Codex Space Marines is the yardstick to compare all the others to. Despite a range of other great codices of note and importance this codex is the base upon which the next Space Wolves, Blood Angels and marines supplements will be based. This edition has seen a few changes to the army but most of it was in line with all of the other codices released so far. This article is going to take a look at the important units and weapons but will be mostly focused on what has changed. Chapter Tactics:
Codex space marines is no longer codex ultramarines with a few special characters thrown in for the other chapters. For those of you who remember 4th edition, there was a host of optional rules that you could employ to define the character and play style of your army. It was there to cover the lack of variety within the rest of the codex especially for the different founding chapters. 5th edition saw the move to armies being defined by the special characters and now they did something interesting.
A space marine detachment, either primary or allied, must contain units with the same chapter tactics. So you must have either an all Salamander detachment or an all Imperial Fists but you can’t mix and match. The other thing you are allowed to do is have an allied force of space marines with different chapter tactics to your primary detachment. While this can give you more tactical flexibility it doesn’t allow you to use characters from both detachments to buff the other army.
Ultramarines:
Ultramarines chapter tactics seem to be very good. They allow the commander to use three, one use, abilities for a single turn each. These abilities cannot be used in conjunction and give benefits to the entire army. The tactical doctrine allows all units to re-roll 1’s when rolling to hit, it also allows tactical squads to re-roll to hit for that turn. This can be very dangerous with a drop pod army as turn 1 you drop in a heavily armed series of tactical squads and should average 88% hits. The assault doctrine allows re-rolls of charge distances and gives all of the fast attack units fleet. The final doctrine is the most interesting. It allows all of the detachment to re-roll snap shots and the devastator squads also gain relentless. This allows for a tactical re-deploy of devastators without a turn of snapshots. In general Ultramarines have a decent amount of flexibility in how they play. You need to be careful in how you deploy initially and keep a look out for major assaults or barrages of shooting.
White Scars: The White Scars being bike riding cavalry give a shape to their rules. The bikes gain the ability to pass difficult terrain tests, bump their jink save by +1 and their hammer of wrath hits are also resolved with +1 strength. The entire army bar Terminators and Centurions gain hit and run. The power of a biker list has returned to the space marine codex, I’m not sure they can outdo a dark angel list but they will be difficult to beat. They gain jink saves almost every turn and augmented hit and run they can slam into a squad doing huge damage before using hit and run to pull out of a combat if it looks to be going badly. Toughness five, good saves and relentless fire from their twin-linked bolters and a huge assault threat area makes the scars an important target. Plasma, heavy weapons and assault heavy units are the way to go to clear the board.
The Imperial Fists:
These mellow yellow marines can re-roll all 1s rolled to hit with bolters, bolt pistols, storm bolters, heavy bolters and combi-weapons firing as bolters. It’s useful but not incredible especially as it doesn’t apply to the specialist rounds like kraken or hellfire. The devastators and centurion devastators gain tank hunter and add 1 to the result when rolling on building damage but that’s not much good as I see it. Tank hunter is nice but with the ability to glance a tank to death with a grav loadout centurions don’t need it. You can’t build a tactic around this ability while at least the gunlines can use the first ability.
The strength of the Imperial Fist chapter tactics is in their special characters. All of the fist successors bar the Templars share the same tactics so you can include Lysander and Kantor. With Lysander as the warlord you have a large bubble of moral and leadership check re-rolls while Kantor makes sternguard units scoring. Though to obey the letter of the rule the sternguard must be Crimson Fists. I think this has the making of one of the hardest lists in the codex. Massed sternguard using specialist weapons, special issue bolter rounds and mounted in drop pods. They can alpha strike and mess up your units saving their two mandatory troops for the second wave of reserves.
My advice is to reserve as much as you can and deny combat to Lysander, whatever he hits will die even Thunderwolves. In a challenge he is a monster and with eternal warrior and four wounds you’ll not stop him with anything short of a full on blitz.
Black Templars:
Did someone say xenophobic, wiccaphobic, crusades inspired nutters? These guys are back and are the most unique of the chapter tactics. They cannot have librarians, they have their own unique troop choice in the crusader squads and that’s before we get into what makes them dangerous. Their characters re-roll to hit and have rending when in challenges, this makes even their most humdrum sergeants a threat to a terminator wolf guard or even a wolf lord. Sure they won’t do insane damage but taking a wound off of a 50 or 150 point character is a good trade off for a 15 point model.
The entire army gains crusader and adamantine will which will make them difficult to break in combat. Taking into account they will have a number of scout equivalents in their crusader squads taking the wounds instead of important characters the Black Templars are not an army to take lightly. Denying them the charge or forcing them to take sustained heavy weapon fire is the best way to clear them from the board. However even the most missile or plasma laden army can only do thirty wounds a turn at the best of times and Templar players do love their land raiders.
Iron Hands:
How better to show this chapter’s love for bionics than to redress the old bionics rules as a 6+ feel no pain? I think this chapter may have a great future as a competitive list. Their vehicles and characters have it will not die, allowing multi-wound characters to heal and tanks to regrow hull points. When you couple this with their improved ability to repair vehicles I think a three landraider list with an allied dark angel force could be devastating. With three crusaders, two tech marines and a spattering of troops and assault heavy units these tanks can march across the battlefield and disgorge an army at your feet ready to rip your units apart in close combat. For this type of threat, meltaguns and land speeders are a solid choice. Firstly if the do go for an allied Dark Angel force, kill the model with the power field and remove the 4+ invulnerable save. After that aim for the raiders, a multi-melta should have the power to stop a raider and with a squad of three you could strip their hull points even if you don’t explode it.
