how to play sm?

[theredbear]

Hi I am a new played and decided to start off with the space marines, what are some tips and Build orders I should know?

[Bahamut]

Play chaos instead CHAOS IS POWER! CHAOS IS VICTORY!!

/serious

For team games you gotta be the glue of your team, the SM army is not made to kill tons of models and do DAMAGE, instead they're made to initiate and counter initiate engagements. Start the fights with ASM so sluggas/hormas/banshees can get in melee without loses, things like that

Really, double tac or tac - ASM are the 2 most important builds in t1, add a second scout or a dev squad in the mix as needed, scouts are better for offensive play, devastators for defensive. In t2 will depend on your opponent's composition, pdevs are the SM solution to heavy fortified areas, like IG bunker spam, TM relay, nurgle/tzeentch shrines, brood nests, etc

In t3, if you're against an eldar DO NOT get neither terminators or Land Raiders, is just sad how stupidly easy eldar can deal with termies or LRs, you'll probably will have to go dev spam or predators against eldar.

Against orks: lighting claw termies, venerable dreadnought and LRR are your tools to deal with nobs and level 4 sluggas

Against chaos: either win early or you're doomed, everything t3 chaos has will just destroy you :/

[Toilailee]

Build orders

In t1:
Option 1: scout(starting), tac, scout, power node, asms, gens/upgrade(s), t2.
Option 2: scout(starting), tac, scout, dev, gens/upgrade(s) t2.

Usually a good idea to get one scout shotgun in t1 and use it with your tacs to cover them from melee and dedicate the other scout for capping, other than that only get one upgrade in tier one (hero gear/scout srgt). If you have a chance for powerbash flamer is a good purchase, but it shouldn't be bought just for the hell of it.

This is the volume one, chapter one of sm cookie cutters (in 1v1 anyway). Keep in mind that nothing is written in stone tho, you can pull of 100 power tier one builds.

[Batpimp]

Don't forget to post your replays so we can give you tips!

[Arbit]

The key to getting good with SM IMHO is getting good with scouts. They have excellent sight range and speed - 55 and 6.5 respectively, which are some of the highest values in the game for an infantry unit, and you get one squad for free. Learning to capitalize on those attributes so your opponent does not catch you out of position and so you can seize advantageous terrain is very important, not just because it gives you a sizable strategic and tactical edge, but because they're a pretty shit unit if you try to use them as a mainline fighting force.

[Atlas]

The key to getting good with SM IMHO is getting good with scouts. They have excellent sight range and speed - 55 and 6.5 respectively, which are some of the highest values in the game for an infantry unit, and you get one squad for free. Learning to capitalize on those attributes so your opponent does not catch you out of position and so you can seize advantageous terrain is very important, not just because it gives you a sizable strategic and tactical edge, but because they're a pretty shit unit if you try to use them as a mainline fighting force.

Can't emphasize this enough. Scouts are probably the most important unit you have in your roster for 1v1. In a roster filled with a lot of tough units, this is one of the few very fast ones that can do all the capping and map control that most of your other units just can't.

[xbsnguy]

We can give you more comprehensive strategies if you tell us which hero you intended on using. SM fundamentals are consistent across the entire roster, but your strategy can fundamentally change depending on the hero.

Fundamental ideas:

- Get good at scout micro and preservation; become proficient at cloaked scout flanking with grenades against range units and grenade-spiking charging melee units.
(Takes most practice arguably)

- Early on, lead engagements with your Tacs, then have your hero and scouts follow in that order. Rarely should you charge your scouts in head-on without cloak (gives a damage resistance bonus). In general, don't run in scouts unless they have shotguns/nades AND the enemy is concentrating fire on something else.

- While you're new, keep 2 scout squads running around. One with combat upgrades to support your main army, and one "throw-away" scout (preferably with cloak) to cap the map and exert map pressure, which new SM can be very weak at. Once you get better, you can experiment with different builds.

- Always sit your tactical marines in cover. Use them to force melee retreating enemy units if they cut across your tacs.

- Retreat your tacs at half-health

- Until you become more seasoned and learn how to properly judge engagements, always retreat sooner rather than later. Bleed will gut SM more so than other races.

- If your opponent is pressuring you with melee squads, respond with shotgun-scouts.

