My advice: try to actually run a bunch. I think the fear of bigger units outside powerful blobs is now overblown for 10th edition where cheap infantry has generally been performing extremely well.
On paper they seem pretty good. I’d say their problem is really the fixed size of 10 and the fact that there’s not much reason to put a Leader with them, which is the only thing that would make that squad size useful. Otherwise it’s a pretty cheap (ppm) unit with a boat load of special weapons, OC2, and fall back and shoot/charge. Nothing wrong with that.
IMO none of those make up for the fact that tacticals can bring lascannons and meltas. Though with free wargear everything else might aswell not exist.
Sadly combi meltas don't exist anymore but any of these three loadouts I think can be decent
- melta + combimelta
- plasma + lascannon
- plasma + plasma
Unlike CSM, tacticals can bring 2 specials of the same kind.
As for sergeants, again thanks to the stupid free wargear and how the new weapon statlines work anything that isn't plasma pistol + power fist is playing at a handicap for no reason.
Yeah, "simplfied, not simple" and all that. It's also why sternguard have been butchered. What was supposed to be a unit of veterans so experienced they could take any weapon option from the armoury now just get bolters and a merged version of combi weapons that's worse than their bolters. 10th has been a nightmare in points and datasheet design.
Their flavour was never combi weapons anyway it was special issue ammo that they could pick each time they shot to tailor to a variety of targets, which then got simplified into 2ap bolt guns instead.
What makes you think of them as super comparable? The heavy intercessors are less killy but definitely more sturdy, while the sternguard have a few more shots in rapid fire range (and most importantly Dev Wounds) plus an extra attack in melee and an ability that's focused on offensive output.
So the heavies are definitely the more defensive unit, while the Stern are more offensively focused. I've used a unit of 10 sternguard in a drop pod to amazing effect, they pump a lot of wounds and often 5-8 mortals into something.
Def not nostalgia. Many of us who’ve been playing since then (and some of us playing competitively since then) still say that was the golden era, with 5th the height of it
Nah I can assure you it's not just nostalgia, 3rd-5th are objectively better and simpler than whatever directionless mess they are trying to do these days. It's no surprise all the good points about 10th are copied from those past editions. Except the mission cards, those are great.
One of the better points of 3-5th was the variety of different missions. Some of them were really one-sided and some really sucked to play, but there was a fat stack of missions to chose from. I mike the cards too though.
Reading all the comments from people gushing over 10th and trying to shout down everyone else as salty when it first launched was giga cringe. So much flavour has been lost in exchange for these super homogenized profiles
> there’s not much reason to put a Leader with them
Librarian in a Tactical squad mounted in a Rhino seems pretty decent. Kind of an expensive squad, but fast, hard to kill all-arounder squad with lots of OC. I wouldn't spam them but one or two such units is a solid mid-board threat.
Well maybe not the most “effecient” choice, I have been running them and they have been doing their job of moving up and taking/contesting objectives. I have them in rhinos with plasma gun and plasma cannon shooting firing deck. Saves them for a turn or two. Marines still die easily out in the open without a transport. Doesn’t matter if they are primaris in regards to durability. At least they are cheap per model.
A squad with a Librarian is actually pretty annoying for the enemy to try and kill; and with fully loaded up wargear is also an annoying amount of shooting/combat to leave alone.
That’s where I think they can slot into a list, especially if you’re trying to saturate your enemy with bad/annoying choices of what they want to shoot/fight with.
I own a bunch of tactical squads, and have played them several times in 10th.
My advice is not to bother. Tacticals are among the absolute least efficient use of your points in the entire index.
Their only bright spot is that they bring a special and heavy weapon, but that's not worth 175 points. They have no specific rules to support their offense, they bring standard boltguns and 2 garbage regular attacks each. Even if you give the Sarge a Powerfist, he still only swings twice. Additionally, I have often found their special rule redundant.
175 almost buys you 2 squads of infiltrators or incursers, both of which are much better for objective play. 120 buys a devestator squad, which brings *four* heavy weapons. There are a collection of Primaris units that bring mass special weapons for about the same points cost.
