There's often talk about GW having too many Astartes codices. So which if any would you cut? Would you add any? You can chose multiple options in the poll.

Chaos Marines shouldn't be on there, for the same reason I presume Grey Knights didn't make it. They might be in power armour, but they're a totally different beast to the glut of Space Marine chapters.

I wouldn't want any cut, for the same reason I wouldn't want Tyranids cut - people have the army, and cutting the codex, even rolling it into another codex, is like a big kick in the pants from GW. Just get better/faster/both at updating everything.

Ah, I forgot GK.

Again, Chaos Marines and Grey Knights shouldn't even be on there. While they are power armoured armies, they're completely different to normal Space Marines. They're entirely different armies. The only logic behind this list is 'Is it in power armour'. You might as well throw Sister of Battle in there.

Black Templar, Blood Angels, and Dark Angels could all be easily rolled back into a standardized loyalist codex, but expanded to fit more variant chapters.
I don't necessarily like the Space Wolf codex, but it's just barely different enough to stand on its own.

Grey Knights should be scaled back and folded into a greater (and this time, fully functioning and independent) Inquisitional codex.

A Raven Guard codex would be cool, as the generic codex I don't think represents their way of war very accurately.

Though I think the IoM is already over-represented in 40k codices.



Edit-after-the-fact: Totally agree with what Fafnir said above.

All of them except SW (which are barely interesting enough to save) and CSM (which will be combined with demons into a single chaos book).

BT have no reason to exist at all, even GW doesn't care about them anymore.
DA can be replaced with a single "terminators as troops" character in C:SM to represent deathwing.
BA can be replaced with a single "assault squads as troops" character in C:SM.
GK have no reason to exist as a full army, replace them with a single "GK strike force" unit in an allies supplement.

 -Loki- wrote:
You might as well throw Sister of Battle in there.

SoB are not SM.


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 greg0985 wrote:
A Raven Guard codex would be cool, as the generic codex I don't think represents their way of war very accurately.

How so?

I own a few thousand dollars worth of minis and the vast majority of them are Templars....sadly, I kinda feel like gw needs to either update them or fold them into the c:sm codex, waiting for them to do something when I am already using the regular codex anyway is getting old. ..even if it's just new models that look sexy, or a standard codex space marines with mechanics and units rolled in for all chapters (like a point system for certain traits)

 Peregrine wrote:
All of them except SW (which are barely interesting enough to save) and CSM (which will be combined with demons into a single chaos book).

BT have no reason to exist at all, even GW doesn't care about them anymore.
DA can be replaced with a single "terminators as troops" character in C:SM to represent deathwing.
BA can be replaced with a single "assault squads as troops" character in C:SM.
GK have no reason to exist as a full army, replace them with a single "GK strike force" unit in an allies supplement.

Spoken like a true hipster, bored with even his own hobbies.

The Space Marine codexes are fine as they are.

I've long advocated for a two book approach to most of the marine books. Have one core codex for Marines that has all the rules for generic space marines and Ultramarines. Use the Chapter Tactics rule to establish a marine base line.

Than do a second supplement book that features the divergent chapters. Chapter tactics change to reflect the different tactics of each group and you can have a special rule that may swap the locations of certain units in the force org chart (assault marines to troops for BA, Bikes to troops for White Scars etc) a few pages for any units unique to the chapter (Ravenwing for DA, Death Company for BA etc) and characters.

I figure each chapter needs 5 pages of Fluff, 5 pages for characters and 2 for units, plus the appropriate unit entries to match the main codex. You could cover each sub codex in 15-20 pages and wind up with a solid 120 -150 page book covering Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Salamanders, White Scars, Imperial Fists, Iron Hands and Raven Guard. Add Black Templars as a "Crusading" chapter and your good to go.

The only ones who in my mind are structurally different enough to warrant their own books in mind are Space Wolves given their pack structure and tendency to avoid heavy weapons in non dev squads, and Grey Knights (who I do agree really shouldn't be a separate army but included in some sort of Allies of the Imperium book along with Cult Mechanicus, Inquisition and Assassins.

I would not like to see GK cut. I really dont like em and hate when my cousin plays them.....however......they are stand out enough just like SW to me that they should easily get their own codex.

Otherwise i completely agree with the main dex plus sub dex. The only thing i would want is that the sub dex contains all the rules to play that way you dont have to own both of the sm codexes if you want to play one of the chapters other than ultramarines

so the argument boils down to codexes that people don't care about or that people just don't like playing against.

this is why GW doesn't ask us for our opinion.

Fold the BT rules into the SM codex. There is no reason not to have a variant list in one codex, it is just an arbitrary decision by GW.

Ere We Go was several hundred pages and had several clan lists. That is what a hardback codex should look like, not this thin crap we get now for $50.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
so the argument boils down to codexes that people don't care about or that people just don't like playing against.

this is why GW doesn't ask us for our opinion.

QFT.

For the record, I'd actually like to see maybe one more SM Codex: The Ironhands. I've always assumed their robo-arms made them relentless or have some other special rule unique to them. That and their love of machines means techmarines/dreadnoughts/vehicles in general would play a bigger role...

JWhex wrote:
Fold the BT rules into the SM codex. There is no reason not to have a variant list in one codex, it is just an arbitrary decision by GW.

Ere We Go was several hundred pages and had several clan lists. That is what a hardback codex should look like, not this thin crap we get now for $50.

Templars, unlike a lot of codex marines, have a rather unique order of battle and combat theory. There is no reason for them to be rolled in to the vanilla book.

 schmoozies wrote:
I've long advocated for a two book approach to most of the marine books. Have one core codex for Marines that has all the rules for generic space marines and Ultramarines. Use the Chapter Tactics rule to establish a marine base line.

Than do a second supplement book that features the divergent chapters. Chapter tactics change to reflect the different tactics of each group and you can have a special rule that may swap the locations of certain units in the force org chart (assault marines to troops for BA, Bikes to troops for White Scars etc) a few pages for any units unique to the chapter (Ravenwing for DA, Death Company for BA etc) and characters.

I figure each chapter needs 5 pages of Fluff, 5 pages for characters and 2 for units, plus the appropriate unit entries to match the main codex. You could cover each sub codex in 15-20 pages and wind up with a solid 120 -150 page book covering Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Salamanders, White Scars, Imperial Fists, Iron Hands and Raven Guard. Add Black Templars as a "Crusading" chapter and your good to go.

The only ones who in my mind are structurally different enough to warrant their own books in mind are Space Wolves given their pack structure and tendency to avoid heavy weapons in non dev squads, and Grey Knights (who I do agree really shouldn't be a separate army but included in some sort of Allies of the Imperium book along with Cult Mechanicus, Inquisition and Assassins.

I absolutely agree with this idea. Basically something along the lines of Index Astartes but adding even more rules, army composition requirements and special characters. It could simultaneously add a lot more variety to marines while opening up a ton of studio effort and space in the release schedule for other armies.

Imho both BTs and BAs can be nicely represented by the current Chapter Tactics system (DA probably too if you consider that C:SM gets bikes as Troops already). Just give Captains/Chapter Masters the ability to enable Troops dependent on their equipment like Chaos Lords do already. This would even make Captains way more attractive again.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
so the argument boils down to codexes that people don't care about or that people just don't like playing against.

No, it boils down to the fact that GW is apparently incapable of keeping up a decent update frequency, and having several marine books that are virtually identical is not a good use of their limited resources. When you have armies like Eldar that haven't had an update since 4th edition there's no reason to waste resources on a DA codex that could easily have been replaced by a single page in C:SM without losing anything of any value.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Templars, unlike a lot of codex marines, have a rather unique order of battle and combat theory. There is no reason for them to be rolled in to the vanilla book.

Nonsense. Their entire divergence from C:SM, outside of a few 4th edition relics (like two-per-five terminator heavy weapons) that will not be included in a new codex, consists of two things: their special "charge the enemy when we get shot" rule, and having scouts and tactical squads mixed together. The former is easily given by a single special character in C:SM, while the latter is something nobody cares about. All BT need rules-wise is a single page in C:SM, just like Salamanders/White Scars/etc.

As for the fluff, who cares. Give them a few pages in C:SM just like all the other marine chapters.

I'd wrap em all into codex:Codex astartes and codex:Non codex astartes.

Put the wolves, gk, DA, etc one one side, and the BA, SM, etc on the other

I thought the 3rd edition way of dealing with this worked pretty well (aside from Space Wolves, that is). Have the main Marines book covering your core units and with its own special characters, then release a smaller Codex for separate Chapters containing just the extra units, wargear and special characters, and a couple of army "shake-ups" (like Combat Tactics replacement and Troops rearrangements).

It was a nice compromise. The Chapters felt different, but without having lots of full size Codexes. It would also cut down a bit on development time.

(added) When I say Space Wolves, that's the only one in 3rd set up this way that in my opinion didn't work. It wouldn't do any good for Chaos or Grey Knights in 6th.

I wouldn't cut any. I'd add more as they are big sellers.

Plus add chaos dedicated god ones.

To quote Peregrine: "BA can be replaced with a single "assault squads as troops" character in C:SM"... That totally makes sense. Its not like the Blood Angels have any other unique aspects, like Death Company, Death Company Dreadnoughts, Sanguinary Guard, Sanguinary Priests, Baal Predators, Furioso and Furioso Librarian Dreadnoughts, Red Thirst, all Fast Vehicles (although the last 2 could be from a character). And all Blood Angels players would just love having to always take one character, instead of the 5 or so they have atm, plus the 3 generic choices...

BlackSanguinor wrote:
To quote Peregrine: "BA can be replaced with a single "assault squads as troops" character in C:SM"... That totally makes sense. Its not like the Blood Angels have any other unique aspects, like Death Company, Death Company Dreadnoughts, Sanguinary Guard, Sanguinary Priests, Baal Predators, Furioso and Furioso Librarian Dreadnoughts, Red Thirst, all Fast Vehicles (although the last 2 could be from a character). And all Blood Angels players would just love having to always take one character, instead of the 5 or so they have atm, plus the 3 generic choices...

What's your point? Are these really essential attributes of BA? Or could, for example, death company be represented by C:SM vanguard veterans painted with black armor?

The answer, of course, is no. BA are defined by one thing: assault marines forming the core of the army. The other things are part of this execution of the BA concept, but it's very easy to imagine an alternate universe in which BA never got their own codex, and BA players happily play red-painted C:SM with assault marines as troops and maybe 1-2 special units/characters, just like all of the Salamanders/White Scars/etc happily play C:SM with a single character. And nothing really would be lost, the C:SM-variant BA would be just as fluffy and enjoyable as the current codex.

And this is of course the fundamental problem here: you could easily make dozens of marine chapters, each with a codex full of "unique" units, but you don't need to do that. In fact, GW just did that with the DA codex, turning a codex that had nothing special besides terminators as troops into a full army full of "unique" units. But that's just bad design. It's making new rules just for the sake of having more rules, and I really don't see why every marine chapter needs a dozen new units while non-marine players have to wait years to get even small amounts of attention from GW.

Vanguard Veterans painted black will totally be the same as Death Company!!! And of course the only essential attribute of Blood Angels are the Assault squad troops. It's not like that is more Raven Guard than Blood Angels. I mean everyone knows the Blood Angels don't follow the Codex Astartes at all *sarcasm*. Also your idea might have worked if it was implemented first. However now that Blood Angels have all those other unique aspects, cutting it back like that just wouldn't work. Its established fluff. This might confuse you a bit, but a lot of people play Blood Angels because they like their unique units and the unique flavor of the army, something they won't get with your suggestion. I think a large Space Marine codex could work, however it would have to have several different armies for the more unique chapters, or something like what Super Ready mentioned.

BlackSanguinor wrote:
To quote Peregrine: "BA can be replaced with a single "assault squads as troops" character in C:SM"... That totally makes sense. Its not like the Blood Angels have any other unique aspects, like Death Company, Death Company Dreadnoughts, Sanguinary Guard, Sanguinary Priests, Baal Predators, Furioso and Furioso Librarian Dreadnoughts, Red Thirst, all Fast Vehicles (although the last 2 could be from a character). And all Blood Angels players would just love having to always take one character, instead of the 5 or so they have atm, plus the 3 generic choices...

Give Honour Guard (I mean the C:SM version) the option to take Jumppacks, give Dreads the option to take 2 dccws (Ironclad anyone?), make Apothecaries an IC like it's done with the priests, give Predators the option to take tl acs (This is nothing you need an STC for. And the Preds could really need more options anyway) and make Fast for the Rhino chassis a purchasable upgrade, probably bound to an IC.

I like my DA, but roll em all back, SW aint even unique enough to matter for that.

Right, so then they get Honour Guard with Jump Packs (same) but no Furious Charge, Baal Predators don't have their signature weapon (Flamestorm Cannon) and are in HS, not FA and then BA have to pay more for one of their signatures? Dreads can't get Talons. My point is, its too late to roll back BA. They are too established with enough very different units. Though I do agree the Pred needs more options.

GK and CSM are SM

JWhex had a good point about this. All the chapters referred in the poll have enough character as to have their own background story and particular units and rules. The comeback of the trait system would also help to have a basis to build different chapters beyond the fluff and commanders dependence. A big book with several sections on particular fluff and one big army list with variants and restrictions could perfectly work (c'mon people is not that stupid as to not being able to use such a book). Really, if you get each and every codex referred to in the poll and put their background together, separated in due sections (and striping it of completely excess and superfluous pieces -yes I'm looking at Ward), and you consolidate the army lists incorporating due restrictions and options, you'd get a great book. Of course it would be more expensive, but by spending about 75 $ you'd have the info contained in codexes adding up to 150$ or more.

BlackSanguinor wrote:
Right, so then they get Honour Guard with Jump Packs (same) but no Furious Charge, Baal Predators don't have their signature weapon (Flamestorm Cannon) and are in HS, not FA and then BA have to pay more for one of their signatures? Dreads can't get Talons. My point is, its too late to roll back BA. They are too established with enough very different units. Though I do agree the Pred needs more options.

The signature weapon of the Baal is not the Flamestorm Cannon it was not even there till the plastic kit was released.

What I tried to demonstrate was that it's nowhere near as 'Can't roll them back, too many options already' it's just a matter of the options and in the case of BA and DA it's way more likely that some of these options that make the chapters unique are spread under others chapters as well as there are successors and probably they gifted some of their equipment to other chapters they have good relations to. In the case of BTs and SWs most of the unique stuff is either bound to the Homeworld (Fernisian Wolves) or persistent believe (EC or the SW psy defense (don't have the name in mind right now)) but even then it's debatable if this could not be done by other Chapters as well (Did I just defended Space Wolves? )

BlackSanguinor wrote:
Blood Angels...unique flavor of the army

Cute

BlackSanguinor wrote:
Vanguard Veterans painted black will totally be the same as Death Company!!!

Sorry, but yes, they would. They might not be the exact same thing as the current rules for death company, but you could easily make a fluffy death company unit using the vanguard veterans rules.

And of course the only essential attribute of Blood Angels are the Assault squad troops.

It is. It's exactly what you think of when you hear "Blood Angels", lots of jump infantry dropping out of the sky to kill you at close range.

However now that Blood Angels have all those other unique aspects, cutting it back like that just wouldn't work.

Sure it would. BA players would complain, but the game as a whole would be improved.


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BlackSanguinor wrote:
Right, so then they get Honour Guard with Jump Packs (same) but no Furious Charge, Baal Predators don't have their signature weapon (Flamestorm Cannon) and are in HS, not FA and then BA have to pay more for one of their signatures? Dreads can't get Talons. My point is, its too late to roll back BA. They are too established with enough very different units. Though I do agree the Pred needs more options.

And, again, you're way too focused on duplicating the current codex rather than writing new BA rules from scratch. No, a C:SM-variant BA army would not have the exact same units and rules as the current one. However, it would still be BA.

The ideal would be to spread players as evenly across available Codexes as possible.

Hence I would probably cut (or at least merge) the one or two Codexes that have the least players, and "split" the one or two Codexes that have the most players into slightly different, but similar books.

The former likely aren't power-armour books, the latter likely are.

 Peregrine wrote:

However now that Blood Angels have all those other unique aspects, cutting it back like that just wouldn't work.

Sure it would. BA players would complain, but the game as a whole would be improved.

Hell, they did that with the Inquisition for the Grey Knight codex, and didn't seem to bat an eye for that. And that was done for the sake of making it more homogenous. If the game can survive it being done poorly, they can survive it being done well.

I'd cut down the SPace marine books into

Codex: Space marines (Incorporating all the chapters bar Blood angels, dark angels, and grey knight's. But it would be a bigger codex than most to compensate for holding many armies and models)
Codex: Angels of death (Blood/dark angels, with HQ's defining if bikes, termies, or assault marines, are troops)
Codex: Daemonhunters (Mix of grey knight's and sisters of battle codex, with a few familiar witchhunters elements.

We don't need 7+ marine books. 3 cover's it just fine, even then, I considered adding both of the angels into the basic space marine book,. and having that become like, a huge anthology codex, with all the options for running allied-marine armies in one book.

 Manchu wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
You might as well throw Sister of Battle in there.

SoB are not SM.

Neither are Chaos or Grey Knights. They're in power armour, but both armies have expanded well beyond being just Space Marines - not to mention one of them being the arch nemesis of the Space Marines.

Considering that to cut a Space Marine codex, they'd need to be rolled into the Space Marine codex, neither of these books belong there. Your crtieria for counting them as 'astartes books' is 'are they in power armour'. So again, you might as well put Sisters of Battle in there. They're functionally the same thing on the table with a lower stat or two, if you're going ti include Chaos and Grey Knights.

there was a codex with ultramarines and gen vanlilla marines. in 2nd edition it was title Codex: Ultramarines. though it double up as "every chapter that didn't already have a codex" SW/BA/DA had their own books, as did SOB, i really don't see the problem with making a rulebook sized/thickness codex with a "one size fits all" approach and re-inventing the chapter/legion traits system, adding several different lists depending on who is leading the force, thus dictating which units are troops elite and such, have marines (loyalist) chaos, all eldar in one book, and a seperate one including the rest of the races. it'd save both money for me, and it'd mean each update of the codex's i'd have rules for each of my armies......5 codex's 188-230pages not the 13/18 48-120 they have planned, is what i'd prefer!!!!

I think they should make a codex for each of the chaos gods for the forces that dedicated themselves to one of them and leave the current codex as undivided.

all eldar in book "eldar"
nids, necrons, tau in book "xenos"
Marines of all flavours in book "marines"
Inquisition, sob, IG in book "Imperial Forces"
anything else missed out in book titled "insert good name here" Just a thought (and one that will never actually happen beside in my mind)

 schmoozies wrote:
I've long advocated for a two book approach to most of the marine books. Have one core codex for Marines that has all the rules for generic space marines and Ultramarines. Use the Chapter Tactics rule to establish a marine base line.

Than do a second supplement book that features the divergent chapters. Chapter tactics change to reflect the different tactics of each group and you can have a special rule that may swap the locations of certain units in the force org chart (assault marines to troops for BA, Bikes to troops for White Scars etc) a few pages for any units unique to the chapter (Ravenwing for DA, Death Company for BA etc) and characters.

