Aggressors vs Terminators vs Assault Centurions – Space Marine Elites Compared!

Aggressors vs Terminators vs Assault Centurions – Space Marine Elites Compared!

so what are the strengths and weaknesses of the EXO armored Elite Space Marines with power fists and bolters let’s talk Terminators versus aggressors and also throw those chunky assault centurions into the mix as well hello and welcome back to war tactics where today we’re talking Space Marines and in this video I thought we’d focus on the armored fighting Elite of the aartis they are a faction that’s rather spoiled for Choice with a sheer amount of close-range fighting Elites sent into the thick of the action for this video I thought it could be interesting to take a look at just three data sheets specifically the Terminators the assault centurions and the aggressors for the Terminators I’m just going to focus on the standard data sheet I know they have a bunch of chapter specific variants plus their Terminator Assault Squad though I feel like for the competition of power fist Plus close range shooting the standard Terminator Squad perhaps represents that best for this video let’s talk briefly about their data sheets then go through some raw damage and defense numbers for un augmented squads and then a bunch of advantages each of them might have in terms of of detachments characters and transports and a few other things then just share some overall thoughts on what tends to get played most in competitive jumping straight in with a quick look at the unit profiles first up we have the standard Terminator Squad these guys being the most stored and wellknown of the estares elites fighting in their ancient Terminator armor and bearing the emperor’s Crux terminatus on their left shoulder pad they incorporate forcefield technology and armed with power fist and storm bolters their Primary Weapons and certainly a massive focus of 10th edition given the new reimagination of their standard Miniatures for their data sheet they’re very nicely durable three wounds at tness 5 with a two plus save and a four plus invulnerable save 175 points per five of them or 350 per 10 having gone down in the last points update they mainly get storm bolters for a whole flurry of rapid fire shots at 12 in power fist and close combat that you could change your out for chain fists if you wanted to make them a bit better against vehicles in general I’m probably a bit more convinced by the Power Fist on the whole though people like both and they get a couple of supporting rules including their teleport Homer and fury of the first competing against them we’ve got the aggressors which did kind of feel like they were sort of the primar Terminators when they came out big chunky gravis plate and still fighting with essentially power fists and bolt weapons they do have their flamestorm variants these guys maybe aren’t quite as stored as the Terminators though and more feel like more sort of a technology driven solution as opposed to a relic Superior armored plate these guys have been put up in points a couple of times throughout 10th edition so far now 120 per three of them so quite pricey per model more so than Terminators they don’t get the two plus save or the invulnerable save but they do get toughness six which is Handy against a few break points and then their weapons all get some nice twin links so we attacks with twin links power fist keep them relevant against the toughest offu around and then both the bolt storm and the flamestorm loadouts get twin linked on the base fist the bolt storm also gets the fragstorm grenade launcher on top and they all get their extra boosted AP against the closest Target which is a big deal when shooting they can put out a lot of anti- hord volume fire then finally we’ve got the assault centurions these guys predated the primaris launch and when they dropped people refer to them as a Space Marine inside a Space Marine they’ve got really quite big bulky armor a tough and seven four wounds and a two plus save though no invulnerable save to help against the highest AP stuff the main weapon are the seege drills in melee which are kind of Next Level against tanks and vehicles three attacks at strength 10 ap2 and damage three and twin linked is pretty massive also getting sustained hits two against Monsters vehicles and fortifications which is a pretty enormous damage boost there otherwise on the chest mounted weapon I’d take the Centurion bols I don’t think getting the grenades keyword is worth passing up on any of them a squad of them can have 18 shots twin linked within 12 in which is rather nice and then you either get twin flamers or twin melter guns on the fist weapons I feel like you could genuinely go one way or the other depending on whether you wanted more dedicated anti- hord we’ll see the damage difference in a second so these guys are three contenders they definitely do feel that they’ve got a fair amount of overlap in Battlefield role generally punching quite good against armored Targets in close combat mostly having some all right anti- hord volume fire with various bolt weapons at close range I thought we could take a look at their numbers for damage defense and durability and a few other pros and cons first up let’s start with Mello damage this table is recorded in numbers of wounds dealt on average it’s waited for 150 points worth of Miniatures so the numbers represent one Squad of assault centurions