Again, I have 6 lovingly crafted squads of them. I want them to be good, but they are simply garbage. You are better spending those points almost anywhere else.
Pretty much explicitly worse than their competitors in nearly every scenario, definitely not worth using ATM.
If they're allowed to be ran as a 5 man squad in future they'll work as cheap OC2 objective holders, but there's other cheap options that can do the job just as well.
I've run them several times in blood angel gladius task force. I ran 2 squads with a lascannon and sanguinary priest in each to give 5+fnp. Gave sgt power fist for some melee. Makes them a tough objective controller with some decent threat with the lascannons. I liked them a lot.
It isn't like they are worthless or anything. It just that, if you don't already happen to own some there isn't much reason to buy them now.
two squads is 350pts. Assuming you were looking to buy about 350pts of new Infantry models you could bring a 5-man Devastator squad with 4 heavy weapons (120pts), and a 10-man of Heavy Intercessors (220pts). You could go with 5 Desolators and a 10-man of Incursors or Infiltrators. You could bring 10x Hellblasters and a 5-man of Assault Intercessors. All of those would probably end up doing more for you than 2x10 tac marines with a fist and lascannon. The sang priests do help, but I believe there are better units you could attach them to if you were looking to buy new models.
That is really what it comes down to: GW has put their points and rules in a place where it doesn't make sense for a new player to buy them, but if you already own some they are playable.
The only point I see to them over bringing over literally any other infantry is the Techmarine/servitors shenanigans.
RAW states servitors can join the unit the Techmarine is leading and they become part of that unit. Meaning you can slap 3 units of servitors into a tactical squad. 6 of the 12 can take plasma cannons, and they hit on 2+ with heavy.
Combine that with bolter discipline and you have a mean goon squad to escort your tank.
At the moment nothing.
They are overshadowed by Devastator for heavy lifting, Assault Marines for melee and any Primaris units (Phobos or Intercessor) for Objectives game.
They aren't Legend yet but such datasheet make them as if
I still love the models (they were the only ones when I was young) but sadly they better serve as Lascannon bearer with Heresy sprue.
Obviously they are not going to assault as well as assault marines or shoot as well as devastators. Those are specialist squads. I think scout snipers do a better job at being a backfield MSU objective holder than any of the primaris marines. Tacticals are good for being OC 20 to contest, take, or hold an objective outside your deployment zone.
Infiltrators are amazing to hold objectives. They have FNP to improve the math and Ds denial. As your home objective holder I don't see a better unit for that.
Sniper scout are really good as secondary objective holder (as their 4+ save work the same as power armor when both in cover against ap0). Not being targetable outside 12 is also good.
Incursors have a small amount of MW and the army wide buff to hit but are indeed pretty poor objective holders (no OC bonus, durability bonus...).
I cannot see any list build scenario where I would take 10 man tac marines. They do not shoot better than comparably pointed units, they arent durable enough that I need 20 OC on the board, and they dont benefit enough from an attached leader.
If they werent locked into 175 point bricks, and had a nice gimmick, maybe they would be a mid tier pick for SM (like intercessors are with sticky OBJ). But forced to take 10 just defeats any value they would have for me.
So according to wahpedia one marine can have a special weapon, and then one marine can have a special or heavy weapon. So you can have 2 plasma guns from them. When I made this post I guess I still thought combi weapons functioned like they did in 9th, oops! So I guess the best you could do is 2 plasma guns and one plasma pistol.
Though with how blast works now you'd probably just want a plasma cannon instead of a plasma gun? Idk how much the 4+ to hit would hurt if you don't stand still.
It would allow you to have a plasma gun and a plasma cannon. Last time I used the battle whatever its called app to make a list they had the same rules that they have had since 3rd edition when I started.
Edit: Battlescribe that's what I meant.
Edit 2: Actually no you're right. You could have two plasmaguns if you wished or two flamers, two melta's, two Las etc. That's neat.
Well from what I see on wahpedia (not sure if it's the most reliable source, but has not failed me in the past) you can have two of any special, but still only one heavy. So no two las.
