The Battle Barn

I have been playing with trying to get my space marines back into shape. I have added the bikes in and found the to be very powerful. I have also been working on beefing up the tactical marines. I upgraded to the LasCannon, Plasma Gun and storm bolter for the sarge.

My plan is to combat squad the upgraded unit and a couple of straight up marines setup in overwatch or sniper positions to take out heavier stuff at range (48" for the lascannon or 24" for the plasma gun or storm bolter) or at least chew on units a bit harder. Since I can take 6 units of tactical marines, this gives me a lot of firepower for 200 points for the upgraded squads. For the purpose of holding objectives, I have 12 units.

Okay, on to the actual questions:

What HQ unit would help out with this?

Is the Plasma Gun any good? I have never used it because of the "gets hot" rule. Is this worth taking? If not, what would you recommend, instead? I tend to just take the flamer, but have not found that is effective.

Would you combat squad all of the units? I played this with 6 squads without combat squadding and found that the other half of the squad just sat around and would have been.more effective on the move hunting down squishy bits.

I appreciate any thoughts to make this more effective.

John

Please post some sort of generalized list and I can get a better grasp on the synergy and HQ choice that might help.

6 squads of improved "heavier" tactical marines (200 points each)

-- Sgt w/Storm Bolter
-- Upgrade to LasCannon
-- Upgrade to Plasma Gun
-- 7 x standard space marines

This is a core of 1200 points to be used either with a 1500 or 1850 point army.

Personally I think you could benefit a ton from Calgar...choosing to pass or fail morale tests is money for you. However Pedro can give you stubborn as well as some scoring sternguard which is money as well.

if you start building up bikes...look into khan of course.