Hi guys

With many xenos troop choices now having fairly good standard weapons
•crons can glance on 6's
•tau range 30 s5
•eldar bladestorm
• hell even the lasgun is pretty effective when used with orders and weight of fire

Do you think the Bolter needs a buff be it even a small one to bring it up to the levels of xenos troops

I mean the problem is its damage out put from a tactical squad isn't brilliant but yet stern guard do quite well with the special ammo

What do you guys think ??

It's not the boltgun. It's the whole marine battle plan now. 3+ armor soliders with gak vehicles isn't cutting it anymore.

Bolters don't need a buff because space marines are supposed to be generalists, not equal to the shooting-specialized xenos armies. It's an adequate weapon, and that's all that marines deserve. Just be glad you have better than a flashlight.

Bolters are fine. It's just that the meta is heavily stacked against MEQ armies right now.

I reckon it would be awesome if they had custom ammo layouts for different targets. Before the game you choose the ammo types for each squads bolter weapons. Kinda like the gun on that judge dredd movie except you get one round type.

I dont overly care if they dont need it but i think iw would be awesome. Not that i do marines.

 Peregrine wrote:
Bolters don't need a buff because space marines are supposed to be generalists, not equal to the shooting-specialized xenos armies. It's an adequate weapon, and that's all that marines deserve. Just be glad you have better than a flashlight.

At 15 points a model, it's not a "be glad you have" situation. It's a "damn right I have this, and frankly this is the bare minimum" situation.

But yeah, bolters are fine. It's MEQ as an army that need help.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
But yeah, bolters are fine. It's MEQ as an army that need help.

How do they need help (I'm not challenging you here, I'm just interested to here your thoughts)?

Bolters are great.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
But yeah, bolters are fine. It's MEQ as an army that need help.

How do they need help (I'm not challenging you here, I'm just interested to here your thoughts)?

They need either a way to survive the wound spam of Eldar/Tau better or a better way to hit back at range. Because assault might as well not exist right now.

They need 36 inch range.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
But yeah, bolters are fine. It's MEQ as an army that need help.

How do they need help (I'm not challenging you here, I'm just interested to here your thoughts)?

Well from my thoughts, when I'm pulling off my CSM in the same numbers as my cultists to the same weapon, that statline and 3+ aint pulling it's weight anymore.

Marines (all marines) need some sort of lesser FNP and if bolters got the stormbolter statline and they became assault 3, then I think it would bring the PA lists back up to top tier.

Though I'm fine with them being middle of the road.

No buff to the bolter will fix the marines' matchup problems against Xeno firepower. S4 shots with no pseudo rending are just weak sauce.

Bolters are less junk since rapid fire is less awful now. I always love how the 'generalists' thing comes up. Only problem is marines suck at everything atm. Only thing that made them worth it in 5th was cheap boxes and not dying easily so now...yeah

That's also a weird thing. Marines aren't generalists. They're an army of elites (at least from a fluff perspective).

They don't really need a better gun since they're shooting at squishier targets most of the time.

Bolters are fine, the game isn't. Power creep has made a lot of "normal gear" less effective.

The biggest concerns an army has to plan for is AV13+, MCs, Fliers, and other Melee Gods. A Bolter firing line isn't the solution for any of these (unless you had a ridiculous amount of bolters, which would be point expensive to bring that many marines).

On a side, I was able to wound a GUO this weekend on Overwatch with 6 bolt pistols! Still lost, but hey!

Martel732 wrote:
No buff to the bolter will fix the marines' matchup problems against Xeno firepower. S4 shots with no pseudo rending are just weak sauce.

That's not true at all, but no SANE fix will fix marine problems. I mean, if the bolter was S10 and assault 25, that would probably do it, but is clearly insane.

The problem with marines is that they are 14 points each, and they are pay 75% of their points for defensive stats, and 25% for offensive, but in the current meta, the majority of their expensive defensive stats are ignored. S6/S7 spam ignores the points they've paid for T4, and all those AP3 weapons out there are ignoring the points you've paid for your expensive power armor....so they are left with the effectiveness (against a lot of weapons) of about a 6-7 point model....which is crap for 14 points. It's very similar to the problem tyranids faced when the Dark Eldar book was upgraded. The VAST majority of the codex ignored the excessive amount of points the tyranid paid for their increased toughness, I mean, a 280 point swarmlord had the same survivabilty to Dark eldar weapons fire as 5 sisters of battle worth ~60 points. That's dumb.

Look at the most basic model you can, a naked human stat line of mostly 3s straight across. This is worth ~2-3 points.
A guardsman get his orders, lasgun and flak armor for 5 points.
A henchman with a bolter is 5 points.

So we know we can get a boltgun on the table for 5 points, which means marines are paying 9 points (basically tripling their cost) for power armor, frag and krak grenades, ATSKNF and the bump from mostly 3s to 4s. True, it's more than a 3 fold increase in staying power to small arms, but it's only a TINY increase in the damage output comparatively...which is the crux of the problem. When you triple something in cost, your have to triple is damage output AND staying power. In 40k, it's almost ALWAYS better to do more damage than to pay for mediocre staying power increases, it's just how the game plays out these days.

Look how long it takes a marine to kill equal points of the following;

Imperial guardsman (5 points, need to kill 2.8); 6.3 bolter shots, 9.45 if they are in cover.
Termigant (4 points, need to kill 3.5); 7.8 bolter shots, 11.8 if they are in cover.
Space marine (14 points, need to kill 1 ); 9 bolter shots, cover doesn't matter
Fire warrior (9 points, need to kill 1.55); 7 bolter shots, cover doesn't matter

As you can see, that bolter marine basically needs 3-6 turns of double tapping the boltgun into enemy troops to offset his investment. Sure, you can round all those numbers down a bit because they are also contributing by being a scoring unit, and sure, that krak grenade barrage might kill the odd lemun russ, or carnifex, or whatever but those would be odd situations. Basically, it's almost impossible for a basic bolter marine to offset his investment via killing the enemy. I mean, if your whole army was of equal "quality" as these guys, I don't see how you could ever win a game. You can run the math for the other troops, and I think you will find they they all come out significantly better off than your basic tactical marine.

If we are going to "fix" the humble bolter marine, upping the damage on the bolter isn't the way to do it IMO. It would destabilize the game too much, eg, bolter henchmen would get completely out of hand, and things like the Land Raider Crusader and bolter-banner affected dark angels would see unexpected returns on the change. Honestly, the best fix I can think of at the moment is to allow tactical marines/chaos boys, as a special rule, to fire 2 shots at max range if they don't move. That was the "rapid fire" rule in 2nd edition, and it should be enough, especially consider they are often stuck standing still for their heavy weapon anyways. This wouldn't overpower bikes, henchmen, hurricane bolters or the Dark Angel bolter banner boys in the process either.

Things like Tau Pulse Rifles need to be brought in line with other standard issue shooti - 24" range guns are the standard. at 30" and 15" rapid fire, giving them that + Str 5 is a kick in the ball-berrings to all other races when you factor in the amount of CHEAP FIREPOWER you can stack with just a simply troop choice...

Look at Noise Marines for CSM... easily the best basic shooting on a marine you can get for the army... EASILY... and how much do they cost? More than a land raider for a squad of 10... MORE... at 10 members 2 Blast masters 7 Sonic Blasters, and FNP on an illogical piece of paper attached to a pole (That disappears if you shoot it) you're looking at 291 point.... That's also if you don't want to upg your ASP. CHAMP. to have anything besides a CCW. Throw the Doom Siren in for another 15 points, add a LC, 15 points.. or nothing.

Fact simply is, where your weapons are cheap AND effective, there is a problem when your entire troop choice can run around with str 5 30" guns. 108 Points for 12 of these...

I WISH my Noise Marines didn't cost 21+ points a model depending if you want them as your troop choice, or not, factor in the lord you have to take with them... 65+15.. so divide that 80 points into your Marines because he's literally not going to be used as anything BUT that simply unlocking of your cult to Troop. So... 29 points a model? No thanks, I'll take the fish-heads.

 Peregrine wrote:
Bolters don't need a buff because space marines are supposed to be generalists, not equal to the shooting-specialized xenos armies. It's an adequate weapon, and that's all that marines deserve. Just be glad you have better than a flashlight.

But you flashlight can be taken buy guys that are the same bs as marines and also you get orders to double or even triple your shots and I dread to think what's going to happen with the new codex

@H.B.M.C but that's the thing they really arnt anymore

@the custom line

That could be a good idea but pay for 1 type of sternguard ammo I.e.
Ap3 30pts or 3 points per
Poisoned 25pts
Ignore cover 15 Pts
30" range 20 points

??

And the 36" range wouldn't play well ( even though a Bolter can shoot at up to 1000m) it would turn marines into the new tau

I don't have a problem with their survivability most of the time I do hate their damage output though I think they just need that extra something to help them stand toe to toe with the enemy that easily bring down the gates these days

GoliothOnline wrote:
Things like Tau Pulse Rifles need to be brought in line with other standard issue shooti - 24" range guns are the standard. at 30" and 15" rapid fire, giving them that + Str 5 is a kick in the ball-berrings to all other races when you factor in the amount of CHEAP FIREPOWER you can stack with just a simply troop choice...

Well yeah, but that's kind of stating the obvious. Of course the pure shooting army is going to have the best shooting troops. They're supposed to be better than everyone else in that area, and they pay for it with limited durability and a complete inability to do anything besides die in the assault phase.

2 disadvantages that mean almost nothing in the current meta.

Any assault unit that can feasibly survive long enough to get into close-combat with Tau and destroy them will be powerful enough to destroy MEQ just as easily (thanks, smash), thus the increased durability and CC prowess they pay for means nothing.

Any army that can shoot tau off the board can shoot MEQ off the board just as easily, thus the increased durability they pay for means nothing.

The problem is indeed the meta. With volume of fire and access to AP3+ weaponry being what it is, MEQ might as well just be 15 point hybrids between Guardsmen and Firewarriors; stronger than the former and weaker than the latter.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Any assault unit that can feasibly survive long enough to get into close-combat with Tau and destroy them will be powerful enough to destroy MEQ just as easily (thanks, smash), thus the increased durability and CC prowess they pay for means nothing.

Sounds like you aren't playing with enough LOS blocking terrain if non-MC assault units have no chance of surviving to get into combat.

