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 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

guilliman and some assassins and forge world character dreads? Please...spare us calling this a space marine army.

Aside from some Assassins...what about it isn't a Space Marine army...?

I think the problem is that it allied in something (what, 2 models? 3?) where as in previous editions Marines didnt need to bother about them.You can find a less flame-baity way to say this, thanks. motyak

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

guilliman and some assassins and forge world character dreads? Please...spare us calling this a space marine army.

Aside from some Assassins...what about it isn't a Space Marine army...?

To be fair, and not having seen the list, if it included a bunch of Forge World models, it would be like someone complaining that Guard is OP because Elysians exist. Or that Chaos Marines are broken because Malefic Lords exist. Same overarching faction, but different book/army list. Namely: it doesn't say whether the core codex is strong or weak, it just says that the cherry picked Forge World units are good.

Martel732 wrote:
Baal preds and furiosos and sgs better drop or the whole book will be useless.

Lets be honest here GW could resurrect Sanguinius and allow BA to include him for free and you'd still complain.

Well, a big fat expensive melee unit is probably one of the worst things to add to an 8th ed list.

Please ensure that when you post in this thread you aren't just posting flamebait, thanks

Clearly if.marines with some assassin's placed 2nd.then marines are not the.worst. also, here is a question for the rest of you. If your codex is the worst, what is your win loss ratio aside from playing against maelific lord spam and dual primarch lists.

Also, what is an acceptable win loss ratio. I have been doing some math hammer and pts wise marines seem like they are in a good place. The primary complaint might be that they are not specialised enough. Given that I have been asserting that they are jack of all trades that may hurt them as they pay for statistics they rarely use or would rather not use. If this really is the case, then perhaps marines are not the best tournament list and better for casual play.

 sennacherib wrote:
I have been doing some math hammer and pts wise marines seem like they are in a good place.

This comment made me laugh.

At least bring some anecdotal "I have played marines and they are balanced" rather than a comment that amounts to "I haven't really played as or against marines in 8th edition, but that isn't stopping me from doing some dubious excel work and declaring them A+++"

I'm going to assume that everyone saying marines are balanced loses about half of the games they play against space marines.

And then i'm going to laugh at you, because you're probably losing to lists with primaris marines in them. Or something like imperial fists? Pretty funny honestly.

I can imagine you guys actually losing to mono-grey knights and being like, "this is total bs, i have no way to deal with 1 damage smites!" haha

So for another data point, I played in a tournament this weekend. It was the local Masters event - what one might call our state championship. Not massive at 50 people but as competitive as our area gets.

Top spot was taken out by an Alaitoc list piloted by the generally-accepted best player in the area. The army didn’t really have a ‘gimmick’, just a classic tournament style MSU army with Wave Serpents, Fire Prisms and a Crimson Hunter.

The rest of the top 10:

1 - Craftworlds + Shadow Spectres
2 - Guard+ - Shadowsword, Manticores, Plasma Scions, a few Smites and Celestine
3 - Orks - 204 of them
4 - Guard - Catachan parking lot
5 - Chaos Soup - Magnus and Smite Spam
6 - Chaos Soup - slightly different Magnus and Smite Spam
7 - Tyranids - 3 Flyrants, Swarmlord, fairly monster heavy
8 - Craftworlds + Shadow Spectres - Alaitoc with 3 flyers, 2 Serpents, 10 Dark Reapers, Fire Prism and some others
9 - Eldar Soup - Yncarne, 5 flyers
10 - Chaos Soup - Magnus, Mortarion, Baneblade, Changeling, Malefic Lords and Cultists
11 - Space Marines - Guilliman’s parking lot

Make of that what you will, but it does show no Space Marines in the top 10, and the Ultramarines list coming in at 11 had Guilliman and no Power-Armoured (or Terminator) infantry. In fact, apart from a 5-man GK Strike Squad, I had the only loyalist Power Armour / Terminator infantry in the top 20.

For reference, I came in at 17th with Black Templars:

Helbrecht
Emperor’s Champion
Lieutenant

3x 10-man Crusader Squads with 5 Neophytes and 2 Power Swords

2x Rhinos with twin Storm Bolters

Land Raider Crusader with all options
Quad-Las Predator with HK Missile

Terminator Chaplain

10 Thunder Hammer Terminators
Relic Contemptor with Chainfist, Power Fist and 2 Heavy Flamers
Cenobyte Servitors

I think it’s fair to say that my area supports the argument that Marines are ok with Guilliman and non-competitive without - our top 10 had none, top 20 had one with Guilliman and one without.

