Email in: Could you spare a few minutes to look at my list? [2k/1750 Vanilla Marines]

"Howdy Kirby (Will)!

I recently (a few days ago) found your blog and have been reading with a great deal of interest. Thank you for explaining concepts like blocking and wrapping. It is refreshing to see someone that actually puts a bit of thought into what he says before letting fly a hyperbolic tirade of bullshit. I have been fed so much crap over the last few weeks that I really was considering not playing 40K ever again. But enough with the brown-nosing; I came here to ask for advice.

I am going to start playing 40K again, albeit infrequently. I am figuring less than once a month and probably closer to once every couple of months. I need to build a 2000 point army for casual games. The LGS had a fairly casual tourney at 1750 recently, and I would like to participate in those too. I don’t need to win; I just need to not be in last place. I am taking the core out of my retired 3rd edition Deathwing army to start my new one because I am lazy, cheap, and love my Termies and Land Raiders.

HQ
Librarian (TA+SS, Null Zone, and maybe Gate?)

Elites
Terminator Assault Squad (x10 TH/SS)
Land Raider Crusader (MM)

Heavy Support
Land Raider

That’s 1050 already! So now I have to try and make the rest of my army resilient as possible while being able to pour the hurt on very quickly. What I currently have is:

Troops
Tactical Squad x10 (Flam, MM, Rhino)
Tactical Squad x10 (Flam, MM, Rhino)
Tactical Squad x10 (Flam, MM, Rhino)

Fast Attack
2 x Land Speeder (MM, HFlam)
2 x Land Speeder (MM, HFlam)

This leaves me with 55 points for Extra Armor, or whatever. I conceived this list from all of the excellent advice I got from 40KOnline and Warseer.

Haha! Just kidding… I actually read a ton of your articles and posts as well as stuff from B&C and, to a lesser extent, BoLS. Anyway, here was my reasoning, so please tell me if I am on the right track or wildly off the mark:

From what I gather, and please realize that I have not played since 3rd edition, is that three Troops is a little on the low side at 2000 points, but with the rest of the army there should be enough to draw an opponent’s fire to more immediate threats. Also, my first attempt at this list had only one, lone LR full of Termies. What I read here is that I should have two, even at the high premium in points. One LR would be too easy to counter, and would leave my army nutless should it get taken out too early. The Librarian is likely over-dressed for the occasion; he should probably lose the Termie suit as it isn’t really contributing much.

I had a few other questions too. Would Vulcan be worth slotting into my army? At 190 points he seems like a rocking piece of hardware, but to use him I would lose either Speeders or some Troops or both. Also, I can probably dump the ‘nilla LR for another Crusader, but that leaves me with no guns that reach out farther than 24 inches, should I? Will this army be competitive enough to not embarrass me? I don’t mind getting beaten, but I don’t exactly want to get roflstomped either. I understand that winning is a result of generalship, but a list full of fail will do poorly no matter what I do. What should I do to pare it down to 1750?

In 3rd edition I basically ran ‘nilla LRs, lots of shooty Dreads, and shooty Termies. I am really excited over fielding close combat Termies and charging into battle!

Thanks for taking time to read my email and look at my list, I hope to hear from you.

Steve"

These are the type of e-mails I love. There is a lot of understanding there and this makes me a happy chook (please don't squeeze me :|). Glad you like the blog as well Steve. I do try to use Dethtron's blog as my venting station :P. Do you  happen to play in Australia btw? Anyway, your initial analysis on your army is pretty much spot on and you've explained the reasoning for 2x Raiders. Problem is at 1750...well you've identified the complete lack of support as well, especially in Troops. At 2000 in this type of list, 3 Troops is too many. If the opponent wants to target your Troops, they can. Those Terminators can and will crush face if ignored. This is why you take 2 (beyond the fact that 1 is easy to block/negate). At 1750 if you want to run 2x Terminators you're running an imbalanced list I'm afraid as there just isn't enough support. Sooner or later you'll come up against Mech Eldar or Tau and they'll be able to negate your support whilst avoiding your Terminators. If you're willing to take this risk @ 1750, that's fine (you'll also be called all sorts of names for using 10x TH/SS terminators at 1750 points. You have my permission to stick them with any point object you may find lying about).

So, we'll take your army list you posted and immediately drop the Termie Armor & SS on the Libby + a Tac squad and replace the Godhammer LR w/another Crusader (or Redemeer if you wish) and plop an MM on it. THose Raiders also need EA. This leaves us at 1740 points and we are in need of some ranged support. At 2000pts this is generally in the form of AC/LC Preds or Rifleman Dreadnoughts but we can't afford those and have speeders. What we'll do then is replace the 4x MM/HF speeders w/3x Typhoons leaving us at 1730 pts (2 combi-meltas or flamers on the Tac sarges and 1750 pat). This gives the list a bit of suppression fire on the move from T1 whilst maintaining some blocking ability. I again think this list runs much better at 2000 but if you're set on Raiders & Termies...I think that's the best way to go. If you weren't set on Raiders & termies but rather just Termies...well we can do something like this:

Libby w/Null Zone & Gate
10x TH/SS Terminators
2x Rifleman Dreads
2x Flamer/MM/Rhino Tacs
2x MM/HF Speeders
1x Typhoon Speeder
3x AC/LC Predators

This keeps your Terminator wall as a bubblewrap which is damn scary and has a lot of downfield firepower through the Dreads/Speeders/Tacs/Preds akin to a more balanced mech list for SM. You don't have the Land Raiders but I think it's a lot more viable a build @ 1750 than dual Raiders.