Topic: 1000pt Anti Marine List

[Shas'Oink]

So, my local GW seems to have turned into a space marine training ground. I want to show people that there is another way! I could probably do this much easier by using 1000pts of Imperial Guard, or Eldar... consdiering that those armies tend to have great anti marine firepower anyway... but I want to also try my hand and running an infantry list that uses Vespid! (a unit that I am practicing with in order to try and get some sort of mastery!)

Now, my usual 1000pt list is mechanised... with two units of FW in fishes and a pair of Ionheads! However, the list has no railguns and only one fusion blaster. This is bad because nearly every single space marine army seems to have a land raider! even at 1000pts!

So, this is one possible answer to that (no, its not replacing one ionhead with a broadside... its instead trying something completely different!)


Shas'El : 87
Plasma Rifle, Fusion Blaster, multi-tracker, target lock
Commander joins the gun drones. he gets protection, they get firepower. the target lock means he is not inhibited by them.

XV8 : 116
Shas'ui : plasma rifle, burst cannon, multi-tracker
Shas'ui : plasma rifle, burst cannon, multi-tracker
Cheaper than plasma + fusion, but still good at cracking marines if you ask my opinion. Plus, the weight of fire is still important as there ARE a couple of Ork / nid players about.

4 XV15 : 120

4 XV15 : 120
I want to get lots of units in as quantity has a quality all of its own, so I've gone for two smaller units of stealth suits. they are flexible and aggressive and can be supported by the kroot seen below

8 Fire Warriors : 80
-rifles

8 Fire Warriors : 80
-rifles
I was debating giving one team carbines, but the chances are they will be used as backfield defenders whilst the other units do the aggressive work. I have no trouble with the idea of losing out one units shooting each turn in order for the m to move up to objectives. Still though, the Kroot will form a more advantourous objective grabber.

10 Kroot : 70
Flexible deployment options and a great pairing with both the vespid and the stealth suits mean that Kroot are kind of a must.

6 Vespid : 102
inc. Leader
I don't think many people at the GW have come across Vespid before... lots of them probably haven't even bothered looking through the ageing Tau codex... so I hope that I can catch people offguard! Advanding up behind other units will be the order of the day, luckily the GW uses quite a bit of terrain so that can help with survivability... then it will be a case of pummeling target units with overwhelming firepower to ensure that they can't retaliate.

5 Gun Drones : 60
Prime tactic is to combine with the commander, but they can also deep strike on their own for some fun. Another underratd unit by many, but the idea os to get lots of speed into the force without needing to rely on devilfishes.
XV88 : 80
ASS

XV88 : 80
ASS
Two broadsides will form my chief anti-land raider capabiklity. There are also lots of dreadnoughts about in the marine armies, so they will also be high priority targets. The ASS means I can go hunting rather than need to wait for the enemy to come into my line of fire

[St. Louis]

If you’re really worried about Land Raiders then dropping the Vespids for a Fusion Piranha may be a good idea. Not only will you be able to block a vehicle but your opponent will have to deal with it on his turn or suffer a melta hit on his Land Raider.

Also why did you include PR/BC in your Crisis Teams/ Do you ever have problems with players being able to stack plasma hits on the same model due to the high rate of fire from the burst cannons?

[Shas'Oink]

Perhaps oddly enough, I don't tend to run into the wound allocation issue all that much (touch wood)... If I'm shooting at large 10 man marine units then there is at a max one wound for each chap (which would rarely happen anyway).

To be honest the issue can be mostly sidestepped by careful planning of your shooting. if you are shooting at a small unit then you can usually work at it by attacking first with volumous fire, such as the stealth suits in this list. Then, when the unit is reduced in number further the XV8s can open fire and overwhelm less because they carry AP2, and more because they torrent of fire the enemy with too many saves anyway!

This is also where the vespid can be useful... Fire at targets with volume of fire first so that they pick off some wounds from the "regular joes" and then attack with vespid so that the "special" guys can't escape the low AP firepower.

I think its this combination of targetted low AP firepower and mass volume of fire that could make this list very dangerous.

[WilliamT]

Hi there

"This is also where the vespid can be useful... Fire at targets with volume of fire first so that they pick off some wounds from the "regular joes" and then attack with vespid so that the "special" guys can't escape the low AP firepower."

Very devious indeed O:nk.  Have to try this for my Eldars as well.

