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

===Gladius Strike Force===
This alternative FOC is included in the base Space Marines codex. It grants one use each of the three Combat Doctrines, which affect the whole detachment when used.  Of interest is that none of these formations or the larger formation grants a warlord trait re-roll, which is an otherwise omnipresent feature of such lists.

*You need 1-2 of the following "Core" choices:
**'''Battle Demi-Company''' - A Captain or Chaplain (which may be any of the named ICs), 3 Tactical Squads, 1 Assault Squad/Bike Squad/Attack Bike Squad/Land Speeder unit/Assault Centurion Squad, 1 Devastator or Centurion Devastator squad, 0-1 Command Squad and 0-1 Dreadnought unit(s) of any type. The Demi-Company gets [[Awesome|Objective Secured]] and its own extra use of Tactical Doctrine. More importantly, if you bring two (with a Captain in one and a Chaplain in the other) within one Gladius Strike Force, the two Demi-Companies are counted as a Battle Company and can then buy Rhinos, Razorbacks, and Drop Pods as Dedicated Transports for the low, low price of [[Cheese|FREE]]. You still need to pay for upgrades, but that can translate into 400-500 points worth of free transports - ideally, you'd use it to spam Razorbacks as a source of free guns or 20-point TL lascannons.
***Since the Demi-Company has a good chunk of what the average Marine player tends to bring anyway, and provides Objective Secured for everything in it, the Demi-Company is perfectly capable of getting by without being battle-forged unless you really want those snazzy detachment-level command benefits. Otherwise the Demi-Company works well as the general purpose core of an unbound army, the rest of your bases can be covered by adding other formations or individual units as you see fit (just note that bringing two Demi-Companies won’t benefit from being a Battle-Company unless they’re part of a battle-forged Gladius Strike Force).
***The Demi-Company's personal Tactical Doctrine can be really nasty if the Tactical Squads are put in Drop Pods and given a special/combi-weapon to blow up tanks or mow down backline units. It can really help these otherwise unimpressive "tax" units pull their weight.
***Free transport drop pods can be fairly hilarious.  Dropping 10-14 drop pods (even empty ones) with ObSec around the board (that's 1-3 per objective) makes a big mess for your opponent.  
*You can take 0-3 of the following "Command" choices:
**'''Strike Force Command'''- Any Captain or Chaplain (named ICs included, as well as Marneus Calgar), 0-1 Honor Guard, 0-1 Command Squad, and/or 0-1 Emperor's Champion. Here's all your non-Librarian HQs in one package. Unfortunately not a Formation by itself, so no Battle Forged army of just 10 heroes.
**'''Reclusiam Command Squad'''- Based on the old Reclusiam Command Squad dataslate, consists of a Chaplain with a Command Squad (he must join them during deployment, and can't leave them) with a Razorback DT. The formation gains Crusader, and all friendly Space Marines within 6" of the Chaplain re-roll misses in the first round of each close combat (aka Hatred). This time around, you aren't required to take an Apothecary or Champion, and don't have to pay points for the formation's unique rules. Still doesn't make it good, though if you insist on fielding a chaplain without a jump pack, bike, or terminator armor (any one of the three are ostensibly better choices, but again, if you insist), this is probably the best way to do it.
***That said, the rules don't actually say you can't bike your Chaplain and Command Squad. If you're fancying a razorback to use for no particular purpose (say you have a combat-squadded tactical squad, or the like), and were going to take a biker Chaplain & squad already, this gives you that plus a (minor-ish) bonus to the chaplain's special rules.
**'''Librarius Conclave'''- 3-5 Librarians, one of which may be Tigurius. Taking this lets you break out an excellent trick, as follows: you may nominate one of the Librarians at the start of a Psychic Phase. All the other ones within 12" of him can't use powers that phase, but the nominated Librarian now knows all of their powers until that phase's end. More importantly, he now harnesses Warp Charges on a 3+ if there's one Librarian within 12" of him, and 2+ if there's more than one in range. This makes your casting in the Psychic Phase ultra-efficient, especially with buffs (or summoning, if you don't give a shit about fluff and want free army points), to the point that even Eldar or Daemons would be jealous! Someone needs to e-mail Forgeworld about their Character Librarians like Chief Librarian Loth joining this.
***Done, FW replied saying that any named Badab War character may be taken in the same slot as a SM codex named character (but only if they are the same unit type, e.g. swapping Tigurius for Loth).
