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Orks have already set the precedent for T5 infantry (as a horde army, no less) and don't seem to have become OP as a result, thanks to the current Wound table where S3 still wounds them on 5+. Making Space Marines T5 (with T6 Termies) would bring them a bit closer to Custodes than to guardsmen, which IMO is more reflective of the relative power levels between humans and two kinds of superhumans.

As for Strength, I know it's now a weapon stat rather than a model stat, but I could definitely see S5 boltguns (wounding T9 vehicles on 5+) and S6 heavy bolters (wounding GEQ on 2+). Not just for Space Marines but for everyone using bolt weapons.

This would leave more room for granularity when it comes to low-to-medium Strength and Toughness. For instance, Sisters of Battle could now be upped to T4 and have S4 melee attacks thanks to their power armor, because right now they don't feel quite as elite as they should be.

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If they do something like that I suspect we’d see the same kind of trickle down that we saw when marines went to 2W.

I agree that it would open up some more room to play at the lower levels, but would probably require an edition reset level event to make happen. Every unit and gun would need to be reevaluated.

 Nevelon wrote:
If they do something like that I suspect we’d see the same kind of trickle down that we saw when marines went to 2W.

I agree that it would open up some more room to play at the lower levels, but would probably require an edition reset level event to make happen. Every unit and gun would need to be reevaluated.

I think Marines should’ve gone to S6/T6 with 10th Edition.
And GEQ should’ve been S4/T4.
Adjust from there.

Without a game wide readjustment, though, absolutely not. MEQ are already frequently more durable than Plaguebearers-this change would make them equally or more durable until their saves are reduced to a 6+ or nothing.

As Nevelon says, I think this would mostly just start the arms race cycle all over again. Marines get a bit tougher and remain the most common army. To avoid the game feeling like a slap fight, GW makes weapons that can kill marines more common. Custodes don't feel super duper marine+ special any more, so GW makes them all T8 or whatever, and we functionally end up in a very similar place, just with several hundred more dollars sacrificed to GW for books.

At this point, I kind of feel like we might get more mileage out of stat deflation and switching back to the pre-8th to-wound chart. Let each point of S and T be more impactful, and eliminate most of the awkward gaps where an extra pip of one doesn't matter. Going from S4 to S5 matters against both T3 and T4, etc.

I'm also not sure you actually want bolters wounding vehicles on a 5+ baseline. The +1 to-wound from Oath of Moment already does some whacky things to the math of units like intercessors, and I'm not sure if that's intentional on GWs part or just a bit of power creep being used as a bandaid for marine balance issues.

So this is something I have commented on many times.

The endless marine stat inflation treadmill. When your most popular faction has to fight itself endlessly on the table, people will complain their marines can't kill marines easily enough, and then complain their marines are dying too easily and should be tougher.

Short answer, no. the game shouldn't have bloated their stats in the first place.

T5 Marines would mean T6 Orks, T7 Custodes, T4 Eldar, T6 Necrons, and I wonder - why?

I wasn't opposed to 2Wound marines.
But I dislike the whole Gravis T5 3Wound marine stuff, I mean, really?!
Especially since they throw off fluff balance and don't properly adjust other races. T5 Orks are totally fine if Marines are T4, 2Wounds and 3+ armour. A Necron must at least be as tough as a Marine. An Eldar can be a bit more squishy, but if you put Marines at T5, sometimes with 3 wounds, you either need to put all eldar on 2+ armour if you're so desperate to keep them T3, or you put them on T4, 2 wounds and so on, because eldar aren't supposed to be mooks you bolter away, every eldar is at least as capable as a Marine concerning their fighting skills, and their armour is just as good, just not as heavy.

Same with strength by the way. S5 Marines means S6 nobz, S6 necron elites, S6, D2 banshees because they're supposed to be Marine Killers and so on.
So in the end you inflate everything up but Grots and Guardsmen only to show how bad they are. Makes me wonder if that's an important Design goal.

*little disclaimer that I'm not really deep into 10th edition and some of those stats might already be there...

The correct approach is to set SM at whatever you want, then base everything around that. Just increasing their stats doesn't help if the goal is to increase their durability unless it goes hand-in-hand with an approach that allows for that. We've seen how D2 weapons became so powerful after the increase in SM Wounds, for example.

The change to the S/T chart probably does mean there should be more granularity in the stats but I don't know if increasing SM stats is the way to go, or using more of the lower bounds of S and T is better. Probably a bit of both.

Slipspace wrote:
The correct approach is to set SM at whatever you want, then base everything around that. Just increasing their stats doesn't help if the goal is to increase their durability unless it goes hand-in-hand with an approach that allows for that. We've seen how D2 weapons became so powerful after the increase in SM Wounds, for example.

