Topic of the Week: Terminators

[Lost Nemesis]

A little late, but as promised, the Topic of the Week continues as of now! To get the ball rolling, this week's topic was submitted by Firaya, who was kind enough to submit a full list of questions that you may choose to consider as you post your thoughts on those 1st Company Veterans who choose to wear the tactical dreadnought armour:

In any case, I'd like to suggest Terminators as the next Topic of the Week. Some ideas on how to start:

1. The recent power up of the Storm Shield in the current Space Marine Codex has resulted in the Assault Terminators being very powerful, and far more survivable against long ranged threats. How would you play these bad boys?

2. The recent downgrade of heavy weapons (to 1) for the standard Terminators has caused them to lose a lot of their punch. Should Space Marine players still play the standard Terminators?

3. How do you play Terminators in general? Scout bikers with home package? Drop Pods with locator beacons?

4. Do you use Terminators with ICs? Chaplains seem a recommended choice. What about named ICs such as Shrike for his Infiltrating and Fleet rules?

To add a little bit, less specific to the standard Space Marines codex - for those Dark Angels players out there, how do you view your trademark all-Terminator army, the Death Wing? Discuss any pro's, con's, stories and more in this thread if you will, as it all pertains to the use of Terminators in an army. Also, for those brave souls who use allies in their armies, how do you like Grey Knight Terminators compared to our standard Terminators? Do you use them differently, or are they very similar in gameplay?

Discuss, and as always, if you have a suggestion for next week's topic, please feel free to toss it in my direction via PM and I will do my best to get it in here!

[Logan230]

Wolf player here. and my prefered is to drop pod them with locator beacons. after the dreadnoughts. then i run either a 5 man team of SS/TH or assault cannon weilding termies. they tend to be my pressure appliers. and since my normal opponent is Tau, well, bad things happen to the Tau.

i also dont happen to have a IC in termy armor so i just use the WG or maybe a WGBL.

[Zadien]

To answer question 3:

I personally like to use basic termies start them with the bulk of my army and just have them run off in another direction away from the army. My opponents usually go after them becasue they are alone and "vulnerable", but the fact is that they buy me atleast 1 more turn of shooting befor assault. Everyone knows that you always needed that one extra turn ^^ lol. All in all I guess they are used as really expensive fodder

Please done hate me for this

[Firaya]

Oh I even got a credit for it, thanks

As for question number 2, I realize that a 10-man squad can take a 2nd heavy weapon. However, to me this seems to be a downgrade to the old 5-man squad with 2 heavy weapons that we could field in our previous Codex. I've read people suggesting that standard Terminators now should use Cyclone Missile Launchers, but it seems expensive to pay the cost for the Terminators and the upgrade as well.

[White Ninja Warlord]

Originally Posted by Lost Nemesis

In any case, I'd like to suggest Terminators as the next Topic of the Week. Some ideas on how to start:

1. The recent power up of the Storm Shield in the current Space Marine Codex has resulted in the Assault Terminators being very powerful, and far more survivable against long ranged threats. How would you play these bad boys?

2. The recent downgrade of heavy weapons (to 1) for the standard Terminators has caused them to lose a lot of their punch. Should Space Marine players still play the standard Terminators?

3. How do you play Terminators in general? Scout bikers with home package? Drop Pods with locator beacons?

4. Do you use Terminators with ICs? Chaplains seem a recommended choice. What about named ICs such as Shrike for his Infiltrating and Fleet rules?

To add a little bit, less specific to the standard Space Marines codex - for those Dark Angels players out there, how do you view your trademark all-Terminator army, the Death Wing? Discuss any pro's, con's, stories and more in this thread if you will, as it all pertains to the use of Terminators in an army. Also, for those brave souls who use allies in their armies, how do you like Grey Knight Terminators compared to our standard Terminators? Do you use them differently, or are they very similar in gameplay?

For starters, i'm liking the idea of the topic of the week so kudos for that. Onto the questions... (Oh btw its been a while since i've read the codex so apologies in advance)

1. Tbh I never utilised Terminators in the 4-5 years I played SM, even so imo Assault Marines are best utilised with Lightning Claws the extra attack from having a pair of them epitomises what Assualt Marines are about. Saying this it would also depend on the situation, if for instance I knew I was going to be playing an IG Armoured Company or another vehicle heavy Army i'd consider taking Assault Termies with Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields because unlike Lightning Claws the Thunder Hammers can make short work of most vehicles.

