Straken is more expensive than a CC by more than the cost of a squad.

Straken can only seem expensive to an IG player. Imagine you had a re-roll bot that costed 200pts or more.

It costs almost as much as a squad.

You mean that undercosted IG squads that could easily cost 1-2 pts more and people would still be running them? To me it seems like you are getting them for free with how efficient everything else in the IG codex is.

In any case: HQs aren't free, even if they're mandatory. You still have to pay points for them, and everything is supposed to pull its weight for the points. If Marine HQs are a straight tax, then that's something that needs to be addressed as well.

When they are costed like the IG ones, then they may as well be free. Even the high cost one like the tank commander are just an super upgraded Lemman Russ. An HQ has a real cost, when taking it stops you from taking important stuff in your army. For IG taking their HQs means they just don't take the extra squads of dudes, they get thanks to being undercosted.

Karol wrote:
Straken can only seem expensive to an IG player.

Karol wrote:
undercosted IG squads

Karol wrote:
When they are costed like the IG ones

I wonder how many times I'll need to say 'Guardsmen and Straken are both undercosted' for people to actually read the point I'm making before leaping straight to 'BUT THEY'RE TOO CHEAP'.

Karol wrote:

Straken is more expensive than a CC by more than the cost of a squad.

Straken can only seem expensive to an IG player. Imagine you had a re-roll bot that costed 200pts or more.

It costs almost as much as a squad.

You mean that undercosted IG squads that could easily cost 1-2 pts more and people would still be running them? To me it seems like you are getting them for free with how efficient everything else in the IG codex is.

In any case: HQs aren't free, even if they're mandatory. You still have to pay points for them, and everything is supposed to pull its weight for the points. If Marine HQs are a straight tax, then that's something that needs to be addressed as well.

When they are costed like the IG ones, then they may as well be free. Even the high cost one like the tank commander are just an super upgraded Lemman Russ. An HQ has a real cost, when taking it stops you from taking important stuff in your army. For IG taking their HQs means they just don't take the extra squads of dudes, they get thanks to being undercosted.

Go back to the last site and reread it's content, that or just stop.
Also they are not free, so don't even spew that.

They are free if your squads are undercosted. If the cost of your support units can be covered by the difference between the cost of what your units cost and what they should really cost, then you are getting them for free. IG the way they are costed right now are playing with more points then other armies, and that it is before we add stuff like hordes being much better then elite units.

Karol wrote:

Straken is more expensive than a CC by more than the cost of a squad.

Straken can only seem expensive to an IG player. Imagine you had a re-roll bot that costed 200pts or more.

Straken is not a reroll bot, he's a Company Commander that gives +1 attack to nearby Catachan Guardsmen and comes with a CC weapon. Comparing Straken to the 200pt reroll bots out there, they generally will outfight Straken in CC something like 5 or 8 or 10 wounds to 1 (looking at Primaris Calgar for instance) head to head, and their reroll abilities affect everything within 6" not just specific kinds of infantry units. Very different things with different roles and different utility.

When they are costed like the IG ones, then they may as well be free. Even the high cost one like the tank commander are just an super upgraded Lemman Russ. An HQ has a real cost, when taking it stops you from taking important stuff in your army. For IG taking their HQs means they just don't take the extra squads of dudes, they get thanks to being undercosted.

While Tank Commanders absolutely should not have been reduced to 142pts base, the Company Commanders generally are about the same price they have always been over the preceding 3 editions editions and a decade's worth of time now, the only difference is that they're just not tied to command squads that also have to be purchased and subsequently qiven a quartet of plasma guns. In 5E a Company Commander was effectively 26pts, 36pts in 6E/7E, and now they're right in the middle at 30pts.

"They are free if your squads are undercosted."
By that logic, GK are fine because they can be in armies with Guardsmen, which are undercosted.

It's a bad form of logic and won't get us anywhere productive.

Motion to rename the thread "The 4pt Guardsman Problem" to better reflect the discussion's actual content.

the power armor problem really is - being worse than everything else in the game so really. This is relevant discussion.

"The great edition-long marine wallow" would be a title that would accurately describe the thread content.

 Xenomancers wrote:
the power armor problem really is - being worse than everything else in the game so really. This is relevant discussion.

Largely only tangentially, it turned into far more of an IG hate thread (often centered around erroneous points) than anything relevant to fixing Marines. IG could be removed from the game entirely and nothing would change for power armor Space Marines. The entire game could be just Space Marines and SM players would still largely be viewing Tac marines and other power armor units as expensive and underperforming.

Well tac marines suck at everything - so it's true - they suck even in the context of marines vs marines. Devs are top teir in the marine codex though and they are in power armor.

Their issues are obvious - they pay for protection and they are really very unprotected. They pay for stats they can't use. The only solution is to reduce their price drastically or give them actually good stats.

In a game where you have 9 point wracks running around with 4++ saves. Harlie bikers running around with 3 W and a 4++ save and DW vets can get a 3++ save for 2 points. I think it is very clear that marines at their current price should probably have 4++ saves at the very minimum.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
the power armor problem really is - being worse than everything else in the game so really. This is relevant discussion.

Largely only tangentially, it turned into far more of an IG hate thread (often centered around erroneous points) than anything relevant to fixing Marines. IG could be removed from the game entirely and nothing would change for power armor Space Marines. The entire game could be just Space Marines and SM players would still largely be viewing Tac marines and other power armor units as expensive and underperforming.

Mostly because the IG players are having just as much of a lack of awareness as the Eldar players stereotypically are.

At least the Marine players acknowledged how broken Gladius was.

To achieve balance, you kinda need to agree what is the balance point your aiming for.

Is it troops should be tax units like marines in which case 90% of the troop choices need points increased?

Should trrops be the basic OP super units that every list is built around like guardsmen in which cade 90% of troop choices need points decreased.

Or ahould the balance point be something more middle of the road like Firewarriors or Ork boys?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
the power armor problem really is - being worse than everything else in the game so really. This is relevant discussion.

Largely only tangentially, it turned into far more of an IG hate thread (often centered around erroneous points) than anything relevant to fixing Marines. IG could be removed from the game entirely and nothing would change for power armor Space Marines. The entire game could be just Space Marines and SM players would still largely be viewing Tac marines and other power armor units as expensive and underperforming.

Mostly because the IG players are having just as much of a lack of awareness as the Eldar players stereotypically are.

At least the Marine players acknowledged how broken Gladius was.

7th eddtion was a joke. The more I think about 7th the more I realize this. Deathstars make 7th ed a complete skipped eddition for balance concepts. Do you know how useless a unit like the Castellan would be in 7th eddition if it were dummbed down to 7th eddition stat levels? What good would that do against invisible deathstars or D weapons? LOL. Plus - Gladius really wasn't THAT strong compared to the stuff that came after it like...riptide wings/demonic incursion/or ynnari. Just forget about 7th. Easily the worst edition of this game. This eddition at least has promise. Just needs a few tweeks and rules writters to stop playing army favorites.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
the power armor problem really is - being worse than everything else in the game so really. This is relevant discussion.

Largely only tangentially, it turned into far more of an IG hate thread (often centered around erroneous points) than anything relevant to fixing Marines. IG could be removed from the game entirely and nothing would change for power armor Space Marines. The entire game could be just Space Marines and SM players would still largely be viewing Tac marines and other power armor units as expensive and underperforming.

Mostly because the IG players are having just as much of a lack of awareness as the Eldar players stereotypically are.