When it comes to their characters strength eight weapons, power fists and jaws are still the best way to remove them. I'd contemplate including some landspeeders in your force to give rapid deployment of melta weapons. Their mobility allows you to get behind terrain and tanks to hit characters and get at rear arcs. They are not durable but they can ensure a couple of quick shots in the right place and that's all they need to do. If a squad of three can take out a land raider they have more than earned their inclusion in any army list.
Salamanders:
I’ve really enjoyed how this chapter looks and would be happy to play against them just to see how they are in reality. With the ability to re-roll saves from flame weapons and re-roll their to wound rolls using them, Salamanders are very fire orientated. Their powers also extend to re-rolling the armour penetration if they fail to glance or pen with flamers. The final feather in their cap is that they receive a free master-crafted upgrade to one weapon on every character.
With fire weapons massed in drop pods, the Salamnders can make an impressive alpha strike list with a few units of sternguard with combi-flamers. While they won’t be scoring, they should do enough damage in a single round of fire to make them worth it. Vulkan He’stan adds to the list by master-crafing melta weapons and combi-meltas. In general the Salamanders are solid; they excel at flamecraft but would need to make use of sternguard or take He’stan to ensure they are able to deal with Space Wolves. Unless they divert lots of their points into weapons or specialist units they won’t be any more difficult to deal with than standard marines.
Raven Guard:
The entire detachment’s units gains scout and stealth for their first turn unless they contain bulky or very bulky models. Jump pack models can use their jump pack in both the movement and assault phases. They also must re-roll failed to wound rolls for their hammer of wrath. The Raven Guard make their presence felt quickly and with devastating effect. Their assault troops can clear 14-24” in a turn, ignoring terrain and hit harder than your average assault squads.
By investing in a squad or two of vanguard veterans a Raven Guard army can be a very dangerous foe for the Space wolves. With so many attacks on the charge and hammer of wrath hits, they stand a good chance of wiping out grey hunters and have enough weight of numbers to be a major risk to wolf guard terminator units. The best things that can be used against this chapter is the space wolf psychic powers or divination. By turning the terrain around the priest for 24” into difficult terrain the Raven Guard would have to pass two dangerous terrain tests before they start assaulting. Or by taking the primis power space wolf squads could re-roll their overwatch and double their tally of wounds. While longfangs with blast weapons or missiles can do immense damage to these squads, any decent opponent would keep them hugging terrain or make use of transports to provide cover and block line of sight.
New units and weapons:
Everyone has seen the new centurion models. I personally think that they are quite disappointing when compared to their artwork. With a 2+ armour save, toughness 5 and a range of interesting new weapons these models are tough to kill. Devastator centurions come with the ability to pump out a lot of shots that through weight of numbers can seriously damage a space wolf unit. If they take an upgrade to their weapons they can cripple terminator units or neutralise vehicles quickly by glancing them to death with grav weapons. 5 shots with re-rolls to wound or to glance and immobilise is nothing to ignore. Devastator centurions are too dangerous to be left to walk across the board shooting at will. They can cripple units with their firepower, however they have one major weakness. This unit cannot fight. In the assault phase they have limited ability as they cannot fire overwatch, have 1 attack each and no ap 2 or 3 weapons. For every turn you can hold them in combat you will keep another unit safe from their guns. The goal should be to hold them up as only the most powerful space wolf weapons have a chance of penetrating their armour. Even on the charge a full squad of grey hunters with the banner and mark of the wolfen you’d only be averaging 1.4 wounds at best. Keeping them locked in combat would also ensure they don’t have the opportunity to hold objectives.
Assault centurions are a beast of a different colour. They have twinlinked assault weapons, either flamers or meltaguns, and can rip anything apart with their combat weapons. In general assault centurions are easy to deal with, deny them the charge and they can do little to nothing. If you are confident of your army’s mobility these models should be little trouble. They cannot run due to having slow and purposeful and unless your opponent drops a large number of points into a land raider for them they will be very slow to cross the board. As they are not ever going to be scoring units they are a low priority for a Space Wolves player.
The anti-air tanks are very good at taking flyers and flying monstrous creatures out of action. What they are not good at is hitting anything on the ground. Their armour is poor and if you’re toting any anti-armour weapons in your long fangs they shouldn’t last more than a turn’s shooting. If you are running flyers these are an important target for the first and second turns. A good thing to note about the skyspear missile launcher is that you can prevent it hitting your vehicles in subsequent turns by leaving combat airspace.
The biggest addition to this codex is graviton weapons. These ap 2, concussive weapons are very powerful. Instead of rolling to wound normally they roll the target’s armour save and they have a one in six chance of immobilizing and taking a hull point off a vehicle. What is incredibly dangerous is their stacking of effects, while immobilised a vehicle takes a further hull point loss for every immobilised result. This means that a tactical squad with a grav gun and combi grav gun could leave a landraider sitting in the corner for the entire game until a centurion squad walks over and strips it clean. The saving grace about grav weapons is that they have short ranges. Graviton weapons can be an important target for Space Wolves players but not for everyone.They are as dangerous as plasma for infantry units and can have an impact on armoured lists but their effectiveness is limited to a one in six chance. For a grav gun the odds are as high for damaging a rhino as they are for damaging a landraider, that they have the ability to do it is not a guarantee of efficacy. If I saw a unit of sternguard armed with combi-gravguns then I would target them as a priority when they are a threat but they are only about as good as a unit of combi-plasma.
Conclusion:
The codex is solid. It can make great lists that will be difficult to beat. It has units and characters that are a grave threat to your army but most of them work best in alpha strikes. If you can weather the first strike drop pod lists are not going to be too much of a problem. Meltaguns to deal with tank heavy lists. Read the chapter tactics of the army you face and see how the characters buff the respective lists. In the end all you need to do is play well and know what you face to do well against any space marine army. Happy Christmas and have fun in the new year with your gaming.