Editing Warhammer 40,000/7th Edition Tactics/Space Marines (section)

===Dedicated Transports===
Note: All of these Dedicated Transports can be taken as Fast Attack Choices. Per the new Facebook draft FAQ, you can't stick Battle Brothers in a transport at deployment (so long Drop Pod taxi service). So if you want to give your Space Marine units (even in a different detachment/formation and even from a different chapter) without one a Drop Pod, or anything that can't take their own (i.e. Centurions), you can if you take the Combined Arms Detachment, without going unbound.
*'''[[METAL BOXES|Rhinos]]''' - Very cheap and good transport since space marines are KNOWN TO HIDE IN MEHTAL BAWKSES, DA KOWARDZ! TEH FEWLZ! There's not much to say about it beyond "use it!" Seriously, don't footslog your marines. A walking marine is a dead marine, and dead men hold no objectives. The only upgrade recommended is the Dozer Blade. Once the guys are out of it, you can basically throw it away in petty dick moves like preventing charges, blocking line of sight (tossing a dozer blade on the sucker will make this glorious bastard even longer, thus potentially blocking even more line of sight), and tank shocking people into tight formation to be hit with flamers, more useful for shielding your own guys as it's side armour is 11, as opposed to the 10 most transports have (*cough* Chimera *cough*) so str 4 weapons (standard infantry power) can't glance it. You can also use its speed to dick around with Necrons if you feel like trolling them and don't really care about winning.
**NOTE: look on the entry for the Rhino in your codex and you will notice a rule that no-one ever uses, which is a shame because it totally rocks: opt out of shooting for a 1/6 chance of repairing an immobilized result. Your opponent cries when he thinks he's immobilized your transport and then it starts moving again. I mean, what else are you going to do in that phase? You're not Chaos, you don't get decent guns on your Rhinos.
**Exploit 7th Edition rules: Did you take a Drop pod with your troops choice? No? Then take a rhino! Vehicles got harder to insta-slag without dedicated AP1/AP2 firepower pointed at them, and dedicated transports taken with troops count as troops. Now you can drive your squad to one objective, then rush your rhino over to hold down or contest another. Alternately: if they want to dislodge your hold on an objective, they now have to destroy both the squad on it AND the transport that took them there.
**Using Khan and White Scars Chapter Tactics a very nasty and potent trick can be pulled with Rhino squads. Start by deploying on 12'', then scout 12'' in your metal box before the game starts. In your first movement go 6'' and disembark your infantry a further 6''. Good at maths? You're now on their deployment line, and you can fire. Your opponent won't anticipate it and it gives you total board control by the end of turn 1 - you can dictate exactly where the fighting goes. That's invaluable.
**Don’t forget that the Rhino comes stock with a free storm bolter, so you can add a second one from the equipment list. A second set of storm bolter shots may not sound like much, but without access to the havoc launchers it’s pretty much the only way your metal box can give [[Your dudes|your dudes]] some quarter-decent fire support.
*'''Razorback''' - What's known in military terms as an Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV), the Razorback is basically a Rhino that trades 4 of its transport capacity for a turret gun. It is one of the best choices for a SM army themed on firepower. Best configuration is a Tactical Squad of 10 with Lascannon, Melta gun/Plasma gun, matching combi-weapon, and a Razorback with a TLLC. The Space Marine codex FAQ lets a Tactical squad choose a Razorback as a dedicated transport even if it has more than 6 men. So at game start you combat squad them, one with the Sergeant and PG/MG, and the other with Lascannon. The former goes in your transport, the latter stays at the back of the board providing fire support and capturing your home objective. The TL lascannon is generally the best pick, since AV11 3HP is pretty frail in the modern meta, meaning that the otherwise-interesting lascannon/TL plasma gun weapon choice may expose you to too much S6/7 fire if you drive it into Rapid Fire range. Just remember to be careful with your deployment if you come up against a gunline. 
**Definitely avoid taking the Razorback stock, the TL Heavy Bolter is a terrible choice. Any of the other choices can be very useful, whether it's backline fire support from the lascannons or running up on enemy objective campers with the TL assault cannon/heavy flamer/plasma gun. The one time the Heavy Bolter might be decent is when you can get a pile of them for free from the Gladius Strike Force.
**See that note above about Objective Secured on Troop Rhinos? Applies here.
**Razorbacks pay 5 points more than anything else you can take for their lascannon or assault cannon loadout - everything else in the codex with a TL heavy bolter can replace it with a TL lascannon for less (a dreadnought needs to spend 10, a centurion devastator or stormtalon gunship 15), and everything with a heavy bolter can replace it with a lascannon for less (devastators pay 10), so you ARE paying quite a lot for TL lascannon spam; make sure to manage your spending before you blow it all on TL lascannons you can get cheaper elsewhere.
