Critique Corner V: Salamander Gladius

The Emperor protects, noble servants of the Imperium, and today he has blessed us with a demonstration of his finest - a mustering of Space Marines, fresh and ready for combat. This force has been brought before us by Sparrowhawk, whose intel suggests will be engaging in a sizable training exercise with fellow Astartes, bearing with them some significant quantity of armor. For such a task, he has recruited none other than the Salamanders, warriors born of ash and flame, and led by the mighty Vulkan He'stan, to take the fight to the foe. What challenges might they face? Will they succeed in their efforts to maintain the honor of the Emperor? Hit the jump to see what 2500 points of Salamander Gladius can really do!
Gladius

Demi-Company
Captain (Usual bike trappings)
Command squad on bikes (4x meltaguns, apothecary)
3 Bikes + Attack Bike (2x meltagun, combi-melta, multi-melta)
Tactical squad (10 guys, melta, multi-melta, combi-melta, drop pod)
Tactical squad (10 guys, melta, multi-melta, combi-melta, drop pod)
Tactical squad (10 guys, melta, grav pistol)
Devastator squad (9 guys, 4x multimeltas, locator beacon drop pod, plasma pistol, power fist)
Dreadnought (multi-melta, heavy flamer)

Stormwing
Stormraven (twin assault cannon, twin multi-melta, hurricane bolters)
Stormtalon (typhoon)
Stormtalon (typhoon)

Librarius
ML2 (combi-melta, bike)
ML2 (combi-melta)
ML2 (combi-melta)

Strike Force Command
Vulkan


Let's start from the foundation: this list is confused, and is running into something I've run into every time I try to write an all drop pod based Gladius (remember, the point is to null deploy!) and that is the 'heavy support' entry. Centuirons can't take a drop pod and devastators lack relentless, meaning that short of forking over absurd sums of points for grav cannons, they'll be snap firing when they drop in. Ick. We're bringing along Vulkan to mitigate some of that, but ultimately we're only netting one hit from the unit. Personally, if we're sold on sticking with the drop-Gladius (which is wildly unnecessary with the amount of melta we're working with and Vulkan), drop the extra bodies (and the wildly expensive 40 points of pointless wargear on the sergeant) and treat the 4 multi-meltas as a disposable threat. The enemy has to kill them, or else they'll remain in play with OS, and will really put the hurt down next turn.

Then we highlight the other issue I indicated: we can't null deploy with this list. No matter how we slice it or what we do, at least one of our bike squads with at least one bike character has to start on the table. And what will become of them? If we know we're fighting a tank company in some capacity, they're going to be forced to jink, and then they're in the same boat as the devastators: too many points for not enough oomph. White Scars and Dark angels are doing the grav thing because it has volume of dakka when they jink, to try and mitigate some of the fall off from that action. Melta, even with twin-linked, doesn't have that luxury. Bikes are fast enough to get melta rule, but my experience has taught me that unless you're in a rhino and gassing it hard, melta is better reserved for drop pods. With a drop pod, it becomes not dissimilar from a conventional military breaching tactic: swoop in unannounced, blow the door off its hinges, and address the occupants.

Similarly, the bikes, unless we took the Centurion fork two paragraphs ago, will put at most 10 models on the table as part of deployment, leaving this list very vulnerable to the possibility of getting piecemeal-ed to death, with each of its parts being dealt with in succession until nothing remains. I know I harp on assault marines, but if we're wanting to drop, any number of them in a drop pod with two flamers is cheap and fluffy. Likewise, it gives us a few tools to deal with some of the infantry that might be supporting those tanks. If we're willing to shell out for the hurricane bolters on the big bird, this makes at least as much sense, if not more. Or, if we don't care about dropping in, keep the bikes, grab a few rhinos, but either way, we should consider dropping the Shield Eternal.

That's a bold claim, and it borders on blasphemy, but I feel very strongly about the 40 points we're wasting over the top of an ordinary storm shield. The bike jerk cannot be our warlord, as Vulkan must be our warlord to get our melta trick to work, and that's something this list is committing to in full. So, why then do we concern ourselves with eternal warrior? Do we fear a strength D shot tearing apart the bike squad? Because that will statistically kill our captain even with eternal warrior, and with the amount of melta we're packing, we don't really want to go toe to toe with a knight. Strength 10? In marines, the only outs are vindicators and Lysander. and at which point, we need to silence the vindicators in swift order anyway. Save the points. Bring a regular shield.

For those of you playing our home game, you'll notice I've already cut a whopping 165 points out of this list, and that's going on the assumption that the command squad just got shoved into their own pod, bringing us from three pods to five (remember, assault marines in a drop pod with two flamers). I'd say there's another 115 points we can trim from there, just by cutting the extraneous wargear off the librarians (assuming we don't want to just cut the librarians wholesale), dropping the hurricane bolters off the raven (they're expensive and pointless), and trading the typhoons on the talons for skyhammers (you should be getting side shots on AV 11 rather than trying to tackle things head on). That's 280 points - closer to 310 after a few things I didn't overtly list, including being a touch under our 2500 target. That's huge. Where should we re-invest it?

I would cut the 270 points of our librarius for starters. Unless we're really banking on invisibility, we don't have any big winners. Divination is pointless with our list, and pyromancy (though fun and a personal favorite) may not be the most potent option. We were previously buying combi-meltas on all the librarians (and we cut those), but I'll almost always swear there's a better outlet. Namely, the home for our newly discovered 580 points: the 1st company task force.

Now, what's so impressive about this? Well, for starters, we can bolt on three more drop pods, upping our total to 8 (soon to be 9). These are crammed with three teams of  5 man sternguard teams, which each have 4 combi-meltas. But, this would leave us in a bit of a pickle, as we're points short of our 9th drop pod, which would be purchased as a dedicated for the dreadnought (who would then have an option of where he'd ride, enabling a 5 pod alpha strike first turn either way). Where to come up with them? Why, by my favorite wargear of all time! The heavy flamer! By turning one squad from four combi-meltas to two heavy flamers, we have a nice counterpart to our assault squad, and we free up the points to grab that 9th pod! Past that, I'd strongly suggest swapping out our multi-meltas for meltabombs on our characters, but I'll chalk that up to personal taste.

It may seem like a big change to move away from the bikes, but to more than double our first turn impact, I think it's worth it. In this new form, it should have ample oomph to come out ahead in our Astartes training action. Also, remember that the Sallies lost their free master crafted item on characters!