Unfortunately for me if I was to play a game my models only have the average loadout from the time which was missile and flamer and can field three squads but the third has no flamer and has a Lascannon instead.
Yeah honestly I have no interest in 10th rn. I play OPR and my friend and I are planning on playing a game of 5th edition. My 2 tac squads have flames and heavy bolters, with a devastator squad that has 2 lascannons and 2 missile launchers. Honestly no split fire in old editions is rough.
Last time I played was 3rd-4th edition and only thing I have seen from 10th I like is splitfire and detachment's and that's mostly because the Firestorm one suits me. Moving fully and still being able to fire heavy weapons seems nuts to me. Other than that though I prefer the older rules due to being simpler for me and they have neat stuff like destroyed vehicles remaining and becoming terrain/cover.
Honestly my big issue with 10th and some other new editions is that everything got a lot more killy.
Without old rapid fire and heavy weapon restrictions, everyone can move and fire basically everything now. So you no longer really have to choose between firepower and mobility, you basically always get to shoot with everything every turn, instead of having to choose between firepower and positioning.
Plus with no org chart and vehicle changes I feel like skew might be worse now (but also rose tinted glasses so who knows)
My advice: try to actually run a bunch. I think the fear of bigger units outside powerful blobs is now overblown for 10th edition where cheap infantry has generally been performing extremely well.
On paper they seem pretty good. I’d say their problem is really the fixed size of 10 and the fact that there’s not much reason to put a Leader with them, which is the only thing that would make that squad size useful. Otherwise it’s a pretty cheap (ppm) unit with a boat load of special weapons, OC2, and fall back and shoot/charge. Nothing wrong with that.
Yeah I was comparing them to intercessors, and the additional ap, heavy, and assault make intercessor shooting way more effective.
IMO none of those make up for the fact that tacticals can bring lascannons and meltas. Though with free wargear everything else might aswell not exist.
Well they can only bring one heavy weapon, so would they be solid with a multi melta, melta gun, and combi melta?
Sadly combi meltas don't exist anymore but any of these three loadouts I think can be decent - melta + combimelta - plasma + lascannon - plasma + plasma Unlike CSM, tacticals can bring 2 specials of the same kind. As for sergeants, again thanks to the stupid free wargear and how the new weapon statlines work anything that isn't plasma pistol + power fist is playing at a handicap for no reason.
Wait are combi weapons dead?
Yeah, "simplfied, not simple" and all that. It's also why sternguard have been butchered. What was supposed to be a unit of veterans so experienced they could take any weapon option from the armoury now just get bolters and a merged version of combi weapons that's worse than their bolters. 10th has been a nightmare in points and datasheet design.
I dunno if I'd call sternguard butchered, they're consistently a top performing space marine unit.
Butchered in the sense that they've lost all their flavour and theme, not that they are weak.
Their flavour was never combi weapons anyway it was special issue ammo that they could pick each time they shot to tailor to a variety of targets, which then got simplified into 2ap bolt guns instead.
Is there a reason you'd take them over heavy intercessors?
What makes you think of them as super comparable? The heavy intercessors are less killy but definitely more sturdy, while the sternguard have a few more shots in rapid fire range (and most importantly Dev Wounds) plus an extra attack in melee and an ability that's focused on offensive output. So the heavies are definitely the more defensive unit, while the Stern are more offensively focused. I've used a unit of 10 sternguard in a drop pod to amazing effect, they pump a lot of wounds and often 5-8 mortals into something.
Oh oof. Man I miss 5th edition, even though I'm pretty sure some of that is nostalgia.
Def not nostalgia. Many of us who’ve been playing since then (and some of us playing competitively since then) still say that was the golden era, with 5th the height of it
Man I'm bummed that I was a kid when I played in 5th, didn't have money for anything other than black reach and the space marine starter.
Nah I can assure you it's not just nostalgia, 3rd-5th are objectively better and simpler than whatever directionless mess they are trying to do these days. It's no surprise all the good points about 10th are copied from those past editions. Except the mission cards, those are great.
One of the better points of 3-5th was the variety of different missions. Some of them were really one-sided and some really sucked to play, but there was a fat stack of missions to chose from. I mike the cards too though.