At least the Marine players acknowledged how broken Gladius was.

EDIT: Most everyone will acknowledge issues with the IG codex. That said, again, IG are not the cause of SM issues, yet that seems to be what the thread keeps focusing on.

IG could be removed from the game and the situation for Power Armor marines wouldn't change, they would still be seen as subpar units in need of assistance. Even if we stripped the game down to just Marine armies alone, most of the basic power armor infantry units arent going to impress people.

I don't think that is an inaccurate statement. There are larger issues with the game and power armor codex books that do this.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Just forget about 7th. Easily the worst edition of this game.

100% concur with this. 7E was a disaster for 40k and by far my worst experience with this hobby.

"At least the Marine players acknowledged how broken Gladius was."
<Citation needed>

All the "Marines are trash" threads at the time?
"Plus - Gladius really wasn't THAT strong"?

Many Marine players *still* don't believe that they've ever been OP, much less that they're the second-most-consistently-good book over the last 3 editions.

Ice_can wrote:
To achieve balance, you kinda need to agree what is the balance point your aiming for.

Is it troops should be tax units like marines in which case 90% of the troop choices need points increased?

Should trrops be the basic OP super units that every list is built around like guardsmen in which cade 90% of troop choices need points decreased.

Or ahould the balance point be something more middle of the road like Firewarriors or Ork boys?

Firewarriors and ork boys are top tier dude. It's hard to even come up with a middle of the road infantry. It's probably something like a scion.

"IG could be removed from the game and the situation for Power Armor marines wouldn't change"
Mostly agree. But how do you specify what you compare them to?

For as long as I've been at DakkaDakka, Marines have been continuously decried as one of the worst troops in the game. This is the closest we've gotten. But how would you rank troops?

Here's a rough breakdown of where I'd put a handful of current troops, best to worst:

Guardsmen
AdMech Rangers
Kabs
Fire Warriors

Rangers
SM Scouts
Guardian Defenders
Dire Avengers
Tac Marines
Necron Warriors

Strike Squads
Storm Guardians

So, remove Guardsmen, and Marines are clearly still bottom-half. But about half the troops here are reasonably balanced against Tac Marines (or were pre-CA, at least). There are even a couple that make Tacs look good.

A takeway I've been seeing for a while is there are two main "tiers" of troops - with half of them balanced around the current Guardsmen's level, and the other half balanced around the Marine's level.

A big problem with this is that there's no one fix. Fix any one unit in comparision to any one other unit, and you've just either made it trash compared to half the units out there, or made it OP compared to the other half of the units out there.

I seem to require this disclaimer in every post: I'm not saying Marines are OP. I agree they're in a bad spot. Further, I'm not claiming Space Elves are not OP. Please stop reading everything I write as that.

The removal of the Loyal 32 would significantly shake the meta though.

What about adding some weapons that give you an increased armour save? Like, a Heavy 20 Frag Missile with +1AP (Marines save on 2+, Guardsmen on 4+ etc.)? Such a weapon would kill slightly less than 5 points of Marine per shot (assuming BS3+) but around 8 points of Guardsman (ibid.). It'd do the same amount of Wounds to a Knight or a Terminator as to a Marine, but that wouldn't matter too much since it'd be lousy at damaging any of them compared to a Krak missile anyway.

Bharring wrote:
"At least the Marine players acknowledged how broken Gladius was."
<Citation needed>

All the "Marines are trash" threads at the time?
"Plus - Gladius really wasn't THAT strong"?

Many Marine players *still* don't believe that they've ever been OP, much less that they're the second-most-consistently-good book over the last 3 editions.

Gladius was OP for like a few months before the next busted rules in 7.5 came out. Get real dude. What is gladius compared to Ynnari? Why are you so butt hurt about gladius? Had you ever seen an invisible wraithknight backed up by huge squads of scatterbikes? Give me a break man. Marines were barely breaking even with Gladius.

"Why are you so butt hurt about gladius?"
My problem is how inaccurately things get remembered. Gladius was hardly the *only* OP gak Marines got. In 7th alone, they had:
-ObSec Spam at the start of the edition
-GravBikes
-CentStars
-SuperBestFriends
-Gladius
-Skyhammer

Yet Marines were still rabidly claimed to be "trash tier" that whole edition. How can we reasonably discuss how badly Marines are doing now, or discuss what would actually need to change, if people mouth off about how bad Marines have it even when they were on top?

None of this is to say Marines were the book that was the most OP the most often. That's clearly been CWE.

I'm not hurt over Gladius. I'm trying to fix the revisionist history that is so rampant with Marines in general.

The whole "Marines got how OP Gladius was" is funny, when the next post is a rabid "But it wasn't OP" post. And is totally at odds with the contemporary threads of the time.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
To achieve balance, you kinda need to agree what is the balance point your aiming for.

Is it troops should be tax units like marines in which case 90% of the troop choices need points increased?

Should trrops be the basic OP super units that every list is built around like guardsmen in which cade 90% of troop choices need points decreased.

Or ahould the balance point be something more middle of the road like Firewarriors or Ork boys?

Firewarriors and ork boys are top tier dude. It's hard to even come up with a middle of the road infantry. It's probably something like a scion.

I was trying to stick to actually used units, scions are a bit difficult to use as a balance point as they have native deepstrike, it's abit like rangers or scouts. The special rules as they are, are difficult to cost.

Bharring wrote:
"IG could be removed from the game and the situation for Power Armor marines wouldn't change"
Mostly agree. But how do you specify what you compare them to?

For as long as I've been at DakkaDakka, Marines have been continuously decried as one of the worst troops in the game. This is the closest we've gotten. But how would you rank troops?

Here's a rough breakdown of where I'd put a handful of current troops, best to worst:

Guardsmen
AdMech Rangers
Kabs
Fire Warriors

Rangers
SM Scouts
Guardian Defenders
Dire Avengers
Tac Marines
Necron Warriors

Strike Squads
Storm Guardians

So, remove Guardsmen, and Marines are clearly still bottom-half. But about half the troops here are reasonably balanced against Tac Marines (or were pre-CA, at least). There are even a couple that make Tacs look good.

A takeway I've been seeing for a while is there are two main "tiers" of troops - with half of them balanced around the current Guardsmen's level, and the other half balanced around the Marine's level.

A big problem with this is that there's no one fix. Fix any one unit in comparision to any one other unit, and you've just either made it trash compared to half the units out there, or made it OP compared to the other half of the units out there.

yeah, theres a lot of weirdness around costing. With the scale of the game increasingly stretching as character statlines bloat and stuff like Superheavies are increasingly integral, this runs into additional issues. What may be a balanced betwern various Troops units falls apart when the rest of the game collectively just doesn't care about their distinctions because the scale has bloated too much.

But yeah, there does seem to be at least a couple different pricing paradigms at work, though its hard to see any particular game design or marketing thread for it.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Bharring wrote:
"At least the Marine players acknowledged how broken Gladius was."
<Citation needed>

All the "Marines are trash" threads at the time?
"Plus - Gladius really wasn't THAT strong"?

Many Marine players *still* don't believe that they've ever been OP, much less that they're the second-most-consistently-good book over the last 3 editions.

Gladius was OP for like a few months before the next busted rules in 7.5 came out. Get real dude. What is gladius compared to Ynnari? Why are you so butt hurt about gladius? Had you ever seen an invisible wraithknight backed up by huge squads of scatterbikes? Give me a break man. Marines were barely breaking even with Gladius.