but it’s a a bit more than three aggressors or a bit less than five terminators for this comparison have given the Terminators power fist as I do feel like they’re probably the most general purpose they would do better against vehicles and worse against the other targets if you went for chain fists they feel like chainfist are sort of gambling that you’re not fighting against Monsters and things as well and they do feel a bit mess and match up dependent in any case for close combat damage against the lighter infantry targets like the termin guns or the standard intercessor it’s generally the Terminators and aggressors that do better than the assault centurions there I guess that’s kind of to be expected as they just have fewer attacks per Point even if those ones are really nice on these comparison numbers for efficiency the aggressors just win out versus the Terminators I feel like the difference is so small it’s not that meaningful against anything tougher though anything that’s three wounds or vehicle profile the assault centurions win pretty big against Terminator targets the damage to doesn’t do so well so the assault centurions damage three wins pretty handily killing around about three Terminators out of a single unit charging and the numbers are equally Superior against things like rhinos and L Raiders particularly against the Rhino given that the assault Centurion wound on a three plus rrolling everything else is wounding on a five plus rrolling they lose that advantage against the lamb Raider as they wounding it on a five plus with their strength 10 Siege drills still though the damage three and that sustained hits to easily see them beating the competition with the aggresses placing in second place against anything that’s fairly tough due to that nice twin link overall at least in terms of Base mellow damage I probably just about Chalk this up to a win for the assault centurions not enormously behind the others against infantry but significantly ahead against tough stuff for unit durability here’s some hits needed to kill 150 points of a unit at 12 in range for this one at base I’ve assumed no cover if there was cover present then the two plus saves would do quite well that might make the invulnerable save of the Terminators less impactful I would bear in mind that you’re not going to get cover and close combat either way though in General on the numbers here though it does seem to be a pretty straight win for the terminators a two plus save and a lot of wounds is a big Advantage versus the aggressors in the assault centurions versus special weapons and anti-tank style stuff it’s a bit more close with small arms and sort of mid-strength weapons like heavy bolters the heavy bolters are actually kind of even between the three of them and the bolt rifles is fairly similarly effective against assault centurions but Broly speaking the two plus save lots of wounds and four plus invulnerable save for the Terminators do have them coming out ahead fairly significantly if had included a damage three weapon on this then I suspect that would been kind of even between the assault centurions and the Terminators just due to it killing Terminators more efficiently and still needing two hits to finish off each assault Centurion I probably T the aggressors up as the least durable overall certainly lesser than the Terminators and a bit less than the assault centurians particularly if we had that damage three comparison in the table finally for some raw numbers here’s the range damage output this is assuming that you can deliver the units into 12in range have maybe been slightly kind to the aggressors assuming that they do get that extra AP buff here the extra AP minus one against the closest Target occasionally that might not be the case though depending on how your opponents deployed things in any case the Terminators for this one are fairly comfortably behind with their flow of stormbolter shots plus a couple of cyclone missile launcher attacks so really for winning the close- range shooting fight it’s between the assault centurions and the aggressors after the two Centurion versions you can tailor them more to anti hord I feel like probably the melters and the Centurion bolters are probably the best overall threat profile they can still take really quite a big chunk out of hordes still slay nine termagant on average but do a bit better against all the more heavily armored things kind of similar sort of efficiency against the intercessor and Terminator targets and really quite a lot better against anything that’s multi- wound like the Rhinos twin links melter guns with good AP and damage do some pretty good work there and this one assumes that they’re out of melter range as well if you can get them in super close it’s going to get nastier overall i’ probably say that this one on the raw number numbers is fairly even between the aggressors and the assault centurions depending on what targets you want to go for raw numbers definitely aren’t the end of the story though all the support that you can get in codec Space Marines is quite a big deal whether it’s characters transports or Detachment type stuff I feel like a lot of these extras maybe favor the aggressors certainly character support is a major weakness for the centurions given that no characters can join the units that means that you can’t get any of the easy character Buffs like free stratums from captains or lethal