"Epic40K Space Marine sprue best usage advice needed" Topic

I have just four Space Marine infantry sprues for Epic 40K which I bought about 7-8 years ago when GW had a sale. I will prob buy more in future, but this is what I have for now and I'm itching to get them painted.

I want to make best use of these troops and not miss a good option (like a useful HQ choice). So I badly need advice.

This is what I get on one sprue

I prob don't need any advice on these:
4 bikes – so 16 for the four sprues
five termies – easy, one base
five scouts – easy, that makes one base
ten assault marines – easy, that makes two bases

this is where I'm in need of help:
eight heavy weapons guys (men with shouldered heavy weapons)
33 marines (including four in pose making them look like sergants, some kind of leader)
six command guys – captain/commander, librarian, chaplain, standard bearer, couple of other blokes

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At first I thought about doing four chapters. I have loads of vehicles. But I think command wise I will face problems. So perhaps two chapters?

The hvy wpns guys, according to pics, want 3 space marines on a base. That gives me four bases per sprue and cuts away two bases of space marines. I'm thinking it will be sensible to use four hvy wpns per base, only one space marine. That gives me 2 bases of hvy weapons per sprue.

I get either four or six bases of marines depending on my choice above. I think six is more sensible since companies have 2 hvy weapons, 6 marines, etc.

What do I need to know for command stands? It looks like there are supreme leader, leader, chaplain and more types. What should I have.

Thanks for reading my geeky post!

Cheers, and merry Christmas,

Neil

Technically, a Tactical Squad consists of:
1 stand with 4 Marines and a Sergeant
1 stand with 4 Marines and a heavy weapon Marine
and a Devastator Squad consists of:
1 stand with 2 heavy weapon Marines and 3 Marines
1 stand with 2 heavy weapon Marines, 2 Marines and a Sergeant.

Accordng to the Tournament army list, a Devastator detachment consists of 4 stands, as do Scout, Assault and Terminator detachments. Tactical detachments consist of 6 stands.

If you want to maximise the number of units you get, I'd suggest:
Making Tactical stands with no heavy weapons. That way you can make your Devastator stands with only one.
cutting all stands down to 3 models per stand (the minimum allowed).

Characters should technically be included within stands (i.e. to include a Librarian in a Tactical detachment, you should have a stand with Tactical marines and a Librarian on it). However, I based all my characters up with two models on 20mm round bases – that way they can be attached to different units as I see fit, and it's clear they're not extra stands.

The only character options in a Space Marine army are Commanders (with the cloak, waving a sword), Chaplains and Librarians. Everything else (standard bearers, Apothecaries and Techmarines) are just extras.

Thanks Andrew. Understanding this saves me a lot of rebasing later.

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