2. Imo this is a slight no brainer, if you are in need of hard hitting support these guys are ridiculously handy, the only issue with having a drawback of only one heavy weapon is that they cannot advance under their own fire like in the previous codex. Previously as long as you had 2 AC you could advance them at a slow pace across the board and have a decent amount of covering fire. Now that they have lost the extra heavy weapon though these guys are seemingly being geared towards close combat, as such i'd be tempted to drop pod / deep strike them in and forget the heavy weapons altogether.

3. Already partially answered this question, I played Raven Guard for the majority of time in 40k and these guys utilised Hit and Run tactics, so very limited vehicles and heavy support. My usually way was run with 3-4 scout sqauds, minimum geared with homing beacons and then proceed to deep strike, assault marines, tactical sqauds, termies. This method and its success rate also depended highly on the amount of terrain on the board at the time.

4. Personally because I played Raven Guard and I tried to stick to the fluff as much as possible, if and when I used Shrike he was with a full strength unit of Assualt Marines. Reasoning behind this is one of Shrikes main assests is his speed due to his Jump Pack but the moment you put him with the Terminators he loses that ability. From memory though I think it is still plausible to have him with the Terminators for the infiltrate etc and then to remove him and attach him to another sqaud. Only issue there would be that he would be to exposed, other then using Shrike on the rare occasion (and never with terminators attached) the only IC I could think of using with Terminators on a frequent basis would be Lysander of the Crimson Fists, although from memory I think they nerfed his effectiveness with Terminators.

- Having played a number of smaller games against Death Wing there are a number of both pro's and con's. Pro's - Well for starters having a army full of Terminators brimming with the best armour save money can buy / invulnerable save and the ability to crush opponents in combat are fun to play with. Being able to weather a huge amount of damage is also a attractive. Drawbacks though, in certain missions especially heavy objective missions Death Wing suffer due to severe mobility problems also against armies that have a high amount of armour penetrating weapons it is quite easy to lose half your force in 1-2 turns. In smaller games though 1000 points or less I have found most armies will struggle against Death Wing because of the awesome armour and powerful weaponry that they can use. As for Grey Knights, can't say much never used them

Just my thoughts

WNW
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Originally Posted by Firaya

As for question number 2, I realize that a 10-man squad can take a 2nd heavy weapon. However, to me this seems to be a downgrade to the old 5-man squad with 2 heavy weapons that we could field in our previous Codex. I've read people suggesting that standard Terminators now should use Cyclone Missile Launchers, but it seems expensive to pay the cost for the Terminators and the upgrade as well.

I've also heard / read that Termies should run with CML but it really isn't worth it when Termies at the basics are built to be combat destroyers, if I was to run with termies under the new codex i'd probably take two lots of 5 assualt termies and skip the heavy weapons in order to give them to another sqauds such as a Devastator or Tactical Sqaud, mainly so that I can get the Termies in combat without worrying about not utilising the CML / AC and therefore waste the points. Also it means it makes the Terminators less of a target and the squad that does get the heavy weapon has more bodies to soak up kills. Terminators in my experience make for bloody expensive meat shields

Peace

WNW

[ForgedInTheFurnaceOfWar]

Last week I finally got to try out a squad I've wanted to try out ever since I read the newish Space wolves FAQ. Here is the squad I took: 4 Wolf Guard Terminators, 2 armed with combi-Flamers, 2 Armed with Assault Cannons, all with storm shields. This formed a retinue with my Wolf Guard Battle Leader, who had terminator armor, an assault cannon, and storm shield. They all got stuffed into a drop pod. The Terminators + wargear and drop pod where 225 points. Then WGBL was another 105. Then I took 2 of these squads.

I was hoping to keep this unit out of the assault - allowing my blood claws to take the lead there. This unit was designed solely for shooting. Toting 3 assault cannons helps, and a couple of flamers when you need them never hurts. My opponent ended up being Imperial Guard - an interesting mixture of lots of guns for my opponent with no assault threat. That is in some ways a perfect match up for these terminators. There where not a lot of ideal targets for the unit, but everything they targeted died.

Anyway, they look a real beating, the 3+ invunerable saves refused to crack, I lost most of the terminators rolling on armor saves under torrents of firepower. They seemed to preform pretty well, but I think an army with some more counter charge would have ruined the terminators day. For these reasons, I was thinking about putting a thunder hammer onto the HQ, and a powerfist one of the wolf guard with assault cannon. It would also be nice to have 1 more wound in this unit. But that raises the price of the unit up a whole lot. And it also might not be legal - I'm not sure if the storm shield counts as a single handed weapon for wolves or not - and what does an assault cannon count as - that is does it limit the wargear items I can select out of the armory? My overall impression of the terminators was they worked well in a wolves list, but that I got lucky with them. I won by the beginning of turn 4.