hits from lieutenants type equivalence and it means that you can’t get any useful enhancements inside the unit everything is like the Gladius fire discipline or Vanguard infiltrate for the Terminators they’ve got access to their Captain chaplain librarian and ancient which would say are all kind of okay and fairly well balanced for what they do they likely rate them as merely okay for the cost rather than desperately Stand Out Terminators can definitely be a unit that you can invest some big Synergy in as they’re quite so points intensive if you want though let say for character support the aggressors have the biggest wins here the gravis captains a fair a bit cheaper than the Terminator captain and they can get the Apothecary biologist which just adding lethal hits into an aggressor unit is pretty Stand Out impressive it means their power fists are far more dangerous against Toof sto they’ be wounding on fives and makes their spammed volume fire with all those bolt shots usually with ap minus one far more efficient against anything that’ wound on a five or six it’s pretty relevant for the fire discipline combo and Gladius as well which can make their shooting from something that kills hordes to something that takes major damage off anything Mar’s calgar certainly one of the strongest space Ring character data sheets as well he often gets played with aggressors in the Vanguard spearhead alongside an apothecary biologist bearing the infiltrate enhancement allowing you to p a terrifying Death Star a unit in the Midfield and his Victor on a guards are pretty good for tanking for the unit having a two plus save and an invulnerable save both of which means that you could potentially take hits on them and then be far more resilient to getting destroyed than the actual aggressors Advanced shoo and charge is also massively helpful on a close- range unit with both shooting and melee to next up for delivery and transport Terminators do have their advantage in inbuilt deep strike it does make them particularly fun as a rapid Ingress unit perhaps a captain or a chaplain wouldn’t be the worst addition to that the chaplain to help them out in melee if they’re going to have a good chance of getting there or Captain for roll charges if for some reason on the board state it makes more sense to risk a charge out of deep strike at least that to give you a coin flip chance they can use a land Raider as well you could have an 175 Point Unit transported there plus a character in general this one seems to be kind of rarely used for the Terminators perhaps due to their inbuilt deep strike and perhaps because compared with the others they skew to a bit more defense rather than damage output and often transports tend to have more value out of things that are more damaged than defense as you get more value out of protecting their fragile profiles and they’re getting the maximum amount of damage delivered as a sort of alpha strike out of that assault ramp otherwise assault centurions are another really popular one to put in a lamb Raider to get them into melee they take up more slots than Terminators so usually you’d only be able to put three of them in a transport they do fit kind of neatly into a standard L Raider or a redeemer though and I feel like if you are using them then that’s probably going to be the best way to get them there unless you’re doing anything else fancy and chapter specific they absolutely do need the delivery given that they only move 4 in and are best within 12 in range plus being a fair bit less durable than the Terminators per points finally for aggressors they work pretty amazingly with land Raiders as well the land Raider Redeemer seems to be really pop popular for them with six of them plus a character jumping out of it never mind the big threat of the L Raider itself I does feel like it’s got a very good ratio of threat in the transport compared with the value of the transport so you could have say a 275 Point Unit including the biologist jumping out of a l raer Redeemer typically in 40K transport units often tend to be best when you’ve got more points of unit within the transport as opposed to the value of the transport itself the land Raiders definitely have enough value in their own right again like the centurions they’re particularly great a fancy way to deliver them a lot more close-range damage than they have defense potentially could be really big investment units with enhancements and things going on and not really all that tough at least not compared with Terminators otherwise specific Detachment things can have all sorts of advantages for various of these I think lad’s task force does work pretty nicely for all of them really they’re slow moving Elite infantry with both range and melee power and that works out pretty well with the combat doctrines and the access to advanc shoot and charge plus some pretty nice damage dealers GS like Lance melee or the storm of fire we already mentioned the fire discipline combo with the Apothecary biologist that makes aggressors even more standout sustained and lethal hits on a five plus rrolling with o of moment will just brutalize anything and even get extra AP with the storm of fire for Firestorm that place the greater emphasis on shooting you get to advance and shoot if needed plus one strength within 12 in and they’ve got access to a nice plus Wonder wound both at range and in melee this one does particularly favor flame