Advantages of Codex Space Marines

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**AbaddonFidelis**

I'm not aware that anyone said codex: space marines was crap. I'm building an imperial fists army right now.

the issue with rhinos is that, cheap or expensive, they dont do the job. wave serpents, for instance, are good transports. they're expensive, but they're also fast and reliable.

**Stormrider**

AbaddonFidelis wrote:I'm not aware that anyone said codex: space marines was crap. I'm building an imperial fists army right now.

the issue with rhinos is that, cheap or expensive, they dont do the job. wave serpents, for instance, are good transports. they're expensive, but they're also fast and reliable.

What's your definition of "do the job"?

**kenshin620**

Dont give easy KP without sitting in the back doing nothing?

**Stormrider**

kenshin620 wrote:Dont give easy KP without sitting in the back doing nothing?

Fair enough

**AbaddonFidelis**

Stormrider wrote:
AbaddonFidelis wrote:I'm not aware that anyone said codex: space marines was crap. I'm building an imperial fists army right now.

the issue with rhinos is that, cheap or expensive, they dont do the job. wave serpents, for instance, are good transports. they're expensive, but they're also fast and reliable.

What's your definition of "do the job"?

well.... the ideal transport would...
1. be able to stand up to a moderate amount of fire power.
2. be fast enough to reliably get the squad to its target.
3. carry moderate offensive firepower.
The more of those it has the better. on that criteria rhinos are obviously out... they're a fail on all 3.
trukks, razorbacks and drop pods have 1 of those so they're ok.
raiders, blood angels razorbacks and immolators have 2 so they're good.
waveserpents have all 3 so they're ideal.... so do land raiders although they're more like a main battle tank with transport capacity... and too expensive for the job anyway....

just musing.

**Brother-Thunder**

I run rhinoes. They work for what I need them to do: get that troop sitting on an objective. Also, consider the rest of a space marine list, filled with juicier targets for AV. Target Saturation can help a Rhino's survivibality big time.

**AbaddonFidelis**

true

**WarOne**

And a Razorback is simply a Rhino with upgraded weaponry and a higher point cost.

Hell, both of these transports are paper-thin, but then again, if you can get 4-6 on the field and not have them be considered the biggest threat to eliminate, it gives your squads and their DTs that much more survivability.

**mwnciboo**

Okay I have read alot of things on this thread and now I'm going to wade in. People tell me my Chapter should use SW because they look like them, I say "no" they are vanilla SM from the Ultra's.

WHY!!!! Says everyone here is an example using LONG FANGS vs DEVASTATORS

LF get 5 x HW + 1 x Sgt and can add a WOLF GUARD..plus counter charge and Fire control ...Looks awesome right?

But wait Max unit size 6? And they all MUST CHOOSE A HW = lots of points but yes they are slightly cheaper. But I don't have any wound absorbing units, so everytime i lose a model its worth more points. But my Vanilla SM have no such restrictions, they can have one HW, I can use the Signum for a BS 5 LC shot or PC shot and the other 3 have bolters, I can take a further 5 models for ablative wounds hmm flexibility... The Long Fangs can Divide fire under Fire Control, I could Combat Squad my 10 man vanilla squad, one with a Signum and LC for Anti-tank the other for whatever and split my fire.

What you gain with one hand you lose with another, but the C:SM is built around flexibility.
Counter Charge for Dev's great, but shouldn't they be laying down fire not smacking the enemy in the grid with a Lascannon or Missile Launcher? Its not playing to their strength.

I wouldn't like my Devs restricted to 5 HW and all had to take a HW it eats into my points and my options maybe I want a 5man Dev squad with only 2 HW's because I am short on points, the SW Codex doesn't allow it.

It is too easy to say, "Rubbish Blah,blah ,blah Death Company are well better than ...." If you compare like for like you'll find the subtle differences, checks and balances and you should look to exploit these in your tactics and strategies. 40K would be dull as **** if everyone had the same Army spam list power gaming I have an undefeatable army...Yeah well even the greatest armies get defeated if poorly led.

I am sure someone is going to pull this apart now. Oh and thread necromancy but this has been a good debate and needs an injection.

**scubasteve04**

The biggest problem for vanilla devs is the price (230pts for a 10 man, 4x missile squad), and competition for heavy slots. I personally would like to see a price drop in 6th edition, and maybe Lysanders chapter tactics making Devs scoring like Pedro makes sternguard scoring.