With volume of fire and access to AP3+ weaponry being what it is, MEQ might as well just be 15 point hybrids between Guardsmen and Firewarriors; stronger than the former and weaker than the latter.

Not even close to true. AP 3- weapons aren't all that common compared to AP 4+ weapons. Just look at the common lists: Tau spam missile pods and pulse rifles and only really get mass AP 2/3 from their Riptides and tanks, while Eldar spam scatter lasers and serpent shields. Sure, there are shooting death stars that laugh at MEQs, but the rest of the army still exists you know.

You only have to look at tournament results to see that marines arnt exactly doing well unless you copy and paste a grav bike army.

I for one don't think there survivability is the problem I think there low damage output for a 200pt unit is the problem.

Although yes the current state also bashes the marines into submission with tau and eldar blatantly being made to kill marines they need an edge to bring them back up to par.

I used to play marines for fun and I can't even do that anymore because of how easy it is to table marines makes me want to permanently shelf them. And with the new guard and ork codex coming out my poor Astartes are cowering in fear of what's to come

 Peregrine wrote:
Sounds like you aren't playing with enough LOS blocking terrain if non-MC assault units have no chance of surviving to get into combat.

Nice try. 1. This doesn't actually address my point at all, since I didn't assert that *only* MC's can get into close combat, rather they're a good example of the type of unit you commonly see that are fast enough and durable enough to get there, and when they do there is no difference between a 15-point marine a 4-point hormagaunt. 2. That being said, how many non-MC assault units do you commonly see in a competitive environment that aren't apart of a deathstar? List them.

Not even close to true. AP 3- weapons aren't all that common compared to AP 4+ weapons. Just look at the common lists: Tau spam missile pods and pulse rifles and only really get mass AP 2/3 from their Riptides and tanks, while Eldar spam scatter lasers and serpent shields. Sure, there are shooting death stars that laugh at MEQs, but the rest of the army still exists you know.

AP3 might not be *as common* as AP4, but it doesn't NEED to be. Why? Because MEQ armies by nature don't have as many models on the board as 4+ save armies. The AMOUNT of AP3 and volume-of-fire has risen steadily through 5th and 6th edition, but the amount of MEQ you can put on the board hasn't risen by a comparable amount.

And let's not try to downplay the rise of AP3 here. We have an entire ARMY that just got pseudo-rending for free. Calm down bro.

Plus there's also a fair amount of AP2, which gets the job done just as fast.

A lighter version of Sternguard ammo would do it. 4+ poison instead of 2+ etc.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
2. That being said, how many non-MC assault units do you commonly see in a competitive environment that aren't apart of a deathstar? List them.

I have no idea, because there isn't really a competitive environment that has sufficient LOS blocking terrain. Tournaments usually have lots of big open fields where gunlines can dominate because the TOs don't have access to enough terrain to make proper tables for everyone.

AP3 might not be *as common* as AP4, but it doesn't NEED to be. Why? Because MEQ armies by nature don't have as many models on the board as 4+ save armies. The AMOUNT of AP3 and volume-of-fire has risen steadily through 5th and 6th edition, but the amount of MEQ you can put on the board hasn't risen by a comparable amount.

It might be rising, but it's still limited to heavy/special weapons. A MEQ army is still going to take a lot of hits that it gets its T4 and armor save against, and that makes a big difference in durability compared to T3/4+ fire warriors or T3/no-save GEQs. Plus, the amount of melee AP 3 hasn't changed all that much and charges with anything short of a death star involve lots of STR 3/4 AP- attacks.

And let's not try to downplay the rise of AP3 here. We have an entire ARMY that just got pseudo-rending for free. Calm down bro.

At short range, with squishy infantry units. Even against Eldar you're still going to face large amounts of AP 4+ weapons, and even against rending weapons a 3+ save is still useful against the 2/3 of the wounds that aren't AP 2.

 Peregrine wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Any assault unit that can feasibly survive long enough to get into close-combat with Tau and destroy them will be powerful enough to destroy MEQ just as easily (thanks, smash), thus the increased durability and CC prowess they pay for means nothing.

Sounds like you aren't playing with enough LOS blocking terrain if non-MC assault units have no chance of surviving to get into combat.

This I have to actually agree with. I haven't got into the hobby yet, but I'm used to other miniature games (and realistic RTS's), and cover is very important to any game involving cover saves, and if peoples' tables are similar to those I keep see in batraps, yeah, they're in a sorry state. And it obviously isn't an issue about the price. If I wanted, I could march down to Target and practically buy stock in crayola clay and mass-produce rocks and rubble like mad for a table to provide a large amount of cover to aid everyone.

The fact that there is little cover doesn't even make sense with the W40K narrative, which is largely urban combat unless it's a fortress on a death world or an agri world. There's no reason why there should be just nine or less pieces of cover slapped on the table and everything called a day. Seriously. It isn't hard at all to model rocks, ditches, trenches, rubble, etc for dirt cheap.

Large number of high strength AP4 shots will do the trick. Or do you imply that e.g. scatter laser is not feared?

Let's face it, SM won't ever get such boosts as the xenos can have. Dark Angels codex being out first sort of tied the hands and codex power creep did not help.

I shall point at the bikers with T5, where their armor rarely comes to play for their saves. And we know how useful jink saves are against Eldar and Tau.

Unfortunately the bolter itself can't be fixed, but I like the idea of using special ammo. That said, I don't see it ever happening.

Naa bolters are fine. You want fancy stuff, go sternguard. My Thousand Sons just sit on the shelf tbh.

It's the Heavy Bolter that needs a bit of fixing I think... Just little point in taking it these days. Which is a shame for a signature marine weapon. I think some form of rending or something would bring it back to favour.

But Grav guns are the new sexy.

Bolters ain't great unless you're going up against Xenos. If that's the case, get into CC. But they're a fair baseline weapon.

I thought special ammo might be a good idea and make it costly to offset the effectiveness of said ammo

But making a Bolter 2 shots would be a good idea because in the fluff they are a rapid fire weapon BUT this would mean storm Bolters would go up a shot ( making grey knights even better at shooting ) and the heavy Bolter would go up Aswel, even though that weapon desperately needs a buff anyway

And I also very rearly use power armour in the open my guys hug cover so hard they might Aswel carry the wall with them just to have a tiny bit of survive ability


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grumzimus wrote:
Naa bolters are fine. You want fancy stuff, go sternguard. My Thousand Sons just sit on the shelf tbh.

It's the Heavy Bolter that needs a bit of fixing I think... Just little point in taking it these days. Which is a shame for a signature marine weapon. I think some form of rending or something would bring it back to favour.

But Grav guns are the new sexy.

Bolters ain't great unless you're going up against Xenos. If that's the case, get into CC. But they're a fair baseline weapon.

Sternguard get wiped off the battlefield very quickly !! And they arnt exactly brilliant "shooting" veterans either

And yes CC that always works well in 6th dosnt it ??

 Peregrine wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
2. That being said, how many non-MC assault units do you commonly see in a competitive environment that aren't apart of a deathstar? List them.

I have no idea, because there isn't really a competitive environment that has sufficient LOS blocking terrain. Tournaments usually have lots of big open fields where gunlines can dominate because the TOs don't have access to enough terrain to make proper tables for everyone.

AP3 might not be *as common* as AP4, but it doesn't NEED to be. Why? Because MEQ armies by nature don't have as many models on the board as 4+ save armies. The AMOUNT of AP3 and volume-of-fire has risen steadily through 5th and 6th edition, but the amount of MEQ you can put on the board hasn't risen by a comparable amount.

It might be rising, but it's still limited to heavy/special weapons. A MEQ army is still going to take a lot of hits that it gets its T4 and armor save against, and that makes a big difference in durability compared to T3/4+ fire warriors or T3/no-save GEQs. Plus, the amount of melee AP 3 hasn't changed all that much and charges with anything short of a death star involve lots of STR 3/4 AP- attacks.

And let's not try to downplay the rise of AP3 here. We have an entire ARMY that just got pseudo-rending for free. Calm down bro.

At short range, with squishy infantry units. Even against Eldar you're still going to face large amounts of AP 4+ weapons, and even against rending weapons a 3+ save is still useful against the 2/3 of the wounds that aren't AP 2.

Not every battlefield should even have LOS blocking terrain. Eastern front of WWII is a good example. The LOS blocking terrain excuse is a getting a bit tiresome. Armies should be balanced both with and without LOS blocking terrain.

Lol, yeah. 6th (tau) edition does hurt CC.

Tbh, first time I've gone up against Sternguard with that ammo was yesterday, killed everyone in the unit other than Kharn.

I think that other than Scars, most marine armies ain't that great at the shooty. But not played the other flavours in the new book.

Some people were comparing a 12 man firewarriors squad to a tac squad with bolters. Sure the 12 man squad cost half as much but they also have worse bs (they need marker light support) and let's face it firewarriors are bush league in combat.
Sure bolters don't have the same reach as pulse rifles but the marines make up for it with better bs and a better save. They are good in cc just drop pod them in or get them in a rhino.
Bolters are fine, I like them and if I want special ammo I'll go stern guard. I think it's a matter of expensive troops not the bolters.

I agree both Bolter and Heavy Bolter need a buff. Specially the Heavy Bolter. They are both iconic weapons yet completely ignored.

Perhaps adding "Shred" to both. After all, is something of a rocket launcher. It blows you up. By the way, I would add Shred to Chainswords and Chainaxes too.

Anyway, I am not sure Marines need a massive buff overall. They are nearly ok. Eldar and Tau are too strong. Look at Nids, Chaos or Sisters to find an army that needs love all over the place. Buffing the humble Bolter (and the other) would be enough for marines.

thinking about it I've concluded that the best cure for what ails Marines would be not revising the bolter but revising the DROP POD.
allow Marines to assault out of a droppod when it arrives and you've IMHO got a minor change that gives Marines a BIIIG boost. as you can drop a squad of marines on top of those gunlines and really get into the chopping.

Perhaps combine this with borrowing the rules from CSMs that allows a tac squad to take a CCW for an additional 2 points per model

Exactly my point why can't a .75 high ex bullet ( bigger than grenade mg's mounted on top of humvee's) have a 6's rend as well ?!?! I mean a bolt round is supposed to be able to blast through flack and carapace armour with ease and leave huge craters in power armour !!