As an eldar / and tau player myself in 7th. Gladius marines were not that great in comparison to ether of those armies. It's like you are blind in a temporal sense. It's like you think marines are OP in 8th because they got the first codex. 7th edition as a whole. Marines were decidedly middle tier out of the codex.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ice_can wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
To achieve balance, you kinda need to agree what is the balance point your aiming for.

Is it troops should be tax units like marines in which case 90% of the troop choices need points increased?

Should trrops be the basic OP super units that every list is built around like guardsmen in which cade 90% of troop choices need points decreased.

Or ahould the balance point be something more middle of the road like Firewarriors or Ork boys?

Firewarriors and ork boys are top tier dude. It's hard to even come up with a middle of the road infantry. It's probably something like a scion.

I was trying to stick to actually used units, scions are a bit difficult to use as a balance point as they have native deepstrike, it's abit like rangers or scouts. The special rules as they are, are difficult to cost.

Pretty much all the IG infantry are better than marine infantry. What would you rather have? A scion for 9 or a scout for 11?

"It's like you think marines are OP in 8th because they got the first codex."
It's like that in no way whatsoever. What would make someone think I'd subscribe to such a theory?

"7th edition as a whole. Marines were decidedly middle tier out of the codex."
Middle of the top 5, maybe. But only middle tier if you ignore *most* of the armies in the game.

Eldar were above them. T'au had their ups and downs comparatively. Demons weren't that much worse off than Marines.

Necrons were only questionably above them for a couple months, otherwise they were certainly below them.

DE were much worse off than Marines.

AdMech - both variants - had nothing on Marines.

IG was crap compared to Marines.

SOB were worse.

GK were worse.

CSM were mostly worse off, but had a few Demon tricks.

IK were worse off.

Orks were trash, as always.

Nids had a few tricks, but couldn't compete.

BA/SW/DA can be ignored because they're basically Marines, but they were worse off.
We probably shouldn't count Harlies/Inqisition/LotD/etc either.

Off the top of my head, that's ~3 in the same tier as marines, at least 10 in worse tiers, and ~6 not counting.

And that's what passes for "Mid tier" for Marine players. That's the problem.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(Marine/Eldar/T'au player, myself.)

"It's like you think marines are OP in 8th because they got the first codex."
It's like that in no way whatsoever. What would make someone think I'd subscribe to such a theory?

^^^
Saying gladius was OP in 7th - is about equivalent to saying the same thing about marines in 8th for their period they were the only codex released. Gladius got worse as worse as the eddition went on until it wasn't even in the picture anymore.

You do realize that:
1. Space Marines were *not* the first 7th ed - or even "7.5 Ed" - codex to be released, right?

2. Space Marines did very well both before and after the release of "7.5 Ed"

3. My post didn't claim that Marines were top dog at the very end of 7th. Only that they were one of the best armies across 7th.

4. Most armies didn't get a codex in "7.5 Ed".

How you read "Gladius was OP in 7th" as being the same thing as, very specifically, "Marines were OP in 8th when they were the only book released" is entirely nonsensical. Like, how does that even appear to follow?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
The removal of the Loyal 32 would significantly shake the meta though.

What about adding some weapons that give you an increased armour save? Like, a Heavy 20 Frag Missile with +1AP (Marines save on 2+, Guardsmen on 4+ etc.)? Such a weapon would kill slightly less than 5 points of Marine per shot (assuming BS3+) but around 8 points of Guardsman (ibid.). It'd do the same amount of Wounds to a Knight or a Terminator as to a Marine, but that wouldn't matter too much since it'd be lousy at damaging any of them compared to a Krak missile anyway.

Fragmentation rocket battery?
Could be fitted on a Rhino?
For 100ppm? Chaos and imperial?
Wouldn't be bad tbh

Actually no make it as a artillery piece with a crew.
For Chaos you could add a upgrade greater havoc launcher for it, Imperials could get a whirlwind battery without paying for the chassis.

I'm not paying 100 points for a weapon that kills a little more than two guardsmen per turn. I was thinking just turning all Frag weapons into something with that profile (Grenade instead of Heavy for grenades etc.).

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I'm not paying 100 points for a weapon that kills a little more than two guardsmen per turn. I was thinking just turning all Frag weapons into something with that profile (Grenade instead of Heavy for grenades etc.).

Well that would be 12 hits at least, that would wound on 3+ so 8 so 4 dead guardsmen.
Better grenades or scalling grenades with units size would be something nice, however guardsmen are just 10 dudes so scalling itself would not really work.

Aw, sorry, forgot to say it should be S2 instead of S4. Otherwise you just get another weapon that kills Marines better than Guardsmen. So a high-shots pathetic-strength weapon to counter hordes.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Aw, sorry, forgot to say it should be S2 instead of S4. Otherwise you just get another weapon that kills Marines better than Guardsmen. So a high-shots pathetic-strength weapon to counter hordes.

Well no. Make it s3 else it would never see daylight.

Also Ap +1 helps allready infact you could go sofar and say that if the target has a SV of 3+ or lower then the weapon would be S3 if the target has a SV of 4+ or higher the weapon would have s4

IMHO, the problem with Space Marines:

1- They're very restricted, but have a lot of options. I know that sounds insane, but I also have always pictured a squad of Marines being able to walk into combat with their choice loadout for a situation, rather than what their squad's requirements are. I mean, only one faction does this very well and that's the Deathwatch. Rank and File Astartes works fine for Horus Heresy, but even in terms of fluff- Space Marines are broken down into Chapters and have significantly smaller forces present on the battlefield- so them going in with a loadout that's just a smaller variant of what they would do when they were a massive legion... doesn't make sense.

2- Primaris Marines have a stat line that is exactly what a Space Marine should have always been. 2 wounds, 2 attacks, you know. They actually feel like Space Marines, but what holds them back is their weapon restrictions. I say it'd be interesting to just be able to give all Space Marines that basic Stat Line and see what happens- basically, remove the difference between Primaris and Original, make them all the same, and go wild.

3- Chaos Space Marines are just scary-looking punchmeat, with a few nifty tricks but overall aren't as good as their loyalist kin- even though, IMHO, CSM should be terrifying... and the army is "Chaos Space Marines", but ends up often being more like "Massive Horde of Cultists with Scary Spikey Monster Daemon Engine and some guy with a jump pack"

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
IMHO, the problem with Space Marines:

1- They're very restricted, but have a lot of options. I know that sounds insane, but I also have always pictured a squad of Marines being able to walk into combat with their choice loadout for a situation, rather than what their squad's requirements are. I mean, only one faction does this very well and that's the Deathwatch. Rank and File Astartes works fine for Horus Heresy, but even in terms of fluff- Space Marines are broken down into Chapters and have significantly smaller forces present on the battlefield- so them going in with a loadout that's just a smaller variant of what they would do when they were a massive legion... doesn't make sense.

2- Primaris Marines have a stat line that is exactly what a Space Marine should have always been. 2 wounds, 2 attacks, you know. They actually feel like Space Marines, but what holds them back is their weapon restrictions. I say it'd be interesting to just be able to give all Space Marines that basic Stat Line and see what happens- basically, remove the difference between Primaris and Original, make them all the same, and go wild.