***The BRB FAQ (page 3) has rendered this formation's benefit practically irrelevant. Sure, you know all the powers of other Librarians within 12", and sure you can manifest them on 3+ or 2+ depending on the number of donors. However, your nominated model is limited in casting a number of powers up to his mastery level, so while he may know something like 16 powers, he is ''still'' only casting two or three. And those donors are standing around doing nothing, because they are not allowed to cast, meaning a whole bunch of wasted warp charges.  The formation can be useful for getting Librarians into your army, but you should typically only be casting your powers individually.
***Sure, your other Librarians can't cast, but in return you can effectively get a +12" range extension on another Librarian's rolled power and an opportunity to reliably manifest several select 2 and 3 Warp Charge powers from a single point with much fewer spent dice and less chance of perils, as Mastery Levels do not restrict the number of charges you are pumping through a psyker, just the number of powers. Also, the harnessing bonus allows you to put more dice into manifesting a power so it will be harder for the opponent to dispel. If you are concerned about wasting Warp Charges, you can dip into Imperial Agents or Inquisition books and buy yourself some more Psykers to buff backfield units.
*You need at least 1 of these "Auxiliary" choices, but there's no hard limit as to how many of them you can take:
**'''Anti-Air Defense Force'''- A unit of Hunters and a unit of Stalkers, with the Stalker unit consisting of at least 2 models. Anytime a Hunter lands a hit on a Flyer or FMC, the Stalkers gain +1 BS against whatever got hit. Solves your AA problem nicely, and it's pretty cheap for how effective it is so a full Battle Company gets some wiggle room.
**'''1st Company Task Force'''- 3-5 of any combination of Terminators or Veterans, who gets Fear and Fearless. All enemies get -2 Ld when they're within 12" of at least 3 units (including the Dedicated Transports!) from this formation, and a selected enemy unit has Preferred Enemy applied to it when attacks are made against it by this formation (again, including the Transports). Expensive, but it'll keep a special snowflake on his toes. Works well with Psychic Shriek and any other sort of Ld-related attack or effect. Scary, scary Rhinos/Drop Pods.
**'''10th Company Task Force'''- 3-5 Scout squads and/or Scout Bike squads (the latter of which must be equipped with cluster mines), and can take Torias Telion. Everyone who Infiltrates but doesn't have Stealth gains a watered-down version of Stealth that lasts until they move, run, Turbo-boost, charge, or fall back, at which point it stops working (shooting doesn't dispel it, though.) And on the first turn, all of their shooting attacks have Precision Shots.
**'''Storm Wing'''- A Stormraven is joined by two Stormtalons. They count as a single unit for the purposes of Reserves, and as long as at least one Stormtalon is intact the Stormraven has Strafing Run. Yes, they did copypaste it from the original Storm Wing dataslate from an edition ago. 
**'''Centurion Siegebreaker Cohort'''- An Ironclad Dreadnought unit teams up with 2-4 Assault Centurion squads. Everyone with an omniscope can reroll failed armor pen rolls against buildings and can choose to re-roll glancing hits as well. If they ever destroy a building or Transport in the Assault phase, the occupants suffer an extra 2d6 S6 AP4 hits with Ignores Cover. Would probably go well with an Imperial Fists army, and it'll definitely make your opponent think twice about taking fortifications. 
**'''Land Raider Spearhead'''- 3 of any combination of the basic Land Raider types (standard, Crusader, and Redeemer). As long as they're within 6" of each other, they ignore all results on the vehicle damage table short of Explodes!, and they all re-roll failed to wound/armor penetration rolls against GCs, super-heavies, and buildings with the Mighty Bulwark rule. With this formation, the classic Land Raider may actually be worth taking as a superheavy-killer. Sadly, no option for Antaro Chronus to join, that's for the next entry.
**'''Armoured Task Force'''- A Techmarine, 0-3 Thunderfire Cannon units, 3-5 of any combination of Predators, Vindicators, and Whirlwinds, and the option of taking Antaro Chronus. As long as any of the vehicles is within 6" of the Techmarine or the Techmarine Gunners, they ignore Crew Shaken/Stunned, and said Techmarines gain a +1 bonus to their Blessings of the Omnissiah rolls when applied to any vehicle from the formation. 
**'''Suppression Force'''- A unit of Land Speeders pairs up with a unit of Whirlwinds (minimum two models). If it doesn't move Flat Out, one of the Land Speeders can nominate an enemy within 18" in its line of sight in its shooting phase; the Whirlwinds have infinite range and re-roll To Hit against that target. Make it a 3-tank Whirlwind unit and watch blob armies cry.