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The Newman wrote:
I actually think half the Marine problem is that they have to castle because of the auras but also need multiple characters to get the full effect.

Imagine this:
- Base Captain: Reroll misses and 1s to-wound at range.
- Base Lieutenant: Reroll 1s to-hit and 1s to-wound at range.
- Chaplain: Reroll misses and 1s to-wound in melee.
- Librarians: Replace the worst power with one that grants reroll 1s to-hit and to-wound in melee and at range but only for infantry.
- Techmarines: Lieutenant rerolls for vehicles only.

Marines are still aura-dependent this way, but honestly they can't get more aura-dependent than they already are. Everything in the codex is pointed like it's standing next to Gulliman already. With those changes a Marine battalion could afford to spread out to multiple terrain features and not hamstring itself doing it.

The chapter master re-rolls all misses
The captain re-rolls ones

The lieutenant re-rolls 1’s to wound.
The chaplain re-rolls.., all misses in close combat. Litanies of hate should be all failed wounds... or something similar. If they rearrange them all perhaps too, but one all misses, one all failed wounds, one 1’s to hit, one 1’s to wound.

I know this won't happen, but I wish they'd drop all the auras (and obviously compensate). Auras make Marines want to play Deathball, whereas they should be one of the least deathball forces.

Bharring wrote:
I know this won't happen, but I wish they'd drop all the auras (and obviously compensate). Auras make Marines want to play Deathball, whereas they should be one of the least deathball forces.

It especially doesn't work for BA.

The Newman wrote:
I actually think half the Marine problem is that they have to castle because of the auras but also need multiple characters to get the full effect.

Imagine this:
- Base Captain: Reroll misses and 1s to-wound at range.
- Base Lieutenant: Reroll 1s to-hit and 1s to-wound at range.
- Chaplain: Reroll misses and 1s to-wound in melee.
- Librarians: Replace the worst power with one that grants reroll 1s to-hit and to-wound in melee and at range but only for infantry.
- Techmarines: Lieutenant rerolls for vehicles only.

Marines are still aura-dependent this way, but honestly they can't get more aura-dependent than they already are. Everything in the codex is pointed like it's standing next to Gulliman already. With those changes a Marine battalion could afford to spread out to multiple objectives and not hamstring itself doing it.

I disagree for several reasons:

1. There are already far too many re-rolls and secondary rolls. I would rather they just do like DW SIA and make things autowound infantry or something.
2. Giving these types of auras to a shooting focused armies reinforces the failed concept of high volume low power shooting is better than high powered low volume shooting. With these rules, a Intercessor squad would do about the same damage to a rhino as a Lascannon, which is dumb.
3. Chaplains are useless in a shooting focused army.
4. Techmarines are of limited use, and I am not buying more models that are useless except for buff auras.
5. Can we please stop forcing SM armies to be based around their HW choices, to the exclusion of everything else? Here's a wild IDEA, make SGTs the buff bots for the squads. Give them purpose!

marines would still deathball without the auras, we’d just call it castle or gunline or something. Close combat sucks this edition, so you won’t see the assault units splitting off to rush while the shooters provide covering fire to soften up targets. And if everything is going to shoot you might as well keep it all together so it can cover for each other.

A Marine gunline without auras would castle in some cases, string out in others. Versus CC-heavy armies, I'll frequently put my heavy long-range firepower in opposite corners, to force the opponent to either split up, or halve what they get to when they get to it.

Further, a shooty force that needs to get within 12" doesn't run gunline, despite being shooty. Granted, you'd need to shift focus towards special weapons over heavies to make Marines play that way, but it's a much more dynamic way to play.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

3. Chaplains are useless in a shooting focused army.
4. Techmarines are of limited use, and I am not buying more models that are useless except for buff auras.
5. Can we please stop forcing SM armies to be based around their HW choices, to the exclusion of everything else? Here's a wild IDEA, make SGTs the buff bots for the squads. Give them purpose!

Saying this shouldn’t happen because it would fix Chaplains being useless in a shooting army isn’t really a winning argument for a suggestion to fix chaplains.

Likewise being against an idea that provides Techmarines something else useful to do because they’re currently of limited use... isn’t convincing. Now, making them a captain, just for vehicles isn’t a good solution either, because it duplicates an aura already available. Buff the repair function. Give them an aura like an invuln for vehicles, or ignore wounds or some other such ability that’s fluffy but otherwise unavailable.