3- Chaos Space Marines are just scary-looking punchmeat, with a few nifty tricks but overall aren't as good as their loyalist kin- even though, IMHO, CSM should be terrifying... and the army is "Chaos Space Marines", but ends up often being more like "Massive Horde of Cultists with Scary Spikey Monster Daemon Engine and some guy with a jump pack"

10/10 description of csm.
Case is they should be able to field that combo, but the actual veterans of the long war should also be usefull.

Bharring wrote:
"Why are you so butt hurt about gladius?"
My problem is how inaccurately things get remembered. Gladius was hardly the *only* OP gak Marines got. In 7th alone, they had:
-ObSec Spam at the start of the edition
-GravBikes
-CentStars
-SuperBestFriends
-Gladius
-Skyhammer

Yet Marines were still rabidly claimed to be "trash tier" that whole edition. How can we reasonably discuss how badly Marines are doing now, or discuss what would actually need to change, if people mouth off about how bad Marines have it even when they were on top?

None of this is to say Marines were the book that was the most OP the most often. That's clearly been CWE.

I'm not hurt over Gladius. I'm trying to fix the revisionist history that is so rampant with Marines in general.

The whole "Marines got how OP Gladius was" is funny, when the next post is a rabid "But it wasn't OP" post. And is totally at odds with the contemporary threads of the time.

My main complaint as a space marine player the more actual space marines I take, the worst my list gets and it's been that way for several editions.

And, if you look at that list of 7e Marine goodness, while 3 of those features PA Marines, only one aimed to field more than the necessary PA Marines.

Even those lists, the PA dudes aren't what makes them good. Either 300 to 400 free points of transports or a super hit or miss deep strike attack did. If I took PA guys in a standard CAD and rolled up to even a semi competitive game, every marine body I took puts me at a disadvantage. For marines to be useful again GW needs to put superheavies back into apoc land, and tone down how easy it is to spam AP -2 plus weapons.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
Even those lists, the PA dudes aren't what makes them good. Either 300 to 400 free points of transports or a super hit or miss deep strike attack did. If I took PA guys in a standard CAD and rolled up to even a semi competitive game, every marine body I took puts me at a disadvantage. For marines to be useful again GW needs to put superheavies back into apoc land, and tone down how easy it is to spam AP -2 plus weapons.

You could allready see in 7the were cultists really took off instead of base marines that the regular csm /sm dude ain't that good.
7th marks also the loss of the Bolter, chainsword and boltpistol equipment for base csm.

Not Online!!! wrote:
10/10 description of csm.
Case is they should be able to field that combo, but the actual veterans of the long war should also be usefull.

I discussed it elsewhere about 'rebooting' armies. CSM should be very much like Deathwatch- a lower model count elite army. They should have very flexible loadouts in their squads, like Deathwatch- they can be melee, or shooty, or whatever. Maybe make Chosen a 2-wound Primaris equivalent. Either way, they should have all kinds of wild stuff from Power Flails, Power Scourges, power lance/spears, and all those other things you rarely see.

There should be at least two distinctive types of CSM, kind of like there are now- "Chaos" that straight up uses the warp powers and does all that stuff, and "Renegade" which is more focused on cunning and brutal. Give them different bonuses and options/restrictions, depending on how you choose to run them (example would be Alpha Legion, some are very "Chaos" and some are more "Renegade").

If you want the human cultist/horde troops, then just roll them up into Lost & Damned and they can be taken as allies. Same with Daemon Engines, roll them right up into a Daemonkin codex.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
10/10 description of csm.
Case is they should be able to field that combo, but the actual veterans of the long war should also be usefull.

I discussed it elsewhere about 'rebooting' armies. CSM should be very much like Deathwatch- a lower model count elite army. They should have very flexible loadouts in their squads, like Deathwatch- they can be melee, or shooty, or whatever. Maybe make Chosen a 2-wound Primaris equivalent. Either way, they should have all kinds of wild stuff from Power Flails, Power Scourges, power lance/spears, and all those other things you rarely see.

There should be at least two distinctive types of CSM, kind of like there are now- "Chaos" that straight up uses the warp powers and does all that stuff, and "Renegade" which is more focused on cunning and brutal. Give them different bonuses and options/restrictions, depending on how you choose to run them (example would be Alpha Legion, some are very "Chaos" and some are more "Renegade").

If you want the human cultist/horde troops, then just roll them up into Lost & Damned and they can be taken as allies. Same with Daemon Engines, roll them right up into a Daemonkin codex.

Iron warriors would vehemently disagree with the last statement but else, making csm veterans the veterans they are supposed to be, would certainly not be something csm players would be opposed too, the distinction between went full Chaos / renegade would also work within many legions and would add quite alot more of decision making.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Iron warriors would vehemently disagree with the last statement but else, making csm veterans the veterans they are supposed to be, would certainly not be something csm players would be opposed too, the distinction between went full Chaos / renegade would also work within many legions and would add quite alot more of decision making.

Well, of course certain Legions/Warbands would have exceptions and special rules. I'd say that would count as one for Iron Warriors for sure.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Aw, sorry, forgot to say it should be S2 instead of S4. Otherwise you just get another weapon that kills Marines better than Guardsmen. So a high-shots pathetic-strength weapon to counter hordes.

Well no. Make it s3 else it would never see daylight.

Also Ap +1 helps allready infact you could go sofar and say that if the target has a SV of 3+ or lower then the weapon would be S3 if the target has a SV of 4+ or higher the weapon would have s4

No S2 +1 ap is quite needed for it to do it's job of abusing lower T models and giving T3 a minor downside and rewarding better armor saves.

I keep seeing the same things repeated for the descriptions of the problems with power armour - ‘SM are too fragile and their output is too low [compared to Guardsmen]’, ‘...ends up being massive horde of Cultists....’ etc

Basically it seems to me that relatively speaking ‘horde’ units are too cheap when compared to SM of all flavours. It’s not just Guardsmen (though they are the most obvious offender because they outperform pretty much any troop in the game right now) - it’s Boyz, Cultists, Kabalite Warriors, Rangers, Skitari Rangers etc all of them. I don’t believe that troops pay for their ability to create CP (and I think they should) so my suggestion would be to increase the cost of all troops excluding Tacs (but possibly including Scouts - so they don’t remain the de facto best choice for SM players).

Standard Marines aren’t going to get an additional wound and attack at no cost. If you want the Marine with that stat line you have Primaris available.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
I keep seeing the same things repeated for the descriptions of the problems with power armour - ‘SM are too fragile and their output is too low [compared to Guardsmen]’, ‘...ends up being massive horde of Cultists....’ etc

Basically it seems to me that relatively speaking ‘horde’ units are too cheap when compared to SM of all flavours. It’s not just Guardsmen (though they are the most obvious offender because they outperform pretty much any troop in the game right now) - it’s Boyz, Cultists, Kabalite Warriors, Rangers, Skitari Rangers etc all of them. I don’t believe that troops pay for their ability to create CP (and I think they should) so my suggestion would be to increase the cost of all troops excluding Tacs (but possibly including Scouts - so they don’t remain the de facto best choice for SM players).

Standard Marines aren’t going to get an additional wound and attack at no cost. If you want the Marine with that stat line you have Primaris available.

I'd also increase the cost of any troop with the stats of T3 5+ and T4 6+ at 7ppm minimum. Close combat oriented troops should cost less than shooty ones. Scouts should be elites, like mandrakes, kommandos, etc... even some chapters like SW have scouts only as elites.