It also wouldn't be restricted to just loyal marines I would share the love between chaos, sisters

 chiefbigredman wrote:
Some people were comparing a 12 man firewarriors squad to a tac squad with bolters. Sure the 12 man squad cost half as much but they also have worse bs (they need marker light support) and let's face it firewarriors are bush league in combat.
Sure bolters don't have the same reach as pulse rifles but the marines make up for it with better bs and a better save. They are good in cc just drop pod them in or get them in a rhino.
Bolters are fine, I like them and if I want special ammo I'll go stern guard. I think it's a matter of expensive troops not the bolters.

You still can't get into CC with those methods. The CC stats on marines are a waste.

 da001 wrote:
I agree both Bolter and Heavy Bolter need a buff. Specially the Heavy Bolter. They are both iconic weapons yet completely ignored.

Perhaps adding "Shred" to both. After all, is something of a rocket launcher. It blows you up. By the way, I would add Shred to Chainswords and Chainaxes too.

Anyway, I am not sure Marines need a massive buff overall. They are nearly ok. Eldar and Tau are too strong. Look at Nids, Chaos or Sisters to find an army that needs love all over the place. Buffing the humble Bolter (and the other) would be enough for marines.

funny thing is of the three armies you mentioned, 2 of the three would also benifit from a bolter Buff

BrianDavion wrote:
thinking about it I've concluded that the best cure for what ails Marines would be not revising the bolter but revising the DROP POD.
allow Marines to assault out of a droppod when it arrives and you've IMHO got a minor change that gives Marines a BIIIG boost. as you can drop a squad of marines on top of those gunlines and really get into the chopping.

Perhaps combine this with borrowing the rules from CSMs that allows a tac squad to take a CCW for an additional 2 points per model

Charging out of a drop pod would be unfair because there would be no counter other than tau's EWO

And marines should be given a cc weapon for free anyway IMO its in a marines basic war gear they are supposed to carry around with them anyway. But cc isn't the point that's the job for assault marines and vanguard (which suck aswell)

 chiefbigredman wrote:
Some people were comparing a 12 man firewarriors squad to a tac squad with bolters. Sure the 12 man squad cost half as much but they also have worse bs (they need marker light support) and let's face it firewarriors are bush league in combat.
Sure bolters don't have the same reach as pulse rifles but the marines make up for it with better bs and a better save. They are good in cc just drop pod them in or get them in a rhino.
Bolters are fine, I like them and if I want special ammo I'll go stern guard. I think it's a matter of expensive troops not the bolters.

I don't like that matchup.

Marines hop out of pod/rhino. Probably kill some firewarriors with shooting (if close enough).
Next turn: Shot to death or irrelevancy.
And even if they do get a charge and win- shot to death.

It's not the Tau or the Eldar, I think. It's that the game is designed to favor shooting in every way. So Marines say, "OK, let's shoot. Anyone have anything better than this bolter?"

Answer: Tau and Eldar. It's both the army's internal synergy and synergy with the rules for shooting. They were designed to exploit those rules, and they do (as they should).

Let's hope the BA and Orks book allow us to exploit the assault system.

 3orangewhips wrote:

 chiefbigredman wrote:
Some people were comparing a 12 man firewarriors squad to a tac squad with bolters. Sure the 12 man squad cost half as much but they also have worse bs (they need marker light support) and let's face it firewarriors are bush league in combat.
Sure bolters don't have the same reach as pulse rifles but the marines make up for it with better bs and a better save. They are good in cc just drop pod them in or get them in a rhino.
Bolters are fine, I like them and if I want special ammo I'll go stern guard. I think it's a matter of expensive troops not the bolters.

I don't like that matchup.

Marines hop out of pod/rhino. Probably kill some firewarriors with shooting (if close enough).
Next turn: Shot to death or irrelevancy.
And even if they do get a charge and win- shot to death.

It's not the Tau or the Eldar, I think. It's that the game is designed to favor shooting in every way. So Marines say, "OK, let's shoot. Anyone have anything better than this bolter?"

Answer: Tau and Eldar. It's both the army's internal synergy and synergy with the rules for shooting. They were designed to exploit those rules, and they do (as they should).

Let's hope the BA and Orks book allow us to exploit the assault system.

Ya I am going to agree that if you just let them out in the open that you will get shot to death and if you do charge will get over watched to smithereens if you are just out in the open.
I think getting into CC is hard and it should be hard because everyone has guns so ya.
Your right that the game favours shooting and I think it should be that way. You just have to learn to play the terrain and board properly to be able to get into close combat.
Every army offers different things to the game and if some are better at shooting but suck at combat then you just have to learn how to deal with it when playing against them.

Basically I don't think that bolter needs an upgrade, I find my marines do fine against Tau as long as there is enough terrain to creep around to get the shots off.

 Swastakowey wrote:
I reckon it would be awesome if they had custom ammo layouts for different targets. Before the game you choose the ammo types for each squads bolter weapons. Kinda like the gun on that judge dredd movie except you get one round type.

I dont overly care if they dont need it but i think iw would be awesome. Not that i do marines.

A random ammo type. A 2D6 chart dictates ammo type at the start of the game
2-6 is standard ammo
7-10 is Armour Piercing. AP value of 3+ instead of standard 5+
11-12 is Emperors Fury Explosive tipped. for every roll to wound that results in a 6, a small blast marker is allocated to the wounded member of the targeted squad. Everything under the marker is damaged at AP6 S4. rolls to save/wound taken again.

that's just one idea. But overall I think it works fine at present. As mentioned, the marines are "all rounders" so the Bolter is fine as is to me.

Could be something simple like the volkites. If you roll a 5 or 6 to wound (and that would wound), it causes two wounds... or something like that.

That would fit fluff well due the the explosive nature of bolt shells however I don't think it would ever happen

brother marcus wrote:
That would fit fluff well due the the explosive nature of bolt shells however I don't think it would ever happen

Yeah, agreed.

 chiefbigredman wrote:

 3orangewhips wrote:

 chiefbigredman wrote:
Some people were comparing a 12 man firewarriors squad to a tac squad with bolters. Sure the 12 man squad cost half as much but they also have worse bs (they need marker light support) and let's face it firewarriors are bush league in combat.
Sure bolters don't have the same reach as pulse rifles but the marines make up for it with better bs and a better save. They are good in cc just drop pod them in or get them in a rhino.
Bolters are fine, I like them and if I want special ammo I'll go stern guard. I think it's a matter of expensive troops not the bolters.

I don't like that matchup.

Marines hop out of pod/rhino. Probably kill some firewarriors with shooting (if close enough).
Next turn: Shot to death or irrelevancy.
And even if they do get a charge and win- shot to death.

It's not the Tau or the Eldar, I think. It's that the game is designed to favor shooting in every way. So Marines say, "OK, let's shoot. Anyone have anything better than this bolter?"

Answer: Tau and Eldar. It's both the army's internal synergy and synergy with the rules for shooting. They were designed to exploit those rules, and they do (as they should).

Let's hope the BA and Orks book allow us to exploit the assault system.

Ya I am going to agree that if you just let them out in the open that you will get shot to death and if you do charge will get over watched to smithereens if you are just out in the open.
I think getting into CC is hard and it should be hard because everyone has guns so ya.
Your right that the game favours shooting and I think it should be that way. You just have to learn to play the terrain and board properly to be able to get into close combat.
Every army offers different things to the game and if some are better at shooting but suck at combat then you just have to learn how to deal with it when playing against them.

Basically I don't think that bolter needs an upgrade, I find my marines do fine against Tau as long as there is enough terrain to creep around to get the shots off.

If what you say is true, then shootier troops should be more expensive. Point values are supposed to reflect the utility of the model on the battlefield. There is no "learn to deal with Eldar". They are just better at what matters in 6th edition. Consequently, they are undercosted or marines or overcosted. Take your pick.

Martel732 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
But yeah, bolters are fine. It's MEQ as an army that need help.

How do they need help (I'm not challenging you here, I'm just interested to here your thoughts)?

They need either a way to survive the wound spam of Eldar/Tau better or a better way to hit back at range. Because assault might as well not exist right now.

Daemons do quite well with assault.

BrianDavion wrote:

 da001 wrote:
I agree both Bolter and Heavy Bolter need a buff. Specially the Heavy Bolter. They are both iconic weapons yet completely ignored.

Perhaps adding "Shred" to both. After all, is something of a rocket launcher. It blows you up. By the way, I would add Shred to Chainswords and Chainaxes too.

Anyway, I am not sure Marines need a massive buff overall. They are nearly ok. Eldar and Tau are too strong. Look at Nids, Chaos or Sisters to find an army that needs love all over the place. Buffing the humble Bolter (and the other) would be enough for marines.

funny thing is of the three armies you mentioned, 2 of the three would also benifit from a bolter Buff

Which is the reason I said Bolters should be buffed, not just marines.

Yes I agree and maybe give marines, sisters, chaos etc an "Astartes class Bolter"
which guard and inquisition stuff can't have access to because they are stronger ??

Django_Unchained wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
But yeah, bolters are fine. It's MEQ as an army that need help.

How do they need help (I'm not challenging you here, I'm just interested to here your thoughts)?

They need either a way to survive the wound spam of Eldar/Tau better or a better way to hit back at range. Because assault might as well not exist right now.

Daemons do quite well with assault.

Okay I should have qualified it. Assault doesn't exist for generalists with no access to 2+ rerollable or FMC.

I think the best way to fix the Bolter is to make it 2 shots or 3 at rapid fire

Storm bolters are 4 shots

Heavy Bolter 5 shots

Giving them rending on a 6 would make heavy bolters waaaaay op but would bring the normal one into line with everything else

So it's OP for marines, but for Eldar, rending is fine? Okay then.

Yes having more shots and and rending would indeed be op

bolters are AWESOME...

its the marines that suck,

my 5pt bolter henchment with precience do more damage then marines pt for pt, and are more survivable as i get 3 of em for 15pts, so a guaranteed three wounds regardless of AP.

brother marcus wrote:
Yes having more shots and and rending would indeed be op

Oh, yes. Both I agree. Frankly, just adding rending to the bolter wouldn't do much.

Oh yes, give my Sisters of Battle superior weapons. Also my guardsmen!

Oh, you just meant for space snorines. Blah.

No way.