As for rhinos, they may not be wave serpents, but they are 35 bloody points! They don't have paper armor like raiders or trucks, and they are simple and cheap and get the job done.

**NuggzTheNinja**

AbaddonFidelis wrote:
tacticals are fine for friendly play I guess. but they really are pretty poor in terms of capabilities, considering what you pay for. w/e. you're paying 16 points a man for a guy whose main advantage - a 3+ armor save - is largely nullified by the easy access to 4++ cover that everyone else enjoys. basically you're paying out the for a slightly improved version of what everyone else gets for free. that's not ok. but yeah w/e run them for your friendly games if you want. I play pretty cut throat so I dont have any room for these guys.

your main advantage as a marine player is your mobility and flexibility. use drop pods and razorbacks. never walk. never use a rhino. AF

Yeah, Tactical Marines absolutely blow compared to similar armies' equivalent troops.

They can't take two Special Weapons (CSM, SW), they don't get a huge rebate on access to FAST vehicles and end up getting them cheaper (BA Assault Squads and Razorbacks), they don't have Counter Attack (SW), and they don't have Bolter/BP/CCW.

The biggest weakness in the Marine dex is that there is no reason to want to take Tactical Marines aside from the requirement for scoring units. They have less attacks, less useful abilities, and poorer wargear choices than any equivalent army's troops selections, AND they cost more. What!?

Competitively speaking, nearly any army list you can make with Codex Space Marines, you can always make with Codex Blood Angels and the units will be better, faster, and cheaper.

**Spellbound**

AbaddonFidelis wrote:
grey hunters are junk too. people get all excited because they have an extra attack. whoopy. BA assault squads are what a good troop choice looks like.

This is what someone who doesn't know how to play the game looks like.

Grey Hunters have an extra attack like your BA ccw guys, except they also get bolters, so they can be more shooty than your BA guys. They also get counterattack, so they get an EXTRA attack, even when charged. They also have acute senses, but whoopdedoo.

But that's not the best part! The best part is getting TWO meltaguns for FIVE frickin' points. 155 points of Grey Hunters look at 170 points of Chaos Marines and say ".....yeah dude, we're just plain BETTER than you." same weapon loadout, PLUS counterattack, PLUS ATSKNF, PLUS acute senses, but cheaper. Lame.

**mwnciboo**

I don't care about BA particularly, but as GH go they are to me the closest thing to STERNGuARD in a TACTICAL SQUAD and that makes them the best all round space marine troop unit in the game... There is far too much BA popularism going on at the moment. "MEPHISTON" I mean seriously, he is basically a Daemon for feths sake. THis is even hinted at in the fluff...Those Furioso Dreads are annoying as hell, I have seen MEPH kill a horde of Orc's without a scratch because he had an apothacary near him. Its units like him and Abbaddon that make the game stupidly dull, I mean why would MEPH even get out of bed for a 1000pt skirmish, he is a living legend. Why bother with tactics when you can field an uber killy unit and watch him arse rape another army for 3 hours from one side of the board to another..

**shrike**

NuggzTheNinja wrote:They have less attacks, less useful abilities, and poorer wargear choices than any equivalent army's troops selections, AND they cost more. What!?

Marines have poor troops? Talk to any tau, chaos, necron or sister player before you say that. You're just comparing it to more recent codexes.

**mwnciboo**

Damn double post...... :( I love tactics, battles and strategies. I hate uber killy neigh on invincible units, just makes the game 2 dimensional...

**Spellbound**

I just hate how many marine characters (2, which is two too many) have the toughness of a trygon. It's just stupid. So you're a super tough space marine? Here, have feel no pain. Wanna be t5? Buy a bike.

**NuggzTheNinja**

shrike wrote:
NuggzTheNinja wrote:They have less attacks, less useful abilities, and poorer wargear choices than any equivalent army's troops selections, AND they cost more. What!?

Marines have poor troops? Talk to any tau, chaos, necron or sister player before you say that. You're just comparing it to more recent codexes.

Tau and Necrons are both recognized as some of the weakest codices period. They are also not "equivalent armies".