If allies can't be banned I don't think there's another way to really fix marines other than making them overpowered. As long as an imperium soup can choose 4-6 points guardsmen there's no reason to take tacs, even if they drop to 10ppm or they gain some better stats, unless it's something really broken like getting +1W bs2+ +1A AP-1 and keeping the 13ppm price. I also think that troops that were ok at 4ppm when blasts and templates existed, most anti infantry weapons were AP5 or better, their weapons couldn't hurt armored stuff, and they didn't generate CPs now they should have a completely different price. Just +1ppm doesn't reflect how much they gained in this edition. I think it's ok to have +1ppm than older editions for boyz since have terrible shooting and don't work as min squads but units like guardsmen which can generate lots of CPs while actually being durable and killy should be hit signifcantly. But I don't see why guardsmen shouldn't be 7ppm other than making GW sell more models.

One of the main reasons why SM struggle is that there's too much competition in their faction. 1000 datasheets to choose from and too many broken combos available for the same faction.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Standard Marines aren’t going to get an additional wound and attack at no cost. If you want the Marine with that stat line you have Primaris available.

Oh, I'm certain it will come at a cost increase if it happens.

Oh, and with said points price increase... I'm fully certain GW will "make the game even better for larger-scale epic battles". And I'm probably being facetious here, but that's probably how GW says "We're going to make things so you pretty much need to play at higher point costs, so you buy more of our stuff"... because I've learned that any time GW says they're gonna start doing something "awesome", there's more to it...

I mean, you can't say it would would be completely nuts to expect something similar to a Formation/Detachment hybrid system that only allows certain units at a certain points level or something along those lines- there's certainly ways to implement restrictions that do that in some way or another. I could rattle off a few ways, but chances are you've already realized it. It's kind of a thing in Horus Heresy, to some degree. 40k may very well be like "You wanna use the cool big toy, you gotta play at a certain points level and get this specific leader guy toy and buy more smaller toy guys and have at least 3 of this other toy..."

But hey, I've only made a small handful of predictions since the few months before 8th Edition was announced. Not all of them were right, but quite a few of them were spot on. Yeah, people curled their lips and said I was an idiot for that, and that there was no way- dude, I even got accused of working for a GW competitor and being paid to spread disinformation through the community to create false panic and ruin the launch of 8th Edition- that was both baffling and somehow flattering at the same time. But, hey- let me be honest- I don't enjoy being right about these things, I'm not gloating and the writing is pretty much on the wall and obvious. None of them were things I particularly looked forward to, except maybe 'Bigger Space Marines'.

So, yeah. Call it something akin to Kurze's foresight if you like. I'm just certain something's gonna change really soon, or at least in about 5 years or less.

Just as much as I am certain that within a few years, we'll see a new edition and there won't be two different kinds of Space Marines- they'll phase out the old kits, and everything will be Primaris Marines, with the options that standard Marines have- but they won't bother calling them 'Primaris', they'll just be 'Space Marines'. I wouldn't be shocked if they were a bit quieter about this whole Primaris Fluff, or at least had an equally lazy way of explaining the 'merge' between the two types.

You'll very likely be able to use your original older Space Marines, but you won't see any new kits for Marines of that type- they may keep producing some of the older ones, if nothing more than to have weapons and such to put on "Not Primaris Any More" bodies. However, I wouldn't put it past them to make 'weapon upgrade kits' of Original Marine weapons something you gotta get from Forge World.

Oh, and I'm fully aware that no matter how many times GW says "We aren't making the original Space Marines any more, but they are still perfectly valid models to use" you'll still have plenty of salt, moaning, whinging, and gnashing of teeth from people. I mean, yeah- 40k has no shortage of people whose complaints often boil down to "I am not required to buy this new thing and I have the option to use the things I already have for as long as I like, however I am still angry that this new thing is available to others and does not meet my personal preference"- but peppered with all the prose that would make one think that GW is holding our civilization under siege and poisoning our drinking water.

And I'm not really griping about this 'theoretical' change or whatever you want to call this prediction. I'd pretty much be okay with it, I just intend to bring a shovel to maneuver through the salt. I kinda think it's what they should have done to begin with, TBH. But I'm fully aware that some of it would suck for certain people, I suppose.

Bharring wrote:


Many Marine players *still* don't believe that they've ever been OP, much less that they're the second-most-consistently-good book over the last 3 editions.

Yeah, apparently if they can't table any opponent in turn 1 with no effort they'll always consider their army trash tier

 Blackie wrote:

Bharring wrote:


Many Marine players *still* don't believe that they've ever been OP, much less that they're the second-most-consistently-good book over the last 3 editions.

Yeah, apparently if they can't table any opponent in turn 1 with no effort they'll always consider their army trash tier

yes, somehow having the opinion that IG squads are undercosted translated in to a 100% turn 1 win rate.

3- Chaos Space Marines are just scary-looking punchmeat, with a few nifty tricks but overall aren't as good as their loyalist kin- even though, IMHO, CSM should be terrifying... and the army is "Chaos Space Marines", but ends up often being more like "Massive Horde of Cultists with Scary Spikey Monster Daemon Engine and some guy with a jump pack"

That is my expiriance too. The army is 1ksons or csm or something, and then the deployed things are 4 demon princes, gracefuly avoiding the rule of 3, some 1ksons HQs and bucket load of cultists. Sometimes there is also a renegade knight there. 0 csm models in a csm list, 2-3 1ksons models in 1ksons list.

Karol wrote:
That is my expiriance too. The army is 1ksons or csm or something, and then the deployed things are 4 demon princes, gracefuly avoiding the rule of 3, some 1ksons HQs and bucket load of cultists. Sometimes there is also a renegade knight there. 0 csm models in a csm list, 2-3 1ksons models in 1ksons list.

Yeah. Now imagine you've bought an entire Alpha Legion army for Horus Heresy, decide to abandon playing Horus Heresy and just take all these cool models to 40k and use what you can...

...pretty much useless or pointless to even bother. Embarrassing for me, wasting that money, considering how frugal I tend to be with my money, even with my hobbies and recreation.

Fortunately, I managed to retain all the stuff and a most of the things have been stripped and repainted/repurposed for something else.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

Karol wrote:
That is my expiriance too. The army is 1ksons or csm or something, and then the deployed things are 4 demon princes, gracefuly avoiding the rule of 3, some 1ksons HQs and bucket load of cultists. Sometimes there is also a renegade knight there. 0 csm models in a csm list, 2-3 1ksons models in 1ksons list.

Yeah. Now imagine you've bought an entire Alpha Legion army for Horus Heresy, decide to abandon playing Horus Heresy and just take all these cool models to 40k and use what you can...

...pretty much useless or pointless to even bother. Embarrassing for me, wasting that money, considering how frugal I tend to be with my money, even with my hobbies and recreation.

Fortunately, I managed to retain all the stuff and a most of the things have been stripped and repainted/repurposed for something else.

Ouch, that hurts, but atleast you had alpha legionaires, could've been worse and you 'd had word Bearers.

 Blackie wrote:

Bharring wrote:


Many Marine players *still* don't believe that they've ever been OP, much less that they're the second-most-consistently-good book over the last 3 editions.