A Bolter is a Bolter. Everything said for Marines applies to Chaos Marines and Sisters too. And of all three armies the Sisters need a buff the most.

I hated it when they finally fixed the shotguns being totally useless and then realized they had created an "Astartes Shotgun", and the basic shotgun was still broken.

I imagine people would be changing their tune if they realized that they were making the Imperial Guard far more powerful by buffing the bolter (or more accurately, heavy bolters and storm bolters).

If you gave my guardsmen 5-hit heavy bolters... let's see... that's... something like 6 mroe twin-linked shots and a dozen more non-linked shots fired every turn.

Oh, man, a rending heavy bolter... that would making Leman Russes quite powerful.

Maybe what you can have with boltguns is have exploding dice. If you roll a 6, roll that 6 and if you get another 6 you can cause one wound regardless of the target's toughness.

No.
Gauss Flayers are super-science Disintegration beams. Pulse Rifles are superior, stable plasma accelerators. Shuriken weapons are.. a bit daft (seriously, a stiff wind should render them useless). Glorified Assault rifles should be better than them why exactly?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That's also a weird thing. Marines aren't generalists. They're an army of elites (at least from a fluff perspective).

One does not exclude the other. They are elite at handling most situations, not at doing one thing and only one thing. That's what the Deathcults and so on are for.

Martel732 wrote:
Not every battlefield should even have LOS blocking terrain. Eastern front of WWII is a good example. The LOS blocking terrain excuse is a getting a bit tiresome. Armies should be balanced both with and without LOS blocking terrain.

That won't ever happen. That can't ever happen. It's impossible to design a game like that unless you design it specifically for a side-board style army.

Terrain provide too many important variables. A dense city scape will limit ranged weapons to below 20", how do you balance 72" Railguns with that? Do you make them overpowered gimmicks on the eastern front while worthless door stoppers in the Berlin suburbs? How would that be balanced? How about armies that are made for close combat gimmick (Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Dark Eldar) or the close range gimmick (Eldar, Orks)? 40k isn't Warmachine, you know, where all armies can do everything differently. Even Warmachine is designed with a very specific terrain set up in mind.

Perhaps I am missing something, but I think the guard is feared because their tanks. S8 AP3 (or worse) blasts and lascannons.

Heavy Bolters are not particularly feared, they would welcome a buff.

Just my opinion, of course. Haven´t played against them in a while.

While I don't agree that bolters need tobe more powerful, I'd say that they're more than just .75 caliber assault rifles. They penetrate the target and then explode within it, making them quite deadly, in a different way than the other upper-end infantry weapons.

Lasguns have the stats of assault rifles, by the way.

No.

Its the good basic standard weapon.

Rapidfire 24" S4ap5.

Its fine.

 da001 wrote:
Perhaps I am missing something, but I think the guard is feared because their tanks

Which carry numerous heavy bolters (up to three per tank, and two per chimera).

 Melissia wrote:

 da001 wrote:
Perhaps I am missing something, but I think the guard is feared because their tanks

Which carry numerous heavy bolters (up to three per tank, and two per chimera).

I am still far more concerned about the S8 AP3 Blast.

You're double posting. I already responded to that.

Speaking as a Guard player, adding an additional shot or rending to the heavy bolter would be a great boon to us. Picture pask in a punisher with three heavy bolters, for example.

That's 32 S6 BS: 4 versus vehicles if you add an additional shot. Or, if you add rending, that would 29 S5 shots with 9 rending and they get to reroll failed to wound against MCs. I don't think Tyranid players would like that very much.

Or the Chimera. For 55 points you get to fire 8 S5 AP 4 shots with an additional heavy weapon if you put in a guard squad. Or 6 S5 AP 4 rending shots.

 Melissia wrote:
While I don't agree that bolters need tobe more powerful, I'd say that they're more than just .75 caliber assault rifles. They penetrate the target and then explode within it, making them quite deadly, in a different way than the other upper-end infantry weapons.

Lasguns have the stats of assault rifles, by the way.

I'm sure that "penetrate and explode" is the plan. Looking at the bolt shell diagram here, those things look like they will glance or ricochet a LOT on anything less than a direct hit against hard armor (like a 4+ save for example).

I'll echo earlier statements that the Bolter isn't the problem per se; it's a bit mediocre, lacking any distinct advantage over any other small arm, but marines as a whole, Tactical Marines in particular are absolute crap.

In terms of game design, the bolter is a pretty obvious baseline; everything kind of exists around it. Lasguns can have better volume of fire, but low strength, no AP, shuriken pseudo-rends, but has low range, but is assault as well, etc, etc. It's not a bad weapon, especially when you can get it for cheap like bolter henchmen, but on a 14 point model it's awful.

Considering MEQ troops as a whole, you pay a premium for a statline and an armour which doesn't mean much. There's no denying the volume of fire available at present to a multitude of armies makes a 3+ save not very effective in the shooting phase (and this is important, I'll come back to it later), and the high volume of low AP shooting doesn't help matters either. Paying well over a hundred points for a 10 man squad with little shooting survivability is not attractive, whether they be Chaos, Vanilla or Sisters.

The advantage MEQs really have, to me, is close combat survival. AP3 close combat weapons and attacks are much more uncommon than the equivalent shooting weapons. Dedicated AP2/3 squads are extremely rare in close combat, and are often horrifically expensive (Vanguard Veterans, Warp Talons, Banshees, etc). Marines in close combat will generally live quite a lot longer in my experience than marines being shot at with the aforementioned exceptions and MCs. Even sisters who don't have the same statline can still sit locked in combat against many foes for some time, as the volume of wounds they'll have to save against per-turn is noticeably lower than against shooting.

The shooting bias in the current edition makes using that advantage difficult, but the bolter is another part of the problem. Using the bolter makes the unit in question a dedicated shooting unit; there's no way for them to assault afterwards or engage in any kind of maneuver shenanigans ala Eldar or Tau. Thus, they get shot into little bite sized chunks, if they even get that close considering their poor range and limited delivery mechanisms, as foot slogging sure as hell won't work most of the time.

What I'd like to see is for power-armoured models getting the ability to charge after using rapid fire weapons. Relentless-lite, in effect, allowing these post-human super-soldiers in extremely sophisticated armour to charge someone after double-tapping. It would fit the fluff, and while it wouldn't make the bolter directly better, it would make Tactical Marines, Battle Sisters, Chaos Marines and so on much better generalists; stay back and shoot those close combat units which threaten them, and be able to shoot and charge others; evening the odds with some low-powered small arms fire. It would also make power armour feel a little more unique and impressive than just a 3+ save which falter under a million bullets.

 Melissia wrote:
You're double posting. I already responded to that.

Yeah I noticed. Hit "quote" instead of "edit" and quoted myself.

However, the point about the Bolter is that it is an iconic weapon for at least three armies, and it has no real weight in most battles. You get a squad of Sisters / Marines and what determines their role in battle is the special weapon they carry. Perhaps it is slightly different for Sisters since you will not declare an assault so often.

Given that two armies without bolters just got a big buff (Eldar and Tau), seems a good time to add something to the humble bolter, thus making the rest of the squad count.

The Heavy Bolter is in a worse position concerning marines, didn´t think about the guard.

Anyway, what I will not like is seeing the Bolter changed into a Marines Bolter. The Sisters need this buff even more.

Just because it's iconic doesn't mean it needs to be overpowered.

Maybe the Tau and Eldar shouldn't just be so lol overpowered, how about that.

Torquar wrote:
No.
Gauss Flayers are super-science Disintegration beams. Pulse Rifles are superior, stable plasma accelerators. Shuriken weapons are.. a bit daft (seriously, a stiff wind should render them useless). Glorified Assault rifles should be better than them why exactly?

A pulse rifle yea might be more advanced but the Bolter is supposed to have the greater range

And have you seen the damage a 40mm grenade MG can do walls don't last very long nor do cars and light armoured vehicles and a Bolter has a much bigger caliber !! Almost double the size in fact

I have already admited that having rending would be op and every one moans about bladestorm for it (even me lol) but I think just adding in an extra shot would help bolters and therefore the sucky units that are tactical marines climb up to the same level as other troops

And don't forget guard have a new codex coming soon and I dread to think the amount of ap3 and lasgun shots that my marines are going to have to weather

 Rautakanki wrote:
Maybe the Tau and Eldar shouldn't just be so lol overpowered, how about that.

The ship already sailed on that. They are the new standard.

Maybe make the Bolters something like assault 2/heavy 3? that way they could assault and move without impediment, while if they take up a good position they can unload more shots with better accuracy!

I think the FW raptors have something similar, were if they stand still bolters are heavy 1 rending, due to headshots.

I think the biggest issue with marines isnt so much their stats or abilities, but the lack of ability in game to implement the tactics they would actually use in battle.

A company of marines is 100 guys, and should be able to do some amazing things! The reason they dont do so on the tabletop is that, since 40k is a game and needs to be fair to both players, disallows a lot of tactics and situations that marines would use to get and maintain momentum and advantage.

Think of it this way, in the fluff, marines often decapitate an enemy force by dropping on their leaders and killing them in a precision strike, or run land raiders across the ocean floor to blindside the enemy's read. Tactics like this either dont work (try dropping marines on your enemies heads in a normal game, unless your opponant is new or just sucks they are NOT going to deploy in any way to allow drop pods to come down right next to the targets they need to kill) or are impossible to emulate in a fair gaming environment (in the fluff, marine drop pods work as a weapon of surprise and fear since they dont know you are coming and have no way to defend against them, but in a normal game the moment your opponant sees your list and see pods, well up comes the bubble wrap, etc).

Also, what elite army would EVER pick a battlefield that was devoid of beneficial terrain? This goes back to the LOS blocking terrain argument. In fluff, marines would never deploy against a Tau gunline across an open field unless they literally had zero other options. A stock 40k game could emulate that bad scenario of course, but immediate puts our elite, low body count army on the back foot.

The best way to make marines competitive in the current meta (purely in my opinion of course) would be a lot more LOS blocking terrain. Not too much, but 1-2 good sized pieces need to be there to give us a chance to maneuver and use our advantages before we simply get deleted by weight of fire.

Buffing the bolter is a strange thing, especially because it is the standard upon which everything is based. You can't increase their range because that's tau's shtick. ditto for an increase in strength, especially because that would be HB strength. Mini-rending was added to shuriken weapons to make them not nerfed bolters so that's out the window. IIRC, shred alows you to reroll to wound, which is a tad overpowered against T3 and T4, making them better than S5 . Shred on a heavy bolter would be even worse.