storm aggressors with those fairly scary Buffs going on and particularly with a gravis captain in the unit for the devastating wound torrent strategy that means that flame storm aggressors can have a good shot at melting just about anything they get in range of it doubles down on helping out transport type units as well so really helps lamb Raiders having a l Raider Redeemer to deliver them can be pretty scary as well would say that assault centurions are still pretty interesting here as well they do have some pretty massive Firepower at close range and definitely have damage outputs to rival the aggressors at least if they’re not buffed I guess the torren strum wouldn’t be quite as good on them you’d probably be more looking at the plus one to wound one if anything finally Vanguard would say maybe has more focus on the aggressors and the Terminators versus The Assault centurions either of those could infiltrate with a character attachment and getting that warlord trait as mentioned aggressors plus cgar and Apothecary bi logist is a tried and tested big scary combo there he definitely could do the same with Terminators 350 points a pretty durable might is pretty handy to have in the Midfield I feel that deploy units that are going for big threat like that do need to have some good durability as they’re often going to be in a position where the enemy can hit them back hard they do get some extra defense at range here as well a nice shooting stratum and a reactive move against charges although which can be quite big if you’re using centurions here though it’s probably going to be the Devastator type as they quite like the stratum to be able to redeploy around the map maybe in combo with urial Ventress otherwise iron storm maybe doesn’t feel quite as optimal for some of these though I guess you could use some maybe jumping out of a lamb Vader redeema which can still work fine there stormlands isn’t maybe quite as competitively played by more Mainline Space Marines but most of these do quite enjoy the advance and charge you can also advance and shoot for one CP which could certainly be worth it on basically any of these units in a big number most of the Synergy is for biker units though and first company task force has a fair few boosts for Terminators a few nice enhancements including a once per game f no pain and some interesting teleport options unfortunately overall though it has seen as rather weak I think terminators would have to be an absolute top tier standout efficient unit to have people have more of a look at it finally for chapter things I’m not going to dwell on this too much here but there are various detachments or characters that could help out various ones of the units we mentioned cgar I guess Lysander can also be of note for the Terminators Dark Angels definitely have some Terminator love they can have Precision with B if they’d like to plus they have their own terminat data sheet in the Deathwing version which is just Five Points more but I think that’s worth it for ignor modifiers and the watch in the dark plus they have their Inner Circle task force which could allow you a few more options there that can give you plus one to wound things though unfortunately like the first company task force doesn’t seem to be doing very well in game right now space wolves have their own Terminator data sheet and a few characters of their own Logan grimnar May been my favorite out of them with a big charge and fight phase rerolls blood angels are certainly more known for their drum troops though I genely think that Terminators aren’t terrible with them a big SW of Terminators charging out of Rapid Ingress can be a massive force to be reckoned with a massive amount of strength 10 plus one attack power fists maybe red Rampage to make them hit even harder and then you’ve got a unit that’s going to be a fair bit harder to remove in return than a fair few of their jump pack squads they will have stiff competition from the fast movers though given the fast movers get so much Advantage from getting the chart and have maybe got a better chance of doing so otherwise Death Watch get their own terminat data sheet with triple heavy weapons in it though it does cost more I feel like both aggressors and assault centurions are maybe more interesting for them than some other places just because both of them are at least somewhat efficient damage platforms with a bunch of Bolter shots and that can be kind of interesting for a few of their special issue ammo stratums which don’t really have tons of value elsewhere they can also teleport units around the board as well which is interesting and gives you another delivery option for getting the slow moving Elites into range to shoot the enemy finally the black Templars can use some f no pain and have some rather nice melee strategems they maybe feel that they might be a bit more tempting with the Terminator Assault Squad given devastating wounds and antia can combo for them all three of these do have some stiff competition from them using their sword Brethren though they often tend to get the nod in their place as the fighting Elites to charge out of transports or Focus big combos around overall between all that here’s my rough takes on them thisa centurions have got strong base damage and a stand out threatening to Terminators and vehicles they don’t need as much investment as the others to be quite good which also can’t access several