Yeah, apparently if they can't table any opponent in turn 1 with no effort they'll always consider their army trash tier

Interestingly that was a thing in 2nd ed. Chaos marines could do it, but not loyalists. Orks could paralyze entire armies and in effect win turn 1.
.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
I keep seeing the same things repeated for the descriptions of the problems with power armour - ‘SM are too fragile and their output is too low [compared to Guardsmen]’, ‘...ends up being massive horde of Cultists....’ etc

Basically it seems to me that relatively speaking ‘horde’ units are too cheap when compared to SM of all flavours. It’s not just Guardsmen (though they are the most obvious offender because they outperform pretty much any troop in the game right now) - it’s Boyz, Cultists, Kabalite Warriors, Rangers, Skitari Rangers etc all of them. I don’t believe that troops pay for their ability to create CP (and I think they should)

The problem is, how do you measure that? CP's aren't generated in any uniform manner (e.g. armies can be made from many different types of detachment and Troops don't generate CP the same in all detachments), the value of Stratagems vary, and even the number of allowable detachments can fluctuate depending on what type of game you're playing (for instance, if you're using Matched Play rules, but not using the Organized Event rules), make measuring this basically impossible. CP's aren't something GW is factoring into points cost right now really for this reason. Likewise, GW's whole intent with the bigger detachment bonuses was to encourage lots of use of Troops units in the first place. Additionally, it's not like all of these other armies with the above Troops always end up with more CP, Orks can't do a Battalion any cheaper than SM's can unless they're going for Grots instead of Boyz.

More to the point, nobody is going to pay significantly more for these weenier troops units. It may make some people happy that SM's aren't as bad by comparison, but all it's going to do for these other armies is shift usage of those Troops units to absolute minimum and they'll all just end up the way SM's are now where everyone treats the Troops units as a minimum tax to be paid and avoided.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Ouch, that hurts, but atleast you had alpha legionaires, could've been worse and you 'd had word Bearers.

I'll get over it. I shouldn't be so whiny about it. Most of the stuff, I managed to find another use for it after some stripping and scrubbing. And sometimes I'll get bored and put together a weird combo of their upgrades and use them for something like Minotaurs or something in my Deathwatch guys. My goal is honestly to have every Deathwatch marine- Primaris included- in my army have a unique appearance with, with no two alike each as their own character.

Also be more honest to name the thread - Problems with Loyalist non Primaris Marines as it is so specific.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

I discussed it elsewhere about 'rebooting' armies. CSM should be very much like Deathwatch- a lower model count elite army. They should have very flexible loadouts in their squads, like Deathwatch- they can be melee, or shooty, or whatever. Maybe make Chosen a 2-wound Primaris equivalent. Either way, they should have all kinds of wild stuff from Power Flails, Power Scourges, power lance/spears, and all those other things you rarely see.

There should be at least two distinctive types of CSM, kind of like there are now- "Chaos" that straight up uses the warp powers and does all that stuff, and "Renegade" which is more focused on cunning and brutal. Give them different bonuses and options/restrictions, depending on how you choose to run them (example would be Alpha Legion, some are very "Chaos" and some are more "Renegade").

If you want the human cultist/horde troops, then just roll them up into Lost & Damned and they can be taken as allies. Same with Daemon Engines, roll them right up into a Daemonkin codex.

I have always found it extremely odd how the Heretic Legion's weapons have been the same old same old weapons since the Horus Revolution even though they have access to the Dark Mechanicus with their unfettered ability to experiment and use warp/demon stuff. Not to mention good ol' pillaging. Compared to the loyalist and their Admech who are supposedly not allowed to innovate, yet have doubled the number of marine infantry weapons. It only becomes more strange as GW puts out more special characters (Haarken Worldclaimer, Obsidius Mallex--the Blackstone Fortress dude) that don't have weapons off the apparently in-universe, pre-approved Chaos Space Marine weapon list. I am still perplexed why Chosen loss double-lightning claws when there is a an actual easy-build model with that exact load out. Just like I always found it odd how other than the 20 man squad size, CSM apparently respect the Codex Astartes when it comes to squad composition. And again, this becomes all the more odd with Primaris seemingly not doing so (as in the Hellblasters being an all plasma weapon squad).

I completely with you that CSM should be able to field a large variation of weapons in non-codex compliant numbers. Chosen are a good starting point, and they would be better if the Black Legion could field them as troop options again. However, that still doesn't really address the dearth of options. I don't know. Maybe it is because I just play Kill Team now, and I am getting a little tired of looking at all those grenade launchers and missile launchers the loyalists have then look at my Heavy Bolter plus Plasmagun, Meltagun or Flamer options and sign.

Of course, even expanding the weapon options still doesn't necessarily fix the issue with out easy it is to kill space marines. I do kinda expect GW to put out a Primaris-equivalent CSM if for no other reason than it is already hard for players to take CSM as real in-universe threat given how kinda pathetic they play. It becomes more so when their forces only come up to the 'heroes' shoulders. Maybe White Dwarf should have a cover with a Primaris being grappled by a bunch of CSM much like you would see a guardsman being grappled by a bunch of grots.

Chaos Marines, at least a lot of them, are frequently beating the absolute crap out of people, xenos, daemons, each other, and loyalists. They actively hang around the horrors of the warp and bargain with dark beings. For hundreds of years, this is apparently "a normal Tuesday".

...but they don't get ATSKNF and run like pansies if a couple of dudes get shot by guardsmen.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Chaos Marines, at least a lot of them, are frequently beating the absolute crap out of people, xenos, daemons, each other, and loyalists. They actively hang around the horrors of the warp and bargain with dark beings. For hundreds of years, this is apparently "a normal Tuesday".

...but they don't get ATSKNF and run like pansies if a couple of dudes get shot by guardsmen.

Eh, +1 Leadership and MSU for me. Never felt the need for And they Shall Know No Rules. At least not in 8th edition. I'm sure CSM marines would have to pay like 2 ppm for something like that with GW Chaos tax.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

I discussed it elsewhere about 'rebooting' armies. CSM should be very much like Deathwatch- a lower model count elite army. They should have very flexible loadouts in their squads, like Deathwatch- they can be melee, or shooty, or whatever. Maybe make Chosen a 2-wound Primaris equivalent. Either way, they should have all kinds of wild stuff from Power Flails, Power Scourges, power lance/spears, and all those other things you rarely see.

There should be at least two distinctive types of CSM, kind of like there are now- "Chaos" that straight up uses the warp powers and does all that stuff, and "Renegade" which is more focused on cunning and brutal. Give them different bonuses and options/restrictions, depending on how you choose to run them (example would be Alpha Legion, some are very "Chaos" and some are more "Renegade").

If you want the human cultist/horde troops, then just roll them up into Lost & Damned and they can be taken as allies. Same with Daemon Engines, roll them right up into a Daemonkin codex.

I have always found it extremely odd how the Heretic Legion's weapons have been the same old same old weapons since the Horus Revolution even though they have access to the Dark Mechanicus with their unfettered ability to experiment and use warp/demon stuff. Not to mention good ol' pillaging. Compared to the loyalist and their Admech who are supposedly not allowed to innovate, yet have doubled the number of marine infantry weapons. It only becomes more strange as GW puts out more special characters (Haarken Worldclaimer, Obsidius Mallex--the Blackstone Fortress dude) that don't have weapons off the apparently in-universe, pre-approved Chaos Space Marine weapon list. I am still perplexed why Chosen loss double-lightning claws when there is a an actual easy-build model with that exact load out. Just like I always found it odd how other than the 20 man squad size, CSM apparently respect the Codex Astartes when it comes to squad composition. And again, this becomes all the more odd with Primaris seemingly not doing so (as in the Hellblasters being an all plasma weapon squad).