I figure each chapter needs 5 pages of Fluff, 5 pages for characters and 2 for units, plus the appropriate unit entries to match the main codex. You could cover each sub codex in 15-20 pages and wind up with a solid 120 -150 page book covering Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Salamanders, White Scars, Imperial Fists, Iron Hands and Raven Guard. Add Black Templars as a "Crusading" chapter and your good to go.

The only ones who in my mind are structurally different enough to warrant their own books in mind are Space Wolves given their pack structure and tendency to avoid heavy weapons in non dev squads, and Grey Knights (who I do agree really shouldn't be a separate army but included in some sort of Allies of the Imperium book along with Cult Mechanicus, Inquisition and Assassins.

I agree with this assessment. And then apply it to Chaos SM for United/Faction books. It would help with the codex saturation and update issues and free up design time/effort with model designs. Let there be about the same number of Imperial and non Imperial books.

So we have for Imperial:
Marines
BA
SW
DA
BT
GK
IG
SoB

and for non Imperial:
Eldar
DE
Necrons
Tau
Tyranids
CSM
Daemons

Thats 8 vs 7 not that bad if you ask me but I would gladly trade one of the Space Marines Codices for Codex Adeptus Mechanicus.

Edit: Oh man I really forgot the orks
So it's even.

 Peregrine wrote:

BT have no reason to exist at all, even GW doesn't care about them anymore.
DA can be replaced with a single "terminators as troops" character in C:SM to represent deathwing.
BA can be replaced with a single "assault squads as troops" character in C:SM.
GK have no reason to exist as a full army, replace them with a single "GK strike force" unit in an allies supplement.

The only sufficiently telling response to this is:

 Fafnir wrote:
Black Templar, Blood Angels, and Dark Angels could all be easily rolled back into a standardized loyalist codex, but expanded to fit more variant chapters.
I don't necessarily like the Space Wolf codex, but it's just barely different enough to stand on its own.

Grey Knights should be scaled back and folded into a greater (and this time, fully functioning and independent) Inquisitional codex.

I agree with everything said here.


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People are way too obsessed over their army having their own codex. Having one big but flexible codex can retain the flavour of your army, while also allowing building many different types armies. Some sort of a trait system where you could choose few special features for your chapter would be ideal. You could mix and match them to create different chapters. BA can take assault marines as troops and furious charge, Raven Guard can take assault marines as troops and add infiltrate to some units etc. This also means tat all those pointless discrepancies between the armies would vanish; we do not need Devastators priced three different ways or four different ways to buy your Tactical Marines. Such differences exist merely due the codices being written in different times, and not because they would be intentional attempts to add any flavour to the armies.

I have 10,000 points of painted Black Templars, including a pair of super heavy tanks. It was my first army, and it will be the army I continue to add to until I can't paint anymore.

I love the lore of the Black Templars. I loved our old codex (until the most recent FAQs). I love the book Helsreach by AD-B. You can say I'm a fan, I think.

All of that said, I have no problem with them rolling my Templars back into the Codex:Space Marines. The Blood Angels have taken the role as the "crazy assault army" and are faster than the Templars will ever be. The Space Wolves are more "shooty" than the Templars are, even though you can build some shooting focused Templar lists. The Dark Angels can drop down more terminators, bikes, or speeders than the Templars can hope to field. Both DA and BA are "Chaplain rich", which I always thought was the Black Templar thing.

Khorne and Space Wolves are better anti-psychers than they'll ever be.

What niche is left for them? Mixed PA and Scout squads? 20-man assault squads? The Emperor's Champion's Vows? What?

We can all argue which is the more Codex-Divergent between the Black Templars and Space Wolves until we're blue in the face, but what's the point? If they're rolled into the Codex: Space Marines, we'll at least get an update every edition. That's a fair trade off!

As for Chaos Space Marines, I would like to see a codex for the original legions and one for renegade space marines that haven't fallen to Chaos. The Legion book could have Terminator and PA rules and units for each legion, be crammed with special characters, and so on. The Renegade Book could have...dunno. Perhaps just use the Codex: Space Marines for Renegades or something. Perhaps that's a bad idea.

 Crimson wrote:



Automatically Appended Next Post:
People are way too obsessed over their army having their own codex. Having one big but flexible codex can retain the flavour of your army, .

People are way too obsessed with different factions getting a codex.

Blood Angels or Grey Knights get released and get 2, maybe 3 plastic-kits and 2 or 3 Finecast. Dark Eldar or Necrons get released and get well over 20, in the case of Dark Eldar over 30 new releases.

Dark Eldar alone get more new releases than ALL Space Marine releases in 5th Edition taken together (!).

Just because there's a book for something doesn't mean that it's "equal" in the attention it gets.

If you wan't a a "big Space Marine Codex to rule them all", just get a book-binder to bind them all into one book for you.

Games Workshop is a miniatures company, not a book company (Bl excepted). The Codexes mean nothing. The miniatures is what counts.

Honestly, I voted for all of them except GK. I see no reason why the rules could not be folded into a main SM codex and use a simple trait system to access them, representing chapters or their successors.

I did not vote for GK as they're somewhat alien even to the normal marine chapters.

Manchu wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
You might as well throw Sister of Battle in there.

SoB are not SM.


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 greg0985 wrote:
A Raven Guard codex would be cool, as the generic codex I don't think represents their way of war very accurately.

How so?

SoB are not SM - that was his point

Raven Guard are poorly represented by the current codex because their combat style is completely different to any of the other existing Marines. They don't use shock tactics. A Raven Guard army at the moment would be best represented by using Black Templar mixed squads and Wolf Scout and old-style Veteran squads in Elites! Raven Guard issue sniper rifles to their assault squads, etc.

BlackSanguinor wrote:Vanguard Veterans painted black will totally be the same as Death Company!!! And of course the only essential attribute of Blood Angels are the Assault squad troops. It's not like that is more Raven Guard than Blood Angels. I mean everyone knows the Blood Angels don't follow the Codex Astartes at all *sarcasm*. Also your idea might have worked if it was implemented first. However now that Blood Angels have all those other unique aspects, cutting it back like that just wouldn't work. Its established fluff. This might confuse you a bit, but a lot of people play Blood Angels because they like their unique units and the unique flavor of the army, something they won't get with your suggestion. I think a large Space Marine codex could work, however it would have to have several different armies for the more unique chapters, or something like what Super Ready mentioned.

Raven Guard, contrary to modern belief, are not an assault marine focussed army. It's just that their character, Shrike, happens to be the captain of an assault company! The Blood Angels are a pretty codex chapter, to be honest. Until the current codex, their unique units were: Death Company, Bhaal Predators, Tycho and Corbulo. Yes, they got ragey rules and overcharged engines, but you could make that an upgrade for a vanilla codex and create any Blood Angels successor chapter.

More options are always better. What's better? Having a Blood Angels codex, or having a Codex that lets you make Blood Angels - or even create your own chapter that uses, say, Predators with assault cannons to support the rapid strike Bike squads that make up the majority of their army?

BlackSanguinor wrote:Right, so then they get Honour Guard with Jump Packs (same) but no Furious Charge, Baal Predators don't have their signature weapon (Flamestorm Cannon) and are in HS, not FA and then BA have to pay more for one of their signatures? Dreads can't get Talons. My point is, its too late to roll back BA. They are too established with enough very different units. Though I do agree the Pred needs more options.

Hahaha. The Bhaal Predator's signature weapon is the twin-linked Assault Cannon. The Flamestorm Cannon is the signature weapon of the Land Raider Redeemer, which it was invented for. They just tagged it onto the Bhaal because they made Fire into a Blood Angels theme for the new codex, even though a Fast Tank is logically the LAST place you want a giant flamethrower.

As for 'very different units', what even makes the Bhaal unique? The Bhaal Predator is one of the Blood Angels iconic units, second only to the Death Company. What is it? A Predator with Fast (could be a 20 point upgrade), TL Assault Cannons and a Force Org swap. Really feeling the unique now. Death Company? Making Death Company an option in the vanilla codex would be an awesome idea. You could use it to make Wulfen squads for a Space Wolf army, or Dragon Claw squads for a Black Dragons army, or... the list goes on!

Fafnir wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

However now that Blood Angels have all those other unique aspects, cutting it back like that just wouldn't work.

Sure it would. BA players would complain, but the game as a whole would be improved.

Hell, they did that with the Inquisition for the Grey Knight codex, and didn't seem to bat an eye for that. And that was done for the sake of making it more homogenous. If the game can survive it being done poorly, they can survive it being done well.

Yep. Heck, just as many Sisters players were glad to see the back of the poorly shoehorned Inquisition units from our Codex as miss them and want them back!

Folding the variant chapters into one codex would only improve the hobby aspects of 40k.

Orkimedes1000 wrote:all eldar in book "eldar"
nids, necrons, tau in book "xenos"
Marines of all flavours in book "marines"
Inquisition, sob, IG in book "Imperial Forces"
anything else missed out in book titled "insert good name here" Just a thought (and one that will never actually happen beside in my mind)

What? Eldar are Eldar, yes, okay I can see that. To make a fluffy DE army just don't use any psyker units. But Nids, Necrons and Tau? You'd need to make them three separate army lists for it to make any kind of sense, and at that point you should put them in different books.

I appreciate you listing Inquisition and SoB separately though. Seems some people still recognise that they're completely unrelated armies. Being able to outright include Sisters and Guard in the same army would only work if you could make a pure army of either force though. Inquisition forces should really be an "allies codex" though, like the original Codex: Sisters of Battle. Enough options to be played as a standalone army, but really designed to be added to another army as flavour.

 Fafnir wrote:
Black Templar, Blood Angels, and Dark Angels could all be easily rolled back into a standardized loyalist codex, but expanded to fit more variant chapters.
I don't necessarily like the Space Wolf codex, but it's just barely different enough to stand on its own.

Grey Knights should be scaled back and folded into a greater (and this time, fully functioning and independent) Inquisitional codex.

Grey Knights were at their coolest when they were a single unit that could be included in any Imperial army. Just like Assassins.

Combining all the Marine chapters into one big book would be awesome - if done like this. Don't drop all the unique stuff. Just make it so that it's obvious they're for specific chapters, but don't legislate against them being used in any army list. Yes, you'll get some tournament players who decide that (silly example) a scout army supported by darkshrouds is dead killy but never create any fluff to explain it, but if this board is anything to go by even most WAAC players will put some effort into fluffing it up so that their homebrew chapter uses recovered stealth field technology to support their scout/disruption groups or whatever, and anything that gives fluff-building options is only going to improve the hobby.

Crimson wrote:I agree with everything said here.


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People are way too obsessed over their army having their own codex. Having one big but flexible codex can retain the flavour of your army, while also allowing building many different types armies. Some sort of a trait system where you could choose few special features for your chapter would be ideal. You could mix and match them to create different chapters. BA can take assault marines as troops and furious charge, Raven Guard can take assault marines as troops and add infiltrate to some units etc. This also means tat all those pointless discrepancies between the armies would vanish; we do not need Devastators priced three different ways or four different ways to buy your Tactical Marines. Such differences exist merely due the codices being written in different times, and not because they would be intentional attempts to add any flavour to the armies.

Yes. This exactly.

Homebrew chapters are very awesome. The Wings of the Emperor's Flame are much more awesome than Blood Angels Fifth Company #6, even if both of them do feature predominantly Assault Squads backed up by Flamestorm predators.

I would like to see a 2 book approach as earlier said.

1 book that remains the Vanilla book, nothing really changes. These are chapters that may be unique, but aren't unique enough to warrant a different enough codex (like Imperial Fists or the like)

The second book combines all the current books into one, and makes a like a "Codex: Divergent Chapters" and has rules and units for all the chapters that don't follow the Codex Astartes very closely or have incredibly unique traits that are hard to represent in a standard book. Armies like Space Wolves, Black Templars, and the like will go here.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
SoB are not SM - that was his point

Nope ...

 -Loki- wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
You might as well throw Sister of Battle in there.

SoB are not SM.

Neither are Chaos or Grey Knights.

No, they really are.

 kronk wrote:
one for renegade space marines that haven't fallen to Chaos

What would differentiate this from a C:SM army?

Yes, it was.

His point was (however fallacious) that Grey Knights and Chaos Marines are as close to being Space Marines as Sisters are.

*sigh* I miss the days when no-one really knew what Grey Knights were...

 Manchu wrote:

 kronk wrote:
one for renegade space marines that haven't fallen to Chaos

What would differentiate this from a C:SM army?

No idea, as I said in that same post. I'm not certain there would be a point. Along similar lines, the Lost and the Damned lists, while interesting, has been made redundant with IG allies IMHO.

BT have some of the best fluff and serves purposes no other SM armies do. No psykers, army wide Vow buffs, specific psyker-hunting units possible, the crazy movement-after-taking-wounds stuff they can do, and a lot of possibilities for special rules to take advantage of the presence of psykers (i really do like abhor the witch vow)


DA dont do anything that hasnt been done before. Troop terminators? See GK and SW. Bike armies? C:SM has white scars and bike armies have never been very effective. They have a few gimicks like the new banners, but those arent there to follow any fluff, just to make the army better than just a generic army. Fluff wise DA are pretty plain also. They fight chaos, cool everyone does. They hate the traitors, everyone does. They have some old tech... now where have i heard that before. Generic enough to be thrown into the C:SM codex.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Yes, it was.

No, it wasn't. Of course SoB are not SM. His point was that if I was going to have CSM and GK on the list then I might as well have SoB because the only thing CSM and GK have in common with other SM is power armor. That was his point. It is incorrect. Take the power armor off a GK and you have a naked SM. Take the power armor off of a CSM and you have a naked (perhaps mutated) evil SM. Take the power armor off a Sororitas and you have a naked human being.

I'd cut the four loyalist books that are essentially marines with minor differences. (SW, BA, DA, BT). None of these warrant their own codex, their weapons and armour should already be covered by a base codex, and minor doctrinal differences can easily be represented through the use of traits or special characters.

Having five different basic marine codexes is one of the biggest causes of game imbalance, IMO.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:
Take the power armor off a GK and you have a naked SM. Take the power armor off of a CSM and you have a naked (perhaps mutated) evil SM. Take the power armor off a Sororitas and you have a naked human being.

Well, the GK is a psyker too.

 Redbeard wrote:
Well, the GK is a psyker too.

Sure, but the common denominator is that he is a SM. Being a psyker, like being a viking wolf man, or a sparkly vampire, is icing.

The important difference is that DA did it first.

DA had terminator-only armies before Grey Knights were a thing.

DA had pure bike armies when White Scars were sword-waving maniacs.

DA are one of the great legacies of early 40k. DA and BA were the first variant Space Marine chapters.

The problem is that all of the cool, unique Dark Angels stuff has at one point or another been given to someone else.

Mortis-pattern Dreadnoughts, AKA Riflemen? Originally DA-only.

Land Speeder Tornadoes? Originally DA-only.

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The important difference is that DA did it first.

Absolutely correct. There is a lot of history pushing the DA dex. Whether that is a good reason for them to retain a separate book ...

Something worth mentioning is how GW has been using the divergent Chapter codices to seemingly "test" new options that then filter back to one another or to the vanilla dex.

Also, BT seem to be taking it pretty hard in the poll. I wonder if that has to do with them having the oldest dex.

Black Templars had the Land Raider Crusader first (Armageddon campaign book? Maybe?), but then everyone got them.

BA had Storm Ravens first, now most SM Codecies have a version of them. Except Space Wolves, because feths those Viking-Werewolf guys.

It's not a reason to keep your own codex, if that's your argument.

 Manchu wrote:

Also, BT seem to be taking it pretty hard in the poll. I wonder if that has to do with them having the oldest dex.

For me, its for the reasons I posted earlier. Other Space Marines have "usurped" most of their uniqueness. Also, I'd rather just get an update every edition and stay current than go through this current Oldest Codex crap again.

Sure, I'll pay 1 points for every marine to have a frag grenade and another 2 points for Kraks. Why not? No sergeants? Well feth those guys, anyway. Whirlwinds? Those are for wimps! Etc, etc...

Having (or not having) access to a handful of random pieces of kit could also be accomplished through the use of traits or special characters. If you take the Black Templar character, Land Raider Crusaders go from being 0-1 to being 0-3 (or dedicated transports, or whatever).

Well, I believe I made my stance on the matter pretty clear a few posts ago - I think all unique and variant units should be moved to Codex: Space Marines and the extra Astartes codices dropped. Some duplicate units don't need to make the jump of course (Sanguinary Guard can just be an upgrade for a Command Squad, for example, and the same being true of Honour Guard).

All I'm saying is that you can't put the Dark Angels down as a chapter because of their lack of unique units.

For me, I like that BT have a separate dex. I think they are probably the more divergent than BA, DA, and SW. They are basically Codex: (Post-Nikaea) Space Marine Legion. It feels very "historical" if you take my meaning.

 Redbeard wrote:
Having (or not having) access to a handful of random pieces of kit could also be accomplished through the use of traits or special characters. If you take the Black Templar character, Land Raider Crusaders go from being 0-1 to being 0-3 (or dedicated transports, or whatever).

I'm fine with that. Codex Space Marines, if all of the others are rolled in, would be as big as the rules section of the current rule book!

Also something I'd be fine with.

Could drop the size a little but shifting the majority of the fluff into a separate supplementary book. Something like "Colours and Histories of the Adeptus Astartes" that's a pure fluff tome like the Liber Chaotica (Which, as the sticker on my copy proudly proclaims, won an Ennie).

 Redbeard wrote:
Having (or not having) access to a handful of random pieces of kit could also be accomplished through the use of traits or special characters. If you take the Black Templar character, Land Raider Crusaders go from being 0-1 to being 0-3 (or dedicated transports, or whatever).

Which adds unnecessary complications to a book (the Unified SM codex) that would end up roughly triple its current size. Plus there is no good economic reason to do this SW, BA, DA and GK players like our books and we pay for the privilege of using different books.

If GW had done 1 unified Sm book to begin with no one would have demanded a separate book. However they did flesh it out and now every month or so all the non-SM players come out and complain about it. I get it, we probably do have too many books when realistically back in 3rd they could have all been put together but think about how many units would have to be incorporated now to make this work.

GK Stormravens
Gk Strike squads
Interceptors
Purgation squads
Paladins
Gk Terminators
Purifiers
Henchmen
Baby Carriers
Death company
Baal predators
Sanguinary Guard
Deathwing Knights
Deathwing Command squads
Black Knights
Land Speeder Vengeance
Darkshorud
Darktalon
Nephilim
Deathwing Terminators
Ravenwing Attack squads (or you could give all marine bikers hit and run)
Grey Hunters
Long Fangs
Wolf scouts
Blood Claws
Thunderwolf cavalry
Fenrisian Wolves
Lone Wolves
Whatever the hell BT mixed squads are called.
Sword Brethern


Now in my personal opinion BT should go just so that their fans can stop suffering if you aren't going to release a book just let them back in to Codex: Space Marines.

But if they did condense all the sm into one book, GW could then have a £50 space marine book and we'd all have to buy it.
I like the individual dex's - it means I can just buy the rules I want for cheaper.

PredaKhaine wrote:
But if they did condense all the sm into one book, GW could then have a £50 space marine book and we'd all have to buy it.
I like the individual dex's - it means I can just buy the rules I want for cheaper.

Think about it with a book that would ba lot larger and a lot more expensive.

