Tactical Marines

As I began amassing my army I started getting some generic backbone troops. Eventually I want enough variety to be able to create a few different army types; all jump packs, shooty, mech, all death company, and mostly dreadnoughts. For starters I just picked one unit from each force org slot and then moved on to the next. This way I'll be able to play the game sooner and build towards making some of my army concepts.

As I mentioned last time my first unit was Tactical marines. I got ten of these dudes and I am extremely unhappy with the paint job. It's been a long time since I painted anything and it totally shows. My paint was too thick so the brushstrokes are very visible. I also played around with what red I wanted. The first few units I painted I tried out various basecoats. Either white vs. black primer, or straight red. I also forgot how small these dudes were! My details and highlights are ugly. I was never a great painter, but I was able to put together a very good table top standard model.

As far as on the board, in the few games I've played the tactical marines have performed fairly well. The heavy weapons option make them a good cheap choice for space marines and they have decent survivability. They have never blown me away with their ability to kill anything but they hold their own. Against the horror of Zach's genestealers they even survive a few rounds of close combat.

Going forward I plan on getting maybe one more unit of tactical marines. I like them, but assault marines are more my style and I would rather load up on them. However, it's taken me a few games to realize that even blood angels can't stand up to bugs in assault and against Tyranids I need to get some more shooting. Tactical marines aren't going to do the damage in hand to hand that assault marines are, but against a unit of genestealers it won't matter much. I need to get their numbers down before they hit my line. Neither assault nor tactical marines can stand against all those rending attacks.

Even if I don't get more tact marines, I need a few more heavy weapons options. Currently I have a missile launcher and a plasma gun. I need some flamers and melta guns. Plasma has failed me a few too many times already.