[monocleman]

Well, my friend got a bunch of foamboard (insulation foam) that's 2 inches thick, and we decided to dig trenches into it and have a kind of World War One-ish battle. It seemed pretty cool, but now that the trenches are built, I'm wondering how I can get his 4,000+ points of Space Marines out of them.


Power armor and a 4+ cover save=lots of living Space Marines.

[steck_638]

templates, flamers, put a team of FW at one end of a trench and start shooting at him... also use marker lights to drop saves,the SMS ignores them, and some aircraft if you can

[viorlashasui]

Make him come to you. End of story.

[Jedibean]

Lots and lots of fire warriors! I mean LOTS of them! The thing you have to think about is that against fire warriors it doesn't matter if he gets a 4+ cover save. His armor save is better anyway. So for you it makes little to no difference if he's in the trenches or out of them. I'd focus fire on 1 flank and then use transports, because I always take them, to move my guys over to the flank I just annhialated. Then I'd basically work my way up his flank.

I've done this before against a lot of shooty marines in cover. It works really well. Just LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of strength 5 shooting. You'll cause enough wounds that they'll fail their 3+ save eventually.

Oh and make sure you support them with well placed markerlights. Ballistic skill 5 fire warriors are the bane of EVERYONE! Rapid firing 10 guys gets you 20 shots that hit on 2's. It's ridiculous.

[razgriz_cipher]

Yes pumping as many shots into them at as high a BS is a way to do it. So the problem may be assualt. if they come out of the trenches.

[Jedibean]

Originally Posted by Doctor Wu

Yes pumping as many shots into them at as high a BS is a way to do it. So the problem may be assualt. if they come out of the trenches.

That's true. I usually try to make a defensive shell with my devilfish. It works quite well. They have to assault the fish or shoot under the fish at which point I'll get my cover save. It helps.

[BONK]

Flank Charging is definatly the way to crack that nut.

Remember to take Shield Drones and Photon Grenades in case they do assault you (EMP in case he throws Dreadnaughts at ya)....having your save even against power weapons really pisses Marine Players off something fierce! ;D

[Tauvegas]

I kinda new to 40k so somebody correct me if i'm wrong, but if their gonna be densely packed you could pie plate the crap out of them with the submunitions shots from a few hammer heads. Plus, if they are out of your los you could use smart missile systems on battlesuits. There is still gonna be alot of them left and eventually they're gonna charge you so i'd go with what alot of the other guys are saying and load up on fire warriors (stack them with photon gernades incase they do get assaulted) and then markerlights. Give the hammerheads and battlesuits burst cannons to support the fws. Also, if you have some points to burn then you can spend them on vespids: the neutron blaster is great for marine hunting and as long as you keep them in your own trenches then they should be good support for your fws when the marines get too close. You could try to fish of fury them with your hammerheads, but with fifth edition alot of people are iffy about whether that's legal or not.

[BONK]

Vespid is a friggin AWESOME idea....use markerlights and reduce their cover to zero, Vespid get markerlight benifits..unlike the Kroot, then hit them with as much AP3 weapons as you can get; rail-rifles, Vespid guns, Plasma, Fusion, etc.

Lotta dead Marines!!!

[SHAS VRE]

"Vespid is a friggin AWESOME idea....use markerlights and reduce their cover to zero, Vespid get markerlight benefits..unlike the Kroot, then hit them with as much AP3 weapons as you can get; retrievals, Vespid guns, Plasma, Fusion, etc.

Lotta dead Marines!!!"

Not points viable to plus a squad of vespids increase BS by 1 and remove the cover save you need 4 marker hits you need 8 pathfinders which is going to cost you around 200 Pt's, now if you try to do that with several squads you dint have enough points to actually kill enough. Full squad of vespid and pathfinders will cost you almost 400 points an kills about 4.4 marines! If you use the pathfinders to plus up the BS of units that don't need the cover reducing you can kill more for cheaper and use less marker lights so need less expensive PF squads.

Units you should take;

1- Firewarriors with both sides having 4+ cover saves firewarriors are pt for pt as good at shooting a 10 man Marine squad with heavy bolter and plasma gun as the same marine squad is against the same Firewarriors.

2- Broadsides if they have tanks then this IS the only unit you want to take them out with. multiple rail guns shots which you will need, more then enough range and make the best use of the cover save.

3- pathfinders use these to plus up the chances to hit with your fire warriors and to reduce the cover save of anything shot by the broadsides

4- Kroot, with a 4+ coversave outshoot same above squad of marines

(165 Pt's of marine squad 8 bolters - 1.78 dead 1 Heavy bolter 0.84 dead Plasma gun - 0.278 dead total 2.89 dead kroot at a total points cost of 20.28 Pt's. 23 kroot = 161 = 1.92 dead marines = 30.67 Pt's plus you have the chance to kill off a heavy/special weapon, the is no special kroot to kill.)

plus even marine players with assault troops wont lightly charge 60+ kroot in cover.

5 - Since you have to take a suit to lead, you need to take the right weapons an there is only one crisis weapon worth taking and that's the missile pod.
with most of the marines sitting in a trench at the other side of the board anything with less then 24" range is useless. plasma rifles are out as a 1 shot weapon against 4+ cover even with BS5 shooting every turn will kill a whole 2 marines so you will NEVER make your points back.
Take a deathrain configuration on your commander and you have the range to stay at the back of the board, (safer) reliably cause wounds which wont be affected by there cover and you keep the cost of the suit down so is easier to make your points back. I would choose Commander with 2 bodyguard suits all with TWL missile pods all having a drone controller with 2 shield droned, the 4 plus cover save now gives you 6 4+ cover saves to be assigned to before you have to even think about one on a suit an when you do they still have a cover save too.

Units not to take

1- vespid (shock!) going to be stuck trying to cross no mans land with no cover get shot to pieces an if they do manage to get a shot off they are robbed of there only good point, there low AP by all the cover they have.

2- hammerheads on a trench board theres likely to be no cover for your tanks and they wont fit in the trenches, plus ions cannon is useless with all the cover and railguns will always be more reliable with broadsides and the sub shot wont do that much against marines.

3- skyray (see above)

4- crisis suits with any weapon set up that is not a deathrain, AFP may be usefull if you were not playing marines as you are its not and might not have the range to reach from your trenches to theres anyway.

Other info - If your playing 4000 Pt's then your going to need 2 FoC as you wont fit them it in one. This lets you have 72 fire warriors and 120 kroot for only 1560 Pt's, 12 broadsides will put you back around another 1000 points leaving you around 1500 for pathfinders an deathrains.

Closest trench have your kroot, behind them firewarriors and pathfinders an suits.

Your list is not going to be very exciting, but if you want to win then it cant afford to be really. half the tau units only just work on a normal board with plenty of cover and other units supporting them. On a trench board some units wont work at all so you have to take more of the ones that will.