Librarian Terminator Mech - List Evolution (Part 1)

After playing Tau pretty much non-stop for near a year now, I have finally put them away for a rest. Instead I have been fielding a Space Marine army drawn from my Apocalyse sized Crimson Fists force. Its over 4500 points now, mostly painted. When I last played marines last I found it difficult to win with them, but I am a much better player now than I was then. I've been paying attention and reading up on some of the great blogs that are out there.

I managed to get my hands on three cheap second-hand predators, the old second ed models. I use the old Rhino chasis for my entire Crimson Fists army. It's a way of making your spending money stretch so that you can create a large force. I am in the middle of painting up another six tanks at the moment - the army already has 4 completely painted.

So the new improved marine army I am playing started as a desire to have a go with the Librarian. In fact I had manage to assemble a Terminator Librarian from some old bits I had found in my collection, and wanted to try him out in a game. I actually modelled him with a storm bolter and force weapon before really looking at his rules. I realised that a storm shield was the obvious purchase to make, so I ended up with the task of detatching his storm bolter arm and adding a shield in place (pretty sure I have one somewhere).

I wanted to combine a Librarian with 3 Predators. Taking 3 Predators meant that I would want to take as much armour as possible, so 2 x 10 man tactical marine squads in Rhinos were the obvious choice of troops to complement this. Looking at the Gate of Infinity power, I thought about the possibility of teleporting 10 terminators to a vital point on the battlefield up to 24" away. It seemed tempting, so I started with a list like this:

Librarian - terminator armour, storm shield, null zone, gate of infinity 130
10 Terminators - 2 cyclone, 2 chainfists 470Dreadnought - multi-melta, heavy flamer 115
Dreadnought - assault cannon, missile launcher 125
2 x 10 Tactical Marines - melta, combi-melta, missile launcher, rhino 2203  x Predator - autocannon, heavy bolters 255

The army is a tad light on melta, with only three melta units. I love the firepower of the cyclone missile launchers, and with a squad of 10 you can combat squad them as a tactical option depending on the mission. I usually put the cyclones together in the same combat squad. Basically in the list I tried to maximise the amount of armour and terminator saves. The weapons on the dreadnoughts are chosen because I don't have autocannon arms currently. This is something I need to rectify!

But damn it that's 1535 points and I'm trying to build a managable 1500 point list here. This is probably the most common sized list I face at the Bunker. What to drop? Well the terminator armour and storm shield on the Librarian was the first to go. That weakened the unit, but everyone has to make compromises at this level. All I had to do then was drop a chainfist and the list was ready for its first outing.

There were plenty of things I would have liked to add (a drop pod for the multi-melta dread, lascannons on the tactical squads, the Librarian's Terminator armour) but I am happy with the number of vehicle chassis I have squeezed into the list. 7 vehicles plus 10 Terminators doesn't give any easy target priority decisions.

Libby Termi Mech (1500) 
Librarian - null zone, gate of infinity 100
10 Terminators - 2 cyclone, 1 chainfist 465
Dreadnought - multi-melta, heavy flamer 115
Dreadnought - assault cannon, missile launcher 125
2 x 10 Tactical Marines - melta, combi-melta, missile launcher, rhino 2203  x Predator - autocannon, heavy bolters 255

So ironically I have dropped the model that was my major motivation for building the force in the first place! Coming up I'll let you know how it performed in its first two outings, and the major changes I am making now that I hope will take it to the next level.