# Boxed vs Black Reach - Space Marine Tactical Squad



## SGMAlice (Aug 13, 2010)

Good Evening All,

So... I'm picking up Space Marines again. My custom chapter - The Children Of The Dragon. 
As much as i love my Orks. I want a change of scenery.

So my question is this: Given the limited poses on the Black Reach Tactical Squad; How Posable are the Marines from the squad box?

Any example and/or comparison pictures would be helpful. 


SGMAlice


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## normtheunsavoury (Mar 20, 2008)

Depends on your skill with a scalpel, file and GS. 

The AOBR ones are OK but they have 0% pose-ability, the ones in the tactical box have separate arms, torso, head and weapons. So, straight out of the box you can adjust the basics, like where the marine is looking, which way his body is facing. With a little bit of fiddling and trimming you can pose them pretty much how you want. 

Sorry, no pics at the moment but I hope that helps.


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## Nicholas Hadrian (Mar 20, 2011)

SGMAlice said:


> Good Evening All,
> 
> So... I'm picking up Space Marines again. My custom chapter - The Children Of The Dragon.
> As much as i love my Orks. I want a change of scenery.
> ...


Fairly so, there are a number of diffrent legs, but most of them are the same bowlegged stance unfortuantely, I advise buying some assault marines to mix and match possibly. The arms are extremely posable however, headswaps are probably the most simple.


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## AG. (Sep 28, 2010)

The AoBR marines aren't poseable at all.

The Tactical box has a variety of options and depending on how skilled you are with a pair of clippers, razor saw and craft knife you have a whooole load of poses available to you.

I find that as Nicholas said, a box of assault marines spread around your squads goes a long way to make the marines look more epic/dynamic.


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## Rhino 88 (Jan 1, 2012)

WTF.! i made post with pics ... but no show ! grrr need nicotine and coffee.............. .....will re-post later


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## SGMAlice (Aug 13, 2010)

I can use various tools and GS so that bit isn't a problem.
I shall also consider an Assault Squad to supplement the Tactical Squad.
@Rhino88: Take your time, my friend, i appreciate the effort.

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions so far.

SGMAlice


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## RedThirstWill Destroy (Nov 10, 2011)

As th above have already said, this is how I'm making my custom vets. You would get a more unique looking tactical squad this way too


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## Rhino 88 (Jan 1, 2012)

*
i know you guys are talking about mainly tactical marines, however i wanted to show you a few pieces i have been swapping..

I really enjoy changing body stances to how they look on the box hehe...​

(L photo)#

I made a Darth Vader scout using a different head/stance.
Now, I never liked the same positioning of the SM on bikes so here's mine.

(i swapped the bikers legs with an assault marines,giving him that Mad Max biker jump look..) after swapping the legs i took one of his arms otherwise would look like he was griping air !) *

*(R photo)#**

As you can see i used the bikers L grip arm for another assault marine (meltas) i thought this worked well.
also for the sniper in the middle of this photo (on the box, his rifle points up.) I hated this and wanted him to point it forwards, knowing this was impractical for the case so i drilled a 1.5 mm hole and used a magnet...

(ive magnetised quite a few figures, bring a nice element to the game when you can swap weapons quickly...)*

Hope you enjoy..

Rhino :wink:


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## SGMAlice (Aug 13, 2010)

Interesting models. The Assault marine is similar to an old Assault Sargeant i made, he was holding a Melta Bomb too, in his Power fist, but sideways on instead of by the handle. I don't seem to have an image of it though.

I can get hold of various parts from ebay, my main concern is with what the boxed Tactical Squad can do on its own.

SGMAlice


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## Rhino 88 (Jan 1, 2012)

SGMAlice said:


> Interesting models. The Assault marine is similar to an old Assault Sargeant i made, he was holding a Melta Bomb too, in his Power fist, but sideways on instead of by the handle. I don't seem to have an image of it though.
> 
> I can get hold of various parts from ebay, my main concern is with what the boxed Tactical Squad can do on its own.
> 
> SGMAlice


Yeah sorry....i get to chop up some tactical in a few days time...got 1.8 kg of all sorts of marines arriving..

i hear converting tactical's into stern-guard is a good option...

may be cheaper than e-bay...check out 

http://hoardobits.com/cgi/hob/search.pl

Laterz


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## SGMAlice (Aug 13, 2010)

Thanks for the link. Though not cheaper than Ebay. At least where i get them from, they're not.

I'm going to hold on to this thread for now and see if any one can provide some examples of Tactical Marines from the box set in differnt poses.
Otherwise, many thanks for your help and suggestions.

SGMAlice


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

come on alice what do you want to know? bits is here for you ! 

