Terminator Tactica

[Ragnarox]

Ok, so recently I have been rebuilding my scattered Blood Angel Space Marine army. Not long ago, I played one of my friends who is just starting with his Dark Eldar army. We've played three games thus far, the first one with just a Troops unit each, the second one with an HQ and two Troops units each. The third and in my opinion most interesting game, we each had roughly 600 army points, no heavy support.

I just so happened to have what I could find of my Terminator squad (which happened to be most of it). As any Space Marine (or Chaos Space Marine) player knows, Terminator squads whether they be regular or Assault are very expensive (points wise) and very dangerous troops. My friend realized this as well and during the early part of the game concentrated the majority of his firepower against them while conveniently ignoring my Tactical and Assault Squads.

Since Terminators can soak up a lot of hits before they go down, it took my friend quite some time to take a few out. All the while, my Tactical Squad barraged his warriors and Raider unit while my Assault Squads closed in for the kill along with my Sanguinary Priest. It wasn't until the third turn that my friend realized that it was not the Terminators but the other troops that were dealing the most damage to him and so he turned to fight them, but did not maneuver from his current position.

The fact that he did not move allowed what remained of my Terminator squad to hammer him with bolter shells and eventually assault. About that point it became the Terminators and to an extent the Assault Squads but mostly the Terminators doing the most damage. After the battle it occurred to me that Terminators, because they were such expensive but more likely dangerous units that players do prefer to attack them first. If this is true, then I believe that Terminators are better suited for a decoy role to draw enemy fire. Their armor save not to mention toughness will protect them from most basic weapons while their storm bolters and heavy weapons can return fire from long range allowing them to stand there and take fire while dealing equal damage in return. To compound this, if an enemy chooses to ignore the Terminators then they can deal the damage they were designed to do.

So my question is for you Marine (including Chaos) players is, do you prefer to deploy your Terminators (assuming you have some) with an offensive posture as part of a combined unit? Or would you rather use them as a completely separate group which can be used to draw enemy fire? If you could give examples and/or explanations regarding your stance (or lack there of) then please do.

[kongurous]

From the limited experience I have of Termies from playing one of my friend's armies, Terminators seem best to fill the kind of purpose to soak up tons of damage. I sent in Assault Terminators to attack some Orks, and tore them to pieces as I lit them up from afar with a Predator tank. Granted, I ultimately lost the fight, but I almost broke through his whole line with that one unit of Terminators. I prefer to use them as a hammer to batter my enemies down, and use my infantry as the anvil, beating the enemy down to nothing against my wall of near-impenetrable ceramite.

[Ktan]

Along a similar line, I notice a lot of the time, as I Necron player, I always here the advice to my opponent: Ignore the Monolith.

The points cost of such 'ard units is truly a gift and a curse. It's a good idea to almost use them as distractions, depending on the opponent. Plus, Termies are good enough that they can wander a bit ahead of your firing line.

I myself would delpoy Termies as either Assault in a Land Raider or Tactical Termies slowly advancing on the enemy. Of course, I'm not a Marine Player at all, but it seems to me that the whole point of the Termies is to get into the thick of it while Devestators and tanks provide long range support.

Plus, it's always more fun to play like a loony :)

What I do with my 'Lith is to send it pretty much into the middle of the field unless there are Wraithguard, Killa Kans or some other high power but short range waepons. Using it to dominate the field in the centre can be useful as from that position it can inflict a lot of damage. Of course, Monolith tactics and Termie tactics differ vastly but if you are using the 'draw fire' principle or want to have small area of the field controlled, it seems feasible.