I think boosting bolters to heavy 3/ assault 2 would be a suitable solution, and lend more flexibility to the supposedly flexible tactical squad.

So my vote goes with that idea posted above

Torquar wrote:
And have you seen the damage a 40mm grenade MG can do walls don't last very long nor do cars and light armoured vehicles and a Bolter has a much bigger caliber !! Almost double the size in fact

ummm... bolter fluff puts the bolters at .5 or .75 or 1 an inch in caliber...
not even close to double the size of a 40mm grenade... .5 caliber is only 13mm, the full inch is about 26mm

and bolters DO chew through light vehicles.



everysingle problem with "bolters" that people keep bring up is really just a problem with space marines...

bolters are the 2nd or 3rd best basic infantry weapon in game, beaten only by tau and eldar, who have better tech... even then the eldar lack ranged weapons, the tau lack ... ok nothing really, id kill for str 5 30" range... but thats what storm bolters with psybolt ammo are for...

 iGuy91 wrote:
I think boosting bolters to heavy 3/ assault 2 would be a suitable solution, and lend more flexibility to the supposedly flexible tactical squad.

So my vote goes with that idea posted above

Which would make them one of the most powerful troops in the game. A 10 man tac-team could be firing 30 shots at 24" if they havent moved or 20 shots at 24" if they have and still assault. You could make them have two different profiles though:
24" S4 AP5 Assault 1
12" S4 AP5 Assault 2

That at least would provide them a small buff, without making them tremendously OP.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:
I think boosting bolters to heavy 3/ assault 2 would be a suitable solution, and lend more flexibility to the supposedly flexible tactical squad.

So my vote goes with that idea posted above

Which would make them one of the most powerful troops in the game. A 10 man tac-team could be firing 30 shots at 24" if they havent moved or 20 shots at 24" if they have and still assault. You could make them have two different profiles though:
24" S4 AP5 Assault 1
12" S4 AP5 Assault 2

That at least would provide them a small buff, without making them tremendously OP.

but hey, it would fit with the fluff! maybe then a company of marines could take a planet after all =P

Hardly....
They would still be out-ranged by tau, who have better guns and range
Suriken weapons still pseudo rend.
This would also benefit several armies, not only marines, notice I never made mention of that.

Maybe switch them to salvo 2/3 instead so they have a reason to switch to pistols instead?

More ST4 shots isn't going to change the outcome of games. Even the catapults on the Dire Avengers are just insult after all the S6/7 injury.

Martel732 wrote:
More ST4 shots isn't going to change the outcome of games. Even the catapults on the Dire Avengers are just insult after all the S6/7 injury.

Then we are opening a whole new can of worms. We're talking about removing the allies matrix, easy acess to Precience for every army under the sun, and price boosts (or having to buy) serpent shields, and price hikes for HYMPs.

No, they need a slight tweak, its really the Tau and Eldar that busted this edition wide open.

 iGuy91 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
More ST4 shots isn't going to change the outcome of games. Even the catapults on the Dire Avengers are just insult after all the S6/7 injury.

Then we are opening a whole new can of worms. We're talking about removing the allies matrix, easy acess to Precience for every army under the sun, and price boosts (or having to buy) serpent shields, and price hikes for HYMPs.

No, they need a slight tweak, its really the Tau and Eldar that busted this edition wide open.

Tau/Eldar are the standard by which everything else must be measured. Unfortunate, but true. There is not rational change to the bolter to assist in the meta. Marines (and everyone else) need to be able to engage Wave Serpents at range and they just can't.

Martel732 wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
More ST4 shots isn't going to change the outcome of games. Even the catapults on the Dire Avengers are just insult after all the S6/7 injury.

Then we are opening a whole new can of worms. We're talking about removing the allies matrix, easy acess to Precience for every army under the sun, and price boosts (or having to buy) serpent shields, and price hikes for HYMPs.

No, they need a slight tweak, its really the Tau and Eldar that busted this edition wide open.

Tau/Eldar are the standard by which everything else must be measured. Unfortunate, but true. There is not rational change to the bolter to assist in the meta. Marines (and everyone else) need to be able to engage Wave Serpents at range and they just can't.

They can, it's just not very effective. It's a lot more effective against the other Eldar tanks that have more moderate fire power, cost heavy support slots, and do not have an extra line of defence the few rounds you don't shoot the shield.

Really, I think what iGuy91 wrote as a suggestion is a first, decent, step to bringing codexes to balance. Haven't got a clue about the Riptide, honestly, but still need a fix on the Wraithknight.

Marines can kill the Wraithknight. In fact, against poison, the Wraithknight is very fragile for its points. Marines can't do squat to wave serpents at range or jetseers. Except go first and get lucky. Lame.

How about upping bolters to ap4? I'd imagine that'd solve the weakness of them in regards to firewarriors?

The whole problem is and always will be the AP system. When AP3 and better is scarce, Marines are the best army in the game, since they pay very little for their top of the line stats. Likewise their own weaponry largely ignore the saves of their Xenos opponents, so the Xenos are paying for abilities that are simply ignored. However, when AP3 and better is common, Marines are the worst army in the game, since now they pay for abilities that don't do anything. Everyone remember the heavy 3 starcannon spam outrage back in the day that just had to be nerfed so that Marines stay relevant?

To hit modifiers and armour save modifiers fix the problem by letting everyone benefit from everything that they paid for no matter what type of gun is shooting at them. If you pay 20% more points to get a 20% better save, even after the negative modifier you'll still have a better save than if you didn't make the purchase, so it's fair game and now you can actually begin the process or balancing units and their points costs. There is absolutely no balance or game design argument in favour of the AP and cover save systems that exist in 40K right now. 2+ cover saves (essentially invulnerable saves except against very few top armies) can be gained for entire armies at very little cost, while armour saves are generally very expensive per model despite actually being susceptible to AP2 and better weapons.

The fact that you're trying to remedy the situation by creating more imbalance in a fundamentally broken rule set is cute.

More people talking about bolters as if it's just marines using them.

Though it would be amusing to have Sisters blobs firing those 3-shot bolters someone suggested. 120 S4 AP5 shots from a single squad of infantry... at BS4? And they have 3+/6++ armor AND Acts of Faith? Plus the addition of heavy weapons and meltaguns. Fun times!

I think another part of the MEQ issue here is assault being so poor. In a game where the army which shoots best has a huge advantage, it's no shocker to see the top two armies being the ones which throw out the most and best shooting. Likewise in 5e, it wasn't a shock to see the best armies be the ones with the cheapest vehicles and best AT in a system where vehicles were extremely hard to kill. Before, it was no shock to see assault armies be top when the editions favoured assault. It's a general failure to balance all the phases in the core rules, and Space Marines have always overpaid for it. If assault was on par with shooting, SM would be able to shoot orks to death and assault Tau. This is such a bad idea in the current edition that it's almost hilarious. SM have always paid for their armour's ability to not only withstand a good amount of shooting, but also to withstand a good amount of blows in combat. The AP system is, likewise, almost immeasurably broken to the point where 3+ save MCs may as well not exist (with the exception of the Wraithknight, who is only viable due to T8 W6 and jump - its save is almost irrelevant).

S4 SHOULD be good. It should be doing substantial damage to most infantry. The fact it isn't shows us that the designers have lost the plot with infantry balance, which we've seen in every codex which has come out (from Kroot getting dirt cheap infiltrating bolters, to hormagaunts still totting up to 10 points when fully outfitted). You can't just buff the bolter and fix this any more - the entire system would need rebalancing. When Tyranid MCs, a thing which should be feared as nigh-unkillable by small arms in the fluff, are regarded as jokes to everyone, especially Tau, the game needs examining. Locked in combat is now an obviously broken relic of a mechanic and we're still lumbered with it - it's so bad that they had to introduce sweeping advance, which was then so overpowered that they had to make most armies almost totally ignore it. There is no simple fix.

trephines wrote:
How about upping bolters to ap4? I'd imagine that'd solve the weakness of them in regards to firewarriors?

Again way op and would make the heavy Bolter pointless

And making them heavy 2 would seriously tip the scale in the marines favour I mean 10 tactical marines would put out 30 shots and combine that with either IF or UM chapter tactics would seriously hurt !!

Just making them 2 shots would be fine

And no I have said numerous times include every race with bolters

brother marcus wrote:
And no I have said numerous times include every race with bolters

You say that without actually paying attention to what that entails.

There is no simple fix..

Invalidating every single codex and starting afresh with new rules and a Ravening Hordes book that lists the basic units for every army untill a codex is released is a very simple fix. It's also the only fix.

Sadly GW have made their bed with these garbage rules and show no signs of turning back or even admitting a problem exists so what I said is something that won't happen untill GW is under new ownership.

 Therion wrote:

There is no simple fix..

Invalidating every single codex and starting afresh with new rules and a Ravening Hordes book that lists the basic units for every army untill a codex is released is a very simple fix. It's also the only fix.

Oh god, we don't need another 2nd->3rd edition release like that. Jegus H Tapdancing Christ that would be bad. I'd have to wait another TEN fething YEARS to get a real codex and new models...

 Melissia wrote:

 Therion wrote:

There is no simple fix..

Invalidating every single codex and starting afresh with new rules and a Ravening Hordes book that lists the basic units for every army untill a codex is released is a very simple fix. It's also the only fix.

Oh god, we don't need another 2nd->3rd edition release like that. Jegus H Tapdancing Christ that would be bad. I'd have to wait another TEN fething YEARS to get a real codex and new models...

I admit drawbacks exist, and for the record I enjoy 40K no matter what form it takes, but the only way to fix the hundreds of problems that exist is to start afresh.

That said, if a guy has painted and re-painted the same model a dozen times and it's really ugly every single time, I'd ask for a new painter before having it re-painted once again. Hence my remark about new ownership and an entirely new team of professional game designers.

 Melissia wrote:

brother marcus wrote:
And no I have said numerous times include every race with bolters

You say that without actually paying attention to what that entails.