Even if a condensed SM book cost 75USD, that'd be awesome savings compared to the current 50USD for one codex.

 captain collius wrote:

Which adds unnecessary complications to a book (the Unified SM codex) that would end up roughly triple its current size.

I think you over-estimate how many alternate units really exist (and I'm not including GK, as they really are a different organizational structure). On the other hand, one book of triple the size is preferable than printing the same material 5 times over.

Plus there is no good economic reason to do this SW, BA, DA and GK players like our books and we pay for the privilege of using different books.

"Pay for"? If you mean in cash, you're saying that you should use a different codex because you paid for one. But you paid for one because it's currently released as a separate one. This is circular reasoning. If they changed it so that all marine books were consolidated into one, then you would no longer have paid for the different one.

On the other hand, if you mean you pay for it in points, well, that's kind of the issue, isn't it. The game isn't balanced when one codex pays 200 points for the identical models that a different codex pays 150 for.

... but think about how many units would have to be incorporated now to make this work.

Okay, but I'll cut out the GK one, as I don't think they belong in a unified codex.

Sanguinary Guard
Deathwing Knights
Thunderwolf cavalry
Black Knights
Nephilim
Land Speeder Vengeance
Darktalon
Darkshorud

If the argument is that you should get a unique book because of tradition, then Sanguinary Guard, Deathwing Knights and Thunderwolf Cav, fail this argument as these aren't traditional units, but very new introductions. There's no reason these shouldn't be more widely available to all astartes.

Baal predators
Deathwing Terminators
Deathwing Command squads
Ravenwing Attack squads (or you could give all marine bikers hit and run)
Grey Hunters
Long Fangs
Sword Brethern
Whatever the hell BT mixed squads are called.

These are all nothing but glorified, renamed versions of codex marine entries. Deathwing Terminators do not need to be more special than anyone else's terminators, Ravenwing need not be different than other bikers, and Long Fangs need not be different than Devastators. These are the exact units that should be standardized for game balance reasons. Really, no other techmarine in the entire Imperium could figure out how to mount an assault cannon on a predator turret?

Death company
Wolf scouts
Blood Claws
Lone Wolves
Fenrisian Wolves

Ideal examples of units that could be unlocked with a special character. If you take the right Chaplain, you unlock the ability to take a death company unit, and so on. If you take wolf-rider guy, you can take fenrisian wolf squads.

 Manchu wrote:
Even if a condensed SM book cost 75USD, that'd be awesome savings compared to the current 50USD for one codex.

It's only a saving if you're planning on using all the special rule to make something from every chapter. If you're just using the bits you need, then you're being overcharged. I think the start up price cost would be enough to put people of playing space marines. Unless you made a Xeno dex and a chaos/demon dex for the same cost and gave people hobsons choice when it came to buying rules.
I know a lot of people that were put off by paying £70 for the heresy book - If the marine codex went up to that price, it would have a massive negative effect on the game, as most people seem to get marines first (though the starter sets like DV etc)

PredaKhaine wrote:
If you're just using the bits you need, then you're being overcharged.

We're talking about a scenario where you pay $25 more for ~$200 more content. Plus, with regard to the allies rules, you could use everything in the book. I don't know if that extra $25 is really that big of a barrier -- especially considering people are already spending $75 on the BGB. I think a $75 "BSMB" would sell.

Just as there is only One Csm codex there should be only One SM codex.

The CSM legions are far more diverse than the SM.

 Manchu wrote:

PredaKhaine wrote:
If you're just using the bits you need, then you're being overcharged.

We're talking about a scenario where you pay $25 more for ~$200 more content. Plus, with regard to the allies rules, you could use everything in the book. I don't know if that extra $25 is really that big of a barrier -- especially considering people are already spending $75 on the BGB. I think a $75 "BSMB" would sell.

Fair enough - if it was $25 more expensive, it wouldn't be that bad and I'd pay.

The cynical side of me thinks it would be more like $100 for the book.

Whenever I hear a SM player arguing for their special flower of a chapter needing its own dex I simply point to the imperial guard codex. Whether I model my guys as cadians, catatachan, steel legion, etc. they are still the same stat line and are given more of a fluffy feel by characters.

This needs to happen for SMs as DAs and BAs are just codex chapters with a few quirks, SWs can easily be fielded in a codex chapter with special rules, and BTs, well GW needs to figure out if they are a special snowflake chapter to begin with. One unified codex is plenty.

Another option I've heard is just combine all non codex space marine chapters into a book and call it "chapters of legend" or something similar and devote 5-10 pages for units, rules, fluff for any chapter GWs deems snowflake worthy.

 Redbeard wrote:
Many thing being snipped to save everyones time in havign to go through it all

All that you are telling me is "I'm going to throw my toys out of pram because i don't like the way things are."

Those unique units if they were widely available would make for some absolutely ridiculous combos.

Thos glorified renamed units all have special rules which cause them to operate differently. What you are saying is that long fangs are the same thing as Devestators they are not. That is the equivalent of say kabalites are the same thing as guardians. Its just not true.

So lets make these units only appear when you take a special character. Hello most everyone dislikes that. I would rather be able to take a generic DA Company Master put him in terminator armor and have him unlock Deathwing.

Also yes i was refering to the cost of the book because it is now $50/ 30 pounds for a codex if it goes up to $100 you won't see most new players buy it it will just be too expensive.

PredaKhaine wrote:
The cynical side of me thinks it would be more like $100 for the book.

The cynical side of you is being very generous to GW!

AL-PiXeL01 wrote:Just as there is only One Csm codex there should be only One SM codex.
The CSM legions are far more diverse than the SM.

Not to mention the many different Imperial Guard regiments.

In my opinion, there should be the following:
- C:SM
- C:CSM
- C:GK
... and that's it.

Narrowing it down to the above would bring the advantages of easier balancing between the armies as well as shorter release schedules for everyone. GW could then still release small "add-on" articles on different Chapters providing special rules and make them available as PDF and/or White Dwarf articles, just like they did with Codex: Catachans. The vanilla Marine 'dex could also bring back the rules for creating custom Chapters with a selection of special rules to pick from, like it already existed in 4E, with the known Chapters simply featuring a specific combination of them thus making homebrewn Chapters just as fun and successful to play as the newest named Chapter 'dex.
This is something that I feel should be available to CSM and IG, too (the Guard had doctrines once).

Of course, none of that is ever likely to happen. They sell too well, as much as the rest of the franchise may suffer from it.

 Manchu wrote:
I think a $75 "BSMB" would sell.

Being a true son of Slaanesh, I approve of this book.

Oh wait ... wrong letters

You're thinking of the right letters for 40k generally, however.

 captain collius wrote:

All that you are telling me is "I'm going to throw my toys out of pram because i don't like the way things are."

I don't think I said this at all.

Those unique units if they were widely available would make for some absolutely ridiculous combos.

I note the complete lack of examples.

Thos glorified renamed units all have special rules which cause them to operate differently. What you are saying is that long fangs are the same thing as Devestators they are not. That is the equivalent of say kabalites are the same thing as guardians. Its just not true.

Right, Long Fangs can split their fire, and no one else can. I think they're the only unit in the entire game that can, and, what's more, they don't even pay a premium to do this. They're unbalanced because they're super-special and not treated like the devastators they should be. They're power-armour guys who sit in the backfield and shoot heavy weapons, and to deny this and pretend that they're anything more than that is either being naive or deliberately misleading. More than any other unit in the game, they're why all marines should be drawing from a unified list, not re-writing the wheel for every colour of armour they can think up.

 Lynata wrote:

AL-PiXeL01 wrote:Just as there is only One Csm codex there should be only One SM codex.
The CSM legions are far more diverse than the SM.

Not to mention the many different Imperial Guard regiments.

In my opinion, there should be the following:
- C:SM
- C:CSM
- C:GK
... and that's it.

Narrowing it down to the above would bring the advantages of easier balancing between the armies as well as shorter release schedules for everyone. GW could then still release small "add-on" articles on different Chapters providing special rules and make them available as PDF and/or White Dwarf articles, just like they did with Codex: Catachans. The vanilla Marine 'dex could also bring back the rules for creating custom Chapters with a selection of special rules to pick from, like it already existed in 4E, with the known Chapters simply featuring a specific combination of them thus making homebrewn Chapters just as fun and successful to play as the newest named Chapter 'dex.
This is something that I feel should be available to CSM and IG, too (the Guard had doctrines once).

Of course, none of that is ever likely to happen. They sell too well, as much as the rest of the franchise may suffer from it.

That would be nice, although I don't think a GK one is necessary on its own, I know certain aspects of the Inquisition have changed over the years, but wouldn't that have been an idea or maybe something along its lines. That way Sisters would be kept up to date nicely, you could have the assassins all in the book, Deatwatch etc.

I really hope that start to do stuff with White Dwarf again, I can't bear to buy it as it is currently.

 Manchu wrote:
You're thinking of the right letters for 40k generally, however.

Blue squidgy marine book, yep

 Redbeard wrote:

 captain collius wrote:

All that you are telling me is "I'm going to throw my toys out of pram because i don't like the way things are."

I don't think I said this at all.

No that is the attitude you are projecting.

 Redbeard wrote:

 captain collius wrote:

Those unique units if they were widely available would make for some absolutely ridiculous combos.

I note the complete lack of examples.

Mixing Deathwing with thunderwolves. Sanguinary guard with long fangs. Etcetera

 Redbeard wrote:

 captain collius wrote:

Those glorified renamed units all have special rules which cause them to operate differently. What you are saying is that long fangs are the same thing as Devestators they are not. That is the equivalent of say kabalites are the same thing as guardians. Its just not true.

Right, Long Fangs can split their fire, and no one else can. I think they're the only unit in the entire game that can, and, what's more, they don't even pay a premium to do this. They're unbalanced because they're super-special and not treated like the devastators they should be. They're power-armour guys who sit in the backfield and shoot heavy weapons, and to deny this and pretend that they're anything more than that is either being naive or deliberately misleading. More than any other unit in the game, they're why all marines should be drawing from a unified list, not re-writing the wheel for every colour of armour they can think up.

I will admit LF's are under costed however a single helldrake tends to ruin their day. More importantly Deathwing have 3 usr that regular Terminators do not. Longfangs have a usr that others do not.

As far as biker go i wouldn't mind them giving all marine bikers hit and run.

Also it seems that your entire argument is based around you opinion rather than fact.

Fact:

Marines make up half the army books.

Marines are the most common army you will see.

Marines are the best selling items.

WHy would you kill the golden goose.

 kronk wrote:
I have 10,000 points of painted Black Templars, including a pair of super heavy tanks. It was my first army, and it will be the army I continue to add to until I can't paint anymore.

I love the lore of the Black Templars. I loved our old codex (until the most recent FAQs). I love the book Helsreach by AD-B. You can say I'm a fan, I think.

All of that said, I have no problem with them rolling my Templars back into the Codex:Space Marines. The Blood Angels have taken the role as the "crazy assault army" and are faster than the Templars will ever be. The Space Wolves are more "shooty" than the Templars are, even though you can build some shooting focused Templar lists. The Dark Angels can drop down more terminators, bikes, or speeders than the Templars can hope to field. Both DA and BA are "Chaplain rich", which I always thought was the Black Templar thing.

Khorne and Space Wolves are better anti-psychers than they'll ever be.

What niche is left for them? Mixed PA and Scout squads? 20-man assault squads? The Emperor's Champion's Vows? What?

We can all argue which is the more Codex-Divergent between the Black Templars and Space Wolves until we're blue in the face, but what's the point? If they're rolled into the Codex: Space Marines, we'll at least get an update every edition. That's a fair trade off!

As for Chaos Space Marines, I would like to see a codex for the original legions and one for renegade space marines that haven't fallen to Chaos. The Legion book could have Terminator and PA rules and units for each legion, be crammed with special characters, and so on. The Renegade Book could have...dunno. Perhaps just use the Codex: Space Marines for Renegades or something. Perhaps that's a bad idea.

Agreed, except for the following points:

Templars could claim the Drop Pod niche. It'd even be fluffy.

I don't want GW rolling BT into the Vanilla Codex because I've yet to see a good suggestion for how to make it happen aside from "add Special Characters hurr!". After the treasure-trove of missed opportunities that is the CSM Codex, I'm sceptical.



On a closing note, why is it that Space Wolves are often considered too divergent and Templars aren't? They've got pretty similar divergences, after all.

I think that they could easily combine everything into one bigger SM codex. There is not so many different models between each of the codexes - just different rules/configurations.

They could then just add army rules for them - like if you run them as Dark Angels - you get X, Y, Z and T unit costs +/- D. Could even mark a unit as only taeable in an army with W rule or something....

In all honesty - it is not something that would happen - cause you would have to only buy one dex and all the models are slightly different...but...it is what it is

 Redbeard wrote:

Right, Long Fangs can split their fire, and no one else can. I think they're the only unit in the entire game that can, and, what's more, they don't even pay a premium to do this. They're unbalanced because they're super-special and not treated like the devastators they should be. They're power-armour guys who sit in the backfield and shoot heavy weapons, and to deny this and pretend that they're anything more than that is either being naive or deliberately misleading. More than any other unit in the game, they're why all marines should be drawing from a unified list, not re-writing the wheel for every colour of armour they can think up.

Long Fangs have no ablative wounds to soak-up casulties, they will almost certainly lose their 'split fire' rule as soon as you kill the first guy in the squad (because it will be the Pack Leader), AND they provide the only infantry-carried heavy weapons for the entire army!
They also lose out on Combat Tactics & the Signum and instead gain Counter-attack, Acute Senses and a ccw.

Devastators on the otherhand can still effectively 'split fire', (go-go-gaget combat squads!), which btw cannot be nullified with a single casulty. They also get ablaitive wounds making it harder to pick-off the big guns AND their squad leader gets to give one model BS5.
While they're not as good in assaults as Long Fangs, Devs also can't be locked in combat, (thanks to Combat Tactics) and they maintain their heavy fire far more effectively than 'Fangs due to those 5-6 ablaitive wounds the bolter chumpies provide.

The only problem right now between the two are that C:SM Devs are over-costed while Long Fangs' weapon upgrades are under-costed.
If Long Fangs for example had to pay 15pts/rocket launcher like SM's/DA's currently do, then there would be a helluva lot less constant bing about them.



All marines drawing from a single book would simply put us back into the dark ages of ungodly cheesed-out BS like we saw with the 4th ed codex. (ie: all those Ultrasmurfs with tank-hunting IF-trained Devs who also served time as infiltrating Blood Ravens just because you could... )

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Redbeard wrote:

Right, Long Fangs can split their fire, and no one else can. I think they're the only unit in the entire game that can, and, what's more, they don't even pay a premium to do this. They're unbalanced because they're super-special and not treated like the devastators they should be. They're power-armour guys who sit in the backfield and shoot heavy weapons, and to deny this and pretend that they're anything more than that is either being naive or deliberately misleading. More than any other unit in the game, they're why all marines should be drawing from a unified list, not re-writing the wheel for every colour of armour they can think up.

Long Fangs have no ablative wounds to soak-up casulties, they will almost certainly lose their 'split fire' rule as soon as you kill the first guy in the squad (because it will be the Pack Leader), AND they provide the only infantry-carried heavy weapons for the entire army!
They also lose out on Combat Tactics & the Signum and instead gain Counter-attack, Acute Senses and a ccw.

Devastators on the otherhand can still effectively 'split fire', (go-go-gaget combat squads!), which btw cannot be nullified with a single casulty. They also get ablaitive wounds making it harder to pick-off the big guns AND their squad leader gets to give one model BS5.
While they're not as good in assaults as Long Fangs, Devs also can't be locked in combat, (thanks to Combat Tactics) and they maintain their heavy fire far more effectively than 'Fangs due to those 5-6 ablaitive wounds the bolter chumpies provide.

The only problem right now between the two are that C:SM Devs are over-costed while Long Fangs' weapon upgrades are under-costed.
If Long Fangs for example had to pay 15pts/rocket launcher like SM's/DA's currently do, then there would be a helluva lot less constant bing about them.



All marines drawing from a single book would simply put us back into the dark ages of ungodly cheesed-out BS like we saw with the 4th ed codex. (ie: all those Ultrasmurfs with tank-hunting IF-trained Devs who also served time as infiltrating Blood Ravens just because you could... )

Not if the rules were much simpler and mutually exclusive.

I.e. Armies led by a captain marked as 'Blood Successor' may take the following but may not take the following.

For each divergent chapter, they can have their special tag. Heck, there's a big page for the marks of the chaos gods in C:CSM.

I think they should scrap them all, put all Chapters in one large 2-3" giant codex charge $135 for it and call it a day. Have a small 4-5 page section for every chapter. Concentrate on a little fluff for those fluff addicts, have several chapter symbols players can choose from ie FW but on a larger scale available and be done. And have 1 or 2 Characters available from said Chapters. Not everyone is a BA,DA,BT,SW, or GK player. Expand into some of the 2nd and 3rd tier chapters and I think they would have more success. I'm a huge Blood Raven fan but there is little to go on in the dex more so from the video game.

Rustgob wrote:

Not if the rules were much simpler and mutually exclusive.

I.e. Armies led by a captain marked as 'Blood Successor' may take the following but may not take the following.

For each divergent chapter, they can have their special tag. Heck, there's a big page for the marks of the chaos gods in C:CSM.

The sheer amount of rules exclusions & exceptions you'd need to prevent the supreme douchbaggery a single marine 'dex would be capable of would require a secondary book in it's own right!

captain collius wrote:
Mixing Deathwing with thunderwolves. Sanguinary guard with long fangs. Etcetera

I fail to see how either of these are horrendously unbalanced. If you simply mean picking the most underpriced units from each codex and using them, then yes, that would happen (it happens with all other books, right) - of course, you can run some of the combos you mention simply by using allies too, so I'm not entirely sure what the big change here would be.

More importantly Deathwing have 3 usr that regular Terminators do not. Longfangs have a usr that others do not.

Okay. Should they? Why, exactly, are Deathwing terminators better trained than Ultramarine's First Company terminators? Doesn't make sense. What's more, let's say I want to play an Ultramarine 1st Company army. What codex do you think I'd have to use to do that today? Oh, the Dark Angel one. So, in reality, my theoretical Ultramarine First Company terminators already have those three USRs too.

Also it seems that your entire argument is based around you opinion rather than fact.

Yes. The title of this thread is "which if any SM codex of codices would you cut?" - responded which ones I would cut, and what my reasoning is. That's kind of the question that has been asked.

Fact:

Marines make up half the army books.

Marines are the most common army you will see.

Marines are the best selling items.

WHy would you kill the golden goose.

Are you trying to be comical, or is it unintentional? You really think Marines would sell worse if they had unified rules? You really think that people would stop making new marine armies if they had unified rules? And, are you actually arguing that it's a good thing that marines are the most common army and make up half the books? Maybe, marines are the best selling because they're pushed the hardest, because they get five releases to every other army's one. If GW released as many IG armies, don't you think they'd get a larger market share?

You're describing a chicken-egg scenario, and there's no implied causality between any of the facts that you presented.