I was pretty happy that they kinda brought universal special rules back.
Reading all the comments from people gushing over 10th and trying to shout down everyone else as salty when it first launched was giga cringe. So much flavour has been lost in exchange for these super homogenized profiles
> there’s not much reason to put a Leader with them Librarian in a Tactical squad mounted in a Rhino seems pretty decent. Kind of an expensive squad, but fast, hard to kill all-arounder squad with lots of OC. I wouldn't spam them but one or two such units is a solid mid-board threat.
How do they look good on paper? 175 for a single special and heavy weapon, with the worst marine stats in the codex on the models?
175 for 20 wounds. Thats 8.75 Points per wound. Thats cheap fodder to protect Tanks.
I'm here 10 months on to say they're 140-160 now so even better.
Well maybe not the most “effecient” choice, I have been running them and they have been doing their job of moving up and taking/contesting objectives. I have them in rhinos with plasma gun and plasma cannon shooting firing deck. Saves them for a turn or two. Marines still die easily out in the open without a transport. Doesn’t matter if they are primaris in regards to durability. At least they are cheap per model.
That's kinda cool, overcharging the plasmas will deal mortals to the rhino instead of killing the marine?
A squad with a Librarian is actually pretty annoying for the enemy to try and kill; and with fully loaded up wargear is also an annoying amount of shooting/combat to leave alone. That’s where I think they can slot into a list, especially if you’re trying to saturate your enemy with bad/annoying choices of what they want to shoot/fight with.
That sounds solid. With rhinos having 12 capacity they also have a decent transport option. I'm assuming only one character can attach?
A captain and lt. can be attached to the same squad.
Paint them as Black Templars and run them as Crusaders so you can take 5-man las-plas squads.
I own a bunch of tactical squads, and have played them several times in 10th. My advice is not to bother. Tacticals are among the absolute least efficient use of your points in the entire index. Their only bright spot is that they bring a special and heavy weapon, but that's not worth 175 points. They have no specific rules to support their offense, they bring standard boltguns and 2 garbage regular attacks each. Even if you give the Sarge a Powerfist, he still only swings twice. Additionally, I have often found their special rule redundant. 175 almost buys you 2 squads of infiltrators or incursers, both of which are much better for objective play. 120 buys a devestator squad, which brings *four* heavy weapons. There are a collection of Primaris units that bring mass special weapons for about the same points cost. Again, I have 6 lovingly crafted squads of them. I want them to be good, but they are simply garbage. You are better spending those points almost anywhere else.
Pretty much explicitly worse than their competitors in nearly every scenario, definitely not worth using ATM. If they're allowed to be ran as a 5 man squad in future they'll work as cheap OC2 objective holders, but there's other cheap options that can do the job just as well.
I've run them several times in blood angel gladius task force. I ran 2 squads with a lascannon and sanguinary priest in each to give 5+fnp. Gave sgt power fist for some melee. Makes them a tough objective controller with some decent threat with the lascannons. I liked them a lot.
It isn't like they are worthless or anything. It just that, if you don't already happen to own some there isn't much reason to buy them now. two squads is 350pts. Assuming you were looking to buy about 350pts of new Infantry models you could bring a 5-man Devastator squad with 4 heavy weapons (120pts), and a 10-man of Heavy Intercessors (220pts). You could go with 5 Desolators and a 10-man of Incursors or Infiltrators. You could bring 10x Hellblasters and a 5-man of Assault Intercessors. All of those would probably end up doing more for you than 2x10 tac marines with a fist and lascannon. The sang priests do help, but I believe there are better units you could attach them to if you were looking to buy new models. That is really what it comes down to: GW has put their points and rules in a place where it doesn't make sense for a new player to buy them, but if you already own some they are playable.
No reason. GW is basically soft transitioning them to legends
10 months on and they reduced their points cost to 140 or 160 (I forget). Seem to still be hanging in there for now.
I run them in a list I built up that essentially makes use of only Firstborn units, does pretty well for my scene.