What do you mean like GW releasing an FAQ hat basically goes " okay guys the new stats for bolters are "this" and codex x,y,z must adhere to these changes

Wow that's really hard I don't know how a well paid design team could manage that

 Therion wrote:
The whole problem is and always will be the AP system. When AP3 and better is scarce, Marines are the best army in the game, since they pay very little for their top of the line stats. Likewise their own weaponry largely ignore the saves of their Xenos opponents, so the Xenos are paying for abilities that are simply ignored. However, when AP3 and better is common, Marines are the worst army in the game, since now they pay for abilities that don't do anything. Everyone remember the heavy 3 starcannon spam outrage back in the day that just had to be nerfed so that Marines stay relevant?

To hit modifiers and armour save modifiers fix the problem by letting everyone benefit from everything that they paid for no matter what type of gun is shooting at them. If you pay 20% more points to get a 20% better save, even after the negative modifier you'll still have a better save than if you didn't make the purchase, so it's fair game and now you can actually begin the process or balancing units and their points costs. There is absolutely no balance or game design argument in favour of the AP and cover save systems that exist in 40K right now. 2+ cover saves (essentially invulnerable saves except against very few top armies) can be gained for entire armies at very little cost, while armour saves are generally very expensive per model despite actually being susceptible to AP2 and better weapons.

The fact that you're trying to remedy the situation by creating more imbalance in a fundamentally broken rule set is cute.

Actually I lose most of my marines to weight of wounds, not AP.

brother marcus wrote:
Wow that's really hard I don't know how a well paid design team could manage that

Because you aren't paying attention to the fact that the balance for Blue Marines, Red Marines, Grey Marines, Silver Marines, Spiky Marines, Green Marines, Black Marines, Sisters, and Imperial Guard are very different. Especially the last two.

What sounds like a good idea for one of those factions may in fact break the game for any of the others. Therefor it's best to instead adjust the specific unit stats or special rules while leaving the bolter alone.

If you make bolters Heavy 3/Assault 2, that could very well make Sisters way too powerful, because they can have units of up to twenty as basic infantry. That's 60 S4/AP5 shots at BS4 from a single squad, or 40 while on the move AND THEN THEY ASSAULT.

If you make heavy bolters Heavy 4, that WOULD break the Imperial Guard, which spams HBs like no other army.

And so on and so forth, and that's without even discussing the balance between each of the various colors of marines.

brother marcus wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

brother marcus wrote:
And no I have said numerous times include every race with bolters

You say that without actually paying attention to what that entails.

What do you mean like GW releasing an FAQ hat basically goes " okay guys the new stats for bolters are "this" and codex x,y,z must adhere to these changes

Wow that's really hard I don't know how a well paid design team could manage that

I think what the point is for you to look at CSM, SoB, GK, IG, =I=, ect and think about how it would affect them as well.

I have to agree that the bolter seems like it is a problem, but it's really the fact that the meq lists, in general, have too many points wrapped up in defenses that don't work anymore and not enough killy at range.

Martel732 wrote:

 Therion wrote:
The whole problem is and always will be the AP system. When AP3 and better is scarce, Marines are the best army in the game, since they pay very little for their top of the line stats. Likewise their own weaponry largely ignore the saves of their Xenos opponents, so the Xenos are paying for abilities that are simply ignored. However, when AP3 and better is common, Marines are the worst army in the game, since now they pay for abilities that don't do anything. Everyone remember the heavy 3 starcannon spam outrage back in the day that just had to be nerfed so that Marines stay relevant?

To hit modifiers and armour save modifiers fix the problem by letting everyone benefit from everything that they paid for no matter what type of gun is shooting at them. If you pay 20% more points to get a 20% better save, even after the negative modifier you'll still have a better save than if you didn't make the purchase, so it's fair game and now you can actually begin the process or balancing units and their points costs. There is absolutely no balance or game design argument in favour of the AP and cover save systems that exist in 40K right now. 2+ cover saves (essentially invulnerable saves except against very few top armies) can be gained for entire armies at very little cost, while armour saves are generally very expensive per model despite actually being susceptible to AP2 and better weapons.

The fact that you're trying to remedy the situation by creating more imbalance in a fundamentally broken rule set is cute.

Actually I lose most of my marines to weight of wounds, not AP.

That's a codex creep issue and doesn't in any way shape or form make the AP less of a problem than before. Like I said previously, 40K doesn't suffer from just one glaring problem that if fixed would turn the game into a game for strategic masterminds. For example, the S6 and S7 AP- spam issue is a symptom of those types of guns being too cheap, dealing with the light vehicle and flyer spam, and putting a ton of wounds on all types of units while also not caring whether the target has a cover save or not since you're not paying for AP that would get negated by the cover. The best low AP weapons right now are those that ignore cover, meaning Tau, and that's just a symptom of the bad rules for cover.

And don't kid yourself and think that Marines were fine before 6th edition. Many Marine armies were top tier in 5th, but it had very little to do with the basic Marine and absolutely nothing to do with bolters. Their cheap vehicles were extraordinarily points efficient and stuff like Riptides and Heldrakes hadn't come around yet to invalidate the lines and lines of infantry Missile Launchers.

Marine players crying..... This is rich.... You want nice guns give up your ridiculous free rule Atsknf and I'm sure all the Xenos and chaos players won't have an issue, with a bolt gun change, make it ap4 for all I care so you ignore 90% of Xenos armor, then we will hear how you still need more since your just cheaper 1k sons now without the invulnerable.... Wait that's the solution power armor supposed to be the best where's our invulnerable?

DA are 1 Pts less than a marine and not even remotely in the same stat line range and no one complains, marines get the best statline, armor, special rule and only 1 more ppm than a chaos marine.....and we still need to make them better

 Arthas367 wrote:
Marine players crying..... This is rich.... You want nice guns give up your ridiculous free rule Atsknf and I'm sure all the Xenos and chaos players won't have an issue, with a bolt gun change, make it ap4 for all I care so you ignore 90% of Xenos armor, then we will hear how you still need more since your just cheaper 1k sons now without the invulnerable.... Wait that's the solution power armor supposed to be the best where's our invulnerable?

DA are 1 Pts less than a marine and not even remotely in the same stat line range and no one complains, marines get the best statline, armor, special rule and only 1 more ppm than a chaos marine.....and we still need to make them better

ATSKNF isn't even that good anymore. Get with the times. You can't regroup models that have been taken off the board.

Both CSM and C:SM troops are getting rocked.

 Arthas367 wrote:
DA are 1 Pts less than a marine and not even remotely in the same stat line range and no one complains, marines get the best statline, armor, special rule and only 1 more ppm than a chaos marine.....and we still need to make them better

You're correct. Those Marines with bolters don't win games. Heavy weapons, incredible vehicles, giant monsters and mega deathstars with 2++ rerollables win games. Marines aren't much more useful than Kroot. Troops choices and infantry in general is nigh useless for every other task than hiding behind rocks and buildings all game and then rushing the objectives.

As a Sisters player, I disagree with your assertions on infantry being useless.

Maybe you're just not very good at using infantry.

 Melissia wrote:

brother marcus wrote:
Wow that's really hard I don't know how a well paid design team could manage that

Because you aren't paying attention to the fact that the balance for Blue Marines, Red Marines, Grey Marines, Silver Marines, Spiky Marines, Green Marines, Black Marines, Sisters, and Imperial Guard are very different. Especially the last two.

What sounds like a good idea for one of those factions may in fact break the game for any of the others. Therefor it's best to instead adjust the specific unit stats or special rules while leaving the bolter alone.

If you make bolters Heavy 3/Assault 2, that could very well make Sisters way too powerful, because they can have units of up to twenty as basic infantry. That's 60 S4/AP5 shots at BS4 from a single squad, or 40 while on the move AND THEN THEY ASSAULT.

If you make heavy bolters Heavy 4, that WOULD break the Imperial Guard, which spams HBs like no other army.

And so on and so forth, and that's without even discussing the balance between each of the various colors of marines.

Okay I hold my hand up that I don't know any rules for sisters but I never said it should be heavy 3 I think he same stat line but one more shot would be fine.

But I imagine it would treat all marines in the same manner including chaos

And I did mention an astartes class boltgun to separate from guard and the =|=


And seriously stop bringing up ATSKNF it's like the xenos butt hurt card. Even when I play my tau and guard I really don't think yea I could use that rule it's ace

 Melissia wrote:
As a Sisters player, I disagree with your assertions on infantry being useless.

Maybe you're just not very good at using infantry.

Maybe you don't play the right opponents. Or maybe sisters weather 50+ armor saves a turn better. Because you know what? The Eldar wound my BA on the same numbers they wound sisters: a "2".

 Melissia wrote:
As a Sisters player, I disagree with your assertions on infantry being useless.

Maybe you're just not very good at using infantry.

HBMC would be proud. Eventually at every rules related discussion a non-competitive player tries to talk down a competitive player with the millennia old 'use tactics' argument.

The next tournament where people get tabled by quad/triptides, jetseers, serpents, screamerstars, wraiths and scythes and whatnot, you need to be there to tell the losers to use tactics. If you could wear a red GW shirt it would be even better.

OMG! Such WAAC! Much power gamer.

Mathematics >> tactics in a such a limited game.

In starcraft, I can get ahead by getting good baneling hits on marines or some such thing, but it's really hard to get ahead of jetseer or screamerstar. Or even helldrakes with no AA.

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe you don't play the right opponents.

Maybe I don't.

So I looked up tourney results. So far, looks like most impressive was Mohile's Necron/Orks, perhaps the top "unbeatable" army of last year. With a battlewagon full of meganobz being the big game changing inclusion from other Necron/Allied lists, I'd say that infantry still have a HUGE place within 40k. If you use them right.

Meganobz aren't "infantry". They are super elites. It's not how you use the "infantry" it's which "infantry" you use. And battlewagons have always been a dubiously cheap source of AV 14. If marines could get a battlewagon, that would be a step in the right direction.

Martel732 wrote:
Meganobz aren't "infantry".

They're a kind of infantry.

Martel732 wrote:
It's not how you use the "infantry" it's which "infantry" you use.

Only if you xhoose to use all infantry in the exact same way.

Martel732 wrote:
And battlewagons have always been a dubiously cheap source of AV 14

Amusingly, I've heard plenty of complaints of them being overpriced for what you get.

Martel732 wrote:
If marines could get a battlewagon, that would be a step in the dumb direction.

FTFY

Freaking marine fanboys wanting to rip off and steal the advantages every other faction has until there's no reason to use anything other than space borings.