- Re-position setup teams after every engagement. It's a good habit, but mostly because you're new and won't be able to watch over them and the map at the same time.

- ASM > range squads
- ASM + sarge w/ merciless strike > most melee squads


SM strengths are their staying power, scaling, and ability to react to new tactical situations with the proper upgrades. Keep this in mind and never stop capping points with your "throw-away" scout squad. Preserve your units, because leveled SM squads are a terror to push off.

The bane of SM players are their high squad/model cost and dependency on power and tech.

[Dalakh]

In t3, if you're against an eldar DO NOT get neither terminators or Land Raiders, is just sad how stupidly easy eldar can deal with termies or LRs, you'll probably will have to go dev spam or predators against eldar.

Can you give exemples for termies because I really don't think they are that easy to deal with (especially the melee kind). For the LR that's pretty true.

And yes please if you play SM in team games initiate engagments. If you double your allies with high dps can then safely pile in and mop the floor with corpses.

[Torpid]

I disagree. Terminators are extremely powerful vs eldar, especially if they're stuck in T2. The cyclone missle launcher can very easily wipe a fire prism too and if you have ASM with their melta bomb it's rather easy to hit. In fact ASM + terminators are some of the best counters to eldar there are, especially with a pred on top. The ASM just jump the reapers and the termies bleed bleed bleed the eldar without ever losing models themselves and while buffing your sternguard for even more deeps.

Reapers are still a bullshit unit though, no need for them, eldar have enough advantages in T2 over SM with their ridiculous walker and their T2 wargears.

[Sub_Zero]

Dark Reapers seem like an unnecessary unit vs SM. What really powerful is wraithguard. Let me explain. Nothing can take them on at range. Snipers are a bad choice, devastators don't do anything at all, tactical marines can be effective if they upgrade plasma guns buf if they do this decision will severely cripple AV department of the race and the next purchase will be the wraithlord which is gonna have a free reign. Assault marines will be the only saving grace but gaydar defensive units do not disappear and wraithguard are not affected by the jump of assault marines (only the leader is). In this situation you will have to rely on your heroes (TM's plasma gun, teleporting FC) but we have to remember that Eldar heroes can counteract their strenghts if use the proper equipment. So the presence of these dildo-warriors deters you from purchasing razorbacks and predators, it is simply a suicide, unless you are a god of micromanagement and can keep them on the move all the time and of course these broken units will be firing upon undesirable targets... Ranged terminators are countered really hard by them as well. I've never found plasma cannon devastators to be any good so you have really limited options to deal with wraithguard and in my opinion it is a no-brainer purchase versus space marines (as well as vs most other races, honestly the unit seems overpowered).

Probably the only right choice will be the dreadnought and a lot of AV to make sure it doesn't die to the relatively cheap yet very powerful wraithlord.

And I think ranged terminators have a hard time vs T3 gaydar stuff. Not to mention those wraithguard who should be purchased immediately if terminators are on the field.

[Ace of Swords]

Dark reapers....

And vanguards are a terrible choice if your asm are levelled, you'll need that melta if he starts spamming prisms, outside of that, all of the eldar heroes will either destroy or render ASM and melee terminators useless in a way of the other.

[Tex]

SM vs Eldar is a pretty even matchup as long as 2 scout squads are on the field. Soon as you lose one, your map control goes to shit, and then you start making bad decisions to protect map, instead of bashing power and preventing the eldar from getting things like d-cannons which will take a huge dump on your ever growing ball of death (aka tacs + asm + hero + dev + w/e T2 support unit you chose).

Don't listen to all the whine-sauce about it being an eldar favored matchup. That's just simply not true.

In the early game, the SM player should be scouting the eldar power farm and capping order. If he goes for an early 2x gens, then you are absolutely obligated to punish him for his first 30 power purchase. Simply cap your way towards his power, upgrade a scout shotgun and then a tac flamer shortly afterward, and take down his farm. Those power purchases will allow you to win a major engagement and force off the eldar hero + banshees + dire avengers. Bash the power with scouts and tacs and use your hero in a forward position to stall the setup of the shurikan cannon which will undoubtedly be rolling towards your blob to defend power. Take down the entire farm and you have secured a very important window for the SM player in this matchup.

