The Space Marines, or Adeptus Astares are the elites of the Imperium. There is over a thousand chapters in the Imperium of man, each with a thousand genetically enhanced superhumans. This section will cover the aspects of collecting Space Marines, using them, some and a few bits of advice for creating your own chapter rules.

Collecting

Tactics

Creating your own chapter

Superhuman Blitzkreig, my views on Space Marine Tanks

Collecting Space Marines

Collecting Space Marines can be cheaper than other armies because of their limited numbers, and are one of the easiest armies to pick a battle winning force. When buying your units, try to pick a theme for your army, but don't neglect the other elements. My own army is full of bikes and fast things but I use at least a Land speeder Tornado, a Dreadnought or an Attack Bike, usually two or all off this list. An example of a good all-rounder type army which is tactically flexible is in the downloads section. Whenever picking a themed army, remember these few things:

1. Try not to forget your theme.
2. Try not to be outdone in another aspect than your theme. Use Land Speeders and Attack Bikes with extra Multi Meltas in Fast Attack armies, and Scouts and Terminator Squads which will Teleport in for Heavy Support armies.
3. Remember this tactical Doctrine,"Victory goes to he who rolls the most dice."

Space Marine Tactics can be as simple or as complex as you like. Ranging from the simple All out attack to a complex Feigned withdrawal turned Ambush(best with Fast attack armies, especially when your enemies Assault units are at the other side of the table!) Please note that just because these tactics work for me, it doesn't mean that your opponents will die as fast as Waaagh! Chiz(And that's fast!) What I'm saying is do try some of these tactics but don't be afraid to alter them. If you have a Successful Tactic, then put it in the Guestbook. You never know, you might get your name on the site.

The all out attack is where you have a main battleline with some very fast reserves just behind. make a steady advance and systematically take each part of the battlefield. This one works best with Cleanse Mission as you can leave the reserves in each Quarter.

The Mob tactic is best used when you need to get victory points to win. What you do is you be really tight to one enemy unit and send your entire army against it, using your superior numbers and Strength to its full effect. The only problem is that if your enemy also does something like this, and has lots of units, it is possible to be forced back with weight of numbers.(Once I had a 5 man Assault Squad, a 3 man bike Squad with an Attack Bike and a 6 Man Tactical Squad against 23 Dark Eldar Warriors, 6 Reaver Jetbikes and 8 Wyches, which wiped me out!) But in a Remach, I had 5 Terminators, a Force Commander and 3 Tactical Marines against his Archon with Shadow Field, a Harmonculus and 6 Incubus, in which I Slaughtered the Archon and two of the Incubus, which broke the rest and so they got overrun by the Tactical Marines.

Saving the best until last, the Feigned withdrawal turned Ambush is very specific and has some sacrifices, but when it does work, your enemy will need a dustpan and brush to clear his troops off the table. You will need some units to make this work to its full effect like some small units of scouts to act as bait, and lots of fast things with hard leaders and big guns! What you need to do is have your scouts at the front of your battleline (your bait), place your fast things on your enemies weakest flank (i.e. the side with the least amount of units.) After doing this, advance as if it was an all out attack, but keep you fast stuff out of trouble and the scouts a bit in front. When your scouts are attacked, try and make them flee, move the rest of your army back, and your fast stuff behind your enemy. Don't worry about letting them shoot for now, just get them in to position. Destroy the static and heavy equipment and then sandwich him up as they will have to kill every single Space Marine, where you only have to catch them in crossfire to win.

Creating your own Chapter

Creating a chapter can be as simple or as hard as you want it to be, from just making up a name and a colour scheme, to writing the chapters background and giving them extra special rules. At the end of this section is an example Chapter, the Fire Fists which is in the downloads section. The way I go about it is to first think of a name for my chapter and then the colour scheme, which is where I paint a squad of theses new minions of the Imperium and stick them into my Space Marine Crusade army(click HERE to skip to the description of a crusade army). A good thing to do is to keep a record of each of your chapter's honours as it can help when writing a background and allocating rules.

Sometimes, I have an idea about a rule which would be cool in a Space Marine Army. So I look down my list for a good name for the rule and write a mini codex, just with the rules. If I come up with more than one or two rules or troop types, then they leave the crusade Army and become small army( say about 500 to 1,000 points worth) to fight on their own.

If this works out then I decide to write a background for them, using your Chapter's honours to make it a bit fuller. You should at least put in about what was its founding Legion? Why do they have the Special rules that they do? Is it because that their homeworld makes it nessicerry to have these skills? Or is it because of some curse or vendetta with another race? This all adds to helping you build a picture of what your chapter should look like(and is does loads to persuading your friends to letting you use them).