That Guilliman argument isn't accurate. It's a misconception, the same way that people think that adding transport capacity onto a vehicle increase the point cost (It does not, take a look in the codex at similar chassis across units)

There is no magic formula that GW applied to units to be affected by Auras. There are many units that have no business being part of a gunline or hanging around at the backfield that are still costed incredibly high. No, this model is not to blame.

The Grey Knights are even less competitive in points and have no Guilliman. I think you'll find it's simply a case of 1st codex syndrome. The first book released always end up getting left behind with over-costed units and less inspired rules. Every codex released after looks to bring something new and flashy to the table.

 Ishagu wrote:
That Guilliman argument isn't accurate. It's a misconception, the same way that people think that adding transport capacity onto a vehicle increase the point cost (It does not, take a look in the codex at similar chassis across units)

There is no magic formula that GW applied to units to be affected by Auras. There are many units that have no business being part of a gunline or hanging around at the backfield that are still costed incredibly high.

The Grey Knights are even less competitive in points and have no Guilliman. I think you'll find it's simply a case of 1st codex syndrome. The first book released always end up getting left behind.

Didn't really happen in 3rd.

Bharring wrote:
I know this won't happen, but I wish they'd drop all the auras (and obviously compensate). Auras make Marines want to play Deathball, whereas they should be one of the least deathball forces.

Aye. The rerolls are so powerful, but so tedious, and it encourages lazy play. I really dislike them.

The rerolls aren't that powerful. They make miserably costed units kinda tolerable.

And encourage or perhaps even mandate castles.

Martel732 wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
That Guilliman argument isn't accurate. It's a misconception, the same way that people think that adding transport capacity onto a vehicle increase the point cost (It does not, take a look in the codex at similar chassis across units)

There is no magic formula that GW applied to units to be affected by Auras. There are many units that have no business being part of a gunline or hanging around at the backfield that are still costed incredibly high.

The Grey Knights are even less competitive in points and have no Guilliman. I think you'll find it's simply a case of 1st codex syndrome. The first book released always end up getting left behind.

Didn't really happen in 3rd.

But it did in 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th

You can't use a 21yr old example.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
The rerolls aren't that powerful. They make miserably costed units kinda tolerable.

And encourage or perhaps even mandate castles.

This I actually agree with. Being forced to hand around units is so detrimental to winning games!

If people actually play properly with sufficient terrain and objectives they'd know this.

What's sufficient? That means very different things to different people.

Martel732 wrote:
The rerolls aren't that powerful. They make miserably costed units kinda tolerable.

And encourage or perhaps even mandate castles.

What is mandating castles is the current state of close combat and CP levels. An intercessor squad is as “good” at close combat as assault marines. If Assault marines and other basic close combat units were viable, the jump captains and lieutenants would be more prevalent, and you’d see more split forces.

If elite armies could pull down the same CP generation as the Loyal 32 while using non Battalion force orgs you’d see more variation. Each army should generate CP’s at a rate based more on their price per unit, perhaps similar to faith points, than how many of a certain detachment they have points to take.

The two biggest factors in list creation right now are volume of attacks with save modifiers - hard to get in basic close combat units - and CP generation for stratagems. Both of these currently push marines into shooty armies that castle/deathball.

Breton wrote:

The Newman wrote:
I actually think half the Marine problem is that they have to castle because of the auras but also need multiple characters to get the full effect.

Imagine this:
- Base Captain: Reroll misses and 1s to-wound at range.
- Base Lieutenant: Reroll 1s to-hit and 1s to-wound at range.
- Chaplain: Reroll misses and 1s to-wound in melee.
- Librarians: Replace the worst power with one that grants reroll 1s to-hit and to-wound in melee and at range but only for infantry.
- Techmarines: Lieutenant rerolls for vehicles only.

Marines are still aura-dependent this way, but honestly they can't get more aura-dependent than they already are. Everything in the codex is pointed like it's standing next to Gulliman already. With those changes a Marine battalion could afford to spread out to multiple terrain features and not hamstring itself doing it.