The change to the S/T chart probably does mean there should be more granularity in the stats but I don't know if increasing SM stats is the way to go, or using more of the lower bounds of S and T is better. Probably a bit of both.

The problem is that people want fundamentally contradictory outcomes. They want killy marines and tough marines. But killy marines fighting killy marines means neither are tough, or vice versa.

People want protagonist powers for their marine army, but not for their opponents. So either one side gets to be movie marines and the gets to be mook marines, or they are both movie marines and neither feels like they're tough.

I would liken marine stat inflation to real-world financial inflation. Perpetual inflation of marines is unsustainable ruins it for everyone else.

 Hellebore wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
The correct approach is to set SM at whatever you want, then base everything around that. Just increasing their stats doesn't help if the goal is to increase their durability unless it goes hand-in-hand with an approach that allows for that. We've seen how D2 weapons became so powerful after the increase in SM Wounds, for example.

The change to the S/T chart probably does mean there should be more granularity in the stats but I don't know if increasing SM stats is the way to go, or using more of the lower bounds of S and T is better. Probably a bit of both.

The problem is that people want fundamentally contradictory outcomes. They want killy marines and tough marines. But killy marines fighting killy marines means neither are tough, or vice versa.

People want protagonist powers for their marine army, but not for their opponents. So either one side gets to be movie marines and the gets to be mook marines, or they are both movie marines and neither feels like they're tough.

I would liken marine stat inflation to real-world financial inflation. Perpetual inflation of marines is unsustainable ruins it for everyone else.

They also want each marine to be a super-elite model capable of killing a dozen termagants like in some book, while still fielding several full squads supported by tanks and heavy weapons. So what, the Nid player needs to bring 500 models to the game? That obviously isn't workable. A 1:3 ratio is about the limit for an "elite army" that still feels like a full-sized army playing into a horde.

They always suggest recycling models for that. Blech.

At the risk of derailing the thread, this is part of the reason I feel like my dream version of 40k would be something smaller scale with just a handful of squads and maybe one tank per side. Marines want to die slowly and be good at killing, but if each player has 20 units in their army, you *need* to be wiping out enemy units. And marines are presumably the squishiest thing in a marine army if you're trying to make tanks feel durable in comparison to non-tanks.

Thus, smaller game with a handful of squads and more focus on targeting limitations, maneuvering, etc.

Eh. I like the Toughness and Strength for normal marines where they are.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
At the risk of derailing the thread, this is part of the reason I feel like my dream version of 40k would be something smaller scale with just a handful of squads and maybe one tank per side. Marines want to die slowly and be good at killing, but if each player has 20 units in their army, you *need* to be wiping out enemy units. And marines are presumably the squishiest thing in a marine army if you're trying to make tanks feel durable in comparison to non-tanks.

Thus, smaller game with a handful of squads and more focus on targeting limitations, maneuvering, etc.

You should give 2nd ed a go, it works that way. It's also before the BL fetishised marine puissance into absurdity.





For this question, there just no way to balance marines that allows them to act this way. Because in a war game both sides need to be killing one another. The only way to really get the feel of this without trying to get on the endless stat treadmill, is customise scenarios where marines are fighting the way they should be. IE, you have an assassination mission, marines only have half the points of the opponent, but they start with victory points and get to deep strike anywhere and make free strikes/moves before the opponent can do anything.

I truly believe the only way for any faction to get that heroic image is for them to play scenarios that highlight their strengths. Eldar would fight in a similar way to marines above.


The true issue with 40k isn't the stats of marines, it's making them fight pitched battles.

You should give 2nd ed a go, it works that way. It's also before the BL fetishised marine puissance into absurdity.

I'd be open to it if I had the rules and opponents interested in trying out some old hammer in my area!

I truly believe the only way for any faction to get that heroic image is for them to play scenarios that highlight their strengths. Eldar would fight in a similar way to marines above.


The true issue with 40k isn't the stats of marines, it's making them fight pitched battles.

Yeah, you're probably right on both counts here. I think it's easier to forget with marines, but pitched battle against enemy forces of roughly comparable capabilities aren't really where marines excel. Their "thing" is sending small forces to pull off surgical strikes. Send a tac squad to plant a bomb on the enemy enginarium and lower the enemy void shields so they can be shelled to death from afar. Assassinate the warboss so that the ork forces temporarily lose cohesion. That sort of thing.

If we keep that in mind and understand your average 40k battle to be marines fighting in extremely unideal conditions, having them die in droves and be only moderately impressive at killing enemies sort of makes sense.