So, you have your chapter name, colour scheme, rules and background. What else do you need? Well first off, try to play a few games with your new chapter so that you can playtest the rules, and see if your introduced rules give the right 'feel' for the army. If you are happy with your chapter, you can get to the Special Characters! These masters are able to take on some of the best that is thrown at you. To go about doing this, you should first pick what position they will be(Chapter Master, Company Captain,etc.) and how he will emphasise your chapter background. After worrying out your basic cost, any extra things should be about 5 to 10 points on average per bonus and on top of all of this, an extra 5 or so points to make him 'special' even more. Don't forget, though, Special characters aren't just combat monsters, they can help you deepen the chapter background even more. When you have completed these steps, you should have a full chapter of your own which will be different because it will be a custom chapter which YOU made yourself. For any special models, you should convert them and if I see you in a Local Games Workshop(Stockport and Manchester area) and you have your custom chapter, I will be more than willing to play against you and any special troops you made up, but I will be very upset if you don't get that modelling knife out and hack some models up, and if you turn down the challenge from my own Chapter, who have had all of the above steps completed for them and are regular opponents for my friends.

As I mentioned earlier, I have a Space Marine Crusade Army, which can be as fun as fighting with a normal army. In medievil times, every knight had to make him and some of his troops available to their Liege for a certain period of time each year. Space Marine Chapters also must supply some of their forces if required, for a crusade army. This normally happens when the Adepts decide that resources of one or two chapters would be no where near adequate to survive a campaign. A crusade can unite hundreds of chapters together to pool their resources, and the army overall can sometimes look like an Imperial Guard Regiment(but obviously much harder). To recruit one of these monsters, just get an army as normal, but paint them all different colour schemes. If you want, you can buy chapter specific troops (like Deathwing and Ravenwing) but with an additional +5 points per model as their chapters would be reluctant to commit these specialists but you may not use any special characters unless they have some serious significance in the scenario. This type of Army can be very fun to paint and collect if you like to paint lots of different colour schemes. If you and your friends are running a narrative campaign the Narrator might have a crusade against an area of space or a heavily fortified planet, with hundreds of Landing craft (battlefleet Gothic is great for this part), with small infiltration parties (Necromunda rules) from your army destroying the defence grid, play both games at the same time( a turn of Gothic then a turn of Necromunda), come up with some rules for the Defence Grid (like every turn it is operable, it can make d6 shots with the same effect as a Nova Cannon, but with no min range) and you have something a bit like the assault on the Death Star in Return of the Jedi. If you wanted to make it really hard for the Attackers, you could use epic rules, with an entire army on one side, one detachment on the other, make up some rules for Sentries and Patrolling and have the attackers having to sneak to the defence grid. If you really wanted, you could make the assault, but when in range of the planet, launch loads of Squadrons of assault Boats and Fighters and try to land some assault Boats on the planet, past the Defence Grid before the game of Necromunda is played. If they succeed, then do as above, but if they fail, they must try and land while the Grid is opperable.

Space Marines may be the most powerful infantry around, but their tanks are deffinatly not top class. Take the Rhino, for example. It's cheap, has a storm Bolter, AV 11 and can carry 10 marines. Only good for speeding up your deployment. Or is it? You can use Rhino's for a screen of your troops, giving you more time to get more shots in. Or you can use it as a suicide truck. Race it riht in to the middle of your opponent and hope that it expodes, with a blast, hopefully taking out more than 60 points of your opponents force. The Suicide truck is my personl fave, as you can load it up with hard troops and drop them off behind the enemy lines.

The Razorback is, I find, one of the more versitile tanks offered to Space Marines. It can carry troops(6 of them), and it has a Heavy weapon, which makes it useable as a mobile weapons platform, with a squad to back it up, at a reasonable price!

The vindicator, in my oppinion, is not much use, due to the Demolisher cannon, being short ranged, and Ordenance, meaning that you have a useless tank untill you have your opponent within 24 inches of it, which is usually when its a wreck. I say avoid it.

The Predator and Pred Anialhator. Their main Tank, sporting Autocannons and Lascannons, making then good at infantry killing or Tank hunting, but only one of them. You choose.

The Whirlwind. Stick it behind a big hill and shoot over it at tanks, as it is ordenance. I reckon that it costs a bit much, though.

Finally, the Marine Tank Master, the Land Raider. AV14 all round (6's needed for a Lasannon to penetrate) Terminator carry capacity, and 2 twin linked Lascannons makes this the mother of all tanks Space marine. Use it only in 1,500 point battles plus, as its a bit big for smaller games. But get one for the shear scare factor.

There you have it, my views on Space marine tanks. Hope it helps you.

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Last date this page was updated is the 4^th Febuary 2000

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