Warhammer 40,000 experts expand Space Marine starter sets

Expanding your Warhammer 40,000 army from the Armageddon and Getting Started with… sets can feel daunting. Today, World Champion Richard Siegler and two-time World Championships runner-up John Lennon from Art of War 40k join forces to help you decide where to go next.

We’ve all experienced this moment – your first miniatures are complete, and you can play a Combat Patrol game, but you want to go bigger. But how? With many years of experience under our collective belt, we’re here to provide you with a framework for expanding your Space Marines army in the new edition of Warhammer 40,000!

List 1 - Ultramarines

Let’s start with a popular one. You’ve played Space Marine 2 and had a blast following the story of the legendary Ultramarines Lieutenant Titus. You heard about the awesome new edition of Warhammer 40,000 and decided to build an Ultramarines army around Titus.

Is this even possible? Yes, it is! It's a perfect combination of flavourful and powerful for games with your friends, at a local Warhammer store, or even at a Warhammer Open event.

Let’s look at a sample list that combines the Reclamation Force detachment, which benefits Titus directly and encourages Ultramarines melee heroes, and the Librarius Conclave, which provides incredible boosts to units led by Adeptus Astartes Psykers like the Librarian in your starter set.

Reclamation Force has the Take and Hold force disposition, while Librarius Conclave has Reconnaissance. Our army will be predominantly melee focused due to our Character units, the melee theme of the detachment, our access to reactive move abilities, and the power of the Hidden mechanic. We want to draw the enemy in close to us instead of having to reach out across the table, so we’ll select Take and Hold, as it’s all about fortifying our half of the board and hitting the enemy extremely hard when they try to take our precious objectives away from us.

Let’s take a look at the list!

Our core is going to be the Librarian, a Land Speeder, a Vanguard Veteran Squad, and a unit of Intercessors.

In order to play this army effectively, you will want to utilise Captain Titus’s Wardens and Bladeguard unit to dominate the central objective and draw the enemy to your side. Meanwhile Marneus Calgar, Cato and the Victrix Guard lie in wait and use the Furious Dedication stratagem to counter-assault any units that attempt to attack Titus’s squad. 

At the same time, your shooting units, in the form of the Librarian-led Sternguard Veterans, Ballistus Dreadnoughts, Land Speeder and Repulsor, engage the enemy armour and elite units as they cross the battlefield. The Vanguard Veterans start in strategic reserves and arrive via ingress move later in the battle to make a hole in the enemy backfield so that the Scout Squad can redeploy into that space towards the end of the game and score points while taking the enemy home objective away. 

Ultimately, this army is all about forcing the enemy to commit to a bloody engagement over the central objective(s) and delivering the Emperor’s justice in response.

List 2 – White Scars

But, of course, Space Marines have many other playstyles. If you prefer a faster and more vehicle-centric approach to playing Space Marines, I would recommend the Spearpoint Task Force and Fulguris Task Force detachment combination. With both detachments linked to the Disruption force disposition, that will be our disposition for every game. Together, these detachments provide incredible benefits to the Land Speeder in your starter set and encourage you to branch out to bring the Storm Speeder variants and other powerful ranged units. Let’s take a look at a sample list!

Here we have the same core units – the Librarian, Land Speeder, Intercessors and Vanguard Veteran Squad –  but we have a very different archetype built around them. Instead of large units worth many points that hit very hard in melee, this archetype has split the damage of the army across many more units and focuses mostly on getting close to the opponent and obliterating them with a hail of ranged attacks.

The primary synergy of this list revolves around using the Storm Speeder Hammerstrikes to remove the benefit of cover from key enemy units while Incursors pepper the same targets with their occulus bolt carbines to allow other friendly units to benefit from the +1 to hit from the Multi-spectrum Array ability. Now our target no longer benefits from cover and all of our units that target it gain +1 to hit. 

You could also drop a unit to give some of the Speeders the Raptorial Cogitator Core upgrade to ignore cover natively, meaning that most of the army can ignore cover thanks to units with this enhancement and the Hammerstrike datasheet rule. 

When combined together, the army is less reliant on Oath of Moment to bring down tough enemy targets, so it’s great at removing multiple critical threats each turn. In addition to the offensive might of this archetype, it also has access to two different reactive move stratagems in Reactive Evasion and Hunter’s Instincts, alongside the Evasive Manoeuvres stratagem to make your Mounted or Fly vehicles more survivable. This is one of the strongest defensive stratagems in the game right now, as -1 to hit rolls can be combined with the -1 Ballistic Skill from cover to keep your precious Speeder alive for much longer than the enemy anticipates. Convinced yet? You also get to have Suboden Khan as your Warlord on his sleek jetbike!

List 3 – Armageddon force

These two archetypes are both very strong and will allow you to grow as a Space Marines player, but could be too powerful in friendly games of Warhammer 40,000 at your local gaming store or on your kitchen table as you learn the game with other players new to our community. If that’s the case, I’ve also created a list that combines the starter set models with the Armageddon box set and a couple other units that will ensure you and your opponent have a terrific time learning the game together.

This list is designed around running at least one of every model in the starter set and Armageddon, with duplicates of several of the units as the core. These are joined by a few of the unit combinations from the previous lists. In addition, we are utilising all three of the new Space Marines detachments from the launch of the new edition to emphasise a balanced, mixed arms playstyle that can do a bit of everything and encourage you to become comfortable with the core mechanics of Warhammer 40,000. 

In this case, I recommend playing the Reconnaissance force disposition, as it will encourage you to focus on how powerful movement is in Warhammer 40,000, and being in the right place at the right time. If you’re looking for fun, casual games of Warhammer with a solid theme, something like this would be a solid starting point to enjoy your initial experiences with your friends!

Of course, these three ideas barely scratch the surface of the vast array of archetypes and playstyles that Space Marines can field. If you didn’t see your favourite Chapter or units in this article, fear not – the new detachment system ensures you can design a powerful Space Marines list by creating a combination that suits your playstyle and rewards your favourite units with additional rules.

Our thanks to Richard and John for their time and insights!

 A bevy of brand new starter sets, including the Getting Started with Space Marines and Orks box sets, are going up for pre-order this Saturday. They’re the perfect way to introduce friends and family into your hobby, and to get your own army project started if you’re making your first steps into the 41st Millennium.