On the point of Chaos and Sisters, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Sisters can do disgusting things with Faith Points, and Plague Marines are some of the best troops choices in the game. 115 points for 5 Fearless bolter/bp/ccw Marines with T4(5) and FNP, defensive grenades, and the ability to take two Special Weapons at any squad size? Glorious!

Vanilla Tactical Marines are one of two mediocre selections that C:SM players are forced to take. They cost far too many points for what you get. If they had bolter/bp/ccw, were 15 pts ea. w/ the free vet sgt, special and heavy weapon, and had the option of taking one special or heavy weapon per 5 guys, then they would be worth taking.

**shrike**

So they'd be worth taking if they had a heavy and special weapon free per squad, and an extra heavy and special weapon per 5 guys?
So you could have 3 plasma guns and 3 plasma cannons per squad, with 2A each? That's quite OP.

**NuggzTheNinja**

shrike wrote:So they'd be worth taking if they had a heavy and special weapon free per squad, and an extra heavy and special weapon per 5 guys?
So you could have 3 plasma guns and 3 plasma cannons per squad, with 2A each? That's quite OP.

Not what I was saying at all...

The entry is the same as it is now, 90 pts for the first 5 guys, 15 pts for each model after that. So a full squad would cost 165.

Each model has a bolter, bolt pistol, and CCW. Instead of one free heavy and one free special at 10 men, it would read, one free special or heavy per 5 men in the squad. So a full 10 man squad could have either one special and one heavy, two heavies, or two specials. Obviously PCs, LCs, Melta guns, plasma guns, etc., would keep their existing points cost.

This is actually insanely tame considering Guard can take Vet squads with 3x plasma guns and 1x autocannon HWT plus a demo charge for less.

**shrike**

NuggzTheNinja wrote:
shrike wrote:So they'd be worth taking if they had a heavy and special weapon free per squad, and an extra heavy and special weapon per 5 guys?
So you could have 3 plasma guns and 3 plasma cannons per squad, with 2A each? That's quite OP.

Not what I was saying at all...

The entry is the same as it is now, 90 pts for the first 5 guys, 15 pts for each model after that. So a full squad would cost 165.

Each model has a bolter, bolt pistol, and CCW. Instead of one free heavy and one free special at 10 men, it would read, one free special or heavy per 5 men in the squad. So a full 10 man squad could have either one special and one heavy, two heavies, or two specials. Obviously PCs, LCs, Melta guns, plasma guns, etc., would keep their existing points cost.

This is actually insanely tame considering Guard can take Vet squads with 3x plasma guns and 1x autocannon HWT plus a demo charge for less.

hmm, I guess that would be fair...but then marine codex units are either OP or under-powered.
sternguard, TH/SS termies, libbies, vulkan, lysander, ect. are OP, so C:SM should have some underpowered units too. If they were any other slot no-ne would take them, leading to over-powered lists. forcing you to take slightly nerfed units means more balanced gameplay (kinda)

**Spellbound**

Tac squads do damage and take damage. That's what marines do. They aren't spectacular squads, they're tactical squads. I wouldn't mind if they had the chaos bit where up to 9 you can take an assault and at 10 you get a heavy, instead of the "get 10 or go naked" thing. Then again I would also like to see csm squads get 2 weapons per 5 period, so we could go legion-style with 4 weapons in a 20-man squad.

Blood angels tac squads really are about the same, with just a 1/6 chance to get a buff and faster transports, which is a rule of the transport not the unit. Assault squads do less shooting damage but get more attacks. There's synergy with sanguinary priests, but again that's a priest ability not the assault squad. I don't see much difference between ba troops choices and codex marine troops. Space wolves? Now there's some real superiority.

**Guitardian**

The synergy of sanguinary priests makes all the difference in the above post. My pansy little emo eldar don't have access to Feel No Pain like well, just about every other army out there, and I think it is one of the best abilitys in the game. Must be nice to have a roving bubble of it. In defense of the SM vanillas, they don't really have much access to it either. Just the captain gets an apothecary and it doesn't bubble around where you need it. So in that regard the BA have a big advantage over them even with their regular tactical squads, who may be "about the same". Well, if you look at the number of BA lists posted here for review and tweaking, you will notice that BA don't use their tactical squads much either.

