"Building 1st Space Marines army" Topic

I have the last 2 rules box sets ( I built Orks and Chaos) and what with a few other bits and pieces acquired over the years I seem to have c 35 Space Marine troopers, 5 terminators, a Dreadnought and several senior officer sorts and have decided to make a force out of them.

I don't know the army particularly well, just got the new codex.

I'm curious abbot what other people would do with what I have and/or are building themselves, we play at the 1500 1750 point level.

The most recent boxset includes Dark Angels, so I would make the previous one (Assault on Black Reach) DA also. This way, by combining the two boxsets you have a decent-size SM army that should be close to or even exceeding 1500 points already. Eventually you'll probably want to build on the army to include Rhinos, tanks like Preds and Landraiders and the like.

Well, you'll want a couple of HQ choices, and your 35 troopers will give you 3 "standard" squads, and the termies a "heavy" choice, and the dread an "elite".

The choice here really is what to do with the officer types.

You can paint one as a generic officer/captain, one as the librarian (in blue armour), and one as the chaplain (in black armour), which allows you to field almost all the HQ choices "counting as".

Like so: link

The leftover figures from the 3 Tactical Squads and spare officers can be painted as part of the Command/Honour squad, which are grouped together with the boss and may include Champion, Standard Bearer, Apothecary, Sergeant.

What else to get depends on what style you see yourself playing, so maybe get the figures you have painted first, play a couple of small games and get yourself beaten, and then figure out how you want your revenge served. :)

Added: And for your dread termies, make the effort of magnetising the arms so you can field them with various weapon options. It's worth the effort.

Added 2: And while you are at it, you may want to magnetise the backpack on the command figures so you have the option of fielding them with the jump-pack.

Terminators are a Heavy now? Didn't they used to be Elites?

Grr, my mistake: they are still elites.

He doesn't mention any of the Dark Angels stuff from the most recent set, that includes five Deathwing and three Ravenwing (the Ravenwing would give him a Fast Attack option) so that makes me wonder if he still has it….it sounds more like he has a Black Reach set with a couple of extra squads/command figures. What he lists is definitely the core of a solid force although if these are the Black Reach terminators you can only really use them with the arms they came with as standard terminators arms don't have the shoulder plates, they are a separate piece, but the BR ones it's all one element. Could really use some vehicles though.

Bob is about correct, I swopped the DA bikes and terminators for Chaos & Cultists stuff from a friend's box, I bought the box for the rules and to make Chaos LATD, he built Deathwing/Ravenwing. I have all the marines and commanders left over. I also have some of the Marines from the Dark Eldar boxed set (I built DE too). I'm not really a great Marine fan, but counting them all sitting there I realized I probably had an army so thought I may as well build it.

I agree it's vehicle light, I don't think I need many more troops, I just don't know what vehicles etc to get. I've played against Marines many a time, but there's no standout Marine army structure that suggests itself too me.

My only thought was to make it a proper marine style rapid reaction force, with lots of the lighter, easier to transport gear – dreads/ transports/razorbacks/whirlwinds etc and speeder/air support

If you want to do that then White Scars are a pretty good army to go with. I had a White Scars force back in the day and they did pretty well. You will need more bikes and probably about 4 Rhinos for the marines you have plus a land raider for the termies. After you get that you will probably have enough for an army of the size you are after.

Well you will want a Rhino for each of Squads since they make great – bring your own cover or blocking terrain.

Also consider getting some Predators or Whirlwinds they are cheap for their points and can be useful.

Oh and you will need something to deal with flyers.

Missile Launchers with skyfire perhaps?

Otherwise the new Hunter/Stalker model is pretty cool, love that seeking missile version where even if you miss unless the target flyer leaves the table it will keep coming after them :)