I completely with you that CSM should be able to field a large variation of weapons in non-codex compliant numbers. Chosen are a good starting point, and they would be better if the Black Legion could field them as troop options again. However, that still doesn't really address the dearth of options. I don't know. Maybe it is because I just play Kill Team now, and I am getting a little tired of looking at all those grenade launchers and missile launchers the loyalists have then look at my Heavy Bolter plus Plasmagun, Meltagun or Flamer options and sign.

Of course, even expanding the weapon options still doesn't necessarily fix the issue with out easy it is to kill space marines. I do kinda expect GW to put out a Primaris-equivalent CSM if for no other reason than it is already hard for players to take CSM as real in-universe threat given how kinda pathetic they play. It becomes more so when their forces only come up to the 'heroes' shoulders. Maybe White Dwarf should have a cover with a Primaris being grappled by a bunch of CSM much like you would see a guardsman being grappled by a bunch of grots.

Supply Lines. Unlike the Imperium, the traitor forces under Abaddon and all that do not have full access to equipment and gear. Their equipment is almost always scavenged and the dark mechanicus is very secluded they don't serve anyone. Hell we know for instance they had massive issues with recruitment for the CSM forces in the eye for decades before they began the first black crusade. Their supply lines are always thin, their equipment almost always stolen. Even the black legion suffers from this.

The traitors have and never have been united. The Legion wars between the CSM depleted many of the resources that they had. As the Dark Mechanicus especially just went into full hiding. It also stripped the entirety of the Emperor's Children of their forces and shattered them permanently.

It makes sense for the CSM to have daemon possessed Astartes or something similar to Gal Valrok to return to the fold. I don't think we will see primaris CSM but instead Possessed that dwarf Primaris.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Chaos Marines, at least a lot of them, are frequently beating the absolute crap out of people, xenos, daemons, each other, and loyalists. They actively hang around the horrors of the warp and bargain with dark beings. For hundreds of years, this is apparently "a normal Tuesday".

...but they don't get ATSKNF and run like pansies if a couple of dudes get shot by guardsmen.

And this is why they should have Vet stats at minimum and we remove the Chaos Marine entry. Then we can move Chosen to troops where they belong.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Chaos Marines, at least a lot of them, are frequently beating the absolute crap out of people, xenos, daemons, each other, and loyalists. They actively hang around the horrors of the warp and bargain with dark beings. For hundreds of years, this is apparently "a normal Tuesday".

...but they don't get ATSKNF and run like pansies if a couple of dudes get shot by guardsmen.

And this is why they should have Vet stats at minimum and we remove the Chaos Marine entry. Then we can move Chosen to troops where they belong.

So basically Fewer marines but gods amongst marines?

Not Online!!! wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Chaos Marines, at least a lot of them, are frequently beating the absolute crap out of people, xenos, daemons, each other, and loyalists. They actively hang around the horrors of the warp and bargain with dark beings. For hundreds of years, this is apparently "a normal Tuesday".

...but they don't get ATSKNF and run like pansies if a couple of dudes get shot by guardsmen.

And this is why they should have Vet stats at minimum and we remove the Chaos Marine entry. Then we can move Chosen to troops where they belong.

So basically Fewer marines but gods amongst marines?

You read me like a book.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
I have always found it extremely odd how the Heretic Legion's weapons have been the same old same old weapons since the Horus Revolution even though they have access to the Dark Mechanicus with their unfettered ability to experiment and use warp/demon stuff.

I'm fairly sure that the Dark Mechanicus is not known for their reasonable R&D branches and exceptional customer support .

 AtoMaki wrote:
I'm fairly sure that the Dark Mechanicus is not known for their reasonable R&D branches and exceptional customer support .

"Have you tried unplugging the Hellbrute and plugging it back in?"

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
I have always found it extremely odd how the Heretic Legion's weapons have been the same old same old weapons since the Horus Revolution even though they have access to the Dark Mechanicus with their unfettered ability to experiment and use warp/demon stuff.

I'm fairly sure that the Dark Mechanicus is not known for their reasonable R&D branches and exceptional customer support .

Helltalon, hellblades etc from that specific dark admech world are expensive but top quality.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 AtoMaki wrote:
I'm fairly sure that the Dark Mechanicus is not known for their reasonable R&D branches and exceptional customer support .

"Have you tried unplugging the Hellbrute and plugging it back in?"

"Yes this is the D. A.M.S.A.C.
Or dark Adeptus Mechanicus support acolythe conclave, how can we help you?"

Yes warlord we fully understand that the crabclaw on a defiler is an integral part.

What? Refunds! I am sorry we have strict order to not allow refunds.

Yes i am deeply sorry that the defiler for your khornate warband has as a Pilot a slaaneshy daemon.
No we can't refund you the decimator if you do not propperly reign in a defiler during warp Travel.
We could surely however give a perfectly fine bionic lower body to brother antrhax.

WAIT FOR FREE! No impossible.

Hello,hello?

Do you belive this nagan, the meatbag just seems to have dropped his voxcaster into the void, and such people get our trice cursed machines!
I tell you, we should implement a mandatory course for future daemonengine owners. "

Shortly thereafter warlord karnaths ship the fury of Khorne was found drifting around the warp.

Asherian Command wrote:

Supply Lines. Unlike the Imperium, the traitor forces under Abaddon and all that do not have full access to equipment and gear. Their equipment is almost always scavenged and the dark mechanicus is very secluded they don't serve anyone. Hell we know for instance they had massive issues with recruitment for the CSM forces in the eye for decades before they began the first black crusade. Their supply lines are always thin, their equipment almost always stolen. Even the black legion suffers from this.

The traitors have and never have been united. The Legion wars between the CSM depleted many of the resources that they had. As the Dark Mechanicus especially just went into full hiding. It also stripped the entirety of the Emperor's Children of their forces and shattered them permanently.

It makes sense for the CSM to have daemon possessed Astartes or something similar to Gal Valrok to return to the fold. I don't think we will see primaris CSM but instead Possessed that dwarf Primaris.

Maybe, but CSM live in the highway that those supply lines travel through at least part of it anyways. Not to mention while that makes some sense on a macro level, but still breaks down on the tabletop level. I mean my CSM army can easy have 6 plasmaguns, they just can't be in one squad. Which is part of my point. The fact that they have never been unified makes it all the more curious that my warband follow the same load out formula of every other CSM warband out there. Perhaps my Chaos Lord has decided that maybe loading up all the combi-metaguns he has into one terminacide squad that going to teleport down and absolutely nuke one high priority objective. Sure, he might lose the meltaguns but maybe he didn't trust those terminators anyway and these weapons might convince them that the lord believes they will succeed since there is no way he would risk so much on a reckless maneuver. Or maybe he has access to a large number of power weapons for some reason so isn't such a big deal to hand them out like chainswords. I could see the same for looted Imperial weapons. Sure, they only pillaged a limited amount of ammo and supplies, maybe even the machine spirit doesn't like them too much, but a grenade launcher is a grenade launcher and would be a nice addition to a kill team. And all of this forgoes any sort of lesser demonic weaponry the warband may have been Blood Raven 'gifted.' It is actually harder to believe that kind of stuff if CSM were still united as they would have more balanced arsenals then.

AtoMaki wrote:I'm fairly sure that the Dark Mechanicus is not known for their reasonable R&D branches and exceptional customer support .