Experiment 626 wrote:
All marines drawing from a single book would simply put us back into the dark ages of ungodly cheesed-out BS like we saw with the 4th ed codex. (ie: all those Ultrasmurfs with tank-hunting IF-trained Devs who also served time as infiltrating Blood Ravens just because you could... )

As opposed to the enlightened glorious days we have now, where people glue goat heads onto generic marine bodies and have them switching to whatever the codex of the moment that gives them the best rules is? Adjusting traits is no better or worse than codex-hopping with the generic marines.

Only the Grey Knights are unique enough to truly warrant their own codex. Everything else is just re-hashing the same army over and over with a different color. GW should release a supplement or release Chapter armies in WD. No need for 40k to get bogged down by one MEQ release after another.

Everyone else (including CSM) are fine.

I think GW should go back to the 3rd edition method of space marine codexes and have one main book with a supplement book (which only cost £4 at the time!) for each variant like blood angels, space wolves etc.

This could easily be done and would stop the same information being printed in 4 or more different places (as each book would say to refer to the main book for a units rules unless there is a change i.e. space wolves have grey hunters instead of tactical marines).

To me, this would make far more sense than having several different marine codexes for armies that are not that different from the norm (codex sm) and therefore do not warrant a seperate full sized book. All they would need would be the main sm book plus their mini book for their unique rules, units, psychic powers and wargear.

The only exception to this would be grey knights imo as they don't field much of what is in codex sm. But those guys should go back to being one or two units available as allies to the Imperium armies.

This method would then ensure that all versions of identical units are priced the same (e.g. devastators/long fangs heavy weapons) and that every army gets updated in every edition (unlike the 2 edition old eldar, tau and templar codexes).

While we are at it, I would also fold chaos daemons and csm into the same codex and just call it codex:chaos. Sure it would be a big codex, but I doubt chaos players would complain. I would also include a few pages of unique rules and units for each Traitor Legion (which would refer to the main CSM rules unless there was a difference).

Of course, this is pure conjecture as GW will never do it again.


More marine codexes (which require more unique units to pad the books out) = more marine armies.

More marine armies = more sales = more profit for GW.

I can see where people are coming from on both sides of the argument.

If you don't play one of those chapters, and you have been waiting forever for a codex update (Eldar, and Tau, and until they got theirs necrons players had this issue), it's easy to say "well they are close enough, just roll them in together, so I can get my new codex faster!".

If you do play one of these chapters, (as I will admit I play DA), it's a little harder to agree with that. After all, I have played both DA and C:SM for a really long time, and feel there is more difference than just "terminators and/or bikes as troops".

Having something like a codex in addition to C:SM for some chapters could work. Something like the old book they had for BA and DA, Angels of death, if I recall correctly (I swear I had it here somewhere). It would work better if that book were to be stand alone however, as having something like a mini dex add on I feel wouldn't do them justice. The problem then becomes a few things.

How many codex variants can we cram into one book. We don't want to invalidate people's armies. I spent a lot of time and money building my army, and I don't want any of my units to no longer be playable. I could see at max cramming DA, BA, and BT into one book.

Another is, I just bought my new DA book. If they did this any time soon, that would be a wasted $60 for me, plus the time and money building my army to fit the new dex. The BA dex is still fairly recent as well. They could just wait a long enough time until these codex need an update, and do them both at once, and it could work... maybe.

Cramming all them back into one codex just couldn't work, imho. The armies function too differently now. And simply saying "add a character that lets you take unit x as troops" doesn't really do justice to the rest of my armies. I play DA, but rarely do I field an army of terminators, as I prefer the synergy of DW and RW together. I like the more subtle differences. It's already annoying to have to take a named character to take bikes as troops, I don't want to have to take one to play my army at all.

*warning, the following paragraph contains some extremism, and does not reflect the views of the poster*
As far as just making the codex bigger to accommodate all the different rules, and just letting marine players foot the bill, well why don't we just do that with everyone then. Stuff Demons back into the C:CSM dex. Put Eldar and Dark eldar into one dex simply seperated buy fluff and units. Heck the argument could go on and on until it worked out that we just had two mega dexes. Who cares about fluff, I just want my dex updated faster, forget everyone else. Lets just have one big $200 dex for IoM, and another $200 one for xenos. Then everyone would get their book updated every two years. Obviously this is an exaggeration, but I mean it could be done. Would I like it, no, and I doubt many others would.

Even if they crammed the books into a smaller number, or even one big book, it would take longer to develop and balance. It's not as if cramming all that stuff together, sprinkling some special named characters unlocking certain units/rules/combos/ect, and printing it, is going to be much easier and take that much less time. A codex that large and complex would probably eat up two or more codex windows anyway. Would that really speed up the release of that one other codex enough to warrant the massive overhaul to the multiple armies? Then imagine they broke a few tings in that massive codex. God forbid matt ward write that mega dex, and it ends up really broken. Then you end up with super SM, DA, BT, and BA, and you have to wait until all the other codex are updated until that gets fixed. It would be much worse than just one army, for example Necrons (not saying I believe they are super OP, but I think many people would agree they are a bit over the top) being off, than a combination of four of arguably the most popular armies being broken.

Right now, to me at least, it seems GW is putting out new codex more often. Maybe in the next few years this won't be an issue. It seems this topic comes up every time a new marine codex comes out and someone else was hoping they would get their new codex instead.

Would I have them remove a few marine codex, probably not. Even talking this over many times with my many friends who don't play marines, including my necron friend before their new codex, and my tau friend last month, we all agreed it would be a bad idea. The core problem really is GW release schedule. At the same time, I think it would be awesome if they added another xenos race or two, but that's just me.

Well that's my two cents, of course YMMV.

The number of chapters are fine. Each chapter has its own unique traits.

If I had to pick one I would say Black Templars because many chapters have taken stuff from them that used to be unique to them. However that can easily be fixed with a new codex.

I could easily see GW in the future making all the other Marined Codices supplemental, in which they have their unique rules and characters, but don't include anything that is shared with the vanilla marines, so that you have to but the Vanilla codex as well. Would make them more money, and piss off much of the fanbase, but then when has that stopped them?

 Redbeard wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
All marines drawing from a single book would simply put us back into the dark ages of ungodly cheesed-out BS like we saw with the 4th ed codex. (ie: all those Ultrasmurfs with tank-hunting IF-trained Devs who also served time as infiltrating Blood Ravens just because you could... )

As opposed to the enlightened glorious days we have now, where people glue goat heads onto generic marine bodies and have them switching to whatever the codex of the moment that gives them the best rules is? Adjusting traits is no better or worse than codex-hopping with the generic marines.

Codex-hopping happens simply because of power-creep.

I can almost asure you that if for example, a SW 'update' were released that does say;
- GH's increase in cost by 1pt/model
- Bloodclaws decrease in cost by -1pt/model
- Long Fang missile launchers cost 15pts each
You'd see alot fewer people simply playing 'counts as' because suddenly the 3 biggest costing issues aren't nearly as skewed.

Same goes for everyone who jumped to the BA bandwagon when they hit. If you fix the Assault Squad by removing the Melta/Plasma gun options which were utterly unnessessary to begin with and reduce the discount on their 'Fast' transport for removing Jump Packs, suddenly they're not an instant no-brainer that gets further buffed by scouting Baal Preds and army-wide FnP.


It's a helluva lot easier to fix under/over-costing issues across multiple books than it is to even try and concievibly balance a giant- tome the size of the BRB that has to somehow represent every single Chapter.
Traits sucked because there was no way to balance them properly while still giving players the chance to customize their army/chapter.

Dark Angels, Blood Angels, and Black Templars could easily be represented with some minor options in the basic codex.

However, there's no way that happens, lol. Too much money to be made selling multiple books.

pwntallica- good stuff and agreed with a lot of the things you wrote.

Now on to my Problems with this theory, like pwntallica said its easy to think this is a good idea if you're not a player of one of the armies in question. First off some of the very people complaining would be furious if they rolled say the Eldar (my second army so I know) and DE together and used the same models and just said well paint them a different color and its ok BAM different unit.

Second Even if they could do this and do it well , and by well I mean not just one HQ choice for a chapter and a unit choice.... actually do it well so when you buy a C:SM you get a ton of choices to roll with. Even if they could do it there comes issues such as

1. The Codex being priced beyond belief
2. the Complaints that GW is price gouging again and making you pay for codex parts you don't wanna play
3. Armies look different BA have a very distinct look so do GK and DA and BT, So solution they sell bits boxes separately to "customize" your look
4. option 3 leads to complaints that GW is Price gouging again (these bits boxes wouldn't come cheap I'm sure)
5. with everyone having access to all SM chapters the strongest one would likely ALWAYS get played at tourneys etc. leading to even more SM Cheese complaints

I'm not against GW placing some good open choices to customize chapters so theres variety ( might make me buy a C:SM myself just to have some fun with) but there are larger flaws than "just throw em together" also add on that as was said GW seems to be putting out codexs at a pretty quick and balanced rate which basically fixes the original reason a lot of players would even want this done!

While the two-book approach seems like a good idea, I'd go more along the lines of VtM -- one core book for SM, then individual chapter books that define what's different. It's a waste of paper to have the same Tac squads in every book, but it's also a waste of paper to have all the chapters rolled into a single book, where a player may only want one or two chapters.

The only problem I see in the current format is that there's too much inconsistency-in-what-should-be-redundancy. Why do my DA marines cost less than C:SM marines, etc. Yeah, there are fluffy reasons for it, but mechanically it makes no difference, and could probably be summed up in a few lines in the DA 'dex, preceded by "For unit costs, see Codex: Space Marine."

All that said, it's REALLY nice to have everything I need for my single army in one book -- especially with the new format, with the foldouts 'n all that. The more we try to simplify-than-customize, the more we'll end up like a game of D&D, where to play your character you need to have seven books open in front of you. "Oh, crap, which book were the rules for this particular unit in?..."

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Dark Angels, Blood Angels, and Black Templars could easily be represented with some minor options in the basic codex.

However, there's no way that happens, lol. Too much money to be made selling multiple books.

Pray tell, what would those minor options be?

While I'm in favour of rolling all the SM into one dex, I'm not sure it would be a good idea for new players. There's already a lot of confusing information out there, and with so many options in what would clearly be the most popular codex, it could stop even more people from joining the hobby. Something that I'm most definitely against.

When my baby brother saw my codices, he was drawn to the one with sullen men walking in snow, clad with wolf pelts. Not the one with anonymous space marine #443 shooting. Different people like different things, and one book cannot portray that inside there is the potential for multiple flavours of elite army. I think that the combining of the books would be a poor marketing choice for GW, and thus is highly unlikely to happen.

Wouldn't cut anything.

....sure we could axe everything and consolidate it into " The Imperium of Man" and " Adversaries of the IoM " ...

But:
1. GW seems to speed up already. Evidence : release rumors. See News&Rumors.
2. its always up to the company to enlist personal to get it done. The amount of codices isn't stopping them...
3. GW is about minis. They push minis at you if you enter a store..not rules. They like to add to the model line. Fliers and MC: neccessary by rules or nice to have as models?
4. multiple codices using one basic model, the compatible line of power armor / TDA etc saves a lot of time and effort. Compared to dozens of different IG uniforms, or multitudes of really alien looking xenos, the easy to achieve release from time to time isn't going away.
5. the major flaw in these threads: a codex preventing another one . Who knows how many hours are spent at each 5th ed release? Maybe GW could axe optional stuff like "death from the skiies" or one off boxes like "dreadfleet", outsource the "Tolkien-verse" line or axe it too.

6. I don't want a complicated tome, something expensive and with a "finedetailed" manual just to understand how it shall be applied.
7. I've seen the threads at a new edition/codex and thus agree we need it clearly written and almost self-explanatory in layout.
8. some people are too fond of special characters. Maybe just until they become mandatory for their army to be " that ork klan" or "from this craftworld", or "a member of the xyz sept" or that "cron dynasty" etc pp.
9. Can I have Index Astartes back? I mean the poor IH got last time a single painted mini and thats all...

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
I could easily see GW in the future making all the other Marined Codices supplemental, in which they have their unique rules and characters, but don't include anything that is shared with the vanilla marines, so that you have to but the Vanilla codex as well. Would make them more money, and piss off much of the fanbase, but then when has that stopped them?

I don't see this at all. I think GW is going to drop armies in the future (SoB) and replace them with more MEQ's, such as Imperial Fists/White Scars/whatever.

Codex: Adeptus Astartes.

Include every unit all chapters can take but reduce the amount of chapter specific stuff.

Furioso dreads, Iron Clads, ect can all be under one entry... Dreadnought. Give all the upgrades or maybe make upgrade packs.

Vanguard Vets, Sternguard, Honour Guard, Death Company, Sword Bretheren could just be called Veterans.

Terminators should just be alloowed to kit themselves as they please.

Characters would determine the FOC.

Chapter traits would define everything. Example:

Blood Angels Chapter: May use X, Y and Z characters.May take X, Y, Z as troops, may take X, Y, Z as Elites... ect.

I don't see what makes all the different chapters so unique.

Sanguinary Guard? You mean Vanguard with artificer armour and a wrist mounted gun?

Furioso Dread? You mean a Dread with 2 CCW?

Templar Squad with scouts? You mean the reason Crusaders have a larger transport capacity?

I love it when this thread pops up every month, and BT gets trashed every time. Never seen one started by a mod though.

Keep all the books, or roll them all up. You dont like BT? Get over it. Theyve got the oldest book what do you expect? Go buy your overpowered cheese army, or your new shiny bandwagon dex, and dump your time and money and love into it. Its no different from what Templar players are doing, only we stick by our guns because we love the fluff and the tactics. The only difference here is that you guys got updates, we didnt, and GW can suck it.

Now back to our regularly scheduled flame poll, with generous helpings of "My toys are better than yours, your toys are pointless".

It is not about people not liking BT. I certainly like them. I just think that ultimately it would be better to have one big, flexible, regularly updated codex, than several inflexible ones that can go editions without an update.

I voted Black Templars. I just don't see the point of these guys. I don't see what sets them apart. The fact they're fanatical? What Space Marine or for that fact Imperial isn't?

 Crimson wrote:
regularly updated codex

Isn't that something of an oxymoron? I doubt having all the info in one book would change regular updates at all... it would just be a 4-year gap, like editions. In 2012, we got 6e, so in 2014 we'd get the next edition of Space Marine OmniDex, then in 2016 we'd get 7e, and 2018 we'd get the following OmniDex edition. Of course, we wouldn't KNOW it was coming, but we'd "know."

So, every 2 years the entire meta, worldwide, would change because every MEQ player would have to relearn rules for their army.

And to keep their regular sales going, they'll release the updated 'dex with a fistful of units without models, and then another Chapterhouse would jump in to fill that void and GW would sue the pants off them.

Having a single book doesn't significantly change the amount of information that needs to be updated, and seems like it would actually cause more of a logistical headache.

I voted all the weird niche chapters, just have CSM vs C:SM or flesh the traitors out with something similar.

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
I love it when this thread pops up every month, and BT gets trashed every time. Never seen one started by a mod though.

Keep all the books, or roll them all up. You dont like BT? Get over it. Theyve got the oldest book what do you expect? Go buy your overpowered cheese army, or your new shiny bandwagon dex, and dump your time and money and love into it. Its no different from what Templar players are doing, only we stick by our guns because we love the fluff and the tactics. The only difference here is that you guys got updates, we didnt, and GW can suck it.

Now back to our regularly scheduled flame poll, with generous helpings of "My toys are better than yours, your toys are pointless".

But wouldn't it be awesome if you could have Predators with twin-linked assault cannons to go with your Land Raider Crusaders, thematically?

The smart people in this thread aren't saying "Get rid of Black Templars!", we're saying, "Make it so the options for Black Templars are in the Space Marine codex."

The problem with the current codex system is that it locks people into thinking "Only Black Templars train their scouts one on one" or "Only blood angels treat land raiders as APCs" or "Only Space Wolves make devastator squads out of veterans instead of newbies".

It really stifles creativity and the ability for players to design their own chapter fluff, which is the whole point of the Second+ Foundings. With out creativity, they may as well still be Legions.

I find it funny that a second founding chapter like Black Templars, when the Iron Fists (their founding Chapter) does not even have a codex. I think one book with separate chapters and army lists could be done in 1 book for all of them except the Gray Knights as I think that they are different enough. Though on that note I think that the inquisition, Gray Knights and Sisters of Battle could share a codex. But then GW would not be able to make as much money with their hard cover Codexes and special edition $90 codexes

Why on earth should Sisters share a codex with Grey Knights and the Inquisition? The only link is that the Ordo Hereticus and the Sisters are both tasked to keep an eye on the Ecclesiarchy to search for corruption.

SW, GK, and BA though have very different play styles. BA have baal predators, death company, special dreads, etc. SW does not focus on flyers, but instead has a focus on infantry. GK has psychic users, wields force weapons, and carries storm bolters. Playing these is like playing Ken, Ryu, and Sagat in street fighter. Sure they have the same basic moves, but they play very differently.

BT does not have any noticable units that cannot be folded into C:SM. They are 'Ken with a few tweaks'.
They have scouts that can join TAC squads, they have a special emperors champion, and trade in combat tactics for rushing into the jaws of oblivion. That's all they need.
They can easily be folded into C:SM

 Furyou Miko wrote:


The smart people in this thread aren't saying "Get rid of Black Templars!", we're saying, "Make it so the options for Black Templars are in the Space Marine codex."

With out creativity, they may as well still be Legions.

Smart people wouldn't try to alter BT until they are black painted UM...
Smart people would realize GW aims for models, not rules. GW wants a place to fit a new box in. A release, a codex. This " omni-dex" would stay the same and include just everything. Zero holes to fit new shinys in.

Legions. BT still crusade.

Matney X wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
regularly updated codex

Isn't that something of an oxymoron? I doubt having all the info in one book would change regular updates at all... it would just be a 4-year gap, like editions. In 2012, we got 6e, so in 2014 we'd get the next edition of Space Marine OmniDex, then in 2016 we'd get 7e, and 2018 we'd get the following OmniDex edition. Of course, we wouldn't KNOW it was coming, but we'd "know."

Yes, there would be a new dex in every edition. That's the whole point. How old is the current BT dex now exactly?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Furyou Miko wrote:

But wouldn't it be awesome if you could have Predators with twin-linked assault cannons to go with your Land Raider Crusaders, thematically?

The smart people in this thread aren't saying "Get rid of Black Templars!", we're saying, "Make it so the options for Black Templars are in the Space Marine codex."

The problem with the current codex system is that it locks people into thinking "Only Black Templars train their scouts one on one" or "Only blood angels treat land raiders as APCs" or "Only Space Wolves make devastator squads out of veterans instead of newbies".

It really stifles creativity and the ability for players to design their own chapter fluff, which is the whole point of the Second+ Foundings. With out creativity, they may as well still be Legions.

Yes, exactly! A big flexible dex with traits would not only allow creating BT and BA, it would also allow mixing and matching to create new chapters with their own flavour.

Sure there would still be space for new boxes.

More, in fact. RAther than making a box for Black Templar Crusader Squads and a box for Tactical Marines, you could have a box for BTCS and a box for TM, then realise, hang on, the "Basic SM Infantry' rules also allow for a squad of mixed Scouts and Marines with all ranged weapons, so lets release a new box for... lets call them Imperial Fist Disciple squads.

