Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

From BoLS:

Hi guys,

Games Day Chicago is over, and our Bothan spies tell us the following based on a review of Codex:Space Marines

In general, almost all of the latest round of rumors are correct. The codex is described as lavish, with a large color section, and clocking in at nearly 150 pages. Lets dive right into some of the details:

HQs
Master
Has well over 20 wargear options, and access to a once per game S:10 AP:1 Orbital Strike that is somewhat similar to the Witchhunter power.

Librarian
Leadership 10, and has an entire page of various powers. Big news is the Psychic Hood which now has a range of 24" instead of infinite.

Master of the Forge
Access to the Conversion Beamer, an old-school Rogue Trader era weapon with a 72" range that grows more powerful the greater the distance to its targets. At its top end, it is S:10 AP:1 Large Blast.

Elites
Terminators
Available in squad sizes of 5-10. Stormshields for Assault Termys confirmed as 3+ invulnerable vs all attacks (assault and shooting).

Techmarines
Has a power allowing you to improve the cover save of a single piece of ruins in your deployment zone by +1. Access to the Thunderfire Cannon, which is artillery and has multiple fire modes based upon 4 small blast markers. One of the fire modes makes its target count as being in difficult ground next turn. ~neat!

Honor Guard
These bad boys have access to "Relic blades" which are +2S powerweapons. Their squad leader is the "Company Champion" who is required to direct attacks vs enemy ICs if possible. ~cool!

Troops
Tactical Squads
Available in 5-10 men. Squads of ten grant access to Flamer/Multimelta/Missile Launcher/Heavy Bolter for FREE. ~Heed the words of the Codex Astartes indeed!

Scouts
WS/BS:3; the heavy bolter option has access to Hellfire rounds.

Land Speeder Storm
Scout transport land speeder nullifies enemy teleport homers and icons within 6". Enemy deepstrikers within 12" roll double scatter. Enemy units who are assualted from it are at -2 Leadership.

Combat Tactics
New marine special rule allows you to voluntarily fail any morale check for any unit in the army.

ICs
Shrike (Raven Guard)
Grants the entire army Fleet instead of Combat Tactics. He has rending lightning claws and Infiltrate.

Cantor (Crimson Fists)
Grants the entire army Stubborn instead of Combat Tactics. Sternguard Veterans count as scoring units.

Forgot the linky:

http://belloflostsouls.blogspot.com/2008/07/sneak-peak-codex-space-marines.html

Orbital strike for the master is cool. Not too practical, but still very cool.

I really hope the new uberstormshields are passed onto the other Imperial armies.

They'd be neat for taking lascannon shots for Grey Knight armies. A Deathwing army with 25 TH/SS and 5 cyclones would be fun too. And so would BA Vets w/ Stormshields.

Why do we even bother playing other races?

This is just too messed up. GW has failed us all in a major way.

Why are enemy units at -2 leadership when being assaulted by young boys in their vest and pants, when they've spent the rest of the battle fighting 8ft tall superhumans in power armour? What is scary about that?!

"Quick lads, run before we get arrested!"

Jayden63 wrote:Why do we even bother playing other races?

This is just too messed up. GW has failed us all in a major way.

Because in the end, this is how it works:

New rulebook comes out.

Marines go to top of the heap (so people think).

Then builds from both old and new codices come out to crush marines without mercy.

Marine players whine that their cheese didn't last long enough.

"Game changing" new rules announced.

Rinse and repeat.

Where ya been man?

Been this way for 20 years.

Greebynog wrote:Why are enemy units at -2 leadership when being assaulted by young boys in their vest and pants, when they've spent the rest of the battle fighting 8ft tall superhumans in power armour? What is scary about that?!

"Quick lads, run before we get arrested!"

Because in the off chance that a 5 man scout squad (WS3, S4, I4, 4+ save) gets to own you...they get to run you down for free, and then you blast them to bits next turn.

Or so it goes in playtesting, where the scouts are found to be humorous.

Now when the FAQ says 'if engaged in combat, this bull ability STILL works' and you hammer someones entire army to death with it AND it's cumulative...

Yeah, then you can quit.

yum, wants to make me try a raven guard army, shrike + 20 (assault) veterns and some troop choice etc... might give it a crack..

Cheers,
Gutteridge

The Land Speeder Storm is beyond belief. I've got to see this in print.

