[Mitch: the noob]

we were organizing a friendly tournament one day, and me and a spacemarine friend got pitted against eachother do to our relative skill.
he won the roll to deploy first. he lays down two dev squads, a dred, and says the rest is infiltrating.
i play deamonhunters, i deploy a bit forward in my deployment.
he has six scout squads and shrike with some badass retinue infiltrate right in front of me.

shrike with the infiltrate/fleet/jump pack/ assault move, hits my terminators first turn.
scouts infiltrate, scout move, apparently have fleet now because shrike has fleet, and assault move into everything else.
i lost this game by turn three.
this seemed a little cheesy to me and just wanted to ask the SM boys on TO about the legality of this, and if it is, any counters they can think of.
all input appreciated

[pikeZ33]

I'm a Tyranid player, but someone did this to me as well. What he did is correct according to the 5th edition Space Marine Codex.

I'm still new to the game, and know little of Daemonhunters, but I would try to out-assault him--they are only scout squads he's using. However, I would not try to do this if he was using the scouts with an embedded power fist.

[mindscape]

Yes, it is cheesy, yes, it is legal, and yes i hate it.

I would drop pod my entire army against this guy, or put on a mask and beat him. IMO people like that shouldn't play 40k.

Peace

[crisis_vyper]

Yes, this is legal, for sure.

Well the fun part is when you put Shrike together with Calgar into the army. Instead of Calgar's own special combat tactics thing, he now can fleet instead. To make it even more amazing, attach Shrike to a squad of 10 Assault Terminators with Calgar in it and just infiltrate as close as you can to your opponent. Then when the movement phase start just start to position yourself for the charge, and if you want you can always split Shrike and Calgar up and let them charge other units. So in effect you are initiating a triple squad charge during your first turn. While they tie down the opponent and try to make a breach, bring in everything else, from assault termies to assault squads and just get closer to the breach to make i even bigger.

I have seen this being done before, and yes it is a tactic that is amazingly brutal and effective in terms of close combat.

[Restayvien]

High initiative is the way to go. Take an army of howling Banshees and watch him try that trick. With Marines I guess all you can do is save points by not bothering with heavy weapons and spend them on bodies and cc weapons. If you're not getting any shooting in you don't need any real firepower. Just line up baisc 5 man squads at the front of your force and put Assault Marines or scouts behind them to counter charge. Either that or Deep-strike Terminators with Thunder Hammers. :P

Make the most of Land Speeders too - keep them moving and they'll need 6's to hit in combat (unless the rules on attacking skimmers in CC have changed since I last played). Assault Cannons and Heavy Bolters should make mincemeat of combat troops.

Hope the advice from a non-Marine player who hasn't played a game of 40k in years is helpful lol.

[crisis_vyper]

Originally Posted by Rezzy

High initiative is the way to go. Take an army of howling Banshees and watch him try that trick.

Well, if they are assault termies all armed with storm shields and thunder hammers, they would like to see you come to them instead. IF they do not see your banshees coming, they come for you.

[Falstead]

It is legal, but it's by no means unstoppable. You said you'd deployed forward, next time don't do that. Instead deploy a few "buffer" units as far forward as possible with the rest of your army well isolated from them. Use small easy to kill units. 3 Death cult assassins who deploy normally rather than infiltrating could be ideal for this. His infiltrators can't deploy within 12" out of LOS/18" in LOS of the assassins, so just the three models can REALLY push back his deployment of the infiltrators. With the gap between the assassins and the rest of your army you now have a nice big killing field to heavy bolter, autocannon and pyscannon apart those lightly armoured scouts.

[Vash113]

Originally Posted by Mindscape

Yes, it is cheesy, yes, it is legal, and yes i hate it.

I would drop pod my entire army against this guy, or put on a mask and beat him. IMO people like that shouldn't play 40k.

Thats not really fair, it is a perfectly legal and not really horribly cheesy tactic. After all its just scouts that are WS3 now, and Shrike may be powerfull but he and his retinue are expensive and limited in number.

They are getting so close using infiltrators, which is not too difficult to counter with your own infiltrators to force his infiltrating units back some and make sure they have greater difficulty charging on the first turn.

[mindscape]

Originally Posted by Vash113

Thats not really fair, it is a perfectly legal and not really horribly cheesy tactic. After all its just scouts that are WS3 now, and Shrike may be powerfull but he and his retinue are expensive and limited in number.

They are getting so close using infiltrators, which is not too difficult to counter with your own infiltrators to force his infiltrating units back some and make sure they have greater difficulty charging on the first turn.

Yeah, when i thought it through i was too harsh there maybe, i just get annoyed by people who push the rules as far as possible, which IMO is concidered powergaming, something i have always hated

[Vash113]

Yea but some of that can be forgiven with the new codex. So many armies were utterly ruined with the new codex its not surprising to see things backswing some. Of my Four armies that use the Space Marine codex two were ruined, and a third needed a complete reorganisation. Not good considering taht none of the armies was overly powergaming or relying on an uber cheese strategy. My Raven Guard are probably going to work the same way now thanks largely to the new codex screwing around with the way the army worked previously.