I really miss is a unit of 5 terminators with 2 assault cannons, who are able to take drop pods. Compared to wolves space marines get all of the equipment much cheaper out of codex space marines. Wolves pay only a few points less than 50 points a model for a standard terminator, and a lot more for the SS/SH assault terminator. I'm sure this will be addressed in the new codex. Along with putting assault cannons on HQs and all the fun stuff I always wanted to do.

All in all, I'm still not a fan of terminators, too many points per model, those 1s really sting every time, and the lack of drop pod transport is lame and in my opinion and unfluffy. If your dead set on taking terminators I would probably run 5 or 6 man squads of assault terminators, giving the sergeant lighting claws, everybody else thunder hammers. Then you'll want to deep strike off a drop pod locator beacon. This provides both units with support, and scares the hell out of the opponent. Remember to run the terminators when you land them and stay out of cover.

[WarsmithNiG]

I've not used space marine terminators in a while, however now i'm thinking how they can blend in my current army.

Anyway, I've faced a friend of mine recently. He has a terminator squad with a CML and a librarian. It's very effective shooting force. On the turn he deep strike, he use a regular terminator as a reference point. His final piece would be his librarian, putting it as close as possible to the enemy unit that they are going shoot. With the librarian's avenger psychic power, and the combine fire of the terminators, he can take out a full 10men marine squad easily. The only trouble he faces is that the bunched up terminators are just asking for a plasma cannon to be fired at them.

In my local gaming group, the CML variant is the most common, as it allows flexibility. It has range, and can do both anti tank and anti personnel.

[White Ninja Warlord]

Originally Posted by WarsmithNiG

I've not used space marine terminators in a while, however now i'm thinking how they can blend in my current army.

Anyway, I've faced a friend of mine recently. He has a terminator squad with a CML and a librarian. It's very effective shooting force. On the turn he deep strike, he use a regular terminator as a reference point. His final piece would be his librarian, putting it as close as possible to the enemy unit that they are going shoot. With the librarian's avenger psychic power, and the combine fire of the terminators, he can take out a full 10men marine squad easily. The only trouble he faces is that the bunched up terminators are just asking for a plasma cannon to be fired at them.

In my local gaming group, the CML variant is the most common, as it allows flexibility. It has range, and can do both anti tank and anti personnel.

Just on the note of the deep strike, I was under the impression that the first model had to be directly over where the dice motioned and then the next members of the squad would be deployed in base contact with the first model and then fan around. As such the range benefit from deploying the librarian last would be minimal (this is all i can remember about deep strike and it may be old info so if its incorrect, please ignore my ignorance).

Peace

WNW

[Kenmichi]

When I first started running Terminators in my army I centered my force around them, they were the main spearhead of my battle plans. Since then I've seen them in a new light which is something you can really only see through experience playing with Terminators and watching games involving them.

On paper they're some of the scariest mothers in the Imperium, opposing players are scared of them. I capitalize on this by sending my Terminators head-long right into the heart of combat out of a Land Raider. For me Terminators serve two purposes: Elite hunters and fire sponge. Loaded up in a Land Raider they can be inserted into just about any location on the field with the objective of finding a target and killing them. While on this mission they, along with the Land Raider (Another highly feared model by opponents), tend to absorb a lot of firepower which allows my other units to close in on objectives and get within rapid fire range. Yes that ends up being a lot of points spent on a sponge but considering how difficult Terminators and Land Raiders are to destroy I see them as the perfect units to be used in that role with their increased chance to survive.

I'm, of course, using Assault Terminators in this situation. Soon I'll be able to swap my Land Raider for a Crusader making it an even more deadly force to be reckoned with.

[Fangda]

I tend to like the assault terminators more than the shooting ones these days. Generally I run them as all TH/SS, and attach a termy chaplain to them (back in 3rd it was 5 shooty with 2 AC =D). Then I put them into an LRC for maximum destruction. A really expensive unit, but it wreaks untold amounts of damage, and is essentially guarantied to get into CC where they excel. The only issue is them being maybe too killy, combined fire of the LRC + their charge = 1 round of assault, then them open to shooting (terminators are more fragile than they seem, 1's and ++2's get rolled much more often that one thinks... or I just have horrid luck).