Wait to see the points of an entire army before we cry "Cheese" and "BS".

The scariest abilities in the game dont mean much if you've got 25 models in a 2000pt force.

....just the same, the techmarine "artillery" peices are pretty neat and might cause me to actually start to 'dabble' with Iron Hands after letting the two last codeii pass by....

Thanks (to you & BoLS) for the scoop. Shameless commentary to follow:

Blackspade wrote:Big news is the Psychic Hood which now has a range of 24" instead of infinite.

Well overdue.

Blackspade wrote:Terminators
Available in squad sizes of 5-10. Stormshields for Assault Termys confirmed as 3+ invulnerable vs all attacks (assault and shooting).

Surprised not to see the 3-10 option that's started popping up for other terminators (and Wraithguard).

The 3+ inv sounds pretty crazy. I know GW want to encourage people to use massed fire rather than min maxing las/plas or similar, but is this excessive? Of course, if you can't consolidate into a new combat, there's hope for the intelligent opponent.

Blackspade wrote:Honor Guard
These bad boys have access to "Relic blades" which are +2S powerweapons.

So much for the ultra-rarity of Grey Knight power weapons.

Blackspade wrote:Tactical Squads
Available in 5-10 men. Squads of ten grant access to Flamer/Multimelta/Missile Launcher/Heavy Bolter for FREE. ~Heed the words of the Codex Astartes indeed!

Well this is springing up often enough to seem fairly corroborated by now. Intrigued by the inclusion of a multimelta in that list, perhaps GW wanted to encourage anything but Las & plas at this point. I'll be inbterested to see how people adapt to this, once we get past the usual anger/denial/depression stages.

Blackspade wrote:Land Speeder Storm
Scout transport land speeder nullifies enemy teleport homers and icons within 6". Enemy deepstrikers within 12" roll double scatter. Enemy units who are assualted from it are at -2 Leadership.

They make a good start with this one, presenting a unit with tactical applications to limit/prevent DS but then ruin it by going overboard with that -2 Ld rule. Do some boy scouts jumping at your head have the same emotional impact as seeing two of your squadmates (let's call them Johhny and Fred) killed in close quarters? I think not.

Blackspade wrote:Combat Tactics
New marine special rule allows you to voluntarily fail any morale check for any unit in the army.

Ahhh, I'd previously read this as voluntary pass or fail. This is still very useful, but more limited. Can SM's therefore limit horde assault armies by being charged, surviving the initial assault, falling back to then open up with full firepower in their own turn? Some might argue that's very 'characterful'

Blackspade wrote:Cantor (Crimson Fists)
Grants the entire army Stubborn instead of Combat Tactics. Sternguard Veterans count as scoring units.

If I played SM, I'd probably like this. Stubborn is a damn useful USR. I like that they make you give up Combat Tactics to get access to the new 'version' of traits in this way.

Stelek wrote:

Jayden63 wrote:Why do we even bother playing other races?

This is just too messed up. GW has failed us all in a major way.

Because in the end, this is how it works:

New rulebook comes out.

Marines go to top of the heap (so people think).

Then builds from both old and new codices come out to crush marines without mercy.

Exactly!

Might Marines in game performance now come closer to matching their fluff?

Finally?

JohnHwangDD wrote:The Land Speeder Storm is beyond belief. I've got to see this in print.

Yeah I'm with Jonny on this one - that list of rules just sounds like too much.

The rest is still bizzare - free heavy weapon upgrades? What are they thinking? - but that Land Speeder is just silly.

BYE

Believe it or not, I don't think any of this is going to be nearly as overpowered as everyone thinks they will be.

Marines will need to be in squads of 10 to be useful. That's a fairly hefty amount of points. And it's not like the synergy between the Flamer and those heavy weapons is all that great. IMO I'd probably want my tacticals on the move with Heavy weapons fire being relegated to Devs or Vehicles.

Voodoo, isn't the synergy issue dealt with by splitting the 10-man squad? Combat squad with special, the other with heavy.

I don't see the Tac squads as a problem in this codex. It's the other toys that will tempt people into taking unbalanced armies, yet again. Already people are focussing on the availablity (or not) of their 'crutch' weapons, rather than the troops that carry them. Then again, I believe that's borne out of a mindset (which I don't share) that firepower ranks above mobility and good battlefield position.

What I want to know is how are they going to codex-creep their way out of this? What will they give the IG (if indeed it is coming out next) to keep them at a similar power level?