Of course, that's not the fantasy that most marine players are probably looking for, and that's where the asymmetrical special scenarios come in. I really should try to get an updated version of oldschool Kill Team together. Something where one player is playing the small, elite kill team full of badass named dudes while the opponent plays a bunch of patrolling sentinel mooks backed up by base defenses and a customizable boss character.

 Hellebore wrote:
Because in a war game both sides need to be killing one another.

This is not necessarily true - while fighting a war obviously involves the risk of some injury, many forms of battle involve relatively little immediate killing, but rather outmaneuvering, shock, and demoralisation in order to sap the enemy's will to fight (and in many cases, make them run away, after which the killing historically often truly began...). However, that is clearly not the kind of wargame that 40k players want, GW wants to make, or indicative of the battles showcased in the game artwork (unless you consider the fact that nobody seems to be aiming their guns in those classic battle piles). Modern objective-based play does lend itself to this interpretation of war, except that the only way to prevent an enemy from fulfilling an objective is to kill them.

The rest of your post is spot on. 40k battles are lethal because they reflect a pretty unfortunate situation - two patrols somehow bumbling into each other and not noticing until they're distanced by fifty metres and a handful of L-shaped ruins. The best interpretation is perhaps that marines are actually pretty solid troops, but in all actual 40k games, they start out in a hopeless situation due to the incompetence of their leader (me).

Don't forget that at the scale of 40K a Marine is just not very special.
A Marine Power Fantasy only works when he fights hordes of Cultists without any heavy weapons, if he fights Gaunts without any warriors, if he fights Orks without Nobz or any special weapon squads.
In any other case, a Marine is just another heavy infantry guy, just like a nob, an immortal, an aspect warrior and so on. A Crisis suit blasting his plasmaguns at a squad of marines outside cover? Yeah, they're dead now.
And that's all without mentioning tanks, walkers or imperial knights.
So, over the years I came to think what happens on the gaming table isn't that far off of how some of the factions work, even Marines.

If you field a Power armor Horde of 50-60 Marines against Orks that field Killa Kans, Looters, Nobz, Meganobz, Mek Kannons? It's quite likely 30-40 Marines will bite the dust and are outnumbering the Orks. As it should be.
It's the fluff numbers that are ridiculous (1000Marines per chapter) and some Bolter porn games (SM2) and novels that are off.

Balancing the game based on fluff is and always will be a terrible idea That will just lead to endless power creep and waste of time and money. If you want to increase the marine stats, present an actual strategic or balance related argument what to do so. Otherwise forget it.

Also, others said generally Marine players fight other Marine players. So if you want your personal games that feel more lopsided or elite, they probably won't be unless you really face off against xenos.

This is the thing with marine power fantasy, they're bullies. The astartes animation, the secret level animation. In both instances they ploughed through rebellious cultists with no armour and poor guns. And they did it from the most advantageous positions they could find.

Charging a guard lascannon battery emplacement is not their natural habitat and they will suffer for it.

Just as Eldar charging across a bare field with no vehicles into heavy bolter batteries , or Orks up against phosphex bombing runs etc are going to be in trouble.

People just take secret level slaughter and think it should apply to all enemies they face rather than just the ones they actually did

I've always taken the novels to be an exaggeration of the "reality" of the game world, because Marines were incredibly consistent in game (moreso than any other faction) from 2e to 7e. And even when they decided to power them up, they gave an in universe explanation for it.

Unfortunately, the popularity of the novels and people loving a good power fantasy have lead to a feedback loop where the novels inform the game and then the game feeds back into the novels.

I even remember when inflating the height of space marines was a joke on Dakkadakka, and it's become the actual canon now.

I always thought the point of Marines was that it put them on relatively level footing with all the terrifying threats in the galaxy rather than them actually being stronger than everything else and only overwhelming numbers preventing the Imperium from curbstomping every other faction.

I find the background much less compelling in it's current state I have to say - the idea that if the Imperium wanted to it could just turn around and eradicate any one Xenos threat no problem makes it a lot less interesting to me.

Agreed, no notes.

^Seconded.

Too many people forget that other threats in-universe are actually incredibly dangerous to Marines, and thus in the pitched battles we have on the tabletop Marine casualties should be high. Marines can plow through cultists all day and that's fine, but if there are genestealers alongside them in close quaters, Marines should start dying.

Or people play the video game and somehow forget all the times they died trying to beat it

Mostly agree with the last few posts, but I will half-heartedly play devil's advocate. I think that, hypothetically, having a faction whose "gimmick" is that they're the super-hardy, super-elite guys that kick ass despite always being outnumbered could be a valid niche for an army.