BlastaRasta wrote:

secretForge wrote:
Just went to a 90 man event, in the uk, won best adeptus astartes player as 41st place! admittedly many of the lists further up contained some marine elements. but its deff not looking good for purists.

for full disclosure - second place at this event was space marines and assassins... so you know. clearly not that bad when you know what your doing.

Like i say, its not looking good for purists, im not familiar with all of the lists at the event, and the top tables will always be filled with excellent players, but from what I gather of that list, its not codex space marine units that are making it work, its character mechanics, hiding behind the closest thing to invisibility that 8th provides. Not to take away from the players excellent performances, and a very enjoyable event. I just would like to have a good time against similarly mono book lists without having to rely on a guilliman crutch (which i did), or a minus 1 to hit build, to even feel like i can get a 50% win. I'd like to believe in the core strength of my units.

41 pages in, and people are still talking past each other.

Marine players are only arguing against people saying "The marine codex is perfectly fine, even OP!"

and people disagreeing with the thread largely based on the title: "Proof that marine codex is the worst."

We've had 8 codexes at this point.

three seem very obviously solid. Eldar, Nids, and Guard all have good depth, internal balance, and variety of different viable builds.

Chaos Marines squeaks in to make it a top four with a heavy reliance on soup and Forgeworld options, but has a few inarguably solid unit choices and sets of legion traits.

Death Guard, I know people are going to rank as higher than marines. But how much of the actual Death Guard codex do we see? If Guilliman is a "lone unit crutch" then what in the flippity-flip is Mortarion, AKA 95% of the actual list representation of the death guard we see in tournaments? Yes, death guard appears in many, many more lists, arguably he is part of the meta setup at this point, but if we flipped this around, and the meta list was "Guilliman+Celestine+Guard" with absolutely ONLY Guilliman appearing, would people take that to mean Marines were fine? Maybe I'm just not seeing all these mono or mostly death guard lists hitting tournaments, but if someone felt like pointing them out I'm curious where they're hiding.

And then here we've got Marines, arguably in either fifth or sixth place. Good? Obviously not. It is abundantly clear that the set of codexes that were released shortly after the indexes did not contain a substantial enough points balance pass, and so have the same terrible internal option balance as the indexes.

But when your point of argument is that marines are the WORST, you don't have to prove that they're worse than Eldar, or Guard, or Nids. You have to prove that they're doing worse than Codex: GMNKD or Codex: Cawl.

the_scotsman wrote:
41 pages in, and people are still talking past each other.

Marine players are only arguing against people saying "The marine codex is perfectly fine, even OP!"

and people disagreeing with the thread largely based on the title: "Proof that marine codex is the worst."

We've had 8 codexes at this point.

three seem very obviously solid. Eldar, Nids, and Guard all have good depth, internal balance, and variety of different viable builds.

Chaos Marines squeaks in to make it a top four with a heavy reliance on soup and Forgeworld options, but has a few inarguably solid unit choices and sets of legion traits.

Death Guard, I know people are going to rank as higher than marines. But how much of the actual Death Guard codex do we see? If Guilliman is a "lone unit crutch" then what in the flippity-flip is Mortarion, AKA 95% of the actual list representation of the death guard we see in tournaments? Yes, death guard appears in many, many more lists, arguably he is part of the meta setup at this point, but if we flipped this around, and the meta list was "Guilliman+Celestine+Guard" with absolutely ONLY Guilliman appearing, would people take that to mean Marines were fine? Maybe I'm just not seeing all these mono or mostly death guard lists hitting tournaments, but if someone felt like pointing them out I'm curious where they're hiding.

And then here we've got Marines, arguably in either fifth or sixth place. Good? Obviously not. It is abundantly clear that the set of codexes that were released shortly after the indexes did not contain a substantial enough points balance pass, and so have the same terrible internal option balance as the indexes.

But when your point of argument is that marines are the WORST, you don't have to prove that they're worse than Eldar, or Guard, or Nids. You have to prove that they're doing worse than Codex: GMNKD or Codex: Cawl.

This is all True, I think the debate has evolved from the OP statement. In my opinion the crux of the matter is that the 'Space Marine' in all its multifaceted forms is almost always a bad unit. And due to this fundamental observation that many have made of 8th, the 4 codexes that we have seen that are based upon this unit, feel bad to play. Because the people who want to play those codexes, often times want to use the conceptual core of those armies, because its what appeals to many about them when they select their race.

SM players that don't consider a list with SM plus assassins as a SM list are amazing. How many competitive AM lists have celestine?