Martel732 wrote:
Meganobz aren't "infantry". They are super elites. It's not how you use the "infantry" it's which "infantry" you use. And battlewagons have always been a dubiously cheap source of AV 14. If marines could get a battlewagon, that would be a step in the right direction.

They are infantry type aren't they?

 Melissia wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Meganobz aren't "infantry".

They're a kind of infantry.

Martel732 wrote:
It's not how you use the "infantry" it's which "infantry" you use.

Only if you xhoose to use all infantry in the exact same way.

Martel732 wrote:
And battlewagons have always been a dubiously cheap source of AV 14

Amusingly, I've heard plenty of complaints of them being overpriced for what you get.

Martel732 wrote:
If marines could get a battlewagon, that would be a step in the dumb direction.

FTFY

Freaking marine fanboys wanting to rip off and steal the advantages every other faction has until there's no reason to use anything other than space borings.

Yeah, I play BA. I'm a real fan boy. What exactly are the marine advantages again? Because when I play BA against C:SM, I am not seeing a whole lot. I'm seeing a few units I care about and then a whole sea of crap. Which, of course, is pretty much what the BA look like as well. So it's a lot more even than Eldar face rolling me to death.

All I meant by the battlewagon comment was that the gulf between assault and non-assault is too great and that open topped is a huge advantage, not a disadvantage like I'm sure GW thinks it is. The Battlewagon is incredibly efficient compared to the LR.

Martel732 wrote:
Yeah, I play BA. I'm a real fan boy. What exactly are the marine advantages again? Because when I play BA against C:SM

So marines vs marines, you're surprised that they're samey or something?

 Melissia wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Yeah, I play BA. I'm a real fan boy. What exactly are the marine advantages again? Because when I play BA against C:SM

So marines vs marines, you're surprised that they're samey or something?

No. What I'm saying is that I have the WORST army in the game and C:SM does not intimidate me in the least. That's how ineffectual the changes to C:SM have been to me. Tau/Eldar/Daemons are not even a game for me. I'm never even in it. It's me scooping red marines up. Not so with C:SM; they have to work hard to beat me, because their weapons and schemes are just lackluster. They just can't do the damage or take the damage like the good lists.

 Melissia wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Meganobz aren't "infantry".

They're a kind of infantry.

Martel732 wrote:
It's not how you use the "infantry" it's which "infantry" you use.

Only if you xhoose to use all infantry in the exact same way.

Martel732 wrote:
And battlewagons have always been a dubiously cheap source of AV 14

Amusingly, I've heard plenty of complaints of them being overpriced for what you get.

Martel732 wrote:
If marines could get a battlewagon, that would be a step in the dumb direction.

FTFY

Freaking marine fanboys wanting to rip off and steal the advantages every other faction has until there's no reason to use anything other than space borings.

Seriously space borings hahahahahhhahaha the imperium has THE most in depth fluff going and what's easily the best book series in the black library oh yes the Horus heresy which is marines killing marines pretty much all the way through

And eldar fluff is boring

Negron fluff got reversed

Nids are a straight rip off from aliens

Orks are copy and paste from fantasy just with guns

Demons- eldars fault

And tau have you actually read their fluff I mean seriously it sucks and I play them

Atsknf is the Xenos butthurt card? Funny looks like this whole thread is the space marine butthurt card..... Enjoy for the next edition marine players .... Us xeno players will just keep to Bizz as usual , know that gw has will never fundamentally change your poster boy selves besides make you a 1 Pts cheaper every year till you get guard prices marines

Though I'm sure us aliens with get our comeuppance next ed where they beat Xenos specific things into the ground with skimmer nerfs, and anything with a 4+ Save will probably just die after it loses a third of it's models

 Arthas367 wrote:
Atsknf is the Xenos butthurt card? Funny looks like this whole thread is the space marine butthurt card..... Enjoy for the next edition marine players .... Us xeno players will just keep to Bizz as usual , know that gw has will never fundamentally change your poster boy selves besides make you a 1 Pts cheaper every year till you get guard prices marines

Though I'm sure us aliens with get our comeuppance next ed where they beat Xenos specific things into the ground with skimmer nerfs, and anything with a 4+ Save will probably just die after it loses a third of it's models

You never did address how ATSKNF isn't even that good anymore. I have army swapped several times and never missed it. The game is too lethal for it to be a valuable ability.

 Arthas367 wrote:
make you a 1 Pts cheaper every year till you get guard prices marines

Don't tempt them.

brother marcus wrote:
Seriously space borings hahahahahhhahaha the imperium

Space Marines aren't "The Imperium".

They are merely a tiny, barely significant part of it.

For someone complaining about the lore, you haven't read much of it.

 Arthas367 wrote:
Atsknf is the Xenos butthurt card? Funny looks like this whole thread is the space marine butthurt card..... Enjoy for the next edition marine players .... Us xeno players will just keep to Bizz as usual , know that gw has will never fundamentally change your poster boy selves besides make you a 1 Pts cheaper every year till you get guard prices marines

Though I'm sure us aliens with get our comeuppance next ed where they beat Xenos specific things into the ground with skimmer nerfs, and anything with a 4+ Save will probably just die after it loses a third of it's models

Urm how many times have has ATSKNF helped me how about never !! They either stand and fight due to their high moral marines either stay and fight or get wiped out its that simple

And hell when I use my tau or guard I love to play marines it's a pretty much guaranteed victory these days and I never have a problem with models running away


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:

 Arthas367 wrote:
make you a 1 Pts cheaper every year till you get guard prices marines

Don't tempt them.

brother marcus wrote:
Seriously space borings hahahahahhhahaha the imperium

Space Marines aren't "The Imperium".

They are merely a tiny, barely significant part of it.

For someone complaining about the lore, you haven't read much of it.

Okay then my book case says differently

The only reason that rule isn't your godsend anymore is because combat isn't as dominating as it was... When it returns and it will return you marine players will find something else to complain about while the rest of us experience getting cut down again like it should be, the rule isn't broke currently because the edition is about shooting you dead now, but that rule still makes your troops the most reliable outside of fearless

Firstly, rather than buffing the bolter's statline, id like to see it have an "ability" like Bladestorm or Gauss. There's already a stat increased rifle in the game, and the tau have it, and making boltguns similar plasma rifles (or just increasing their stats in general) would be boring, overpowered, And/Or counter-productive. Bolters are supposed to be brutal weapons, even in the universe of 40K, so make an effect that demonstrates the horrific wounds these weapons would cause. Some sort of morale effect probably, like if the squad has been reduced to 25% of their original model count by bolt weaponry, the units gains a permanent -1 modifier to their leadership. Failing that, unit interactions like DA banners that change the profile of the bolter would be a solid direction, just don't make it a straight port from the DA, they've suffered enough.

However, the problem is not so much the bolter as it is 40K as a whole. I see three things that need to be changed to fix this problem, the AP system, the Cover System. and Allies. Let's be honest, the current AP and cover rules are a complete flop. The AP system overvalues AP 2 and 3, undervalue anything with a 5+ or worse, while Cover should be a modifier for "to hit", not some independent save, since this means that units that don't pay for good armor saves can get them for free, with ignores cover weapons being far less prolific than AP 2 and 3 weapons. It also makes cover far less useful for anything with a decent armor save, except against the aforementioned low AP weapons. If AP doesn't "ignore" armor, but rather decreases it gradually as AP increases, then players wont feel the need to take AP 2-3 equivalent weapons, since they're not the only effective weapons against marines and therefore just as good against everything else. Weaker AP weapons will be more versatile, while still impacting marine armor to a not insignificant degree.

Finally, the Allies system is a mess. I would have less of a problem with the current game balance of super strong Xenos (they should be strong, otherwise the Imperium would have just wiped them out by now) if they weren't allowed to ally similarly to the new (and pathetic) Tyranids codex, forcing them to handle their own weaknesses and downsides without aid. Split the game into 4 factions (Chaos, Imperial, Xenos, and Neutral) and only allow allying within your own faction, with the exception of Xenos who could not ally without that aid of a "neutral" inquisition ally, or with a neutral army (imperial guard (they can be corrupted, mercenaries, brainwashed etc etc), Harlequins, Inquisition, etc). This way the Xenos are really powerful, but Chaos and Imperials can shore up their weaknesses with allies. Also helps avoid some of the ridiculously strange/dumb ally configurations in play currently.

All of this is a lot of work, coupled with big changes to the system, but these problematic situtions are going to keep popping up until the system itself gets fixed. Additional fixes like general balance work (both internal and external) and streamlining the game are both needed as well. The fact that the rules are in the hands of people who have an incentive to keep them imbalanced does not bode well.

Didnt read any of the replies. I think bolters should be salvo 1/2 at 24" range

brother marcus wrote:
Okay then my book case says differently

No it doesn't.

Most battles that the Imperium participates in are won or lost without so much as sniffing a Space Marine's flatulence as they pass by. Most humans live their entire lives without ever seeing a Space Marine. Including most guardsmen. Hive worlds produce so much military manpower and equipment every year that just a single year's output could crush an entire chapter of Space Marines. Uncounted trillions of guardsmen die every year in order to keep the Imperium alive, and without their sacrifice, the Space Marines would never have a chance to shine in the relatively few, vital battles that they DO participate in, where they DO manage to turn the tide with their skill, equipment, and heroism.

The Space Marine codex doesn't really disagree with any of these statements, nor does the BRB. The Imperium is unfathomably huge, amongst which Space Marines are such a tiny number. Even if Space Marines are each equal to a thousand guardsmen-- an assertion which even their own primarchs disagreed with-- the Imperial Guard's military power exceeds that of the Space Marines exponentially. And it has to, because the Imperial Guard and the PDFs are what holds the line, not the Space Marines.


Back on topic, however: Again, boltguns really don't need changes. What needs changes are the individual units. To give a blanket change to all bolt weapons would upset the balance, not create balance.

 Peregrine wrote:

I have no idea, because there isn't really a competitive environment that has sufficient LOS blocking terrain. Tournaments usually have lots of big open fields where gunlines can dominate because the TOs don't have access to enough terrain to make proper tables for everyone.

Fair enough.