**'''Infernum Pattern Razorback (Forge World; IA2)''' - Basically the Razorback with a Multi-Melta turret, introduced by the Forge World. Unfortunately it cannot be taken for free as part of a Gladius. 
*'''Drop Pod''' - Also great, mainly because of its ability to deep strike into the most useful position. Inertial Guidance lets it avoid scattering onto impassible terrain and models, which prevents Deep Strike mishaps that don't involve the table edge. Excellent tool to hunt tanks with squads of melta, or drop down a Dreadnought where they least expect it. These transports suffer from the "Half on turn 1, half regular reserve" rule common to deep-striking forces nowadays (bring an odd number of them if you bring more than one, because the "half on turn one" is rounded up). However, even a single Drop Pod is a major psychological tool. A Deep-striking Sternguard squad or Dreadnought is almost guaranteed to change how your opponent deploys, so consider this carefully.
** Thanks to 7th, Drop Pods are now scoring. And if they delivered an ''Objective Secured'' squad to the battlefield, they're (typically) also denial units.
** Also note that the Drop Pod is one of two units able to take a Locator Beacon, good for Deep Striking reinforcements for whatever the Drop Pod was carrying.
** The Deathwind launcher is now cheaper. With the reduced price, you can pay a little more than a tac marine for the ability to lock down a 12" area around a drop pod with a S5 AP- pie plate.  You kill a MEQ, you basically pay off the cost of the launcher.  Put these on your offensive pods, otherwise it'll be a waste.  
** Note: Drop Pods, or their cargo, can be shot by Interceptor units, so beware quad guns and Hydras. Interceptor shots are fired at the end of the Drop-Pod-equipped player's movement phase, meaning AFTER it lands and the Spess Mehreens disembark, so you can at least get into position before being shot at. And yes, it still counts as open-topped against Interceptor.
** Units arriving by Drop Pod are allowed to disembark, and fire or run as normal, but they may not assault.  Also thanks to 7e disembark rules you get 6" of free movement to mitigate scatter. As well, Drop Pods don't Snap Fire anymore on entry, so their Deathwind Missile Launcher can strike fear into hordes of low Toughness infantry.
**Advanced tactics on the use of drop pods can be found in the common playing styles section towards the bottom of this tactica page.
*'''Lucius Pattern Dreadnought Drop Pod (Forgeworld; IA2):''' This is a special pattern of Drop Pod that gains Shrouded on the turn it comes in, and does not require its dreadnought to disembark immediately. It's also an Assault Vehicle, so if you're willing to let your dreadnought wait a turn, he can come out from safety and start handing out prostate exams to anyone stupid enough to stay close to the damn thing. 
*'''Land Speeder Storm''' - 7th edition may be where the Land Speeder Storm finally comes out of the back of the model enthusiast's closet and onto the table as a viable and fun model to incorporate into your army. AV10/open-topped/HP2 means that if anything looks at it funny, it might explode into a giant fireball that will eat your squad of scouts. On the other hand, being a skimmer means that it gets Jink and can flat out 30" in a turn. It's also an assault vehicle! If you keep this thing behind cover it becomes a decent skirmisher and lets you grab late game objectives with scoring Scouts. You can replace its standard heavy bolter it comes with stock for a heavy flamer for free, but remember that if you are jinking you can't shoot it, and when running scouts you really don't want to be running them at anything that is tougher than them anyway. Lastly, the Cerberus launcher is now S4 AP6 large blast with Blind, so it can give you an edge by blinding something that would otherwise scare your Scouts. Remember that since the LSS is open-topped, the Scouts inside can add significant firepower. The choice between bolters/shotguns/CCWs depends on what you are planning on fighting. Against 5+ and 6+ saves, the bolters are likely better as they will ignore the light armor, but for anything else, you are probably better served by the shotguns letting you charge after shooting. All of this and the Scouts will only run you about 100 points - even adding every upgrade you can think of, this unit won't even cost more than 150. That's savings that you can bank on.
**Remember that tanks no longer suffer from Blind, so this can only work against infantry. It's still fairly good against [[Orks|low]]-[[Tau|initiative]] [[Necron|armies]]
*'''Land Raider (various types)''': Several squads ''(Terminators, Crusaders)'' have access to Land Raiders as dedicated transports, which can make it change its battlefield role. See those unit entries for specific applications of rules and tactics.