No new book required, just flexible rules that let you build Tac squads or Crusader squads from the same unit entry that then provide more options for kits.

 Eiluj The Farseer wrote:
I find it funny that a second founding chapter like Black Templars, when the Iron Fists (their founding Chapter) does not even have a codex.

It's the Imperial Fists, not the Iron Fists. The Imperial Fists are extremely rigid to the Codex Astartes and follow it to the letter, so it really isn't funny at all that they would use the Codex: Space Marines. They aren't a variant chapter by any use of the phrase.

 pwntallica wrote:
As far as just making the codex bigger to accommodate all the different rules, and just letting marine players foot the bill, well why don't we just do that with everyone then. Stuff Demons back into the C:CSM dex. Put Eldar and Dark eldar into one dex simply seperated buy fluff and units. Heck the argument could go on and on until it worked out that we just had two mega dexes. Who cares about fluff, I just want my dex updated faster, forget everyone else. Lets just have one big $200 dex for IoM, and another $200 one for xenos. Then everyone would get their book updated every two years. Obviously this is an exaggeration, but I mean it could be done. Would I like it, no, and I doubt many others would.

That's completely missing the point. The problem here is very simple:

Marine armies are 90% the same. You start with a core of tactical/devastator/assault/terminator squads and then add in a few army-wide special rules and maybe a special unit or two. Obviously you can do more than this and make, say, long fangs special instead of just generic devastators, but that is NOT something inherent to the concept of long fangs. Long fangs could be represented perfectly well by a standard devastator squad painted in SW colors. The only reason to give them their own special rules is that you've decided you want to have another marine codex and you need to add different rules for the sake of having different rules. Therefore it would be very easy to combine most (or even all) of the marine armies into a single book. Just like White Scars function just fine as C:SM with a special character BA would function just fine as C:SM with a special character (or a generic "BA Captain" HQ choice).

Non-marine armies are NOT 90% the same. For example, there is pretty much zero overlap between Tau and Tyranids, and a combined Tau/Tyranid codex would just consist of the two separate books stapled together. Same with trying to put IG and C:SM into the same "IoM" codex. It's no longer about cleaning up redundancy and making the game more efficient, it's combining things just for the sake of having fewer (but heavier and more expensive) books.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
I like my DA, but roll em all back, SW aint even unique enough to matter for that.

I really hope you're bein' sarcastic or something, 'cause the SW are the MOST divergent of the Chapters, along with the BT, from the Codex Astartes. SW have pack structure, their scouts are ELITE 'cause they are Grey Hunters who preferes to stand alone, Blood Claws are the "meatshield", and they are "promoted" from BC to GH etc etc etc by non-standard ways.
And more, a lot more.

Add DC into C:SM, bam, there's Blood Angels done. Special Bikes/Terminators for DA, slight FOC change for SW. Don't see why they need 3 codicies worth $50+ each just to cover a couple niche units. The World Eaters Legion is represented by a single elite choice and a special character. Even worse is the marine fanboys who cry for more specials in their own homebrews /facepalm

MarsNZ wrote:
Add DC into C:SM, bam, there's Blood Angels done. Special Bikes/Terminators for DA, slight FOC change for SW. Don't see why they need 3 codicies worth $50+ each just to cover a couple niche units. The World Eaters Legion is represented by a single elite choice and a special character. Even worse is the marine fanboys who cry for more specials in their own homebrews /facepalm

Notice the part where pretty much every World Eater player hates it? Or, you know, the part where your suggestions would completely gut BA?

I'd add a Salamanders codex.

If they did that it would open up new imperial codex options.
Eight non human and four human. You could have all the branches.

I must say, the current number of marine dex's is a little much, and isn't neccessary.

I've played Dark Angels, and have tried a mate's Blood Angels army a few times, and while they're fun, they don't all deserve their own books. That being said, a single "every marine" codex would be unwieldy, and with GW prices, it'd be like $120.

That being said, so much of these codexes is effectively information repeated; Dark Angels Greenwing is just codex marines, but cheaper, most of the Blood Angels army is codex marines with some special rules, like red thirst and descent of angels, and Grey Hunters and Long Fangs are just tacs and devs but much better, with some special rules and cheaper.

They really don't need their own books, and could be handled like customization was handled in so many 4th ed books. All you'd need is sections for each of the various marine variations, so if you choose to play Blood Angels or their successors, you get all their special rules, Sanguinary Guards and Priests, Death Company, Baal Predators and their special characters, and lose some of the codex options, like vanguard vets, sternguard, Storm Talons, etc.

The same system works pretty easily for other chapters, it just is predicated on the need for a bigger, more comprehensive Marine codex. I don't want to eliminate the unique elements of Blood Angels, Dark Angels and so on, but how many hardcover entries for Tactical Marines, Devastators, Scouts, Predators, Land Raiders and so on?

To be frank, the Traitor Legions are more deserving of different codexes than Blood and Dark Angels (those two irk me the most, I can understand the argument for BT and SW, but those two really are just Marine +1), and, to be frank, the more new players are exposed to non-MEQ armies the better.

 Peregrine wrote:

 pwntallica wrote:

*warning, the following paragraph contains some extremism, and does not reflect the views of the poster*
As far as just making the codex bigger to accommodate all the different rules, and just letting marine players foot the bill, well why don't we just do that with everyone then. Stuff Demons back into the C:CSM dex. Put Eldar and Dark eldar into one dex simply seperated buy fluff and units. Heck the argument could go on and on until it worked out that we just had two mega dexes. Who cares about fluff, I just want my dex updated faster, forget everyone else. Lets just have one big $200 dex for IoM, and another $200 one for xenos. Then everyone would get their book updated every two years. Obviously this is an exaggeration, but I mean it could be done. Would I like it, no, and I doubt many others would.

That's completely missing the point. The problem here is very simple:

Marine armies are 90% the same. You start with a core of tactical/devastator/assault/terminator squads and then add in a few army-wide special rules and maybe a special unit or two. Obviously you can do more than this and make, say, long fangs special instead of just generic devastators, but that is NOT something inherent to the concept of long fangs. Long fangs could be represented perfectly well by a standard devastator squad painted in SW colors. The only reason to give them their own special rules is that you've decided you want to have another marine codex and you need to add different rules for the sake of having different rules. Therefore it would be very easy to combine most (or even all) of the marine armies into a single book. Just like White Scars function just fine as C:SM with a special character BA would function just fine as C:SM with a special character (or a generic "BA Captain" HQ choice).

Non-marine armies are NOT 90% the same. For example, there is pretty much zero overlap between Tau and Tyranids, and a combined Tau/Tyranid codex would just consist of the two separate books stapled together. Same with trying to put IG and C:SM into the same "IoM" codex. It's no longer about cleaning up redundancy and making the game more efficient, it's combining things just for the sake of having fewer (but heavier and more expensive) books.

I think it is you who missed the point of the section you quoted. I added and underlined the part you missed.

I don't find the different marine books to be 90% the same. Do they have similarities, yes. Stat lines on their basic stuff. But even points, special rules, war gear, and FoC vary per unit. I wonder how many people claiming they are all the same actually own and/or have read/played even a single marine dex (and no, a quick read through a store copy or a questionably obtained digital one does not count), let alone different ones. I have, and from my experience, they vary and feel/play differently. I physically own and have played 9 different books from different editions and each of the different chapters (although I do always go back to C:SM and DA), they are different.

What a lot of people seem to be missing is it is not just "I can take terminators as troops, now I'm DA" or "My assault marines are troops because I'm BA". There are a bunch of other, sometimes more subtle, and even overlooked differences, these are just the ones that stick out most to non marine players. It wouldn't be as simple as squish all the unique units into the C:SM dex, and sprinkle a few characters for each codex that gives them a different chapter tactics. Yes you could do that, but people who have been spending time and money for years would probably not appreciate the lack of diversity their army now has.

To cram all that in one book would make the book bigger (and hence cost more) and/or dumb down the varying other armies, possibly even invalidating units/builds. Would it be fair to Ultra marine players to pay more for their codex? It's not their fault other people wanted to cram the other marines into their book. If they have no interest in the other chapters, well they are paying extra for nothing. Would it be fair to a player who had been collecting their army for years (or decades) to have some of their models/units useless or sub par because people feel their army is more important? Well I own at least one of every DA unit that is not in the SM codex, I have a friend who plays both BA and BT, and he has lots of pretty much everything. There is no way you could fit all that in one book, without making it three times bigger, and also making at least some of those models scrap.

Clearly people aren't going to ever agree on this, since it is one of the most reoccurring topics I have ever seen. Bottom line, GW will probably never dump their cash cow/most popular releases into one stub of a release. It would make no business sense to do so.

But if you do the two book opetion means you can include the one or two units that are truly unique to each chapter as a tack on option to the list that is drawn from the main book similar to how they did the 3rd edition pamphlets. You unlock them by selecting a particular option from a list of Chapter Tactics and limit the choices to one of these Chapter Tactics choices like they do in the Current 5th Edition Marine Codex.


So if I'm Blood Angels I can trade the standard Chapter Tactics out for the Blood Angel one which grants Furious Charge and allows you to take Assault Marines as troops and adds Death Company as a Troop choice. Want Dark Angels switch out Chapter Tactics and you get units with Stubborn. White Scars and look we have Hit and Run. Salamanders Twin Linked Flamers and Melta, Master Work Thunderhammers. Raven Guard units gain Fleet. Iron Hands units gain Bionics and have a natural 6+ Invulnerable save. Imperial Fists gain bolter drill for all units. Templars gain the advance when they fail morale.

Each unit could receive one or two signiture units to go with them and the choice of Chapter is no longer tied to a special character which saves characters to play with the force chart allocations. Want Deathwing take the Dark Angels Chapter Trait and than Captain of the 1st Company Special Character allows Termies as troops instead of elites. Ravenwing are the signature unit for the army in the fast slot and Master of the Ravenwing turns them into troops.

It solves the problem of redundant unformation being printed accross several codex and means that GW can update all the marine armies at the same time and keep them all competetive hopefully meaning consistent sales accross all lines instead of seeing spikes and valleys as the new books are realeased and people jump to the new flavour of the month.

It also means that design studio's time is opened up so we can have all armies updated with in the life span of an edition which would help those armies as they get the new codex sales spike and start adding more armies with out adversly affect the realease schedule. Want Squats there's now a hole to fill in the realeas schedule. Adaptus Mechanicus we now have a space for you. Always loved the Kroot Mercenaries list from White Dwarf, guess what we have time to develope it. Genestealer Cults welcome back to relevance. All optoions that can increase sales for GW and add extra options for players which should never be a bad thing.

I am very disheartened that the community at large wants to get rid of my BTs.....hopefully GW doesnt feel the same.

 Vladamyr wrote:
I am very disheartened that the community at large wants to get rid of my BTs.....hopefully GW doesnt feel the same.

Again: we don't want to get rid of them, we want them to have current, up-to-date rules. And most effective way to do that is to include them in the big, flexible marine codex. Things that make BT unique should be retained.

None of them. GW is belting out Codexes at a pretty good clip now, and I would feel bad for any hobbyist that spent tons of time putting together a (insert variant Chapter here) army, only to be told that a bunch of their units were invalidated because they had been rolled back into the Vanilla 'Dex. While I don't want to see any more Chapter (or Legion) codexes added, the ones that we have now aren't hurting anything.

2 Codices to Rule Them All (All Them Marines, that is).

One book, hardback, Codex: Space Marines of the Imperium, covers all loyalist Space Marines and includes rules for building your own Chapter. Has ~300 pages, retails for $150.

One book, hardback, Codex: Space Marines of the Traitor Legions, covers all Chaos Space Marines, as well as Renegades, and includes rules for building your own Traitor Warband. Has ~300 pages, retails for $150.

more codexes is better,

more SM codexes is old and boring, so not that Id see any taken away,

buuuuttt.....
Id rather see things like guard regiments, eldar craftworlds,
mechanicum, rouge trader/cult/genestealer cult type armies get new codexes then the latest flavour of marine.

my genestealer cult army is still crying....

 Vladamyr wrote:
I am very disheartened that the community at large wants to get rid of my BTs.....hopefully GW doesnt feel the same.

I got to break it to you, check out the GW website, the BT do not have their own entry on the army list, they are at the bottom of the SM entry, i dont know if its been like that, but im sure its not a good sign. They dont even warrant their own sidebar, and BA, DA, and SW all got their own, and all the shared SM units are simply reposted there.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/landingArmy.jsp?catId=cat440176a&rootCatGameStyle=wh40k

 schmoozies wrote:
But if you do the two book opetion means you can include the one or two units that are truly unique to each chapter as a tack on option to the list that is drawn from the main book similar to how they did the 3rd edition pamphlets. You unlock them by selecting a particular option from a list of Chapter Tactics and limit the choices to one of these Chapter Tactics choices like they do in the Current 5th Edition Marine Codex.


So if I'm Blood Angels I can trade the standard Chapter Tactics out for the Blood Angel one which grants Furious Charge and allows you to take Assault Marines as troops and adds Death Company as a Troop choice. Want Dark Angels switch out Chapter Tactics and you get units with Stubborn. White Scars and look we have Hit and Run. Salamanders Twin Linked Flamers and Melta, Master Work Thunderhammers. Raven Guard units gain Fleet. Iron Hands units gain Bionics and have a natural 6+ Invulnerable save. Imperial Fists gain bolter drill for all units. Templars gain the advance when they fail morale.

Each unit could receive one or two signiture units to go with them and the choice of Chapter is no longer tied to a special character which saves characters to play with the force chart allocations. Want Deathwing take the Dark Angels Chapter Trait and than Captain of the 1st Company Special Character allows Termies as troops instead of elites. Ravenwing are the signature unit for the army in the fast slot and Master of the Ravenwing turns them into troops.

It solves the problem of redundant unformation being printed accross several codex and means that GW can update all the marine armies at the same time and keep them all competetive hopefully meaning consistent sales accross all lines instead of seeing spikes and valleys as the new books are realeased and people jump to the new flavour of the month.

It also means that design studio's time is opened up so we can have all armies updated with in the life span of an edition which would help those armies as they get the new codex sales spike and start adding more armies with out adversly affect the realease schedule. Want Squats there's now a hole to fill in the realeas schedule. Adaptus Mechanicus we now have a space for you. Always loved the Kroot Mercenaries list from White Dwarf, guess what we have time to develope it. Genestealer Cults welcome back to relevance. All optoions that can increase sales for GW and add extra options for players which should never be a bad thing.

Something like this could be done. They could make a second book to do DA, BA, and BT. They used to have something similar in second with BA/DA, it was called Angels of death (I swear I have that book here SOMEWHERE!). But putting them all in one book with vanilla SM wouldn't work. It also couldn't be something like "take hq x and now you're BA and can take assault marines as troops".

It could work if say for DA, in that book was something like: "If you are playing Dark Angels you make take the following:" All the unique DA characters, the Da unique special rules, and their unique units (fliers, speeders, RW units, and DW units), and then had something like "you may also take Space marines, scouts, devastators, predators, ect... from codex Space Marines at the cost listed using their regular force organization slots". Then have something like "if you select unit x from Codex space marines, it may take upgrade y for point value z".
Then do the same for BA and BT. They just need to make sure they don't leave out any of the units/rules/characters ect.

This solution would probably work, if done correctly. There are a few issues though. First, GW would have to wait until 7th, as they just had DA release. They would also have to wait until after the 7th ed C:SM codex, since it would be dependant on that. Another issue would be that for people playing BA, DA or BT would now have to pay twice as much to play their army. Now I need to pay $120 to play my army. Not an issue for me as I play both C:SM and DA, but my BA/necron playing friend is out an extra $60. Although this option is more fair than the pricier cost of the mega single dex for players who only play with the vanilla dex. Another problem is the number of books I need to carry. Now I need the BRB, C:SM, AND CA/BA/BT.

The other thing to consider is how much of a difference did that really just make. This book would be about the same size as a normal codex, and would basically be combining 3 books into 1. meaning they would have two less books to update in order to do them all. At the current rate of codex release, you're only saving about 4-6 months. Is it really that big of a deal to make all this fuss out of waiting a few months either way? And yes they release SM codex almost every other release, but the repetition probably aids in the process, meaning every other release takes less work.

In the future, I wouldn't mind a well executed compromise like this. But I still don't feel like it would be the huge difference some people make it out to be


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 Psienesis wrote:
2 Codices to Rule Them All (All Them Marines, that is).

One book, hardback, Codex: Space Marines of the Imperium, covers all loyalist Space Marines and includes rules for building your own Chapter. Has ~300 pages, retails for $150.

One book, hardback, Codex: Space Marines of the Traitor Legions, covers all Chaos Space Marines, as well as Renegades, and includes rules for building your own Traitor Warband. Has ~300 pages, retails for $150.

The price tag alone on such a book is why this idea is a sound no. If I'm only playing ultra marines, why should I have to pay triple for my codex? With tax, that's just under $300 per edition for BRB and codex.

 Peregrine wrote:
Marine armies are 90% the same. You start with a core of tactical/devastator/assault/terminator squads and then add in a few army-wide special rules and maybe a special unit or two. Obviously you can do more than this and make, say, long fangs special instead of just generic devastators, but that is NOT something inherent to the concept of long fangs. Long fangs could be represented perfectly well by a standard devastator squad painted in SW colors. .

Your a smart guy Peregrine, and normally your spot on. In this case I think your off.

The space marine codexes (BA, SW, C:SM, GK) are not 90% alike.
Take a look at the SW codex. Thunderwolves, really good 'tactical squads', assault bikes, and devastators that can split fire. They can have terminators in TAC squads, and have to decide to bring wolf guards or grab that extra special weapon.
The BA codex is more than just 'assault marines as troops. There is a variety of units in there that are unique to the army. In the way it plays its very aggressive in its playstyle.
The GK codex is not like any of the other C:SM codex's. All the models have storm bolters and force weapons. You often see multiple psydreads, and coteaz's imperial henchman brigade.

Those 3 can not be folded into C:SM without having major issues to the playstyle. Its not just 'adding a few units to C:SM' or 'tweaking the rules' unless you want to get rid of what makes those armies play so differently.

BT/DA are a different story.
DA don't have many special items unique to their chapter (yea, knights, the DJ speeder, and crap flyers). You could duplicate the ravenwing/deathwing with 2 special characters. The rest of the stuff is not needed.
BT has just a special character type. This could be completely rolled into C:SM in the next release.
DA will not be rolled up though. Releasing a new codex was a comittment to keep them in their own codex for at least a few years.

I say just keep things as is. I play DA and really like having my own codex. I know someone who plays salamanders and wishes they had their own codex. It offers more variety in units, wargear, and special rules. Plus with the clip that the dexs are coming out at the amount of them isn't a problem.

 pwntallica wrote:

Something like this could be done. They could make a second book to do DA, BA, and BT. They used to have something similar in second with BA/DA, it was called Angels of death (I swear I have that book here SOMEWHERE!). But putting them all in one book with vanilla SM wouldn't work. It also couldn't be something like "take hq x and now you're BA and can take assault marines as troops".

It could work if say for DA, in that book was something like: "If you are playing Dark Angels you make take the following:" All the unique DA characters, the Da unique special rules, and their unique units (fliers, speeders, RW units, and DW units), and then had something like "you may also take Space marines, scouts, devastators, predators, ect... from codex Space Marines at the cost listed using their regular force organization slots". Then have something like "if you select unit x from Codex space marines, it may take upgrade y for point value z".
Then do the same for BA and BT. They just need to make sure they don't leave out any of the units/rules/characters ect.