I could see a mad tech priest forming a partnership with a Chaos Lord to bring materials exchange for tech especially dangerous prototypes in need of field testing preferably a subsector away from the priest's lab.

Doesn't chaos have huge planet size forges and forge world that mass produce weapons that are upgraded versions of the tech from heresy and pre heresy times? I could imagine some small cast out warband having problems with resuppling, but something like the black legion should have no problems getting the best weapons and the best tech for their warriors. Plus unlike their imperial counter parts, the chaos mechanicus and tech marines can experiment all they want with new stuff. They don't have to follow procedures like drones.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

2- Primaris Marines have a stat line that is exactly what a Space Marine should have always been. 2 wounds, 2 attacks, you know. They actually feel like Space Marines, but what holds them back is their weapon restrictions. I say it'd be interesting to just be able to give all Space Marines that basic Stat Line and see what happens- basically, remove the difference between Primaris and Original, make them all the same, and go wild.

3- Chaos Space Marines are just scary-looking punchmeat, with a few nifty tricks but overall aren't as good as their loyalist kin- even though, IMHO, CSM should be terrifying... and the army is "Chaos Space Marines", but ends up often being more like "Massive Horde of Cultists with Scary Spikey Monster Daemon Engine and some guy with a jump pack"

Yeah I think that these problems don’t fix each other. Primaris still use lots of non PA stuff they can’t really work without a delivery system for hellblasters, usually a repulsor if they don’t have special deployment, and they benefit a lot from allying horde units. Loyalists take min PA and Chaos take an even lower min PA.

Even with stat changes and extra options, PA units have to be able to work by themselves, without needing the other half of a combo.

HoundsOfDemos wrote:If I took PA guys in a standard CAD and rolled up to even a semi competitive game, every marine body I took puts me at a disadvantage. For marines to be useful again GW needs to put superheavies back into apoc land, and tone down how easy it is to spam AP -2 plus weapons.

Except that pure heavy armor has never been a good counter irl to infantry. Space marines need to go up against superheavies by themselves all the time in the background. If 20 year old humans can kill tanks in the 20th century with rocket tubes, grenades, and anti tank rifles, of course some blasted space marines can blow some up with space age las cannons and melta guns. The rules just don’t reflect it atm.

Karol wrote:
Doesn't chaos have huge planet size forges and forge world that mass produce weapons that are upgraded versions of the tech from heresy and pre heresy times? I could imagine some small cast out warband having problems with resuppling, but something like the black legion should have no problems getting the best weapons and the best tech for their warriors. Plus unlike their imperial counter parts, the chaos mechanicus and tech marines can experiment all they want with new stuff. They don't have to follow procedures like drones.

I don't think they do, but I'm not up-to-date on the current Dark Mechanicus background.

 Dysartes wrote:

Karol wrote:
Doesn't chaos have huge planet size forges and forge world that mass produce weapons that are upgraded versions of the tech from heresy and pre heresy times? I could imagine some small cast out warband having problems with resuppling, but something like the black legion should have no problems getting the best weapons and the best tech for their warriors. Plus unlike their imperial counter parts, the chaos mechanicus and tech marines can experiment all they want with new stuff. They don't have to follow procedures like drones.

I don't think they do, but I'm not up-to-date on the current Dark Mechanicus background.

They do, F.e.Xana II which builds supposedly terrorclass frigates and produces Helltalon /blades fighter and strike craft.

Then there is the System "the Hollowos"

However many more have consolidated with the legions, (note that they also freelance) to manufacture and of course statisfy their needs for R&D.

So yes Chaos owns forge worlds, but less then the imperium however the legions themselves and even warbands got more direct access to magi which maintain supply.

With this announcement :

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/01/21/21st-jan-introducing-better-beta-boltersgw-homepage-post-4/



I am thinking that marines in general are in a much better place.

This still doesn't address their lack in terms of firepower against heavy vehicles. Hopefully, they decide to nerf DW in some way that prevents them from being the most overpowered marine army ever made.

This still leaves terminators in a weird spot, but unfortunately, they are too expensive still to take even with their guaranteed 4 shots.

Bikers and the veteran bikers I suggested are now bonkers. (Veteran bikers with storm bolters and stormshields + twinbolt guns, 8 shots per a turn?!)

Ravenwing got far better as well, grey knights just need that rule on base on all of their units no matter what.

If I would add anything it would be if the model is within 1/4 range you may fire an additional time in addition to the other rapid fire range. So a Combibolter at 6" would be 5 shots, instead of just 4. (increasing it by 1 not 2!)

This unforunately screws over all the intercessor other options, specifically the stalker pattern and assault bolter which is now worse objectively bare any ranges.

It's welcome to see, but I doubt it's going to make anyone any more inclined to take Tactical Marines than they already are - which is to say hardly at all. Makes Intercessors a bit better, but still not really worth more than 15pts per model. I think the biggest change is we'll see more bolter Scouts over sniper Scouts.

 Grand.Master.Raziel wrote:
It's welcome to see, but I doubt it's going to make anyone any more inclined to take Tactical Marines than they already are - which is to say hardly at all. Makes Intercessors a bit better, but still not really worth more than 15pts per model. I think the biggest change is we'll see more bolter Scouts over sniper Scouts.

I'm honestly expecting to see Deathwatch Terminators taken in squads under that rule. 31pts/model (sword, not fist) for a SIA storm bolter firing four shots at AP-1 out to 30"?

 Grand.Master.Raziel wrote:
It's welcome to see, but I doubt it's going to make anyone any more inclined to take Tactical Marines than they already are - which is to say hardly at all. Makes Intercessors a bit better, but still not really worth more than 15pts per model. I think the biggest change is we'll see more bolter Scouts over sniper Scouts.

Nobody was seeing Sniper Scouts this edition in the first place, so I don't understand your commentary.

I use them now at 16 ppm.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Grand.Master.Raziel wrote:
It's welcome to see, but I doubt it's going to make anyone any more inclined to take Tactical Marines than they already are - which is to say hardly at all. Makes Intercessors a bit better, but still not really worth more than 15pts per model. I think the biggest change is we'll see more bolter Scouts over sniper Scouts.

Nobody was seeing Sniper Scouts this edition in the first place, so I don't understand your commentary.

I use a set of scout snipers along with my ratlings and rein/raus in my current GT list. A lot of people write their lists assuming that their characters will be safe chilling behind their escorts, and 16 good BS rifles is enough to punish that assumption.

I'm doing that as well. 16 pom for 2+ armor is at least middling.

Martel732 wrote:
I'm doing that as well. 16 pom for 2+ armor is at least middling.

Only in cover vs shooting. At least remove the Camo Cloak.

No. The camo cloak makes it points back easy vs AP 0 and AP -1. Ignore cover is relatively rare for now. If I can force them to shoot AP -2 and better at my troops, I'm happy. Given how many dum dums I lose to mortars, splinter, lasguns and the like, it's well worth it.

For once, I'd say Martel is right. Camo cloaks make the snipers have the same armor save in cover as a terminator suit, well worth the cost when your goal is to kill characters or take potshots at heavy weapons teams when characters are down or hidden.

The planet-ending meteor is on way.

That feel when an old poncho gives you as much protection as a suit of armour build to walk knee deep in plasma D:

What it SHOULD do is reduce the enemy's ballistics skill when aiming at them. But it's probably for the best that it doesn't given how obnoxious that can get while stacking it.