"Hiya,
I am rapidly liking the blog (articles actually have substance unlike another tolling website ;D) I'm writing to ask for your thoughts on Salamander marines.
Essentially my army's living at home in Ireland and I'm wondering if it's worth getting it sent over to the UK or just starting BA or DE (used to play them back in the day) At present the Salamanders have no tanks and are a WIP. I've got lots of flamer, combi weapons, a couple of multimeltas, 10 shooty terminators (wrong choice but going cheap at the time from a closing store) and a couple of plasma cannons. It was quite 3/4th ed based but suffered lack of tanks. Basically it needs an overhaul and I'm wondering if you could offer advice. My only thoughts were to mechanise it and add Hestan, although for mechanisiation I was thinking drop pods not rhinos. As mentioned I only own the basic marines / sternguard so would have to buy whatever vehicles but that's not a problem. :-)
I like the idea of drop podding into the enemies face and unleashing a hail of dakka/flame/melta/ap3 bolter death but I'm told that its a bad tactic.
Anyway this is what I was thinking of running/updating to:
Hestan (travels w/sternguard)
10 tactical marines - Multi melta, meltagun, sgt w/ combi-melta
10 tactical marines - Multi melta, flamer
5 sternguard 2 combi-melta,s combi-flamer, powerweapon,
-drop pod
Dreadnought - CCW + multi melta
-drop pod
Vindicator - siege shield
For 1500pts:
Add Another Dreadnought - CCw +multi melta & drop pod
Add 5 Man assault squad w/ flamer & thunder hammer
Add 2 attack bikes w/ multi-melta
add 2 drop pods to the tac marines, (enabling all the juicy units to DS on t1)
add pfist & combi melta to the flamer tac sgt
add a power weapon to sternguard
Either that or I start and buy a Reclusiach lead, jumpy-melta elite (small) BA army! (suggestions also greatfully recieved)
Reclusiarch - Jump Pack, Inf Pistol (travels with honour guard)
Honour guard - jpacks, 3 lightclaw + 3 meltaguns {cannot get +1 A so might as well tote a gun :D
10 man assault sqd - power fist, 2 meltagun
10 man assault sqd - power fist, 2 meltagun
5 man assault sqd - power wep, flamer {this is the most mutable part}
Regards,
Joe
P.S.:Congrats on finishing your Thesis BTW, I've just started the PhD plunge myself."
Thanks for the congrats and good luck on yours! Glad you enjoy the site as well but you e-mailers sure aren't subtle...lol. In regards to the list, I wouldn't bother with Vulkan at anything below 1750, there's just not enough to take advantage of. Secondly, you need to build the list around him. A lot of people think Vulkan can just be put into any Marine list and off you go but a lot of people are wrong. Sure he's not a bad HQ in most lists but you can make much better lists by focusing on his abilities. This means as much as possible you should be building around melta and flamer weapons in every slot (except Heavy Support). This means MM/HF Dreads, MM/HF Speeders, MM AB, MM/flamer Tacs, Sternguard w/combis & HF, Terminators, etc. So you've done that pretty well in your list but in regards to Drop Pods, it's basically an all or nothing approach and the all approach is brought to you by the Master of the Forge so you can get six Dreads. Example here.
So with your lists, I wouldn't bother with Drop Pods and I wouldn't use Vulkan until 1750. Build a list which you scale from 1000 up to 1750 with the 1750 step basically adding in or replacing in Vulkan.
Let's start with the basics: Libby, 2x10x flamer/MM/Rhino tac squads, 2x Predator, 2x MM AB, 2x Dreadnought gets us 990 points. Nothing fantastic as you need to combat squad to get the Libby anywhere (so can use a Missile Launcher/Lascannon in a Tac squad if you wish) but solid anti-tank, anti-infantry, mobility, saturation and some range. Taking to 1500 we add in 5 Terminators, 2x2 MM/HF Speeders and 30 points of extras (i.e. HKM, combi-weapons, etc). And then for 1750 we replace Libby with Vulkan, MM ABs with Dreadnought and 5 man tac squad w/LasPlas RBack which takes us to 1730 (so combis again). You'd have to buy the Mech obviously but you'd be able to use your Marines and pretty easily convert with Terminators I imagine (or play them counts as for the moment) and once you hit 1750 is a very solid list with the usual hallmarks of a Vulkan list (punishing at close range, mediocre at long range).
If you wanted to end up doing the Jumper army I'd go with a Libby over the Reclusiarch, drop some of the upgrades on the Honor Guard squad and completely drop the 5 man ASM squad and either go for a couple Dev squads or a VV squad w/SS. There are a bunch of Jumper/Blood Hammer lists on this site but can do a 1000-1500-1750 step through if you'd like as well.
