Editing Warhammer 40,000/6th Edition Tactics/Space Marines (section)

==Building Your Army==
Games Workshop always advocates it, and it bears repeating: start with an HQ and two Troops.
* For your HQ, you are somewhat split for choice. If you're playing a chapter with SC's, they're a good starting point. Support HQ's like a Libby or Master of the Forge are worth considering. If you're looking to create a badass retinue for a tough guy character then a Captain or Chapter Master with tooled up weaponry is a good starting point. Fundamentally, HQ choice comes down to planning - they are the most difficult units to integrate by far. You could just take a 65 Libby to minimise the tax, but in many cases that becomes a waste in itself - what the hell is it going to accomplish? Its still a lot of points. Base your HQ on things that *will* happen, not what *might* happen. 
**e.g don't put a Captain inside a rhino with a Tactical squad and expect him to reach enemy lines. You'll get obliberated. However- if you take RG chapter tactics and pull off the maximum movement, he will reach threat range by the beginning of turn 2. Drop pods, Land Raiders, strong retinues, all are good assurance a Captain *will* and not *might*. 

* Good starting troops are:
** Tactical Squads. They're your bread and butter. Unless you're writing a gimmicky spam list you're going to have them. They're an oddball, or a guilty pleasure if you will. Having a load of bolters is not good for your list in all honesty, you want your Tac squads to have maximised firepower or potential. Don't equip them for AT, they suck at it, tanks are too rare to compensate for with an entire unit for, and the alternatives are better. You *need* a method of transporting them. Consider very carefully how you choose to do so, you should not mix and match pods with rhinos unless its just one or two pods and they're carrying a deadly alpha strike unit. Rhinos only become truly good if you're using either the Raven Guard chapter tactic or Khan and the White Scars - you need the mobility and alpha strike potential scout gives you. Razorbacks are alright but don't form a good core unless you're either taking them minimum or maxing them out. The best options here are generally Plasma and Flamers for wiping infantry. Don't forget the Sarge can take a combi-weapon - and by the Emperor make it the same as your special, or he'll twitch.
** Scout Squads. Sniper Scouts are the time honoured classic choice for holding backfield objectives. Honestly, they're not that good at all, but by throne are they cheap. In 6th you can use them as a counter attack or alpha strike unit by abusing Land Speeder Storms, which let you charge out of them with open topped and move a long distance at the start of the game with scout. They can also snatch objectives at the last second.
** Biker Squads. These became very good with the new Codex, and they're a very viable choice for basing an army around, but you need a Captain/Master/SC to field them as troops. Grav Gun spam makes them a very nasty bastion of firepower. 

Once you've got a start on your army, the most important thing to do is play the game. A lot. Learn what you like. Build your army around that.

Some things to keep in mind:
* Note that generic marines are a "jack-of-all trades, master of none" type army: each unit type has a loose yet specific role that they're best at, and because something in the Codex covers each base the army itself is adaptable to pretty much any tactic. Don't run lists around the concept as a whole though. You want your units to have focus. Taking Devastators? don't mix and match your anti-infantry and anti-tank. You want to annihilate what you shoot at. Consider this trait a convenience (or at worst, a hindrance) and nothing else. 
** Never, ever, ever take CC weapons in non CC orientated squads like Tacticals, Sternguard, or Bikers. The objective of those squads is to shoot. What they can't already kill in CC will not be changed by a CC weapon. They're expensive and they massacre your focus. Also bear in mind that weapons like plasma or grav pistols are extremely inefficient for what you pay - they're not worth taking, but a combi-weapon that is both cheaper and supports the squad role is.
* MEHTAL BAWKSES save your life and time. Space marines love being in metal boxes. They make the tough marines even tougher. Stop them from getting bogged down in pointless hand to hand combats, prevent them from being pinned, and, perhaps most importantly, let them move faster and prevent them from being tarpitted. Invest in rhinos/razorbacks. 
** take drop pods. They're just as good rhinos. Put your marines in high priority area's with out worrying about hull points.
* You're not a Khorne Berserker. You're not even a Blood Angel. You cannot turn anything at close range into mulch while being fearless. Pick your close combats wisely. Pure H2H focused space marine armies will struggle against codices that were actually designed with close combat in mind. 
* You're not a Tau Fire Warrior. You can't out-shoot *everything* no matter how many guns you take.
* You're not a Guardsman, Sluggaboy, or Gaunt. You cannot defeat your enemies through weight of numbers alone. Don't sacrifice your men without careful consideration. 
* You're not a Grey Knight, Movie Marine, or Necron Immortal. You cannot rely on individual strength to win. Do not rely too strongly on small numbers of high priced units. 
* You're not a Necron Immortal or a Necron Warrior. You are tough, but you can't get back up. Stay under freaking cover! 
* You're not a Leman Russ Squadron. You can't take a bunch of vehicles and just crush everything in your way. Your tanks are good, but not great, so keep them just as alert as the rest of your minis and let them do their jobs.