FOC slots is another big problem for SM versus BA versus SW. Looking at each unit separately, you get the sense of SM and BA having many similar units. All well and good, but compounding the assault marines as troops means 3 open slots of FA ready to use the Landspeeders in mass, Baal preds, instead of having to dodge around trying to find a balance between stuff in that category. Likewise, having to take 2 devastator squads to split fire instead of 1 long fang squad, means 2/3 of your HS gone. A SM tank list is unheard of (unless you call a Lazorback a tank) but a BA tank list is very possible. The point is this: BA can make a SM equivalent vanillla flavored list if they want to (but they don't bother because their own flavor is simply superior), but vanilla SM cannot make a blood flavored list.

**Lorek**

Guys, next time, check to make sure you're not re-opening an old thread when you post a reply; you're better off starting a new thread (it's called thread necromancy).

I'll leave this open for now as there's been a fair bit of discussion, and it would be impractical to ask you all to repost in a new thread.

**schadenfreude**

There are small advantages to each codex, and there are the top tier advantages to each codex.

Top Tier advantages of codex share with BA, SW, BT, and DA ie stuff they do have an equivalent of.

Lysander & TH/SS termies: Both are combat monsters that can keep codex marines on par with special chapters in the areas of HQ combat monster and elite deathstar unit.

Top Tier advantages of codex over BA, SW, BT, and DA ie stuff they don't have any equivalent of.

Vulkan: Build an entire army around TL melta, TL flamers, and lots of MC TH/SS.

Null Zone: Nobody else has it. If codex marines have TH/SS, non codex have TH/SS, and they get into a TH/SS on TH/SS smackdown the guy with an active null zone on his side wins.

**Rex-Nine**

I posted this in some other forum and am now posting it here, I added the puppy stuff for the fun of it.

Rex-Nine wrote:
Guitardian wrote:I also think tactical squads, while not the worst unit, are pretty inefficient. People say "horray! I get a free flamer and missile launcher" but they forget that they are overpaying for Sarge, and that cost is figured in.

Comparatively to any other Marine-like codex, they suck. No other version of Marines requires a full 10 models in order to get a weapon upgrade. Who wants to buy 5 marines and overpay for sarge? Your hand is forced by practicality to throw on the extra 5 guys or it's just a useless squad. When you do add the "free" missile launcher and flamer you have a choice between splitting into two squads that are either too small to last long in cc, or one big squad with multiple personality disorder that will either never fire anything but the missile, or never fire the missile.
Not true, at my local GW they wanted to know out of all the space marine codexes who had the best marines? so they had a bunch of small games with all of the SM codexes, SM with tac squad, SW with grey hunters, BA with assault marines, and so on. All squads were at full strength and could only take free upgrades. In one game we had a full squad of tac marines with free flamer and ML and pit them against a full squad of gray hunters and boom those space pups ate dirt.

Why? 1: the tac squad was split in to combat squads, now those puppies could only deal with one squad at a time. the pups got blasted by the ML, and turned in to hot dogs by the flamer!

2: the puppies shot as they advanced of corse! But this was not the best idea as the tac marines just failed their moral and fell back, making it harder for the puppies to get in to close combat!

3: O look the puppies got into close combat with A (remember a unit can only shoot, assault one target at a time, so that leaves the other combat squad to rapid fire the pups) tac combat squad, the tac squad is going to die now finaly! But what is this??? they failed their moral test and are falling back? how are the pups going to hit them now? ( I know thats only if they live, which they did, and the pups can do a sweeping advance but more often then not I have seen a tac squad escape from cc, which they did) Now both of the tac marine combat squads just rapid fired and flamed the pups in the face during their turn!

The SM player only lost 4 marines in that game! The same thing happened between the SM and the BA, but it was a close match with the SM on top by 2 guys! As it turned out the SM came out on top of all the others! This is not to say that all other marines eat dirt, It showed us that all of them are great if you take advantage of their special rules and use them in roles they were made for (do not send a tac squad into CC, that is why they have combat tactics to avoid CC!)

Rex-Nine

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Rex-Nine wrote:This is not to say that all other marines eat dirt, It showed us that all of them are great if you take advantage of their special rules and use them in roles they were made for (do not send a tac squad into CC, that is why they have combat tactics to avoid CC!)

Rex-Nine

just reposting this because some people do really dumb stuff! Putting a Tac squad in CC is like avoiding CC with BA Assault marines!!! (Thats as useless as tits on a bull!)