Move Over Tau, Marines Are the Kings of Cover Denial!
I used to get so mad at all the cover denial shenanigans the Tau Empire pulled. Then I took a look at the Space Marine book.
I remember the day I first saw the Markerlight-Riptide combo in use. It was ugly. Nobody likes to remove handfuls of marines in heavy cover. It just seemed like whatever I did, when you are fighting the Tau, it felt like playing on a blank table.
Here’s what the blue-commies have at their disposal to ignore your hard-earned cover:
-Seeker Missiles
-Markerlights
-Airbursting Fragmentation Projector
-Smart Missile Systems
-Flamers
-Multi-spectrum Sensor Suite
A very potent list and in the hands of a good player, the Tau will make you suffer dearly.
But then I started to study the Marine book and look what I found:
-Auspexes
-Flamer
-Heavy Flamer
-Flamestorm Cannon
-Incendiary Castellan Missile
-Thunderfire Cannon – Airburst
-Dragonfire Bolts
-Perfect Timing – Tigurius
–UPDATE: Legion of the Damned – (they can get a plasma cannon!)
Now you can argue that the Tau using markerlights can grant ignore cover to any weapon which is true. But the combinations of things like Perfect Timing and Auspexes isn’t too shabby in comparison. I would argue that Space Marines also have the movement advantage using hard hitters deploying in DropPods, or Deepstriking to more easily bring their ignore cover weapons to bear.
You can even combine lots of these Marine weapons with a chapter that improves them even more like the Salamanders, to emphasize the point.
In the end, I’m happy and sad. I didn’t like the power of lots of Ignore Cover weapons in the game, so seeing even more makes me sad. On the other hand – screw the Tau – it’s payback time!
~So do you think the Marines can hold their own in the ignores cover department?
