Space marines in 7th edition part 3: MSU spam with Rhinos

Last part in this series. So far we've covered drop pods and bike lists. Today we're looking at armies with lots of tactical squads in combat squads in Rhinos. A version of this list placed 5th at the Bay Area Open, the first tournament to use 7th edition rules.

Something like this...

* Everything is Scars except the CM and scouts, which are Iron hands

Chapter Master (Iron Hands), bike, shield eternal, power fist, artificer armour, digital weapons
Khan w/ Bike
5 x Sternguard in Pod w/5x combi-melta
10x Tactical in Rhino w/meltagun, combi-melta, melta-bombs
10x Tactical in Rhino w/meltagun, combi-melta, melta-bombs
10x Tactical in Rhino w/meltagun, combi-melta, melta-bombs
10x Tactical in Rhino w/meltagun, combi-melta, melta-bombs
5x Tactical in Rhino w/flamer, combi-flamer, melta-bombs
6 x Scouts (Iron hands) in Land Speeder storm (h-flamer) w/boltguns
Thunderfire cannon
Thunderfire cannon

That's 16 objective secured units with high toughness and high armour saves, and solid speed across half of them (plus the infantry can hit and run). Good luck killing all that in order to score objectives.

Melta is the best way to load out your squads so they are all purpose, but I think the bombs are probably in here because the BAO allowed super heavies and was the first tournament to feature knights. You need melta to handle that.

The basic idea with this list is to hide behind cover most of the game while killing your opponent's objective secured units, and then rush to all the objectives late game. That many tactical marines and Rhinos are very hard to kill, especially when they outflank. Meanwhile, the Chapter master and thunderfire cannons do some damage and the Sternguard net you first blood. You'll have a hard time in kill point missions but otherwise, a strong contender.

The main piece of advice to give with this list is "don't die". This list outflanks (thanks to Khan) more often than most because your objective is not to kill your opponent but rather, not to die. Sometimes you can still get off a pretty sweet first turn rapid fire bonanza with your squads, which is worth it, but after that you get back in those Rhinos and drive away until the time is right to capture objectives. Hopefully your alpha strike (rapid fire, meltaguns, orbital bombardment) crippled the right units and you're now unlikely to die before the end of the game. Your objective secured units are better than just about all others, so getting you off those objectives is going to be a big ask, especially when your thunderfires are raining on his troops. The scouts can deep strike in and turbo boost late game to take any objective on the map, or linebreaker if your drop pod is dead.

One way to increase your chances of not dying while holding objectives is to place them in cover. This is the opposite of what bike armies do, which want things in the open so enemies can't get cover saves against your special weapons while they try to hold objectives. Here you don't have any special weapons, so stick objectives in ruins and camp your ass in there. After killing the path finders with you alpha strike you can go to ground in their and get a 3+ against the riptide's blast template. Hur hur hur.

Second piece of advice involves hit and run. Because all your guys are White Scars, they can bail out of close combat on a 4 or less. Pretty good odds. Use this to slingshot around the board. If you charge and then hit and run you can net yourself some serious inches. It also gives you some ability to hide from shooting in close combat.

Final point is about using your Rhinos. Rhinos are fantastic for blocking lines of site (against the Chapter Master and Khan for example, on turn 1), making enemy charges longer, forcing people to kill a vehicle before they can get at your tactical marines, and for boosting across the map to distant objectives. 18" move in a turn is nothing to be sneezed at. These guys are cheap, so don't feel bad when they die, but do try to protect them and their contents. Drive around holding objectives, and otherwise avoid casualties using cover - that's the way to play this list.

What other ways could you build this army? For 1850, I think the list above is pretty bloody optimised. We play 1500, so my first thought is to get its cost down a little bit. We also play Maelstrom most of the time, so my second thought is to make it more Maelstrom appropriate. Annoying thing there is that Khan needs to be your Warlord to do his work, which sucks because he dies pretty easily unless you hide him and Maelstrom is like playing slay the Warlord x2. But then if you hide him you suddenly need a moderately expensive bike squad, which isn't great for the army's play style. On the plus side it's almost a death star. Then you need to add a Librarian to this list because you're playing Maelstrom, and all of a sudden you've got a full blown bike death star and you'd be better off using bikes rather than Rhinos. Anywayz...this is what I came up with

Chapter master w/bike, artificer armour, storm shield, thunder hammer
Khan w/bike
Librarian w/bike, force maul, ML1
10x tactical Squad w/Rhino, meltagun, combi-melta
10x tactical Squad w/Rhino, meltagun, combi-melta

10x tactical Squad w/Rhino, meltagun, combi-melta

5x tactical Squad w/Rhino, flamer, combi-flamer

5x bikes w/flamer x2, veteran sergeant with power axe
5x Sternguard w/Drop pod, 5x combi-melta

The bike squad equipped that way is quite versatile and cheap (140 points). They make for a nice assault compliment to Khan and the Librarian because the vet sergeant brings 4 str5, AP2 attacks on the charge and you have 2 redundant bikers in there for ablative wounds for the characters. With Khan and the Librarian you have a power maul, axe and sword for whatever might ail you, and Khan gives the unit furious charge. If the Chapter master is around this unit can take on just about anything you might come across at 1500. The unit also scouts. It makes for a nice distraction for your Rhino units. The squad can also break away and do it's own thing, going after isolated units of infantry in cover. It's got the flamers and the assault kit to flush them out.

Speaking of flamers, I had to drop the thunderfire cannons, so those two extra flamers are quite important for crowd control. The thunderfires are great but the main thing I see this list having trouble with are things like missile-sides and Riptides that can actually blow your tactical marines off the table in a few turns. Cannons don't help much with that. Bolters can handle the hordes. 

Other small issues include that you might have some trouble scoring kill objectives. You'll only have 3 meltaguns after turn 1 or 2. Assault shouldn't be too hard because you have so many krak grenades and the chapter master, but killing with shooting might be tough. 

Another issue is that you don't really have anything that can camp the backfield objectives as I've dropped the scouts and the cannons. You can leave a Rhino there but that is a bit of a waste. You can mitigate this with objective placement but it is not ideal in my experience. A thunderfire would help here (note that deploying on an objective with cannons is much more important in Maelstrom than getting line of sight for the barrage). Another thought would be to make that flamer tactical squad into a heavy bolter or rocket launcher squad and have them stand back field. Not sure. If you're interested in play testing let me know how it all goes. I think this is more of an eternal war army to be honest.