It's just that marines simultaneously do and do not want to fill that niche in the lore. Sometimes marines want to be roughly equivalent to aspect warriors, and sometimes they want a squad of 5 marines to be able to conquer a planet in an afternoon. And because other elite armies aren't going to be onboard with being straight up worse than marines and because GW wants to sell you more models to fill out a 2k army, the hyper-plot-armored version of marines just doesn't really work out.

Custodes seem to be GW's attempt at filling that niche with a faction that doesn't have as much baggage. We don't have decades of novels making aspect warriors look roughly comparable to custodes the way we do with marines, so custodes being straight up better than aspect warriors doesn't feel as weird. Custodes aren't the #1 selling army like marines are, so GW is okay with golden power armor armies being a bit smaller on the tabletop than marine armies.

It's just that marine players were sold on the idea that they were supposed to be what custodes (kind of) are. So if you're a marine player who wants to feel like custodes, the existence of custodes kind of makes you less cool by comparison.

tldr; Movie Marines are kind of a valid army concept so long as you only play against horde armies.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Mostly agree with the last few posts, but I will half-heartedly play devil's advocate. I think that, hypothetically, having a faction whose "gimmick" is that they're the super-hardy, super-elite guys that kick ass despite always being outnumbered could be a valid niche for an army.

It's just that marines simultaneously do and do not want to fill that niche in the lore. Sometimes marines want to be roughly equivalent to aspect warriors, and sometimes they want a squad of 5 marines to be able to conquer a planet in an afternoon. And because other elite armies aren't going to be onboard with being straight up worse than marines and because GW wants to sell you more models to fill out a 2k army, the hyper-plot-armored version of marines just doesn't really work out.

The thing is, also lore-wise, Marines should be no more plot-armored than their adversaries because their adversaries also kick-ass in their own stories. Eldar striking fast and hard, outmaneuvering the enemy with speed combined with psychic foresight. Tyranids and Orks drowning their opposition through numbers and brutality. Chaos terrorizing their foe with cruel tactics and warp infused technology. The only difference is that Marine stories are told more often, so relative perspective is lost. All factions are sometimes plot armored, and sometimes all factions suffer because their the punching bag of the story. The dice on the tabletop could be seen as "rolling for amount of plot armor per instance of encounter." My Genestealers charge your Marines, let's compare stats and then roll for plot armor! Ahh, this looks like a Tyranid fluff piece today, the Marines are overcome and slaughtered to a man.

Agreed insectum. Imo it would do wonders for the health of the community if marines appeared as punching bags more regularly in books so that their perception is more balanced.

The game's strength is in playing your dudes whoever that might be, and that means your dudes should have as much protagonist protection as any other.

Playing your dude only to be treated like your opponent is the protagonist of your dude's story is not fun. I don't want to play a game where I don't get to be my own protagonist.



Every army should get a punching bag moment regularly to set expectations.

Idk. I always think back to Deathwatch: Overkill. One player played a handful of marines who decidedly had "protag energy" while the other player played a faceless horde of GSC. Both sides were fun to play as, and I never particularly minded that my GSC felt like a faceless horde because instead of projecting personality onto individual characters, I was more projecting it onto the cult as a whole.

But I don't want to die on this hill. Most factions in the game do, in fact, want to also feel like badasses.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Idk. I always think back to Deathwatch: Overkill. One player played a handful of marines who decidedly had "protag energy" while the other player played a faceless horde of GSC. Both sides were fun to play as, and I never particularly minded that my GSC felt like a faceless horde because instead of projecting personality onto individual characters, I was more projecting it onto the cult as a whole.

But I don't want to die on this hill. Most factions in the game do, in fact, want to also feel like badasses.

That was a boardgame with protagonists. Like Space hulk. I'm specifically talking about 40k. If GW were fair and equitable they'd make 'aspect warrior: Killing Blow' the board game as well, or 'Neophyte: The rebellion is here' the board game.

I don't have a problem with a board game that says X is the hero and Y is the villain. I just have a problem where GW has set up such a marine centric gaming environment that the expectation is it has to cater to the marine power fantasy alone, so that you with your cool ork warboss, or tau leader with the converted model and backstory, don't even get to feel like you're fighting your own story, but acting as the buttboy of someone elses.

I mentioned a while ago I think that each army should get its own protagonist scenario where its set up specifically to show off their best way of fighting - drop pod assaults, fate manipulation, endless swarm or whatever. That's what these board games are, taking the thing they shine at and centering the win conditions around it. An endless swarm where the game starts with the tyranids having all the victory points. They have already won, and your opponent is trying to stall them long enough to reduce those points. Or a lootas scenario where the orks win if they steal all your gear (actions on destroyed enemy uints), regardless of the casualties they suffer.

