"Hi Kirby. Congratulations for your blog. It is crammed with useful advice and articles. You and your collaborators have really taught me how to play this game to win and have fun. I had been lost before, not knowing what to do with my codex. 3++ is truly my light of the Astronomican.
Okay, I'm done with the buttlicking (thought I really meant it :P). Just so we are on the same page, I've thoroughly read VT2's series about Codex: Space Marines and the rest of the articles about them. I've tweaked my lists accordingly, but still there are some things that I cannot seem to grasp. One of them is shooty Terminators.
I can't find a way to properly run them. I've always put a 5 man squad on DS reserve, out of ignorance, with pretty bad results. Though I scarcely suffered DS mishaps, they never actually paid off.
I've got a Phobos Land Raider, so I thought "maybe this will work?". I ran it a couple of times, 5 Terminators in this LR with MM. I managed to drop a Tervigon and some Termagaunts once, only to find myself stuck in combat and overrun by even more Termagaunts 2 turns later.
If you want to try and build a list around them, I've got the following models: 2 Tac squads w/ Rhinos, Captain, Librarian, LR Phobos, sniper scouts w/ Telion, a bunch of Devastator heavy weapon guys, 5 Sternguards w/ Razorback, and obviously these Terminator guys. Feel free to add any units I haven't got in my collection. I'll certainly grab some boxes if they are needed.
Thanks in advance. Keep it up Kirby!"
As nicely as possible the stuff you have is very much a 'battleforce' army with lots of variety but not much balance. Shooty Terminators have the major issue of a lack of a good invulnerable save but are still a scary deterrent to most armies that need to remove them. Being able to get a 4+ cover save certainly helps against AP2 weaponry but it's in combat that the lack of a good invulnerable save comes to the fore. What you want to do obviously then is take advantage of their combat power over most units but minimise their weaknesses against actual combat units which can scare them.
The most basic use of them is in something akin to Thunderbubble where you make a rather shooty list but instead of running TH/SS Terminators as the bubblewrap as a huge "stay away" you run the shooty Terminators. This brings a lesser "stay away sign" whilst bringing more firepower with a Cyclone Missile Launcher. You could also run this type of list with Blood Angels which makes the "stay away" sign of the shooty Terminators a lot larger as they get FNP whilst you also have access to cheaper Devastators.
Basically I would consider shooty Terminators to always be a dedicated bubblewrap unit which not only deters opponents/protects your army but is capable of shooting and punching things in combat. You could take the Thunderbubble list and basically replace the TH/SS with the shooty Terminators (I might also consider dropping the ACLC Preds to ACHB Preds and grabbing more Typhoons). This role for Terminators is also done really now with Dark Angels who can take CMLs in TH/SS squads giving you the best of both worlds really.
In the end I think if you look at them like this (a deterring bubblewrap) you'll have an easier time working them into lists.