It might be rising, but it's still limited to heavy/special weapons. A MEQ army is still going to take a lot of hits that it gets its T4 and armor save against, and that makes a big difference in durability compared to T3/4+ fire warriors or T3/no-save GEQs. Plus, the amount of melee AP 3 hasn't changed all that much and charges with anything short of a death star involve lots of STR 3/4 AP- attacks.

It's limited to heavy/special weapons, which are readily available to shooter armies like Tau and Eldar in huge amounts, *as well as* high-ROF weapons which also nullify +3Sv. And the latter is even MORE readily available. And again, you're not addressing the fact that the difference between 4+ armies and 3+ armies is that 3+ armies have much smaller model counts, so you don't NEED to have AP3 or better or high RoF weaponry on *every* model.

At short range, with squishy infantry units. Even against Eldar you're still going to face large amounts of AP 4+ weapons, and even against rending weapons a 3+ save is still useful against the 2/3 of the wounds that aren't AP 2.

Short range? Eldar out-DPS marines at longer ranges bro, because battle focus. Take a look at Dire Avengers. 18'' range, and their weapons are assault 2 rather than rapid-fire. So they can easily fire their full 2-shots and then dance away out of rapid-fire range. Even rolling 1's for your run every turn, it's literally impossible for a marine squad to get into rapid-fire for their double-tap, ensuring DA's will consistently fire off twice as many shots per turn,all of which are rending. That's just the type of shenanigans you face as a marine player.

Your appreciation of the 3+ save isn't realistic, and isn't really paying attention to the meta. There is far, far too much volume of fire and AP3 or better to make that save worth what you pay for it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Which... ties in to what everyone's saying.

The problem with Marines isn't bolters, or really even marines. It's other factions and their power-creep. Too much access to low AP weapons, too much access to high rates of fire. Too much ignores cover, too much increased range (imo, no army should be able to shoot into the enemies' deployment zone turn one unless they're artillery), and yes, not enough cover and LoS blockers.

Fixing the rest of meta is the only way to really fix MEQ without buffing them into incredulous. Unfortunately, that's a lot of work, and it's not going to happen. Oh well.

 Melissia wrote:

brother marcus wrote:
Okay then my book case says differently

No it doesn't.

Most battles that the Imperium participates in are won or lost without so much as sniffing a Space Marine's flatulence as they pass by. Most humans live their entire lives without ever seeing a Space Marine. Including most guardsmen. Hive worlds produce so much military manpower and equipment every year that just a single year's output could crush an entire chapter of Space Marines. Uncounted trillions of guardsmen die every year in order to keep the Imperium alive, and without their sacrifice, the Space Marines would never have a chance to shine in the relatively few, vital battles that they DO participate in, where they DO manage to turn the tide with their skill, equipment, and heroism.

The Space Marine codex doesn't really disagree with any of these statements, nor does the BRB. The Imperium is unfathomably huge, amongst which Space Marines are such a tiny number. Even if Space Marines are each equal to a thousand guardsmen-- an assertion which even their own primarchs disagreed with-- the Imperial Guard's military power exceeds that of the Space Marines exponentially. And it has to, because the Imperial Guard and the PDFs are what holds the line, not the Space Marines.


Back on topic, however: Again, boltguns really don't need changes. What needs changes are the individual units. To give a blanket change to all bolt weapons would upset the balance, not create balance.

For all the wrangling, I agree with you. But marines are more miserable than you are making them out to be.

They're still in better shape then the army I use, so I don't have many [expletive deleted]s to give.

Then why are you in this thread, complaining about everyone else's posts?

 Melissia wrote:

brother marcus wrote:
Okay then my book case says differently

No it doesn't.

Most battles that the Imperium participates in are won or lost without so much as sniffing a Space Marine's flatulence as they pass by. Most humans live their entire lives without ever seeing a Space Marine. Including most guardsmen. Hive worlds produce so much military manpower and equipment every year that just a single year's output could crush an entire chapter of Space Marines. Uncounted trillions of guardsmen die every year in order to keep the Imperium alive, and without their sacrifice, the Space Marines would never have a chance to shine in the relatively few, vital battles that they DO participate in, where they DO manage to turn the tide with their skill, equipment, and heroism.

The Space Marine codex doesn't really disagree with any of these statements, nor does the BRB. The Imperium is unfathomably huge, amongst which Space Marines are such a tiny number. Even if Space Marines are each equal to a thousand guardsmen-- an assertion which even their own primarchs disagreed with-- the Imperial Guard's military power exceeds that of the Space Marines exponentially. And it has to, because the Imperial Guard and the PDFs are what holds the line, not the Space Marines.

I already know this and I don't know how it's relavent either. I have also said I have a guard army at 2500 Pts

I don't think you see how rubbish they actually are these days


Back on topic, however: Again, boltguns really don't need changes. What needs changes are the individual units. To give a blanket change to all bolt weapons would upset the balance, not create balance.

brother marcus wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

brother marcus wrote:
Seriously space borings hahahahahhhahaha the imperium

Space Marines aren't "The Imperium".

They are merely a tiny, barely significant part of it.

For someone complaining about the lore, you haven't read much of it.

Okay then my book case says differently

There are 1,000 chapters IIRC. Each chapter has a maximum of 1000 marines. That means that at any one time there can be only a maximum of 1,000,000 marines. The average hive city (not world) can have a population in the hundreds of millions. There are thousands, if not millions of hive worlds. That's only the hive worlds. Yeah space marines are a tiny potion of the imperium. I don't even knnow if they are reprsented with the high lords of Terra (could be though, no idea).

They are not.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Then why are you in this thread, complaining about everyone else's posts?

And I think it's just what he/she does in pretty much every thread Ive seen


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

I have no idea, because there isn't really a competitive environment that has sufficient LOS blocking terrain. Tournaments usually have lots of big open fields where gunlines can dominate because the TOs don't have access to enough terrain to make proper tables for everyone.

Fair enough.

It might be rising, but it's still limited to heavy/special weapons. A MEQ army is still going to take a lot of hits that it gets its T4 and armor save against, and that makes a big difference in durability compared to T3/4+ fire warriors or T3/no-save GEQs. Plus, the amount of melee AP 3 hasn't changed all that much and charges with anything short of a death star involve lots of STR 3/4 AP- attacks.

It's limited to heavy/special weapons, which are readily available to shooter armies like Tau and Eldar in huge amounts, *as well as* high-ROF weapons which also nullify +3Sv. And the latter is even MORE readily available. And again, you're not addressing the fact that the difference between 4+ armies and 3+ armies is that 3+ armies have much smaller model counts, so you don't NEED to have AP3 or better or high RoF weaponry on *every* model.

[quote[At short range, with squishy infantry units. Even against Eldar you're still going to face large amounts of AP 4+ weapons, and even against rending weapons a 3+ save is still useful against the 2/3 of the wounds that aren't AP 2.

Short range? Eldar out-DPS marines at longer ranges bro, because battle focus. Take a look at Dire Avengers. 18'' range, and their weapons are assault 2 rather than rapid-fire. So they can easily fire their full 2-shots and then dance away out of rapid-fire range. Even rolling 1's for your run every turn, it's literally impossible for a marine squad to get into rapid-fire for their double-tap, ensuring DA's will consistently fire off twice as many shots per turn,all of which are rending. That's just the type of shenanigans you face as a marine player.

Your appreciation of the 3+ save isn't realistic, and isn't really paying attention to the meta. There is far, far too much volume of fire and AP3 or better to make that save worth what you pay for it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Which... ties in to what everyone's saying.

The problem with Marines isn't bolters, or really even marines. It's other factions and their power-creep. Too much access to low AP weapons, too much access to high rates of fire. Too much ignores cover, too much increased range (imo, no army should be able to shoot into the enemies' deployment zone turn one unless they're artillery), and yes, not enough cover and LoS blockers.

Fixing the rest of meta is the only way to really fix MEQ without buffing them into incredulous. Unfortunately, that's a lot of work, and it's not going to happen. Oh well.

Alright, keep it about the topic and not personal please.

 Melissia wrote:

brother marcus wrote:

Most battles that the Imperium participates in are won or lost without so much as sniffing a Space Marine's flatulence as they pass by. Most humans live their entire lives without ever seeing a Space Marine. Including most guardsmen. Hive worlds produce so much military manpower and equipment every year that just a single year's output could crush an entire chapter of Space Marines. Uncounted trillions of guardsmen die every year in order to keep the Imperium alive, and without their sacrifice, the Space Marines would never have a chance to shine in the relatively few, vital battles that they DO participate in, where they DO manage to turn the tide with their skill, equipment, and heroism.

The Space Marine codex doesn't really disagree with any of these statements, nor does the BRB. The Imperium is unfathomably huge, amongst which Space Marines are such a tiny number. Even if Space Marines are each equal to a thousand guardsmen-- an assertion which even their own primarchs disagreed with-- the Imperial Guard's military power exceeds that of the Space Marines exponentially. And it has to, because the Imperial Guard and the PDFs are what holds the line, not the Space Marines.

Just sayin', replace "Space Marines" with "Sisters of Battle" and it's the same story. Live and let live I say. There's not anyone in here raging about how dumb a concept Sisters of Battle are (note: this is not my opinion, if not for the dumb Allies Matrix I'd probably play some Sisters myself), so why do you feel the need to belittle people who like Space Marines at every opportunity?

 Melissia wrote:
Because you aren't paying attention to the fact that the balance for Blue Marines, Red Marines, Grey Marines, Silver Marines, Spiky Marines, Green Marines, Black Marines, Sisters, and Imperial Guard are very different. Especially the last two.

No such Codex anymore.


Back on topic: Dark Angels can turn their bolters into Salvo 2/4. That hasn't made them OP whatsoever. Sure, it's a banner with limited range and all that, but even army-wide I don't think it'd be too much. To avoid Henchmen getting out of hand, there could be some sort of rule only letting models in Power Armour (so all Loyalists, Sisters, Chaos Marines, and any Henchmen rich enough to pay for Power Armour) use them as such, justifying it with the built in servos, gizmos and doo-dads that Power Armour comes with.

Regarding Sisters: I haven't argued to the contrary yet have I? I'm perfectly okay with Sisters being elite specialists who are quite rare. I do believe them to be more common than others do (such as Lynata), mind you, but still not really much more common than Marines.


More on topic: I think that ability should stay unique to the DA.

lol Marines without ATSKNF are beyond trash. Small units with gak weapons and saves that don't matter. Hello why do you think C:SM suck so hard.