I am in the middle of assembling and painting my Tau.  I have primed 3 stealth suits, with the team leader armed with fusion blaster & bonding knife.  I plan to have 1 more team. Just think the stealth suit models are gorgeous eye-candy

Also, it is brilliantly refreshing to see players using Gun Drones & Vespids!  Really think it is interesting to put the commander into the Gun Drone squad.  This has practical uses because the drones can take instant death wounds.  My local meta dark elf player fields 5 dark lances in a 750pts game along with 2 pain engines.  So it is risky to rely too much on crisis suits that do not include a few drones.

[Shas'Oink]

The principle works well with a range of armies... the general difficulty is that most armies don't have access to full units with low AP weaponry. Eldar can do this very effectively through the use of Fire Dragons (everyone always considers these as pure anti-tank, but it is good to remember that a larger unit can be a devastating anti-infantry unit!) The other difference is that Tau units will often struggle to kill off enemy units themselves... you need to double, or triple up on them.

I'd also be careful with having 3 stealth suits, including 1 with a fusion... as you are dropping volume of fire in favour of anti-tank... and making a unit which isn't going to be very effective at either. This is why my stealth suits run pure burst cannons... their task is to volume of fire enemy infantry, and back this up with an assault if the opportunity presents.

If you want to take a fusion, I'd increase the unit up to at least 5 models. Then make sure that the fusion is given to the team leader and he takes a hard wired target lock. This way the unit can still perform its main anti-infantry task, and the team leader can turn his attention to enemy tanks without prejudicing this.

[Tarrin the Space Marine]

Its a nice list but i think you can make it nastier.

HQ:  Its what it is. but your points are out. This guy is 92.
E: Never the burst cannon sir. Stealth are for bursts, XV-8's are for other guns. also those staelth squads are just too small for my liking.
T: Look good. I also agree that carbines are not the way here.
FA: Nice. though i think 4 drones would suffice. They are cheap wounds, but considering you are leaving your XV-88's to the mercy of a stray lascannon shot i reckon you could do without these.
HS: Two? hmm. personally i think you can get away with one. Ionhead would be far better.

How about:
HQ: 'El, PR, MP, TA, HW-MT, HW-BSF HW-DC, 2 x GDrones
E: 6 Stealth
E: 2 Crisis, PR, FB, MT
T: 8 FW
T: 8 FW
T 10 Kroot
FA 6 Vespid
HS Broadside, ASS, Tleader, HW-BSF, HW-MT, HW-DC, 2 x GDrones
HS, Ionhead, BC, MT, DPod

Drone shielding is now split on the broadside, which can dish out all its guns. The BSF ruins DoW day. Reroll and double, when walking on :-)
The stealth concentrate fire now, which is best. you dont lose BC fire as you have an ionhead now.
The crisis act as low AP and back up AT.
The HQ is a better shot, and has a MP for dealing with light vehciles which are more likely at 1k. Again has the BSF for DoW.
And you have an ionhead which will ruin the day of most MeQ armies, and the 9 shots works well against orks/nids as well.

[Shas'Oink]

Thanks for the comments Tarrin... I agree that adding an Ionhead would be nasty... but in addition to this being anti-marine, there is the additional caveat that I'm trying a full infantry list (I don't want to make things easy for myself do I!?)

I used the initial army in a game vs a blood angel player. My lucky stars, he didn't have a Land Raider. Instead he had a Storm Raven and about 7 terminators (as well as a librarian in terminator armour!)

Funny enough, considering you said I could get away with one XV88 they BOTH spent the first two turns missing completely! When one finally hit, it made mincemeat out of the Storm Raven. Considering their performance there, i'd loath to drop one of them for future games!

As for the stealth suits. The idea with 4 strong teams is that they can still work together to combine firepower and cause mayhem. Their small size however, also means that I can split the fire to support other units too. In short, where a 6man team is pretty capable on their own, a 4 man team is used as a support tool - boosting the overall number of shots on a target. It is the absolute minimum squad size I'd ever recommend... as usually I'd be wanting to run 5 strong teams anyway. Unfortunately though I did have to make some sacrifices to get the vespid.

The crisis were good and bad. The additional range of the bursts was not a massive deal as the termies deep struck close to them, against them, fusions would have been better options though I was expecting more in teh way of regular marines. Having taken another look at the marine armies on the day, I think that fusions might be the way to go... every single one had terminators in!!! I'll have to drop the drone like you mentioned to make points for this.

[Tarrin the Space Marine]

i'm not a fan of small units of stealth. All or none for me.

Looking at the list i gave.
What about swapping the ionhead out, losing the 2 drones from the HQ, 1 off the broadside and the two BSF's giving 166 points.

In goes a full squad of 8 drones, and a 2nd squad of kroot?

adds a fair amount of mobile kick and keeps you infantry only. The loss of the ionhead is made up by the DS drone unit (with HQ) and infiltrating.