This solution would probably work, if done correctly. There are a few issues though. First, GW would have to wait until 7th, as they just had DA release. They would also have to wait until after the 7th ed C:SM codex, since it would be dependant on that. Another issue would be that for people playing BA, DA or BT would now have to pay twice as much to play their army. Now I need to pay $120 to play my army. Not an issue for me as I play both C:SM and DA, but my BA/necron playing friend is out an extra $60. Although this option is more fair than the pricier cost of the mega single dex for players who only play with the vanilla dex. Another problem is the number of books I need to carry. Now I need the BRB, C:SM, AND CA/BA/BT.

The other thing to consider is how much of a difference did that really just make. This book would be about the same size as a normal codex, and would basically be combining 3 books into 1. meaning they would have two less books to update in order to do them all. At the current rate of codex release, you're only saving about 4-6 months. Is it really that big of a deal to make all this fuss out of waiting a few months either way? And yes they release SM codex almost every other release, but the repetition probably aids in the process, meaning every other release takes less work.

In the future, I wouldn't mind a well executed compromise like this. But I still don't feel like it would be the huge difference some people make it out to be

Sort of, though there's no reason to wait until after C:SM 7 comes out. I mean, entire armies have gone 2+ entire editions of the game without an update, so there's no reason why this should wait.

Schmoozie basically spelled out how I would write it, though on reflection, I might break the Loyalist SM into 2 different Codices. Codices: Codex Adherent and Codex: Special Snowflakes (or something). In the one, you get all the Chapters that adhere to the Codex Astartes. In the other, you get all the Loyalist Chapters that don't. In either case though, at their cores, all SM Chapters are the same: Space-Monks in Power Armor. Stats-wise, the Marines of one Chapter are the same as the Marines of another, the only thing that really changes (from a tabletop perspective) is some war-gear choices and some SRs that apply to one Chapter but not to another. These variations do not justify 90-page books for each Chapter.

The price tag alone on such a book is why this idea is a sound no. If I'm only playing ultra marines, why should I have to pay triple for my codex? With tax, that's just under $300 per edition for BRB and codex.

Because you just got like 9 Codices in one, and if you ever want to play another Chapter, you can. You don't even need to buy new models, just repaint the ones you have.

 labmouse42 wrote:
Take a look at the SW codex. Thunderwolves, really good 'tactical squads', assault bikes, and devastators that can split fire. They can have terminators in TAC squads, and have to decide to bring wolf guards or grab that extra special weapon.

I stated from the beginning that SW are arguably unique enough to deserve a full codex, but remember what I said about the current specific rules not being the same as the fundamental concept of the army? Things like devastators that can split fire aren't in any way inherent to the concept of "Space Wolves", you could easily make a new codex that removed the ability and nothing fluff-wise would be lost.

The BA codex is more than just 'assault marines as troops. There is a variety of units in there that are unique to the army. In the way it plays its very aggressive in its playstyle.

There's a variety of units, but few, if any, of them have any reason to exist. For example, death company are just a nasty assault unit, they don't need their own special rules. You can represent them just fine by using the vanguard veterans rules, painting their armor black, and calling them death company in your fluff. The role in the army rules-wise will function exactly the same way. And the same is true for pretty much everything else "unique" about BA, it's special rules made for the sole purpose of filling an entire codex rather than something essential to representing a BA army properly on the tabletop.

The GK codex is not like any of the other C:SM codex's. All the models have storm bolters and force weapons. You often see multiple psydreads, and coteaz's imperial henchman brigade.

True. GK are different, but I already said that I would kill off GK as a separate codex and replace them with an entry in an allies supplement. GK are supposed to be a tiny elite, deployed only in special situations, not a full army fighting everyday battles.

SoloFalcon1138 wrote:There is no reason for them to be rolled in to the vanilla book.

... because almost everything that made them unique, ruleswise, are ways in which they're no longer unique. Basically, black templar get the "move when you shoot me" thing, and the ability (if not ever practically exercised) to take more than your usual amount of land raiders.

Now that everyone can take BT-patterned land raiders and land speeders, and can take drop pods, and can challenge, well... there's not much point to them anymore. They could just be regular space marines with interesting fluff, and a "move when you shoot me" chapter trait.

Moreover, sort of their schtick was that they were a fast, close-combat-oriented space marine army. Since their codex came out, we've gotten our current incarnations of space wolves, grey knights, and blood angels. BT have just simply been made redundant.

The important difference is that DA did it first. F-Miko Quote: page 2-5 comments from bottom
Actually the Ultramarines did....historically speaking. Codex angels of death was published released after Codex: Ultramarines.

in respect to armies of terminators..... bike armies etc. 2nd edition didn't have a FOC that defined a strict measure of balance, that is the only reason they decided to do 3rd edition btw..... before the release of AOD, they (DA/BA) only featured as a few pictures in the colour section of Codex: Ultramarines. and before that in Codex: space marines (or was it Imperial Marines....so long ago now)....
you are right that they were the first "themed" seperate of vanilla codex marines, but sadly other than that DA are generic marines the same with the other legions.

 Orkimedes1000 wrote:
The important difference is that DA did it first. F-Miko Quote: page 2-5 comments from bottom
Actually the Ultramarines did....historically speaking. Codex angels of death was published released after Codex: Ultramarines.

And Space Wolves were out before Ultramarines. Dark Angels and Blood Angels were the last variant Space Marine chapters of 2nd edition.

1. The Codex being priced beyond belief (like they aren't with special editions and all, btw a codex now in AUD cost $80, i collect, or have in the past 9 different chapters, do i want to pay $80 each hell no)
2. the Complaints that GW is price gouging again and making you pay for codex parts you don't wanna play (much like the codex's on offer, ie in particular generic space marines and other chapters not deemed elite enough to gain a seperate codex)
3. Armies look different BA have a very distinct look so do GK and DA and BT, So solution they sell bits boxes separately to "customize" your look (GW sells bits for most of their SM legions, so not really an issue here)
4. option 3 leads to complaints that GW is Price gouging again (these bits boxes wouldn't come cheap I'm sure, presently they are increasing stock price, so really what is different here????)
5. with everyone having access to all SM chapters the strongest one would likely ALWAYS get played at tourneys etc. leading to even more SM Cheese complaints (i am sure they already do that at tournaments)

is there anything that doesn't read "you don't like it" and are "grabbing at straws" and trying to find reasons of why this is a bad idea?
because
1. it might peeve off player
2. GW makes less money (like that'd be a problem, they increase price and do 57 second animation promotionals. they cost money you know. guess who foots the bill? you do thats who. the end user/consumer)
3. repeat option 1 & 2 rinse and repeat.

the only reason i suggested (originally) this as an idea to be played with because what happens if you collect 12 armies for warhammer 40k, are you prepared to either
1. cut down on collecting until your new Dex is released (and wait for all those shiny new releases by which time it'll be next edition and a whole set of changes example is edition to edition some units become obsolete)
2. stop playing those armies

and lastly 3. this would/could clarify a few things, they could release a new codex imperialis. scrap all codex's and use a Beastiary system similar to 4th edition fantasy battle, in one book have rules in other have pictures/bg fluff. if it worked for GW in the past why wouldn't it work now (beside the fact you may lose privilege of owning your own book? well you still could, and more beside) again this is an idea, it is not concrete, nor has it been implemented into 40k. so relax and enjoy the commentory. Absolutely last thing: increased price $130 is acceptable for a massive dex. they charged $140 for god specific chaos codex....where is the exact difference ?????


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@ loki: and codex space marines (RT book) came out before space wolves is there a point your making? the SW did come out before Codex UM sure, but they didn't make models for them until 2nd edition. in RT they showed generic space marines. it was only much later (and a different edition of rules) that the SW actually became a skeleton of what we know of them today. DA/BA/SW were the ONLY variants. until UM showed pictures of models cs from people in the studio's armies. really there is no Actual point to keep them in seperate books beside personal preference and that you don't want to share your codex with another legion's.

All loyalist marines could be released in two books... it won't ever happen, but it should.

 Psienesis wrote:
Has ~300 pages, retails for $150 and Has ~300 pages, retails for $150.

I hope you're being sarcastic, it's difficult to tell. Good luck getting new players to spend $150 on a book before they can even use their $150 of models.
I know I'd never spend $150 on a book.

you need to add a "roll into one" option. Get a SM codex that was like Chaos 3.5 dex Oh man that was an Amazing Codex.

 Ninjacommando wrote:
you need to add a "roll into one" option. Get a SM codex that was like Chaos 3.5 dex Oh man that was an Amazing Codex.

If by "amazing" you mean "convoluted and broken in more than one way" then yes.

generalchaos34 wrote:

 Vladamyr wrote:
I am very disheartened that the community at large wants to get rid of my BTs.....hopefully GW doesnt feel the same.

I got to break it to you, check out the GW website, the BT do not have their own entry on the army list, they are at the bottom of the SM entry, i dont know if its been like that, but im sure its not a good sign. They dont even warrant their own sidebar, and BA, DA, and SW all got their own, and all the shared SM units are simply reposted there.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/landingArmy.jsp?catId=cat440176a&rootCatGameStyle=wh40k

DA didn't have their own sidebar until they were updated, BA didn't have their own sidebar until they were updated, SW didn't have their own sidebar until they were updated. By all means, though, more doom and gloom, I'm sure we don't get enough of that as it is...

Personally there are far too many imperial books for my liking. I count 9 Imperial (including BT) vs 8 'Alien' (and one of those are ex-imperials...)

This is suppose to be a vast galaxy full of alien terror and new and disturbing grimdark. WHERE ARE MY ALIENS DAMMIT?!

Back on Topic: I'd have no problem having all SMs bar Grey Knights and CSM (for obvious reasons), rolled into one bumper flufftastic codex. I mean they are all the same at there core.

 labmouse42 wrote:

The space marine codexes (BA, SW, C:SM, GK) are not 90% alike.
Take a look at the SW codex. ... really good 'tactical squads', assault bikes, and devastators that can split fire...

Personally, I think this is a strong argument for rolling them together. There's no reason that only one marine chapter should have effective 'tactical squads', nor that only one marine chapter should be allowed to split a unit's fire.

 Redbeard wrote:

 labmouse42 wrote:

The space marine codexes (BA, SW, C:SM, GK) are not 90% alike.
Take a look at the SW codex. ... really good 'tactical squads', assault bikes, and devastators that can split fire...

Personally, I think this is a strong argument for rolling them together. There's no reason that only one marine chapter should have effective 'tactical squads', nor that only one marine chapter should be allowed to split a unit's fire.

My only worry was if they were all put in one book - you'd see all marines using them all the time.

You could end up with things like Long fang spam, with split fire, ablative wounds and fnp from a sanguinary priest.
Grey hunters wouldn't just be for the space wolves, everyone would have them.

Armies made of the cheapest troops, with the most abusive special character rules.
The normal sm dex is enough 'fun' - fighting Lysander/Kantor/Vulcan/Calgar at the same time etc - now add all the rest of the unique units like Logan Grimnar, Mephiston, Baal predators, Deathwing Knights

I think it would be a good codex to play with, but there would be so many spam builds/abusive lists that people would bring.

I think they should be kept separate, but traits would be a nice addition (as in 4th)
Then they wouldn't have to clamp down with so many loopholes - balance would be easier.

I like that not all marines have the same options - it limits the amount of rune priests

PredaKhaine wrote:

My only worry was if they were all put in one book - you'd see all marines using them all the time.

You're assuming that they'd take everything they currently have and just put it together in the exact same way it is now, and that's not the way to do this. The right way to do it is to actually charge points for things that have a beneficial ability, and then make them available.

For example:
How are Long Fangs able to split fire? It's an ability granted to them by their squad leader. Devastators have squad leaders too. What if that ability cost 15 points? 10? I dunno the right cost for it offhand, but it's clearly worth something. If you get that cost correct, it's no longer an auto-take, it's a choice, it's a tradeoff for what works for the army being designed. (In fact, you could take this a step further, and allow any Sgt to take this ability, thereby allowing Rocket Guy to fire at a tank, while the other 9 guys with bolters lay down some bolter fire on enemy troops.) The idea that only one chapter, in the entire Imperium, figured out that not every single marine had to shoot at the same target is kind of ridiculous.

BT has needed an update for eight years. Other chapters got their updates in the interim and were fleshed out to stand apart from the UM book. BT just sat there. Its as simple and obvious as that, and stating the difference between chapters just boils down to who got updated in 5th/6th. GW taking the time to take our core concept, tweak points, and add new units and tactics would have the same effect as the updates for BA and DA had (who were more or less C:SM with a couple small tweaks). The numerous posts Ive read stating "I dont see why BT couldnt be rolled, theyre just an EC and casualty movement" obviously havent done their homework and probably shouldnt be arguing with the people who actually have a clue.

BT has a book, and the fans want to keep it. End of story. GW practically owes it to use after all this time collecting dust. Lumping into the UM book with a couple chapter traits, to me, is quite frankly insulting. Not to mention Im insulted whenever I read a post suggesting my army become redundant, when I have spent countless dollars and time into something I love.

Im surprised at this website, when a mod can start a thread that (when monitoring General and seeing similar threads pop up every month) will knowingly get the unpopular army trashed and start 4 pages of argument in a day.

 Redbeard wrote:

PredaKhaine wrote:

My only worry was if they were all put in one book - you'd see all marines using them all the time.

You're assuming that they'd take everything they currently have and just put it together in the exact same way it is now, and that's not the way to do this. The right way to do it is to actually charge points for things that have a beneficial ability, and then make them available.

For example:
How are Long Fangs able to split fire? It's an ability granted to them by their squad leader. Devastators have squad leaders too. What if that ability cost 15 points? 10? I dunno the right cost for it offhand, but it's clearly worth something. If you get that cost correct, it's no longer an auto-take, it's a choice, it's a tradeoff for what works for the army being designed. (In fact, you could take this a step further, and allow any Sgt to take this ability, thereby allowing Rocket Guy to fire at a tank, while the other 9 guys with bolters lay down some bolter fire on enemy troops.) The idea that only one chapter, in the entire Imperium, figured out that not every single marine had to shoot at the same target is kind of ridiculous.

It used to be everyone could shoot what they liked with whoever they liked in 2nd ed. A 2000pt game took about 3 days (for us anyway )

So rather than a single 'ultramega' codex detailing your options, you're thinking more of an army 'creater', choosing rules that best fit your chapter. I like the idea, it's similar to the traits system from 4th ed.
If you broke it down into points per ability/upgrade that would cost a lot of points to get everything, so it might even out.

I guess my point is I have more faith in WAAC players finding ways to abuse rules than GW making it tight enough to stop them. But hey, whats new

I'd still play against it.

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
Im surprised at this website, when a mod can start a thread that will knowingly get the unpopular army trashed and start 4 pages of argument in a day.

You are the one who is trying to get that ball rolling so please quit it.

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
BT has a book, and the fans want to keep it. End of story. GW practically owes it to use after all this time collecting dust. Lumping into the UM book with a couple chapter traits, to me, is quite frankly insulting. Not to mention Im insulted whenever I read a post suggesting my army become redundant, when I have spent countless dollars and time into something I love.

How would having the BT lumped with C:SM be insulting?
Why would it make your army redundant? Could you not still play it? Especially if you swapped chapter tactics for the BT ability to rush into the maws of death?

If it were me? We'd have Codex: Space Marines, Codex: Chaos Space Marines, and if they weren't merged with a larger INQ book, Codex: Grey Knights.

Honestly, anyone saying that Space Wolves or Black Templars or Blood Angels or Dark Angels are as distinct from Codex: Space Marines as Codex: Imperial Guard or Codex: Orks is, is being delusional, and if they aren't that distinct, they really have no business being their own book. Likewise, trying to argue that any of those loyalist SM armies are for some reason more distinct than the Traitor Legions and Chaos renegades are from each other is also quite silly, and if those don't warrant their own codex, then the loyalists certainly don't.

Most of what makes these variant SM codex's "unique" is silly stuff like wargear/weapon/option swaps, with relatively few truly unique units. Much of the variation in these books came long after their initial spin-off to simply justify their continued existence but really not quite making it. Codex: Blood Angels for example is still about 85% Codex: Space Marines (with much of the rest of the 15% being, well, weapon/wargear/option swaps, such as the Baal predator), and, barring characters, you really could fit everything that makes Codex:BA into a two page supplement for Codex: SM (yes, really), character entries may take another couple pages, but that's about it.


There's justification for a differentiation between Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines and Grey Knights (if they must be their own book), but beyond that, no, nothing *needs* its own codex, you could fit everything for most of the variants (barring character entries) in 1-3 pages in a sub-codex ala-CSM 3.5.



Honestly, I think variant SM books is something that Forgeworld should handle, not the core studio unless they're just 3.5-esque sublists. They're no different than say, the IA Krieg or Elysian lists, and they should be treated as such. As is, we've got a quarter of the armies as loyalist variants taking up release/marketing pipeline that, until recently as GW has now started putting out releases much faster, was effectively adding ~2 years to the cycle to revisit the entire line.

 Griddlelol wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Has ~300 pages, retails for $150 and Has ~300 pages, retails for $150.

I hope you're being sarcastic, it's difficult to tell. Good luck getting new players to spend $150 on a book before they can even use their $150 of models.
I know I'd never spend $150 on a book.

Never played an RPG, have you? We don't buy hundreds of minis (usually), but the price in books alone can reach $1000. I have, easily, $600 in Dark Heresy books, and probably ~$200 each in each of the other 40K RPGs (Deathwatch, Rogue Trader, Black Crusade, Only War). People are currently paying $100 for the AOBR boxed set. Give them an option for the rules to half a dozen (or more) armies in one book? Hell, yes, people will buy that.

Why is it that people think that a 300 page codex would be $150?

Flames of War, the FFG 40k RPG's, Warmachine, etc all put out ~300page hardcover and full-color books for $50, the gigantic and overcosted 40k core rulebook is only $75.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Why is it that people think that a 300 page codex would be $150?

Flames of War, the FFG 40k RPG's, Warmachine, etc all put out ~300page hardcover and full-color books for $50, the gigantic and overcosted 40k core rulebook is only $75.

I think we just assume that GW = Money Grab and thats how they value stuff. If GW were to make something as cool as a Codex Astartes it would be an astronomical cost

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
The numerous posts Ive read stating "I dont see why BT couldnt be rolled, theyre just an EC and casualty movement" obviously havent done their homework and probably shouldnt be arguing with the people who actually have a clue.

If I was a jerk, I'd point out that I've been playing 40k longer than you, have a 10,000+ point army of Black Templars, and they're my favorite chapter/army/whatever and that it's you that don't have a clue. However, that would be a jerk thing to say. EVERYONE is entitled to their own opinions. I want the BT to get their own codex. That's my first preference. If they're rolled into the Space Marines codex, then I'll just have to deal with it.

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
BT has a book, and the fans want to keep it. End of story.

Fans do want to keep it. I certainly do. But that's not the end of the story. The end of the story is what does GW want to do with them?

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
GW practically owes it to use after all this time collecting dust.