The mid game in my experience really seems to be dictated by 2 things. First, who makes the better T2 major purchase, and second, as SM, can you maintain a decent level of map control as you depend more and more on blob fighting to win engagements. I think a big mistake a lot of SM players make is that they instantly purchase sarge's on their squads going into T2 and then from there, pretty much force themselves into fighting a wraithlord with a late las dev, or with melta bombs and missle tacs (which just opens you up so badly for being mopped up by flanking banshees). I highly recommend buying T2 squad upgrades re-actively unless your tacs are level 1 (get sternguards immediately if this is the case). A melee dreadnaught is usually a fantastic purchase if you can hold off from other power expenditures as it will allow you to push directly into your opponents power farm and bash. After the push is over, upgrading the dreadnaught to an assault cannon means that setting up shop on 2 VP's and sitting back will cause you to be an incredibly hard nut to crack for the eldar player and should buy you precious time to tech into a predator or terminators. After the halfway point in T2, I view this as a very important gut check decision (time to turtle? or should I step on the throat?), because Eldar strength really starts to ramp up at this point where they can drop multiple gates, they can deploy big time firepower from numerous sources, and you really won't have much to counter the rapid deployment if you are trying to grab map that you don't already own.

T3 is a very simple matter really. If you successfully get there with some power income in tact, I firmly believe that a predator is your best choice. The eldar player will have an extremely hard time pushing forward against you and will have to endure horrific losses to gain ground. Should he have vehicles, a las pred will smite anything an eldar can build quite handily. The AC dread will have been absolutely punishing rangers for taking pot shots (due to the fact that it finishes its salvo when it starts shooting) and the rest really comes down to not letting the eldar assault you from the sides or the rear. If you are the one in control of more map, a fire prism will be much less effective, and you should have enough meat that it can't absolutely ruin engagments for you.

Hope this helps... it comes directly from my personal playbook.

[Torpid]

Let's look at it this way:

SM T2 can counter eldar T3 without much difficulty.

Eldar T2 can't do much at all vs SM T3, what counters termies doesn't do anything to preds and what counters preds doesn't do anything to termies.

Seer council btw suck cockles vs SM. They get owned becuase they aren't knockback immune and then there's the whole dreadnought issue/libby with his set-up team spam that they do nothing against, not to mention that predator if both players are actually of equal tech. Also, have you seen how ridiculously fast ranged terminators shoot up the SC? And melee terminators just absolutely wipe the floor with them.

Also, regarding that predator not hitting that fire prism while it chasing it, the fire prism needs to be backing off and you know what happens when it does that? It misfires or loses line of sight. Also, where are those ASM that can jump in from nowhere, melta the prism and lead to it's instant death from a pred.

[Atlas]

>Topic is about learning to play SM
>1/2 page on topic, 1 1/2 pages complaining about SM vs Eldar
>Some things never change

Anyway, another thing I'd say to do as SM is get really good at is using those Assault Marines. They're a very good unit but they'll need support. When I started with SM I pretty much just did starting scout - tac - scout - node - asm every single game and just went from there.

Is it the best build ever? Not really. But it's solid enough that a newb can just pound out some hours just learning how things works.

[Dark Riku]

@theredbear
If you need advice on certain things just add me or someone else of your choosing in Steam so you can avoid this nonsense.

[lolzarz]

Eldar T2 can't do much at all vs SM T3, what counters termies doesn't do anything to preds and what counters preds doesn't do anything to termies.

Forgive me for being a noob, but terminators being large-sized units, surely brightlances work equally well against both? Or do teleporting terminators rape set-up teams that hard?

[Torpid]

Brightlances don't counter terminators. Yes, they do significantly more damage than a shuriken weapons team does, but without shurikens how do you counter the sternguard/asm/scout combo? Well, it's very hard. The combined dps even post-terminator dps nerf of sterns+terms vs light infantry is insane, at that point eldar really needs some seers+banshees, or an avatar, but that's when you get a pred and there's not much the eldar can even if they pull out a fire prism. If they're in T2 however, they've lost (if they start spamming WG/DR because of your terminators that's when you get a vanguard squad on top of your initial ASM rather than a pred, which is what you get if they get shees, or wraithlords).

[Bahamut]

termies vs eldar? :S sure they won't get time fielded or sucked into singularity or raped by an avatar :/

D-cannons usually shits on whatever t2/3 the SM can have, FP + Dcannon should be able to easily handle predators and terminators at the same time