The chapter master re-rolls all misses
The captain re-rolls ones

The lieutenant re-rolls 1’s to wound.
The chaplain re-rolls.., all misses in close combat. Litanies of hate should be all failed wounds... or something similar. If they rearrange them all perhaps too, but one all misses, one all failed wounds, one 1’s to hit, one 1’s to wound.

So your response to a suggested fix to the auras is to spell out how they are currently? Why exactly?
(Thanks for pointing out Chapter Masters though, I meant to add them to my list as rerolling failed to-hit and failed to-wound rolls at range for the generic ones, and having more variety for the named characters.)

To the people saying Marines shouldn't be aura-dependent in the first place, I whole-heartedly agree. I just think GW adjusting the auras is a lot more likely than GW adjusting Marine stats to where they'd need to be to function without rerolls. They've been remarkably reluctant to adjust the legacy stat-lines. I'm trying to work within the boundries of what's likely without defaulting to just lowering the point costs again.

Want to fix marines - make their auras table wide. Because that is what you are paying for. Other units put out comparable damage without stupid auras. Not GMan level but Gman is 400 points of doing almost not damage for the first 2 turns and quite often not doing damage turn 3 ether.

Martel732 wrote:
The rerolls aren't that powerful. They make miserably costed units kinda tolerable.

Habitual marine complaining aside, rerolls are quite powerful. That's why everyone was *****ing about Doom.

I just sucks having to crowd around a few HQs. The Eldar version, while usually less effective, at least allowed the army to spread out.

Breton wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
The rerolls aren't that powerful. They make miserably costed units kinda tolerable.

And encourage or perhaps even mandate castles.

What is mandating castles is the current state of close combat and CP levels. An intercessor squad is as “good” at close combat as assault marines. If Assault marines and other basic close combat units were viable, the jump captains and lieutenants would be more prevalent, and you’d see more split forces.

If elite armies could pull down the same CP generation as the Loyal 32 while using non Battalion force orgs you’d see more variation. Each army should generate CP’s at a rate based more on their price per unit, perhaps similar to faith points, than how many of a certain detachment they have points to take.

The two biggest factors in list creation right now are volume of attacks with save modifiers - hard to get in basic close combat units - and CP generation for stratagems. Both of these currently push marines into shooty armies that castle/deathball.

This I specifically have to disagree with. Castling makes it hard to take advantage cover, hard to take objectives, and easy to get chain-pillaged by a good melee army that manages to reach you.

"If assault marines were viable you'd see more jump captains and more split lists" - this is still castling, it's just that you have one castle that doesn't move and one castle that flies. Both groups are still dependent on the buffing characters as-is, and if they got better you'd still want the buffs.

CP generation isn't mandating castling either. It's mandating taking HQ choices, needing the buffs is mandating castling. If you want proof, here's a thought experiment: take away the rerolls without changing anything else. Do you even look at a Captain or Lieutenant? I don't, I start looking at Librarians and Techmarines instead, Libbys because having no otions in the psychic phase kind of stinks and Techmarines because they're the cheapest HQ to pay the Battalion tax with.

IG's order system is better buff mechanic. Marines could have something like that. If there is a clear limit on how many units a character can buff, then it doesn't encourage castling.

 Crimson wrote:
IG's order system is better buff mechanic. Marines could have something like that. If there is a clear limit on how many units a character can buff, then it doesn't encourage castling.

Guard can afford to take enough buffing characters to cover every squad in the army if they want to, and they couldn't castle like Marines do anyway since they take up so much space at 4 ppm.

Again, I'm not saying I like where Marines are with the buffs right now. Just that if we're stuck with it it could at least be less painful.

What if they did a DoW for PC style of buffs, HQ's can "attach" to squads of troops, thus enhancing that squads buffs?

For vehicles, there would need to be some form of Vehicle "squadron" rule, where coherency comes into play. Three preds and a captain make a "unit" that can gain the captain's buffs.

Captain with a squad of Intercessors gets +2 to hit, +1 to saving throws, and +1 to wound

Hell, bring back bike HQs and they will finally have a purpose!

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
What if they did a DoW for PC style of buffs, HQ's can "attach" to squads of troops, thus enhancing that squads buffs?

For vehicles, there would need to be some form of Vehicle "squadron" rule, where coherency comes into play. Three preds and a captain make a "unit" that can gain the captain's buffs.

Captain with a squad of Intercessors gets +2 to hit, +1 to saving throws, and +1 to wound

Hell, bring back bike HQs and they will finally have a purpose!