GW doesn't owe anyone anything. Except whomever they rent their property from, their share holders, and their vendors. And what, exactly, is collecting dust? My Templars get used all of the time. Mostly as Black Templars. Sometimes as Sons of Dorn (Codex: Space Marines). If you shelve yours, that's your decision I suppose.

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
Lumping into the UM book with a couple chapter traits, to me, is quite frankly insulting. Not to mention Im insulted whenever I read a post suggesting my army become redundant, when I have spent countless dollars and time into something I love.

How exactly is this insulting? You'll have to explain this one to me. Did GW come to your home and slap your mother?

Also, how does using them via the Space Marine codex destroy the countless dollars and time you've put into them? You'll still be able to play them. Guess what? Armies change all of the time. What's effective today might be less than stellar with the next up date.

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
Im surprised at this website, when a mod can start a thread that (when monitoring General and seeing similar threads pop up every month) will knowingly get the unpopular army trashed and start 4 pages of argument in a day.

Not a single person has trashed the Black Templars. Not one. Any insult you perceive is exactly that: YOUR perception. You are getting entirely too riled up over this thread and it isn't healthy. No one here wants them to get "squatted". Don't be so close minded. Further, the mod that started this is simply asking people's opinions of what people would cut. That's far different from saying "Which codex sucks the most? OMG LOL!"

Finally, if you think anyone in this thread is trolling you or attacking you personally, use the little yellow triangle with the exclamation point in the upper left corner of their post.

 Vaktathi wrote:
As is, we've got a quarter of the armies as loyalist variants taking up release/marketing pipeline that

Actually, it's about half.

Half are Imperial, yes, but only about a quarter are variants - Sisters, Inquisition, Guard and 'nillaMarines are all legitimate codices.

 kronk wrote:

No one here wants them to get "squatted".

Wouldn't be so sure about that.

I know the OP loves the Black Templars, right Mr Manchu?



Is it really changing the order of releases or the speed of GW if a codex or multiple codices are 'cut' ?
Maybe they just need someone to put them on "full ahead" instead of wasting time with limited stuff.

Codices are of a certain price range, size and layout per edition.
Would the "omni-super-special-dex" fit into this?
If not and thats likely to happen, things are getting "squatted"...

 1hadhq wrote:
I know the OP loves the Black Templars, right Mr Manchu?

I do really like the BT because I think they are extremely interesting. As you know, I see them on the edge of falling to Chaos. That doesn't mean I don't like them -- just that my own interpretation is different than yours.

For the record, I voted that GW already has it right. I want a separate BT book in 6E with some cool exclusive options for them. They are one of the few SM chapters I seriously consider playing.

I remember when every founding chapter had its own rules. I still own the Index Astartes series. (Every chaos legion had special rules too).

How is it more insulting to a Black Templar player, whose army was originally a tack-on in a campaign supplement to have to go back to being part of the general Marine system, than it was an insult to take away the White Scars special rules, the Iron Hands special rules, or the Death Guard, or Emperor's Children, or Alpha Legion's?

If all of those can do without special snowflake rules, then so can Black Templar, Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Space Wolves.

Why should it be all or nothing? I don't know how folding any of BA, BT, DA, or SW back into the vanilla codex makes up for or justifies taking away special rules for WS, IF, RG, etc.

Also, Black Templar are the best looking chapter!

That's a very Orky land raider.

One can never have too many lascannons.

Unless you roll too many ones and suffer a power overload... Terminus Ultra Data Sheet

 Manchu wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Yes, it was.

No, it wasn't. Of course SoB are not SM. His point was that if I was going to have CSM and GK on the list then I might as well have SoB because the only thing CSM and GK have in common with other SM is power armor. That was his point. It is incorrect. Take the power armor off a GK and you have a naked SM. Take the power armor off of a CSM and you have a naked (perhaps mutated) evil SM. Take the power armor off a Sororitas and you have a naked human being.

Ummmmm lol no? Take the armour off a cultist, you have a human. Take the armour off a plague you have T5 feel no pain mutation. Take the armour off a thousand son....well......

Regular CSM are not even really used as much as cult marines and cultists I find.

Take the armour off a grey knight and you have a psyker. Take the armour off a henchman and you got a human.

Grey knights and chaos are far to gone from SM to warrant them really being them any more.

There are two ways of looking at this.

Either you cut any non-first founding chapters and roll those into the big SM book or you break out the books to cover certain ideologies and group chapters together.

 Manchu wrote:
Why should it be all or nothing? I don't know how folding any of BA, BT, DA, or SW back into the vanilla codex makes up for or justifies taking away special rules for WS, IF, RG, etc.

Yes, one of if not the most loyal chapter to the emperor, forbids psykers, takes an 8 tons of vows to the emporer and and even has a unit called the emperors champion is about to fall to chaos

 Manchu wrote:
Why should it be all or nothing? I don't know how folding any of BA, BT, DA, or SW back into the vanilla codex makes up for or justifies taking away special rules for WS, IF, RG, etc.

I think idea that these armies *need* their own book in and of itself is an issue personally. They don't really, almost everything unique about them as an army (that can't be attributed to edition/design studio shifts) could be included as a 1-3 page sublist to C:SM barring characters. Much of the "unique" stuff is relatively new for these factions, created to justify their existence as a distinct codex when otherwise not really required, and that really makes one question why these armies need their own books, especially when lots of other subfactions are far more diverse and will never in a million years get their own book (e.g. there will never be a Codex: Thousand Sons or Codex: Ulthwe)

If the Catachans could be successfully reintegrated into a single book after having their own codex, so can (and should) SW/BA/BT/BA.

 Manchu wrote:
the only thing CSM and GK have in common with other SM is power armor.

That's not true.

They also have the fact that they're space marines in common.

You know, instead of being human.

Disclaimer: I'm not advocating anything in this thread. Just contradicting a false assertion.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:
Add DC into C:SM, bam, there's Blood Angels done. Special Bikes/Terminators for DA, slight FOC change for SW. Don't see why they need 3 codicies worth $50+ each just to cover a couple niche units. The World Eaters Legion is represented by a single elite choice and a special character. Even worse is the marine fanboys who cry for more specials in their own homebrews /facepalm

Notice the part where pretty much every World Eater player hates it? Or, you know, the part where your suggestions would completely gut BA?

Why should BA exist as a niche of an army that already exists in the game 4 times? Also, why should I care? When I got into playing BA shared a codex with DA and there were no problems.

clively wrote:
There are two ways of looking at this.

Either you cut any non-first or second founding chapters and roll those into the big SM book or you break out the books to cover certain ideologies and group chapters together.

Fixed that. Second Founding Chapters have the same history during the Heresy as the Legions, it's only from 3rd founding onwards that they start making new Chapters without the heritage of having been a Legion.

It doesn't make up for it, it's just a continuation of a design ideal.

It doesn't make sense to say four chapters are super-special, and all others can be governed by one set of rules. Especially when it can (easily) be argued that the differences between the chaos legions who are dedicated to specific gods are far greater than the relatively minor differences in how the blood angels or dark angels designate their squads.

It really seems to come down to GW's schizophrenic approach to game design, and inability to stick with any one ideal for more than three or four codexes. Obviously at some point, they said, we don't want different armies for every little thing. They took craftworlds away from the eldar, they took legions away from chaos, and they took klans and kults away from orks.

In terms of competitive play, this both reduced the variety of what we actually see at tournaments, but also made it easier to plan for what you might be expected to face. Playing against Iron Warriors was very different from playing against World Eaters, even if they did come from the same book. At one point there were over 30 different army lists you could pick from.

Someone, somewhere, decided this was too much, and so the great consolidation began. And, in a way, it was a good thing. The difference between an Ulthwe guardian and a Biel-tan guardian shouldn't be that important. But, as others have predicted if any current armies get rolled into the Marine codex, we also lost variety. Chaos armies all seemed to morph towards Plague Marines and Obliterators. Eldar Armies all took on a Sam-Hein look (for a while), yet all had Eldrad too.

From a "fun" perspective, I actually would prefer to see 40 different army lists, each one with distinct limitations. But from a game-design perspective (and, with some hope of ever having a balanced game), I think consolidating the armies that are essentially power-armoured soldiers of the Imperium into a single book makes more sense. It should be up to the Marine players to design armies that fit the theme of their chapter, not up to the rules-teams.

As an aside, here's a (probably incomplete) list of armies that used to have distinct army lists, and got rolled into one generic one:

Eldar: Biel-tan, Ulthwe, Iyanden, Alaitoc, and Sam-Hain (And possibly non-official Harlequins and Exodites)

Orks: Bad Moons, Evil Suns, Goffs, Blood Axes, Snakebites, Deathskulls, Kult of Speed, and Feral Orks

Chaos: Emperor's Children, Death Guard, World Eaters, Thousand Sons, Night Lords, Alpha Legion, Word Bearers and Iron Warriors, Lost and the Damned

Marines: White Scars, Iron Hands, Crimson Fists, Salamanders, Imperial Fists, Deathwatch, Flesh Tearers, Raven Guard

IG: Armoured Company, Catachans, Cadians

So, before the Space Wolf, Dark Angel, Bood Angel or Black Templars players get so bent out of shape about how awful this would be, remember, it's happened before. I've got three armies from that list that got rolled in before. It's not the end of the world.

What about putting the Dark Angels and Blood Angels together (Angels of ___), and the Space Wolves, Black Templars, and Space Sharks together (Codex: Abhorrent, yet Loyal).

 Ozomoto wrote:
Grey knights and chaos are far to gone from SM to warrant them really being them any more.

Even if this is true, which it is not (or at least it is not necessarily true), it is irrelevant: no matter what, one has to be a SM in order to be either a GK or CSM. This is not the case for SoB. I don't know why you people are being so obtuse on this issue.

 Melissia wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
the only thing CSM and GK have in common with other SM is power armor.

That's not true.

They also have the fact that they're space marines in common.

That was my point.

 Vaktathi wrote:
If the Catachans could be successfully reintegrated into a single book

I'm not sure that they have been, honestly.

 Ozomoto wrote:
Yes, one of if not the most loyal chapter to the emperor, forbids psykers, takes an 8 tons of vows to the emporer and and even has a unit called the emperors champion is about to fall to chaos

Nice litany of overcompensation. Meanwhile, none of the First Founding chapters -- which proved their loyalty in the HH itself (including the IF, who defended the Palace) -- feel the need to do any of that. Anyway, my theory is that Dorn was on the knife's edge after the HH. It came to a head during his stand off with Guilliman. He formally relented and turned the IF into the chapter second only to the UM in codex-adherence. Meanwhile, all his bitterness, rage, insecurity, and regret were split off as the super-noncompliant BT. This isn't really the thread to debate that theory but I thought I'd explain it a bit more as an example of both why I personally find them to be extremely interesting and why I think they should have their own dex -- to my mind, they represent the Legion-model rather than the Chapter-model. It's not exactly what a Legion was like in M31 but it is closer, generally, than what any other chapter (including the SW) is doing in M41-42.

The breaking point of any "condensed" codex debate is when the design throughout an edition is ignored.

3rd had a space marine codex and multiple sub-codices. Some additonal mini-dex and even campaign lists, a index astartes series all make sense with this approach.

6th ed and 5th ed before, got nothing like Index Astartes or Chapter approved.
There was a period with expansions, maybe a return to a Main Astartes codex as the "home-base" and expansions to detail the former Legions and their successors in M41 could keep the cost down and the minimum of Books to play affordable. The fluff-nuts could still fork over their income directly to have it all..
Secondly, they don't need to stop with marines.

As a theory:
- Main Rulebook
- Main Codex of xyz
- Expansion of xyz

Means anyone can do fine with just the rulebook and a codex. Want more? Expansions are your friend.
A chapter based on the main "SM" dex and the specified data of the "astartes" expansion could provide a lot. Same for everyone else.
Orks? codex orks and "ork klans" , codex Eldar and " craftworlds ( or a combined craftworlds, commoragh and the exodites book ), etc.
The core rulebook provides the rules and a short run down of the background.
A codex provides the specific rules and a basic overview of the background.
Expansions give the details, multiple lists and in depth background.
Sounds complicated but if the company has the basic codices running before the edition is out in the public, timed releases of expansions and models can keep the fanbase busy. Could balance the game too if the foundation is made at once.

But actually its a mess of codices, i-codices ( not localized ! ), limited release nonsense.
I believe the transfer to digital publications is the right spot to move from limited access towards expansions.

 Manchu wrote:

Melissia wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
the only thing CSM and GK have in common with other SM is power armor.

That's not true.

They also have the fact that they're space marines in common.

That was my point.

You made it out as if they didn't have anything in common but power armor.

Except that they have more in common than that.

 Melissia wrote:
You made it out as if they didn't have anything in common but power armor.

Except that they have more in common than that.

Try again. The part you quoted is in blue; the part you didn't read/understand is in red:

 Manchu wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Yes, it was.

No, it wasn't. Of course SoB are not SM. His point was that if I was going to have CSM and GK on the list then I might as well have SoB because the only thing CSM and GK have in common with other SM is power armor. That was his point. It is incorrect. Take the power armor off a GK and you have a naked SM. Take the power armor off of a CSM and you have a naked (perhaps mutated) evil SM. Take the power armor off a Sororitas and you have a naked human being.

Do you see how I characterized what you misattributed to me as someone else's point in that very post? And then distinguished it from my own?

 Vaktathi wrote:
Honestly, anyone saying that Space Wolves or Black Templars or Blood Angels or Dark Angels are as distinct from Codex: Space Marines as Codex: Imperial Guard or Codex: Orks is, is being delusional, and if they aren't that distinct, they really have no business being their own book.

I'm not saying that the different chapters are as different from vanilla marines as tau are from necrons, but I am saying they are different enough. To paraphrase my previous point, I proposed one separate supplementary dex to contain BA/DA/BT, that would be used with C:SM. I really don't see an issue with this approach.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Likewise, trying to argue that any of those loyalist SM armies are for some reason more distinct than the Traitor Legions and Chaos renegades are from each other is also quite silly, and if those don't warrant their own codex, then the loyalists certainly don't.

I'm not going to argue either way if they are more of less different than certain traitor legions because it has no baring on my point of view on this thread. But I will agree with you that there should be something similar to my above proposal for CSM. A separate supplementary book that lets you run your CSM as one of the specific legions.

But if they were to do both those things, then they would have only reduced the number of codex books by 1, and people would still complain about unrealistically cramming all the SM armies in one book, and then start on cramming the legion book, CSM, and CD into one book again.

 Manchu wrote:
Do you see how I characterized what you misattributed to me as someone else's point in that very post? And then distinguished it from my own?

Yes. Sorry about that.

I'm just used to people trying to act like space marines aren't space marines.

 Melissia wrote:
I'm just used to people trying to act like space marines aren't space marines.

You aren't used to me acting that way.

And yet, even so, I still have no real problem with there being functionally seven SM codices. TBH, I think 40k is a game about Space Marines and everyone else is just who they fight against or beside. I'm not saying it always has been that or always will be that or that it's best. But I don't see it as a bad thing, either.

 Manchu wrote:
And yet, even so, I still have no real problem with there being functionally seven SM codices. TBH, I think 40k is a game about Space Marines and everyone else is just who they fight against or beside. I'm not saying it always has been that or always will be that or that it's best. But I don't see it as a bad thing, either.

I wouldn't have a problem with it if it wasn't JUST marines having seven books about basically the same exact guys. But it is. I'm not taking any position on cutting codices, I'd just like to see more, and more consistent updating while we're at it.

And while I'm wishing for heavenly bliss, I might as well also ask to win the lottery as well.

I think having multiple books could be a bad thing or at least inappropriate for some existing factions. SoB orders, for example, seem more uniform than either SM chapters or IG regiments. Similarly, there is a cultural uniformity among Craftworlders -- the path system is common and crucial to them all. I'm not sure it would make any sense to sort out Tyranids into different lists. And the Tau all like to do things the same way, at least ideally.

 Manchu wrote:
I think having multiple books could be a bad thing or at least inappropriate for some existing factions. SoB orders, for example, seem more uniform than either SM chapters or IG regiments. Similarly, there is a cultural uniformity among Craftworlders -- the path system is common and crucial to them all. I'm not sure it would make any sense to sort out Tyranids into different lists. And the Tau all like to do things the same way, at least ideally.

And ideally Space Marines all act the same way, too! That's why they have the Codex Astartes after all. But... there's a few exceptions just like everyone else (even Tau despite their tiny, insignificant size!). The difference is that those exceptions are given their own books, unlike everyone else.

 Manchu wrote:
I think having multiple books could be a bad thing or at least inappropriate for some existing factions. SoB orders, for example, seem more uniform than either SM chapters or IG regiments.

We could start by SoB getting one book...

 Melissia wrote:
And ideally Space Marines all act the same way, too! That's why they have the Codex Astartes after all.

Exactly so -- which is why the SM who get their own books are played up as non-adherent (even if that is debatable).

 Crimson wrote:
We could start by SoB getting one book...

Keep in mind they have done once already. And, if C:GK in any indication, will probably do so again if/when they "return" at all.

pwntallica wrote:
I'm not saying that the different chapters are as different from vanilla marines as tau are from necrons, but I am saying they are different enough.

If the differences can be covered in 1-3 pages of rules, it's hard to see how they'd need an entire book. Look at BA's, they've got Death Company, Sanguinary Guard, Sanguinary priests and everything else is largely stat/FoC/weapon/special rule/etc swaps and can be covered in a couple pages of "may take X with the following changes for Y points".

To paraphrase my previous point, I proposed one separate supplementary dex to contain BA/DA/BT, that would be used with C:SM. I really don't see an issue with this approach.

It would certainly be better than the current situation, and entirely doable, though I still think they all could easily be fit in a single book with their variety largely intact.

But if they were to do both those things, then they would have only reduced the number of codex books by 1, and people would still complain about unrealistically cramming all the SM armies in one book, and then start on cramming the legion book, CSM, and CD into one book again.

See, I don't think it's unrealistic to have everything in one book. The CSM 3.5 dex did it wonderfully. It had its issues, but they were largely issues of execution not of the underlying concept. The vast majority of the chapter-specific stuff is variations on existing units of some type, be they weapon swaps or stat changes or FoC swaps, etc. The few actual unique units and rules wouldn't have much trouble being covered in a relatively small number of pages.

A great example can be found in the game Heavy Gear. With hundreds of units and variants in the game they manage to create rules for different city states for each league (e.g. roughly analgous to individual chapter rules within say, C:SM) and different types of regiments (armor, infantry, gear, para, specops), along with universal and unit specific veteran rules, and they could all fit on maybe a ten pages if you took out the huge big color pictures. If they can do it, with like 2 permanent staff members, certainly GW can.

 Manchu wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
And ideally Space Marines all act the same way, too! That's why they have the Codex Astartes after all.

Exactly so -- which is why the SM who get their own books are played up as non-adherent (even if that is debatable).

So give books to the exceptions of other factions.

The only reason Sisterhood orders seem more uniform than Marine chapters is because there hasn't been a Codex: Argent Shroud or Codex: Ebon Chalice.

Somehow, Martyred Lady are the 'default' Sisters, even though really it should be Ebon Chalice if you go based off which Order is associated with the leading Saint. But then, Dark Angels should be the default Astartes by the same logic, lol.

