Tactical thoughts
I’ve been looking at/for Salamander tactica on-line and not having a whole lot of results. One of the best sites was apparently www.thefireofnocturne.com but it seems to have lost its registration. I have managed to salvage some bits from it by using cached Google results and I may post those here someday after I clean them up. I also tried www.archive.org, but had little luck there.
I remain concerned about being short range shooty because that sounds a lot like shoot once and be assaulted to me. People on the Salamander boards often refer to “our short range firepower” like we somehow have more than most other Marines or are better with it. the truth is that, as of 4 October, any other marine outfit can takes exactly the same range of weaponry that we can. Their bolters, standing and shooting at 12” are every bit as good as ours. We can, for fluff reasons, optimize for fluff by doing something like only taking flamers and meltaguns, but that would mean that when marching at another Space Marine player, we’d be taking a lot of plasma and lascannon fire before getting into range.
I’ve also pondered GW’s decision to limit tactical squad’s ability to get special weapons to only ten man squads. Obviously, they want to encourage the players to take more troops and full ten man squads. They then allow us to break up our tens into two five man squads. I can see this having a few effects. 1) People may elect to take the two cheapest five man squads they can and then fill out their list with three elites, three fast attack, and three heavies; exactly the opposite of what GW wants. 2) They may break up their squads so they have two assault halves with say meltaguns and 2 heavy halves with lascannons. The assaults then move together assaulting and the heavies stand on the same hill and shoot. It’s like having a light devastator squad. 3) I think you can put two meltaguns or flamers in a tac squad now and if you can conceiviably when you split them, you could end up with a five man squad with two meltaguns. If you matched up two halves like that you could have a ten person group with two sgts geared to assault, four meltaguns/flamers, and four damage sponge vanilla space marines. This group of course is actually two units so it would take casualties a bit more easily. On the other hand it can divide and go after two targets at the same time (useful when assaulting tanks with meltaguns). 4) Do as GW intends and take a ten man squad.
I remain kind of honked off by the fact that if I want terminators with thunder hammers, they can only go in an all assault squad where the base weapon is a lightning claw. As a general rule, I prefer a LC to a TH for carving up bad guys so I’d be grinding my teeth every time I had to pay to upgrade. If I want flamers, a quintessential assault weapon though, I have to go to a “shooty” terminator squad. I can still make an assault oriented squad from that by putting in two heavy flamers and eight other storm bolter/power fist guys, but then I can’t have my hammers, damn it! Besides, if I’m a shooty terminator, I want my assault cannon and missiles. Oh and did I mention that all these terminators are expensive?
I forgot to mention the problem now with veterans. Only assault veterans can have thunder hammers. Only Sternguard veterans can have heavy flamers (and no figure is made for a space marine carrying a heavy flamer by the way). So, whereas previously and in fluff a Salamander veteran squad should have both heavy flamers and thunder hammers, I have to choose. I think you could make an interesting assault squad of Sternguard veterans with the heavy flamers and whatever I can give them to make them better assaulters. Probably mount 'em in a Razorback. At least that's what I'm going to TRY doing. Problem is that I need another 4 terminators with just a storm bolter and power fist. I could get the "terminator" box which would give a me a second assault cannon and a second chainfist. But that is $50. I already have 12(!) termies with t-hammers of course.
I feel as if I am being forced to trade effectiveness for fluffiness. I can be fluffy or good or do neither well.
The only good short-range shooty battle I can remember was actually with my Sisters of Battle running out of a Chapter Approved book. Like the Salamanders, Sisters have a lot of flamers and meltas. I was fighting a Chaos Marine enemy, Tzeneech (or however it’s spelled) and it turns out that while he was good in the assault, he could not initiate an assault. He had to be assaulted which I was not about to do. So we stood eight inches apart and shot at each other. He had a higher toughness. I had numbers and meltas. I won. Otherwise, the best battlefield for the Salamanders would be an impassible hedgerow running the length of the table, 23” from the opponent’s edge in a scenario which had no deep strike, jump packs, etc. Even then, it’s probably just a break even fight.