Or will we just get a box of plastic stormtroopers, one new special character, the removal of Last Chancers and a recut Leman Russ that still looks the same, but the tank commander has a new hat?

I think you can guess which I think more likely.

Tribune wrote:Voodoo, isn't the synergy issue dealt with by splitting the 10-man squad? Combat squad with special, the other with heavy.

I don't see the Tac squads as a problem in this codex. It's the other toys that will tempt people into taking unbalanced armies, yet again. Already people are focussing on the availablity (or not) of their 'crutch' weapons, rather than the troops that carry them. Then again, I believe that's borne out of a mindset (which I don't share) that firepower ranks above mobility and good battlefield position.

The only thing I see as being really good is the one character that lets sternguard vets count as scoring. Then all of a sudden Drop Pods with them get very scary very quickly - depending on their points.

I still see Orks & Nids being a huge problem for them. They need to deal with hordes, and all their shiny new tools look like anti-MEQ/MC deals.

Interesting points. I recall when looking at all the rules/rumours for CSM that it seemed to be mostly slanted towards giving them a raft of AP3 options. It's not the defining feature of that codex, but certainly it stood out.

I don't get the same feeling (anti-MEQ) with these rumours, but I could well be wrong. I made a note about partly offsetting horde assault with voluntary fallback, was that off base?

I just find it funny that DA, BA, and BT will have inferior wargear. The saddest part is we would expect Black Templars to have an outdated wargear list but DA and BA are both 5th ed books...

The onething i hate about GW is their Dev team are a bunch of Manics. One moment everything is built around same principle and halfway through the line they are gonna scrap everything and build a new line thats "new edition compliant". Well thats all good but once they bring out source books after a new edition of rules release all of the "new Edition books " become outdated....

I mean heck with the way GW is going will we ever be able to play a 5th ed game with every army having a 5th ed (not a 5th ed compliant) codex or will 6th ed come out before the 5th ed line is even done?

Heritor wrote:..... but DA and BA are both 5th ed books...

Why do you consider these 5th Ed books?

HFN

I remember when the 2003 Chaos Codex came out it was so much better than the marine book that they even offered marine players and out by including pictures of loyalists who had drawn red Xs through their imperial symbols and changed sides.

I wonder if GW will now offer chaos a similar bone, include the 'Sons of Redemption' chapter who have white Xs through their chaos marks?

they were supposed to be written with 5th edition in mind

Voodoo Boyz wrote:

Tribune wrote:Voodoo, isn't the synergy issue dealt with by splitting the 10-man squad? Combat squad with special, the other with heavy.

I don't see the Tac squads as a problem in this codex. It's the other toys that will tempt people into taking unbalanced armies, yet again. Already people are focussing on the availablity (or not) of their 'crutch' weapons, rather than the troops that carry them. Then again, I believe that's borne out of a mindset (which I don't share) that firepower ranks above mobility and good battlefield position.

The only thing I see as being really good is the one character that lets sternguard vets count as scoring. Then all of a sudden Drop Pods with them get very scary very quickly - depending on their points.

I still see Orks & Nids being a huge problem for them. They need to deal with hordes, and all their shiny new tools look like anti-MEQ/MC deals.

It's strange how players view news differently. As an example, to me most of the shiny new tools like like anti-horde.

Land Raider Reedemer: Two 'better' than heavy flamers that can shoot at different units. Tank shock, flame. Hell with the new Land Raider rules tank shock 12' so the claw needs 6's than flame anyways.
Land Raider Crusader: Getting cheaper, with new rules that allow it to move 6 and fire everything.
Thunderfire: Barrage with four templates. No cover saves for enemy models.
Free Flamers and Heavy Bolters: Both anti-horde, split down to combat squads, throw flamer in Rhino (Or hell drop pod it)
New Blast rules: Plasma Cannons are sick and the free ML barrage might actually be worth firing from time to time
Term Cyclone ML is now Heavy 2: Again, the optional two blasts.
Combat Tactics: Getting out of HTH, enough said.
Sternguard Vets Ammo ignores cover: No KFF, no intervening models.

Now, I'll admit I view this through a lens of a marine player that plays an Ork opponent frequently....but I can see several new tools that helps marine players deal with 180 Boyz running across the field....