That's how they used to be. It was broken as hell; though arguably, the current character system is also kind of broken.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
What if they did a DoW for PC style of buffs, HQ's can "attach" to squads of troops, thus enhancing that squads buffs?

For vehicles, there would need to be some form of Vehicle "squadron" rule, where coherency comes into play. Three preds and a captain make a "unit" that can gain the captain's buffs.

Captain with a squad of Intercessors gets +2 to hit, +1 to saving throws, and +1 to wound

Hell, bring back bike HQs and they will finally have a purpose!

That's how they used to be. It was broken as hell; though arguably, the current character system is also kind of broken.

Thank you for your measured and appropriate response! I do think Additions to the rolls instead of re-rolls would save a TON of time.

Imagine if instead of re-rolls, they just gave benefits to the rolls. Or to the saves?

I have to say I quite like the non-attatching HQs in comparison to the previous "attaching" mechanics.

It's just the Aura thing that is the issue. Just give the Captain/whatever a non-aura ability that remains a good enough incentive to take him and it's all good.

(as opposed to some previous editions where the SM Captain was almost never taken, because a Chaplain had the same stats and the same invuln, but for a bit cheaper.) I think it was 3rd or 4th where most Space Marine armies I saw were led by two Chaplains.

I just want Re-rolls to die. I'm sick of waiting for your gaunts to roll their 750 attacks, followed by 320 re-rolls, followed by wound rolls, followed by.....*Shoots self in face***

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
What if they did a DoW for PC style of buffs, HQ's can "attach" to squads of troops, thus enhancing that squads buffs?

For vehicles, there would need to be some form of Vehicle "squadron" rule, where coherency comes into play. Three preds and a captain make a "unit" that can gain the captain's buffs.

Captain with a squad of Intercessors gets +2 to hit, +1 to saving throws, and +1 to wound

Hell, bring back bike HQs and they will finally have a purpose!

That's how they used to be. It was broken as hell; though arguably, the current character system is also kind of broken.

Yep. Maybe it would be better if we combined the two systems and took what was good about each and take away the bad.
Here is how I would do it. Character can attach to a squad of their choice and confer buffs to that squad. However only 1 character can be attached to any 1 squad. You can apply wounds as you do now in 8th. So A leader can take saves for the unit but he has to keep taking saves once he takes a wound. Also characters would receive no protection if not inside of a unit (all would be targetable). Also in this case we would not allow characters to leave units they have joined until that unit is completely destroyed. Might as well make characters immune to morale too (because they can't leave the unit).

The end result would be better. Only 1 unit would be getting buffs at a time. Characters that are a nuisance could be singled out by destroying their unit first. It would be fun!

In this case we could make the sniper rule go back to what it was - you can pick units within units. Such as a special weapon holder.

I've said this before but captains (hell every HQ for marines) should have a table just like the dark Apostle in the new chaos marines book.

Captain has a table to buff units in a general way, Chaplin helps with melee and such, techmarine has a table to help vehicles/infantry to shoot and can reinforce cover like in 7th.

Tech marine might only be able to take 1 power, same with the Chaplain, captain can take 2 but a chapter master can have 3.

Yeah it'd be a crazy amount of powers to manage but let's be honest, how many techmarine or chaplains have you seen?

I use techmarines as cheap HQs. And fixing FW dreads can be nifty.

Right, well, it would only be in pure lists, because lets be honest, we don't need knights running around with plus to this and that. Also, I would suggest it be a Space Marine only style thing. Finally, I'd say make the chapter tactic part of the attachment buff.

Let marines determine at the beginning of the round if they want to re-rolls 1's to hit in shooting/combat, 1's to wound in shooting/combat OR 1's to save.

Give characters dark apostle type stuff (powers), regen, movement buffs, +1 to hit/str/damage/save/ap, ignore hit mods/move penalties, -1 to be hit to a limited amount of units (1-3 depending on LT->captain->chapter master).

Aura re-roll mechanics are one of the worst game design decisions GW made this edition (CP generation, opponent specific abilities, gulliman, invlun save distribution, chapter tactic equivalents and relics not costing point and the power of strategems being some of the others) but are so baked into the design of 8th that it would be so hard to get away from them. Maybe 9th will be different...