I remain concerned about being short range shooty because that sounds a lot like shoot once and be assaulted to me. People on the Salamander boards often refer to “our short range firepower” like we somehow have more than most other Marines or are better with it. the truth is that, as of 4 October, any other marine outfit can takes exactly the same range of weaponry that we can. Their bolters, standing and shooting at 12” are every bit as good as ours. We can, for fluff reasons, optimize for fluff by doing something like only taking flamers and meltaguns, but that would mean that when marching at another Space Marine player, we’d be taking a lot of plasma and lascannon fire before getting into range.
I’ve also pondered GW’s decision to limit tactical squad’s ability to get special weapons to only ten man squads. Obviously, they want to encourage the players to take more troops and full ten man squads. They then allow us to break up our tens into two five man squads. I can see this having a few effects. 1) People may elect to take the two cheapest five man squads they can and then fill out their list with three elites, three fast attack, and three heavies; exactly the opposite of what GW wants. 2) They may break up their squads so they have two assault halves with say meltaguns and 2 heavy halves with lascannons. The assaults then move together assaulting and the heavies stand on the same hill and shoot. It’s like having a light devastator squad. 3) I think you can put two meltaguns or flamers in a tac squad now and if you can conceiviably when you split them, you could end up with a five man squad with two meltaguns. If you matched up two halves like that you could have a ten person group with two sgts geared to assault, four meltaguns/flamers, and four damage sponge vanilla space marines. This group of course is actually two units so it would take casualties a bit more easily. On the other hand it can divide and go after two targets at the same time (useful when assaulting tanks with meltaguns). 4) Do as GW intends and take a ten man squad.
I remain kind of honked off by the fact that if I want terminators with thunder hammers, they can only go in an all assault squad where the base weapon is a lightning claw. As a general rule, I prefer a LC to a TH for carving up bad guys so I’d be grinding my teeth every time I had to pay to upgrade. If I want flamers, a quintessential assault weapon though, I have to go to a “shooty” terminator squad. I can still make an assault oriented squad from that by putting in two heavy flamers and eight other storm bolter/power fist guys, but then I can’t have my hammers, damn it! Besides, if I’m a shooty terminator, I want my assault cannon and missiles. Oh and did I mention that all these terminators are expensive?
I forgot to mention the problem now with veterans. Only assault veterans can have thunder hammers. Only Sternguard veterans can have heavy flamers (and no figure is made for a space marine carrying a heavy flamer by the way). So, whereas previously and in fluff a Salamander veteran squad should have both heavy flamers and thunder hammers, I have to choose. I think you could make an interesting assault squad of Sternguard veterans with the heavy flamers and whatever I can give them to make them better assaulters. Probably mount 'em in a Razorback. At least that's what I'm going to TRY doing. Problem is that I need another 4 terminators with just a storm bolter and power fist. I could get the "terminator" box which would give a me a second assault cannon and a second chainfist. But that is $50. I already have 12(!) termies with t-hammers of course.
I feel as if I am being forced to trade effectiveness for fluffiness. I can be fluffy or good or do neither well.
The only good short-range shooty battle I can remember was actually with my Sisters of Battle running out of a Chapter Approved book. Like the Salamanders, Sisters have a lot of flamers and meltas. I was fighting a Chaos Marine enemy, Tzeneech (or however it’s spelled) and it turns out that while he was good in the assault, he could not initiate an assault. He had to be assaulted which I was not about to do. So we stood eight inches apart and shot at each other. He had a higher toughness. I had numbers and meltas. I won. Otherwise, the best battlefield for the Salamanders would be an impassible hedgerow running the length of the table, 23” from the opponent’s edge in a scenario which had no deep strike, jump packs, etc. Even then, it’s probably just a break even fight.
Comments
I am tempted to make a Salamander army and go the fluff route but don't want to get handed a loss every single time I go to play just because I'm trying to fit with the background material.
With my current Lustwing, I am spoiled wiht my Termies as I can mix and match all the weapon combos I want in any given squad.
Good luck with finding that balance between background and playability.
You still use Dark Angels Codex and all the associated rules and restrictions for an actual Deathwing but your paint scheme is what makes it different. Sort of a "counts as" army.