Blackspade wrote:From BoLS:

Hi guys,

Games Day Chicago is over, and our Bothan spies tell us the following based on a review of Codex:Space Marines

In general, almost all of the latest round of rumors are correct. The codex is described as lavish, with a large color section, and clocking in at nearly 150 pages. Lets dive right into some of the details:

HQs
Master
Has well over 20 wargear options, and access to a once per game S:10 AP:1 Orbital Strike that is somewhat similar to the Witchhunter power.

Librarian
Leadership 10, and has an entire page of various powers. Big news is the Psychic Hood which now has a range of 24" instead of infinite.

Master of the Forge
Access to the Conversion Beamer, an old-school Rogue Trader era weapon with a 72" range that grows more powerful the greater the distance to its targets. At its top end, it is S:10 AP:1 Large Blast.

These are the ones that REALLY piss me off. My lovingly fully converted, painted, and collected Emperors Children army got tossed through the ringer and completely made unplayable because it was "too powerful" by the new chaos codex. My lovingly converted and painted KOS orks got foobar and my Nobs lost all their options as well because GW wanted to streamline lists. Now SM get pages of wargear and power options. Yeah right. BS. This is how GW fails.

Jayden63 wrote:These are the ones that REALLY piss me off. My lovingly fully converted, painted, and collected Emperors Children army got tossed through the ringer and completely made unplayable because it was "too powerful" by the new chaos codex. My lovingly converted and painted KOS orks got foobar and my Nobs lost all their options as well because GW wanted to streamline lists. Now SM get pages of wargear and power options. Yeah right. BS. This is how GW fails.

It's worse than you think. GW has traditionally been completely unable to balance new options. Old stuff after 1 or 2 or 3 tries they can usually get the rules working but new stuff is usually disasterously bad.

And here comes the most played army with a slew of new stuff...

Guaranteed some will be unplayable, some will need work but some... some will be SOLID GOLD. And GW won't address these problems for years and years.

Blackspade wrote:Land Speeder Storm
Scout transport land speeder nullifies enemy teleport homers and icons within 6". Enemy deepstrikers within 12" roll double scatter. Enemy units who are assualted from it are at -2 Leadership.

That's almost too unbelievable. I bet the Ld thing is BS--it seems terribly arbitrary. Otherwise, the thing sounds unbelievable. A 24" circle that's a "No Deepstrike" zone? Wow.

For me the kicker will be that I bet no other army will get as much new goodies as Space Marines. I wouldn't be surprised if IG got zero new codex entries in 5E.

bigchris1313 wrote:

Blackspade wrote:Land Speeder Storm
Scout transport land speeder nullifies enemy teleport homers and icons within 6". Enemy deepstrikers within 12" roll double scatter. Enemy units who are assualted from it are at -2 Leadership.

That's almost too unbelievable. I bet the Ld thing is BS--it seems terribly arbitrary. Otherwise, the thing sounds unbelievable. A 24" circle that's a "No Deepstrike" zone? Wow.

Well they can DS within 24, just roll double scatter =p.

If this is true, which surely it isn't, they just gave marine players who get the first turn a nasty farking trick against Demons.

3 Scout Speeders turbo across the field with overlapping DS disruption bubbles. Roll double scatter on those Demons please! Even if they try to bring down an icon...it will probably scatter so far its use as an icon will be questionable at best. Or deploy in the corner away from the bubbles (and me) .

Not surprised that the codex is chock full of new rule exceptions... New retinue rule lets you hide an IC from direct attack... until the new SM Company Champion comes along.

If you take a retinue, he's not a IC anymore, so the Champion won't be able to direct attacks at him.

It's all looking and sounding great, but it's almost all going to be competing for the same few Heavy and Elite choices, which don't score. And with some of the rumors stating the basic marines are going up in points, what kind of cost is all the cool new stuff going to come at?

AgeOfEgos wrote:

bigchris1313 wrote:

Blackspade wrote:Land Speeder Storm
Scout transport land speeder nullifies enemy teleport homers and icons within 6". Enemy deepstrikers within 12" roll double scatter. Enemy units who are assualted from it are at -2 Leadership.

That's almost too unbelievable. I bet the Ld thing is BS--it seems terribly arbitrary. Otherwise, the thing sounds unbelievable. A 24" circle that's a "No Deepstrike" zone? Wow.

Well they can DS within 24, just roll double scatter =p.

Allow me to rephrase then: 24" de facto "No Deepstrike" zone