combos or enhancements without characters and they absolutely need a delivery system given that they’re very close range in their damage output even more so than the others they’re the slowest with a 4in move and they’re not really any more durable per Point than the aggressors in my opinion the Terminators are the most durable but are also generally the least dangerous overall I feel like deep strike is perhaps one of their biggest selling points being able to threaten them as an interesting rapid Ingress unit potentially plus maybe being an interesting unit for Vanguard and infiltrating due to their toughness and for the aggressors per point I rate them as the least durable quite nice balance between range and melee and a little bit more threat range on the shooting if you take the bolt storm and frag storm at 18 in they compete all the rest for anti- hord shooting and still pack a fair punch against vehicles and tough stuff they’re not quite as much as the centurians in combat I say their biggest selling point though is that they’re just the easiest to make in two big scary damage combos between their character access transport capacities and working extra well with certain strategems for a bunch of the strongest space between detachments they just feel like one of the best and most OB I choices whether it’s Vanguard Firestorm or Gladius finally I thought it would be just interesting to take a look through a few top Space Marine Army list over the past few weeks to see what’s actually getting played more than others at the moment the biggest points change for these guys recently were the Terminators going down a bit though kind of has expected it hasn’t really swapped them to be a top tier competitive unit or anything just a bit more usable than they were look it’s a whole bunch of space r Ary list that have done well often with Firestorm Gladius or Vanguard it does seem that people do occasionally use both Terminators and assault centurions though they tend to be quite nich and rare picks still I saw one person who’d use a 10 Terminator Squad of some success in Vanguard with infiltrat they not much besides that and a couple of people using three assault centurions in a lamb Raider or lamb Raider redeema as SW and Gladius and Firestorm certainly out of the three for competitive play it still seems that aggressors are very much seen as the goto maybe not too surprising given how easy it is to focus some really good stratums characters and enhancement all on one units to make them just ridiculously dangerous they usually tend to be in units of six to focus all your damage on them commonly with Maria cgar for people who are playing ultramarines and ofer in Vanguard there often taking fire discipline and Gladius which likely some unit is going to be taking and could be delivered out of L Raiders there and people often use the flamestone load out in Firestorm usually jumping out of a land Raider edema generally using the gravis Captain as opposed to the Apothecary given the lethal hits doesn’t work with those flamers and the free devastating wound torrent strategy is a very nice one overall between all that i’ rate all of these as absolutely fine and usable in casual play Terminator in particular perhaps a particularly easy unit to use given that they’re a bit more forgiving with their durability assault centurions do seem kind of fine they’re kind of specific in really wanting to jump out of a lamb Raider in certain detachments and aggresses still seem to be the overall strongest by far the most plays still being fairly easy to kill per the points investment but having enough damage and stacking enough Synergy on them to really make them next level and worthy of a placing a big transport or some other fancy delivery mechanism though it do feel like since the space Mar codex dropped the gap on all these was closed a fair bit aggressors having gone up in points and Terminators having gone down in any case I look forward to hearing your guys takes on these which of these armored Elites do you put on the table in 10th edition if any and how would you rate the strength of each unit look forward to hearing your thoughts down in the comments if you’ve enjoyed the video then feel free to subscribe to or’s tactics or certainly keep the regular 4 K videos coming I do tend to post new ones just about every day finally if you have been enjoying all the videos on the channel I would just like to mention that or’s tactics does have a patreon page as well and you can find that Linked In the video description if you’d like to help support and keep them all coming Channel patrons do get a fair few advantages seeing certain videos early regular votes to see what sort of things come next on the channel and automatic entry into the regular prize giveaways with a chance to win some big model kits each month if any of that sounds good to you or you just like to help support the link is down in the video description in any case a massive thank you for listening and I’ll hope to see you guys next time

Let’s talk through a few armoured elites that have a bit of overlap in battlefield roles, and how they fare when placed head to head…

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0:00 Intro
1:07 Datasheets
4:17 Melee Damage
6:05 Durability
7:19 Ranged Damage
8:35 Character Support
10:32 Transports
12:40 Detachments
15:34 Chapters
17:42 Overall Thoughts
19:02 What Gets Played?
21:12 Outro