In real terms the the tactical squad is very limited , the box has ten marines with identical poses to the standard AOBR marine. It has 6 mk7 legs with the wide leg stance and 4 mk6 with the same stance. 5x2 standard marine torsos 10 sets of arms all holding the bolter infront of the chest, 2 mk6 heads and 10 mk7 heads, 20 shoulder pads plain and 2 mk5 studded pads, and some accessories.
on the weapon sprue you get 2 chain swords left and right,2 bolt pistol arms left and right, and two plasma left and right, melta,flamer,plasma and missile lanucher.

the only real advantage of the tactical squad out of the box is the assault weapons included, but on the flip side some of the abor are better sculpted and have better poses than the standard tactical box set.

the interesting space marine parts are actualy from none tactical boxes such as the assault (legs/weapons) command squad (arms and detail and kneeling legs).
also some of the non vanilla stuff offers the best stuff like sanguinary guard and greyknights and space wolves, many of those kits have very dynamic posed arms and legs and greater level of detail,personally i think the marines as they stand are starting to look very tired and dated, the design as iconic as it is hasnt changed much since the early 90s and the level of detail available to GW shown in other ranges is really starting to make the marines look old hat.


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## SGMAlice (Aug 13, 2010)

:laugh: all you need now is a cape with a big 'B' on it and your underwear worn on the outside XD

I'd like to be able to vary the poses throughout the squads as much as possible but from your description it sounds like that cannot be done without some work outside the scope of the pieces provided in the box.

SGMAlice


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## xenobiotic (Jun 7, 2008)

I agree with B&Ks sentiment about the Tactical Squad box. But I also loathe the AOBR marines because of their stale appearance and the fact that they are hard to modify. 

Basically the Tacical Squad box a basic framework to start from and modify, the legs are the weakest link, IMO, because of the lack of variation. I've moved away from the Tactical Squad box more and more and I find myself unable to use the parts from that kit without modifying them in some way - be it splicing them up with other kits or cutting them apart and putting them together again with greenstuff modifications.

The advantage you have with Space Marine modelling, which you should use to your benefit, is the fact that the kits are interchangeable. You shouldn't expect to get 10 unique marines from the basic box, end of story. But you can get a plethora of unique marines if you harvest parts from the Space Marines / Blood Angels / Grey Knights / Space Wolves / Black Templars / Forge World ranges and put them all together. Modifying distinctive parts (cutting away some, covering some with greenstuff and so on) to get to where you want to go with your specific marines of choice (whatever codex you might be using). It helps to have a big bit-box (of your own or a friends) and scrounging through the internet (B&K and ebay have supplied me with many tasty parts the last year for a fair price).

All that said I find that a well done Space Marine army can be one of the most labor intensive armies in the GW arsenal if you just open your eyes and expand the view when it comes to customization.

Recently I came into some Vanguard veterans (I bought a box but they where shite so I got a replacement box which was also shite, all in all I ended up with 3 boxes for the price of one) and I decided to hack some of them apart for parts, splicing the legs with other combinations to achieve different poses, here is a small collection of what I came up with (and this is only legs (they are not completely done on this pic but I think it gets the point through)):









And here are some "pre-greenstuff" spliced legs, just to show you my preferred process:









I'd say that if your planning om doing 50 marines, at most 25 of the pairs of legs should originate from the Tactical Squad box.

Hope you could get something useful out of my rambling.


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## Babu Dhakal (Jan 10, 2012)

Having finished my first 10 Tacs I would echo the above in that variety is not available in the Tac box. I'll try and post up what I did (unpainted) when I can.


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

SGMAlice said:


> :laugh: all you need now is a cape with a big 'B' on it and your underwear worn on the outside XD


what do you mean "need"?, thats how i dress for work every day :victory:


its a bit of a conundrum, marines are the most converted of all the armies because they have direct interchangeability ,they are the best selling by a long chalk, but the basic kits are some of the poorest GW produce, the range of different "marine" bits is massive when you take into account the different chapters and FW releases but the basic kits themselves are pretty cack straight out of the box, the actual bench mark for a army with variety is the DE, they take the philosophy of how the marine kits work but shove a shit ton of variety into every sprue accross the whole range.


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## lav25gunner (Dec 13, 2008)

Here's the plastic goodness that comes with the tactical squad box. 


























The problem is that there is little variation in the box. Essentially you get a Sergeant, Missile Launcher, and 8 nearly identical Marines (1 with special weapon). Here's my first Tactical Squad. 










It's extremely generic and boring, so I decided ided to add a few things to it. I added an industrial base, flame from WHFB Empire Flagellant Warband, and a "comm pack" to my "radio marine" (made from IG comm pack and SM pack). 


























The Tactical box comes with a right grenade hand and an extended left chainsword arm that lets you do something like this on the right (combi-flamer)...










Best thing to do is to kit bash the hell out of it. This is my Veteran Ork Hunter squad. It has bits from about 5 different kits, including some Ork stuff, Tactical Squad and Assault Squad (and some OOP stuff).










Here are some of my other stuff I made. I'm certain that most of it is illegal in the rule/codex book, but it looks good on the table.
















An all power fist assault squad.


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