Overall, space marine armies require <del>'''BALANCE'''</del> FOCUS to succeed. As Charles Darwin (didn't actually) say: "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to [[Tzeentch|change]]."

The logic is that you need a hard counter to whatever pops up in this edition. Missile Devastators made mincemeat of vehicles last edition like it was going out of fashion. And it did, because now if you come up against a Riptide that every Tau *will* have they're absolutely worthless. Most people don't even take vehicles anymore. 

Another thing of note is that your chapter is not long just a color scheme, you should build your army to be suit their chapter tactics, ie Raven Guard assault marines, white scars bikes ect.

You need to consider the following when writing a list:

**Anti Scoring. You want to wash them off objectives, because objectives win games. Preferably with minimum effort. Examples : 3 Flamer Assault Squad with DP, Thunderfire Cannon, anything else that ignores cover or reliably reaches their scoring.
**Anti Tank. Not half as important this edition but still needs to be considered, you don't want to be boned when you inevitably come up against someone who anticipates a lack of AT. Don't take Melta. Its too situational, unreliable and takes away your focus. Good examples include: Tri-Las Predators, Storm Talons, (even if you don't have the AT guns you can still fly behind and fire at their rear armour with your 360' gun) Devastators. If it can't also do Anti-MC you should probably not take it. 
**Anti Monstrous Creatures. High strength, low AP guns that pound the wounds off these fuckers. They're almost always deadly and critical to your opponent's strategy. The trick is killing them so hard and so fast your opponent crumbles. They vary from Nid MC's that rampage towards you to backfield MCs such as Riptides. You need to plan for the latter especially. Good examples include: Alpha striking Sternguard with combi weapons, Tri-Las Predators, any ranged unit or set of ranged units that can leverage a large amount of high strength AP2 firepower reliably. Don't deal in *might*'s, deal in *will*'s. CC units are not a good choice for this category because they are a *might* on the face of it.
**Anti Flyer. You need to shoot these down before they wreck your list without compromising it. A fortification with Quad Gun is a good easy choice, but you need to plan about how you're going to use them best. Taking your own flyers is a valid counter - they can elect to get skyfire. The Hunter/Stalker have benefits each and are both worth considering.
**List backbone. Its all well and good covering all of this, but if your list is literally a jumbled mess of different units performing different roles with no cohesion you're in trouble. When you look at your list become your own opponent. Think about what they would target first, what is easy to neutralize, and about the amount of damage they would need to inflict in order to cripple your chances at winning. 
**Also relating to list backbone, duality. It is inevitable that a unit can't always reliably achieve its goal. You will take casualties. The easiest way to absorb every punch is to have another layer under your skin - take pairs, triples, quadruplets even of units with the same role. You destroyed a Rhino with 10 Tactical Marines? Here's 3 more squads that all pose the same threat. Unless a unit is exceedingly hard to kill or extremely reliable (e.g in a low points game a DP Sternguard alpha strike unit or a squad of 10 Terminators) you should always have duality.

*Note: If you happen to have 7000£ lying around and several servants who can paint awesomely buy the astartes ultra i.e. [[AWESOME|THE ENTIRE ULTRAMARINES CHAPTER COMPOSING OF 1200 MODELS]] and 17000 point not including vehicles characters
# contact a friend who has a similarly sized tyranid army
# have 6 fortresses of redemption clustered into 2 giant (poler) fortresses
# plan at some point a challenge between calger and the swarmlord
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# [[Profit|PROFIT]]