There could be two Tau codices - Tau Empire and Farsight Enclave.

There could be two Dark Eldar codices - DEldar: Kabals and DEldar: Covens of the Haemonculi

There could be two Necron codices - Codex Necrons: The Triarch Legacy and Necrons: The New Way (with TNW including things like Deathmarks and Wraiths whose use in war is forbidden under the Triarch's laws).

There could be SIX Ork Codices!

 Psienesis wrote:

Never played an RPG, have you?

Nope, I find the whole role playing thing to be a little weird and unsavoury, but that's irrelevant to the topic.

We don't buy hundreds of minis (usually), but the price in books alone can reach $1000.

Really? See that may be your experience, but most people I know have the rule book (between $15 and $75) and two codices. That's nothing like the $1000 you're experiencing. I've not paid for a single new book, getting my rule book and two codices off ebay. My overall expenditure has been in the range of $60.

Give them an option for the rules to half a dozen (or more) armies in one book? Hell, yes, people will buy that.

The people who are already in the game would do that, I agree. However someone just starting, I feel would be a little irritated that not only did they spend $100 on something where they intend to only use 1/2 the models, but then they have to buy a book that they are only going to use 1/6 of the rules.
If I was told "oh to play space wolves you need to buy the C:SM, BA, DA, SW and BT books, I'd tell the clerk to find another customer while I head on over to my friends house with a scanner.

There could be any number of new books depending on what kind of new fluff you wanted to introduce. But here we are without that fluff, at least with regard to the examples I gave. So the issue is not what could be made up in the future -- because that's rather pointless, it could be just about anything (Codex: Chaos Sisters, Codex: Chaos Tau) -- but rather what is currently known. With Tau, you have special characters doing all the necessary work -- because no different units are at issue. Same goes from Necrons and Deldar. By contrast, should there be Sanguinary Priest, or Interrogator Chaplain, or Tunderwolf options in a vanilla SM book?

I guess the difference can be summed up as talking about creating new things on the one hand, which is not what I'm talking about, and how to best preserve what already exists on the other hand.

 Manchu wrote:
should there be [...] Tunderwolf options in a vanilla SM book?

Dude, I don't even think there should be TWC in the Space Wolf codex.

I don't think I'd cut anything, really. If there are people who'd buy specialized rules for each chapter, then there's no reason GW shouldn't make them.

Just keep it fething balanced, and don't let other armies to out of date for it.

 Melissia wrote:
I don't even think there should be TWC in the Space Wolf codex.

And plenty of people don't like Tomb Crons. But that's what we have.

 Manchu wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
I don't even think there should be TWC in the Space Wolf codex.

And plenty of people don't like Tomb Crons. But that's what we have.

Heh, tombcrons. That's a new one for me.

I'm just saying, there is a completely different level at which this question could be answered -- something like, what do you hate about the setting as-is and what codex structure would fix that? But I had something else in mind, namely, given the fluff and rules as they currently exists in GW's publications, could some of the SM books be folded into each other or would there need to be more books, etc?

 Manchu wrote:
I'm just saying, there is a completely different level at which this question could be answered -- something like, what do you hate about the setting as-is and what codex structure would fix that? But I had something else in mind, namely, given the fluff and rules as they currently exists in GW's publications, could some of the SM books be folded into each other or would there need to be more books, etc?

For me, I think that lies at the heart of why I wouldn't cut anything. Or much, at any rate. Maybe BT or BA don't warrant their own codex. I dunno, I'm not familiar enough with those armies to say. But Grey Knights and Space Wolves do operate in a radically different way from vanilla marines, to the point that a separate codex might be justifiable. I feel like if GW handled it better, and made more balanced books and kept things up to date as opposed to using it as an excuse to indulge in powercreep shenanigans, everyone would be a lot happier about it.

C:SM is the baseline 40k army. The next level of "core-ness" is MEQ. One benefit of having so many SM (=MEQ) books is that GW can test out core-level changes (e.g., splitting fire) without necessarily risking the baseline.

To OP: I get what you are trying to say about grey knights and chaos but to make a fair comparison:

Sisters should not have there own codex, they should be regular guard with the ability to upgrade to power armour, as they are regular humans.

Dark eldar should not have there own codex either, as they are eldar.

Ok, so "technically" fluff wise they are (or once were) space marines, but its not fair to throw their codex in the same boat as blood angels or BT (which I play btw) when even there basic stat line are not space marine any more.

 Manchu wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
And ideally Space Marines all act the same way, too! That's why they have the Codex Astartes after all.

Exactly so -- which is why the SM who get their own books are played up as non-adherent (even if that is debatable).

 Crimson wrote:
We could start by SoB getting one book...

Keep in mind they have done once already. And, if C:GK in any indication, will probably do so again if/when they "return" at all.

I have a feeling that, if the Kroot are gone from the new Tau codex, they will release a Mercenaries codex. And then we'll see 6th ed Sisters of battle, but just new rules. No new models, no new units.This is just conjecture, however, but I would not be surprised if that did happen.

 Ozomoto wrote:
To OP: I get what you are trying to say about grey knights and chaos but to make a fair comparison:

Sisters should not have there own codex, they should be regular guard with the ability to upgrade to power armour, as they are regular humans.

Dark eldar should not have there own codex either, as they are eldar.

Ok, so "technically" fluff wise they are (or once were) space marines, but its not fair to throw their codex in the same boat as blood angels or BT (which I play btw) when even there basic stat line are not space marine any more.

Just had a 'what am I reading?' Moment. I mean, I'm no expert, but lets be real here, Dark Eldar and SoB need their own codex. You can't roll them into Eldar and IG, respectively, because the force operates differently on an intrinsic level. Different units,different combat philosophy, different rules. There's a lot more that goes into a codex than simple statlines.

 TermiesInARaider wrote:

 Ozomoto wrote:
To OP: I get what you are trying to say about grey knights and chaos but to make a fair comparison:

Sisters should not have there own codex, they should be regular guard with the ability to upgrade to power armour, as they are regular humans.

Dark eldar should not have there own codex either, as they are eldar.

Ok, so "technically" fluff wise they are (or once were) space marines, but its not fair to throw their codex in the same boat as blood angels or BT (which I play btw) when even there basic stat line are not space marine any more.

Just had a 'what am I reading?' Moment. I mean, I'm no expert, but lets be real here, Dark Eldar and SoB need their own codex. You can't roll them into Eldar and IG, respectively, because the force operates differently on an intrinsic level. Different units,different combat philosophy, different rules. There's a lot more that goes into a codex than simple statlines.

Ya...... that is exactly what im saying? This post is basically about if the SM codex are to similar and should be abolished. Im arguing that even having chaos and grey knights in the options is not fair, let alone arguing if they should be cut. Im saying what you are saying, idk where your getting what i m saying from?


Edit: To clarify i was using the examples of sisters of battle being humans etc to argue that chaos and gk are SM, but at the end of the day aren't. It wasn't entirely clear without reading my previous posts.

 Manchu wrote:
I'm just saying, there is a completely different level at which this question could be answered -- something like, what do you hate about the setting as-is and what codex structure would fix that? But I had something else in mind, namely, given the fluff and rules as they currently exists in GW's publications, could some of the SM books be folded into each other or would there need to be more books, etc?

All of them could be folded in to a single book with some core units and various variant rules.

It's not a realistic feat we'd want to see GW attempt, but it's certainly more than possible.

 Ozomoto wrote:

 TermiesInARaider wrote:

 Ozomoto wrote:
To OP: I get what you are trying to say about grey knights and chaos but to make a fair comparison:

Sisters should not have there own codex, they should be regular guard with the ability to upgrade to power armour, as they are regular humans.

Dark eldar should not have there own codex either, as they are eldar.

Ok, so "technically" fluff wise they are (or once were) space marines, but its not fair to throw their codex in the same boat as blood angels or BT (which I play btw) when even there basic stat line are not space marine any more.

Just had a 'what am I reading?' Moment. I mean, I'm no expert, but lets be real here, Dark Eldar and SoB need their own codex. You can't roll them into Eldar and IG, respectively, because the force operates differently on an intrinsic level. Different units,different combat philosophy, different rules. There's a lot more that goes into a codex than simple statlines.

Ya...... that is exactly what im saying? This post is basically about if the SM codex are to similar and should be abolished. Im arguing that even having chaos and grey knights in the options is not fair, let alone arguing if they should be cut. Im saying what you are saying, idk where your getting what i m saying from?


Edit: To clarify i was using the examples of sisters of battle being humans etc to argue that chaos and gk are SM, but at the end of the day aren't. It wasn't entirely clear without reading my previous posts.

I think the wording of it was a bit confusing, but now that it's cleared up yeah, that's pretty much where it's at.

I would add one. Heroes of the Space Marines, I'd call it. It would be a book of nothing but independent commanders like the ones in the Space Marine codex, in order to represent a few dozen more of the hundreds of Space Marine chapters.

 Jimsolo wrote:
I would add one. Heroes of the Space Marines, I'd call it. It would be a book of nothing but independent commanders like the ones in the Space Marine codex, in order to represent a few dozen more of the hundreds of Space Marine chapters.

Or - here's a thought - what if we could choose between all those chapter tactics without a special character!

 Crimson wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
I would add one. Heroes of the Space Marines, I'd call it. It would be a book of nothing but independent commanders like the ones in the Space Marine codex, in order to represent a few dozen more of the hundreds of Space Marine chapters.

Or - here's a thought - what if we could choose between all those chapter tactics without a special character!

Ah, but this would mean less things the players have to buy, thus less profits, and we can't have that, can we?

 TermiesInARaider wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
I would add one. Heroes of the Space Marines, I'd call it. It would be a book of nothing but independent commanders like the ones in the Space Marine codex, in order to represent a few dozen more of the hundreds of Space Marine chapters.

Or - here's a thought - what if we could choose between all those chapter tactics without a special character!

Ah, but this would mean less things the players have to buy, thus less profits, and we can't have that, can we?

If they have to buy a hq, whether a captain, librarian, or whatever then does it matter.

They could have a a few special chapter HQ upgrade packs that include must have things on them for you to get the chapter tactics. Id prefer this, and they would be getting more money anyway. ( have to buy a hq + an upgrade pack rather then a special character)

Having to use Special Charactors to unlock a specific chapter is supa lame.

 Jimsolo wrote:
I would add one. Heroes of the Space Marines, I'd call it. It would be a book of nothing but independent commanders like the ones in the Space Marine codex, in order to represent a few dozen more of the hundreds of Space Marine chapters.

I love that idea.

In all this discussion, people are not thinking about what is really driving the codex system and that is the sale of models.

You cant roll the SW, BA, DA, GK etc into one book because GW has to manage the release of new models to coincide with the release of new rules. Space Marines are the bread and butter and the sales engine that actually enables us to have models and rules for the less popular races.

GW still needs to get off its lazy butt and produce codexes like Ere We Go were there were multiple lists for all the clans. Freebooters only had a page but that was because they eventually received a whole book.

The content of a "heroes of the Space Marines" book should be included in the regular SM codex since they are charging so much for it.

I think combining the IG and SoB is a very bad idea. The SoB need and deserve their own book with lots of supporting units like they had in the Witch Hunter Codex. The SoB also need more dedicated SoB unit types and vehicles added as well.

You cant roll the SW, BA, DA, GK etc into one book because GW has to manage the release of new models to coincide with the release of new rules. this untrue.

they release new rules after several years of conflicting Q&A, because newer players cannot understand certain grammar in which GW writes material

(GW has mentioned this in WD on a number of occasions. idk if they are using a different approach/model now, as it appears they are still doing exactly like they were before management/change of Ownership- some 2-5 years ago)



Space Marines are the bread and butter and the sales engine that actually enables us to have models and rules for the less popular races.

While this is 100% true. in relation to space marines (only).

while at the same time a 100% false presumption they drive sales up or down.

in relation to their space marines, well yeah that's obvious. but in other "less popular races" it is not so.

you cannot have one race drive up the market of say Dark Eldar as it is a different target niche market to that of the niche market of space marines.

they bring sales regardless of percieved "popularity".

the only reasoning behind they are "more popular" is because they are GW's Love child. one of the first armies they began mass producing.

if Dark Eldar (example again) were released/manufactured first then they'd in your assumption "drive the market sales".
but there is differing markets within markets. and that is fine. because it is all just a Niche market either way

 Jimsolo wrote:
I would add one. Heroes of the Space Marines, I'd call it. It would be a book of nothing but independent commanders like the ones in the Space Marine codex, in order to represent a few dozen more of the hundreds of Space Marine chapters.

That is a damn good idea.

Honestly, I'd be fine with all the non codex-adhering chapters being rolled into C:SM if we got a rulebook dedicated exclusively to providing additional rules for the non-standard chapters.

 Orkimedes1000 wrote:
You cant roll the SW, BA, DA, GK etc into one book because GW has to manage the release of new models to coincide with the release of new rules. this untrue.

they release new rules after several years of conflicting Q&A, because newer players cannot understand certain grammar in which GW writes material

(GW has mentioned this in WD on a number of occasions. idk if they are using a different approach/model now, as it appears they are still doing exactly like they were before management/change of Ownership- some 2-5 years ago)



Space Marines are the bread and butter and the sales engine that actually enables us to have models and rules for the less popular races.

While this is 100% true. in relation to space marines (only).

while at the same time a 100% false presumption they drive sales up or down.

in relation to their space marines, well yeah that's obvious. but in other "less popular races" it is not so.

you cannot have one race drive up the market of say Dark Eldar as it is a different target niche market to that of the niche market of space marines.

they bring sales regardless of percieved "popularity".

the only reasoning behind they are "more popular" is because they are GW's Love child. one of the first armies they began mass producing.

if Dark Eldar (example again) were released/manufactured first then they'd in your assumption "drive the market sales".
but there is differing markets within markets. and that is fine. because it is all just a Niche market either way

They are not more popular because they are GW's love child. You have it exactly backwards, GW loves them because they are popular.

They are not popular because they were the first to be mass produced. Orks, Eldar and the Imperial Army all had models released at the beginning. Just look at the first "Book of the Astronomican" and you will see plenty of models for all these armies. Orks, Imperial Guard and even Squats all were supported early on with cheap plastic troops. With the books "Waaargh the Orks, Ere We Go, and Freebooters" it is clear that Orks had really good support from the beginning.

I never said space marines drive sales up or down, the great success of space marines means that some codexes that are not carrying their weight can be maintained as part of the over all system.

Quote: "because GW has to manage the release of new models to coincide with the release of new rules". unquote

it matters little in the debate at hand which came first it was merely an example (if i used necrons or space toads it'd matter just as little, fluff wise). and GW does have a lovechild. it is the SM of both varieties. before the squat they had IG, but are IG any more Popular than the space marines? are IG advertised as the "be all end all" no it's generally Ultramarines. every boxed set beside chapter specific sets feature Ultramarines on the front. it has been this way since 2nd edition, possibly earlier. other than that

quote "the great success of space marines means that some codexes that are not carrying their weight can be maintained as part of the over all system." unquote .


because the majority aren't holding their own weight,

but then again we'll have player X wanting to retain some special privilege for his chapter over player Y and so on.

if you roll all into one it ONLY work if several were in one book, another few in another and so on.

40k is the only wargame outside of warhammer fantasy with total un-needed amount of "codex/army books"


Automatically Appended Next Post:
i use term lovechild because of GW's overall fixation on free advertising on certain merchandise.

it is simply a "one use, general term" meaning why not add black templars onto 3rd edition boxed sets (or any other chapter, not that is an issue here)?

why not promote another army as the "centralized defining force"? the answer simply is because it is easier and More likely that a new player will paint his models blue if they are space marines, they include blue in the paint set, so thats one thing they do not have to worry about,

another thing is why always release a "space marine test model" in paint sets ever since 2nd edition?

not everyone would have felt the need to paint said space marine. most would have done so because it was there first miniature/s.

if they were IG or DE or Squat then the likelyhood of them collecting that army is % wise greater than if they first painted something else.

it is pretty basic economics of product placement due in part to "intentional/unintentional promotion" of said product. if it were a unit of imperial guard they would collect guard, that is all i was meaning. how far down this rabbit hole do you want to venture?

because at the bottom you'll find nothing that hasn't been said before by someone else in this thread, but in a different manner or wording


Automatically Appended Next Post:
GW love space Marines because they probably have always sold more units vs some other races unit would have sold. think about it.
space marines have had countless "influxes" of new miniatures since the early 90's (possibly late 80's) and as the years roll by they only release yet more space marine units and chapters and stuff we can collect, (if we WANTED TO).

and continue to ignore the majority until a rules edition scheduled for next updated best thing to hit since sliced bread, for 40k (what was broken in 3rd or 4th or 5th. for that matter why aren't we still using RT rules?
but updated?
because it comes down to potential loss of sales $$$$$$$$)

(and you me and everyone buys new models, codexs, and rinse repeat every 4-5 years) other armies (they only update the other codex's is because they'll lose a large chunk of other sales attributed to GW hobby if they didn't. it's not as fun as fighting two space facist factions as it is with a whole horde of Xenos to add spice to their gaming "universe")

if they actually promoted their miniatures in a way that new players didn't automatically see a Ultramarine (or BA/DA/BT/SW/insert another generic yet named chapter here). why not see an ork a space toad or a sister of battle? it'd push sales up much higher. (on the ones that exist-including those barely yes i am looking at you sisters of battle). there is many varied reasoning WHY they are GW's favorite but bottom line is because they actually promote them but in a "round-a-bout" way.

because as we ALL know GW's stance (do i really have to parrot Kirby?) "we do not promote or advertise outside of our own production/publication" that is the context if not the words Kirby used in his speech (on avdertising)

where do i have it backwards? i'd like to know

 Orkimedes1000 wrote:
Quote: are IG advertised as the "be all end all" no it's generally Ultramarines. every boxed set beside chapter specific sets feature Ultramarines on the front. it has been this way since 2nd edition, possibly earlier. other than that

You are just trolling and dont know what you are talking about.

2nd edition box set 40k has Blood Angels on the cover

2nd edition Dark Millenium box set for 40k has Dark Angels on cover

3rd edition box set 40k has Black Templars on the cover

1st Edition did not have a box set but Crimson Fists not Ultra Marines are on the cover

1st Edition Book of the Astronomican, the first RT supplement had Space Wolves on the cover

1st edition WH40k vehicle manual has Dark Angels on cover

Epic Armies of the Imperium box set has Dark Angels on the cover

Epic 40k box set had Blood Angels on the cover

Space Marine Strike Force of 15 Tactical Marines had Dark Angels on the cover (metal plastic hybrids by J. Goodwin)

What about the iconic "Imperial Space Marine" Box set rtbo1, the set that put thousands and thousands of space marines in the hands of gamers and can still be found easy on ebay 25 years later, why those arent ultramarines, they are the Crimson Fists.

 Jimsolo wrote:
I would add one. Heroes of the Space Marines, I'd call it. It would be a book of nothing but independent commanders like the ones in the Space Marine codex, in order to represent a few dozen more of the hundreds of Space Marine chapters.

The Badab War FW books had a lot of commanders that did a number of things like FOC changes, army wide buffs, unit buffs, and so on. Something like that, for all armies (Eldar, GK, Tau, SM) would be awesome!