When your dudes meet my dudes in 40k, it's a clash of two equally valid and important protagonists.

My least favourite expression of that mentality was the old Daemonhunters codex from 3e. Because it was stupid to make Daemonhunters into an army that fought anything but Daemons, they brought in a bunch of rules to explain how the enemy warlord had actually been possessed by a daemon or corrupted by a chaos artefact.

It really pissed me off, because it showed what I'd been feeling for a while - the marines and imperium were seen by the game designers as the de facto protagonist faction, and the rest of us were foils for them. Because instead of twisting the Daemonhunters background in some way, it was MY background that had to get mangled to make fictional space for them. My warboss, veteran of a hundred battles, deathskull looter supreme, was now suddenly going to be a dupe for Chaos? Yuck. I really disliked that and it was one of the times I took note of the codex writers because I thought "man, I'll avoid these arseholes in future!"

I've seen imperial players wax lyrical about how cool it was that these rules were included, and how "fluffy" it was. Yeah, YOUR fluff, not mine. I maintain to this day that Grey Knights should have been a couple of specialist squads and never a full army outside of scenario or campaign play against Chaos armies.

But there's very little point in complaining about any of this. It is clearly the case that GW sees the Imperium and especially Space Marines as the true protagonists and "Your Dudes" factions, Chaos as the real antagonist and Xenos as third string colour to make the setting a bit more interesting.

I often refer to the "ur-plot" of 40K where Orks or something are used as the initial baddy but it's not long before the TRUE THREAT of chaos is revealed. They've used it so many times. Even the Third War for Armageddon has been changed so that the battle with the Orks was just a prelude to the Khornate invasion.

At this point, as a Xenos fan, I'm done with official 40K background and I'm off doing my own thing. No doubt my stance seems baffling to Imperium fans because they're getting a buffet of background every day and it all seems like the natural order for them.

I am not saying I like it, but the Imperium has been de facto protagonists for a long, long time. Like, your example of codex: Daemonhunters is a book that is 23 years old. That's not a new development.

I personally think if we're talking newer issues, then prestige creep is a bigger one (to quote a well-written reddit comment, yes those exist: )



But that is all probably going off topic. Regarding the thing about S5/T5 Marines, the others are correct in saying it wouldn't do much. The rest of the game would adjust and you'd be back to square one.

Yeah, I suppose I am coming to terms with the fact that I loved a different 40K to most of the authors who have worked on it.

And certainly to the one many current fans seem to like.

That's fine really. I shouldn't get upset about it, it's very silly to get annoyed about things like this. There's nothing wrong with either view, though I DO wish that GW and the fandom in general were a little bit more open about this stuff with newbies - like make sure to mention to a newbie that if you play Xenos you are third string and not to expect to be the same as the human factions.

GW have cynical reasons for not doing that but I see no reason why the fandom should have a problem with being open about the mook status of Xenos factions.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I am not saying I like it, but the Imperium has been de facto protagonists for a long, long time. Like, your example of codex: Daemonhunters is a book that is 23 years old. That's not a new development.

I personally think if we're talking newer issues, then prestige creep is a bigger one (to quote a well-written reddit comment, yes those exist: )

Spoiler:

But that is all probably going off topic. Regarding the thing about S5/T5 Marines, the others are correct in saying it wouldn't do much. The rest of the game would adjust and you'd be back to square one.

Defacto is doing a lot of heavy lifting here and it's the thing I hate the most about gws business strategy.

If they actually just admitted the imperium is the protagonist and every other faction is just mook chaff for them to slaughter and advertised it as such id have no issue.

But they don't..they sell all the factions as equal options to new gamers who then discover if they picked the wrong one they get ignored, no products no stories and are still expected to spend money on a mook faction to be someone else's target practice.

If they set the game up as everyone needs to choose their own marine chapter and then sold mook boxes for super cheap, like board games where you have heroes and monsters that would be fine.

Gw misleads its customers in the name of profit and then creates a horrible gaming environment of marines fighting marines whose players all wonder why there aren't non marine armies to fight.

Because there are 2 tiers of gw customer, imperial and non imperial..except they don't tell people that and don't admit it. So they get a keen kid who wants Orks and then sinks their money into a faction that gw doesn't care about. So they get tired of it and either quit entirely or move to marines where they actually feel appreciated and can get gold plated service.

Until gw either admits to its customers this truth, or actively shifts their internal biases to give equal time to all factions, the disfunction will continue.