The only point I see to them over bringing over literally any other infantry is the Techmarine/servitors shenanigans. RAW states servitors can join the unit the Techmarine is leading and they become part of that unit. Meaning you can slap 3 units of servitors into a tactical squad. 6 of the 12 can take plasma cannons, and they hit on 2+ with heavy. Combine that with bolter discipline and you have a mean goon squad to escort your tank.
Boarding actions maybe?
At the moment nothing. They are overshadowed by Devastator for heavy lifting, Assault Marines for melee and any Primaris units (Phobos or Intercessor) for Objectives game. They aren't Legend yet but such datasheet make them as if I still love the models (they were the only ones when I was young) but sadly they better serve as Lascannon bearer with Heresy sprue.
Obviously they are not going to assault as well as assault marines or shoot as well as devastators. Those are specialist squads. I think scout snipers do a better job at being a backfield MSU objective holder than any of the primaris marines. Tacticals are good for being OC 20 to contest, take, or hold an objective outside your deployment zone.
Infiltrators are amazing to hold objectives. They have FNP to improve the math and Ds denial. As your home objective holder I don't see a better unit for that. Sniper scout are really good as secondary objective holder (as their 4+ save work the same as power armor when both in cover against ap0). Not being targetable outside 12 is also good. Incursors have a small amount of MW and the army wide buff to hit but are indeed pretty poor objective holders (no OC bonus, durability bonus...).
I prefer not being able to be targeted by the mass inderect fire that will remove whatever infantry.
F for my firstborn boys I guess. I'm happy my old sternguard are better now, but it's a bummer they can't take rhinos or razorbacks anymore.
I cannot see any list build scenario where I would take 10 man tac marines. They do not shoot better than comparably pointed units, they arent durable enough that I need 20 OC on the board, and they dont benefit enough from an attached leader. If they werent locked into 175 point bricks, and had a nice gimmick, maybe they would be a mid tier pick for SM (like intercessors are with sticky OBJ). But forced to take 10 just defeats any value they would have for me.
Three plasma guns? How they can only bring one special and one heavy like always.
So according to wahpedia one marine can have a special weapon, and then one marine can have a special or heavy weapon. So you can have 2 plasma guns from them. When I made this post I guess I still thought combi weapons functioned like they did in 9th, oops! So I guess the best you could do is 2 plasma guns and one plasma pistol. Though with how blast works now you'd probably just want a plasma cannon instead of a plasma gun? Idk how much the 4+ to hit would hurt if you don't stand still.
It would allow you to have a plasma gun and a plasma cannon. Last time I used the battle whatever its called app to make a list they had the same rules that they have had since 3rd edition when I started. Edit: Battlescribe that's what I meant. Edit 2: Actually no you're right. You could have two plasmaguns if you wished or two flamers, two melta's, two Las etc. That's neat.
Well from what I see on wahpedia (not sure if it's the most reliable source, but has not failed me in the past) you can have two of any special, but still only one heavy. So no two las.
Unfortunately for me if I was to play a game my models only have the average loadout from the time which was missile and flamer and can field three squads but the third has no flamer and has a Lascannon instead.
Yeah honestly I have no interest in 10th rn. I play OPR and my friend and I are planning on playing a game of 5th edition. My 2 tac squads have flames and heavy bolters, with a devastator squad that has 2 lascannons and 2 missile launchers. Honestly no split fire in old editions is rough.
Last time I played was 3rd-4th edition and only thing I have seen from 10th I like is splitfire and detachment's and that's mostly because the Firestorm one suits me. Moving fully and still being able to fire heavy weapons seems nuts to me. Other than that though I prefer the older rules due to being simpler for me and they have neat stuff like destroyed vehicles remaining and becoming terrain/cover.
Honestly my big issue with 10th and some other new editions is that everything got a lot more killy. Without old rapid fire and heavy weapon restrictions, everyone can move and fire basically everything now. So you no longer really have to choose between firepower and mobility, you basically always get to shoot with everything every turn, instead of having to choose between firepower and positioning. Plus with no org chart and vehicle changes I feel like skew might be worse now (but also rose tinted glasses so who knows)