It's also amazing how SM FW stuff doesn't count when all competitive chaos lists spam FW units but no SM players say that chaos is competitive mostly because it can spam an underpriced FW HQ. Not to mention chaos soups with DG or TS superheroes or even ynnari, which are a soup by definition.

More than half the armies in the top 11 posted above were actually soups. SM codex is not the worst compared to other ones, it's still one of the best.

Among the pure lists ultramarines are still among the most competitive ones. And I still believe that tyranids are winning only because of their new codex, they're not better than SM, even if SM don't bring guilliman. Eldar are not overpowered at all.

Tyranids are the #2 codex in the game, hands down. 2nd only to the IG.

 Blackie wrote:
SM players that don't consider a list with SM plus assassins as a SM list are amazing. How many competitive AM lists have celestine?

It's also amazing how SM FW stuff doesn't count when all competitive chaos lists spam FW units but no SM players say that chaos is competitive mostly because it can spam an underpriced FW HQ. Not to mention chaos soups with DG or TS superheroes or even ynnari, which are a soup by definition.

More than half the armies in the top 11 posted above were actually soups. SM codex is not the worst compared to other ones, it's still one of the best.

Among the pure lists ultramarines are still among the most competitive ones. And I still believe that tyranids are winning only because of their new codex, they're not better than SM, even if SM don't bring guilliman. Eldar are not overpowered at all.

The space marine codex isnt one of the best, a small number of units from it are useful, and none of them are actually space marines, thats what people done like. and yes its what sucks about gk, chaos and deathguard too. gk dont like being codex dreadnight, and marines dont like being codex guilliman, or ravenguard.

As usual, Eldar are very strong, but not quite what we are used to. They are still OP, but not "set up on the table and win OP". But to posters, that means that are NOT OP, when they are.

I would like to see every army have multiple builds and every unit be effective. That’s never happened for CSM since 4th ed when I really started playing. SM themselves seemed to have a book where everything seemed solid last codex so I can imagine that if their current book is lackluster it would be a disappointment.

I also think armies should be viable without their primarch. It may come down to the suggestion that playing smaller point level games would solve. 1500 pts would mean a primarch was a full 1/3 of your points.

Given that point reductions are around the corner, I would suggest sucking it up. You can always ally in some units to give your army chaff. Want specialist units like other codex have, play those codex or ally them in.

 Blackie wrote:

It's also amazing how SM FW stuff doesn't count when all competitive chaos lists spam FW units but no SM players say that chaos is competitive mostly because it can spam an underpriced FW HQ. Not to mention chaos soups with DG or TS superheroes or even ynnari, which are a soup by definition.

You know what's more amazing?
That isn't even a CSM unit that the chaos armies spam, it's a renegades HQ.
It's basically as if space marines spammed IG psykers

The discussion of if Marines are above average has had some constructive discussion.

The original is it the worst codex - was fairly easily answered.

But the comment about how the codex wasn't in the top 10 in that list above - neither was pure CWE, and we know they're above SM. Most of those top 10 listed included multiple factions, Forgeworld, or both. And one was an Index list!

The original question was very limiting, and almost insulting, but what it's evolved to is more interesting.

secretForge wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
41 pages in, and people are still talking past each other.

Marine players are only arguing against people saying "The marine codex is perfectly fine, even OP!"

and people disagreeing with the thread largely based on the title: "Proof that marine codex is the worst."

We've had 8 codexes at this point.

three seem very obviously solid. Eldar, Nids, and Guard all have good depth, internal balance, and variety of different viable builds.

Chaos Marines squeaks in to make it a top four with a heavy reliance on soup and Forgeworld options, but has a few inarguably solid unit choices and sets of legion traits.

Death Guard, I know people are going to rank as higher than marines. But how much of the actual Death Guard codex do we see? If Guilliman is a "lone unit crutch" then what in the flippity-flip is Mortarion, AKA 95% of the actual list representation of the death guard we see in tournaments? Yes, death guard appears in many, many more lists, arguably he is part of the meta setup at this point, but if we flipped this around, and the meta list was "Guilliman+Celestine+Guard" with absolutely ONLY Guilliman appearing, would people take that to mean Marines were fine? Maybe I'm just not seeing all these mono or mostly death guard lists hitting tournaments, but if someone felt like pointing them out I'm curious where they're hiding.

And then here we've got Marines, arguably in either fifth or sixth place. Good? Obviously not. It is abundantly clear that the set of codexes that were released shortly after the indexes did not contain a substantial enough points balance pass, and so have the same terrible internal option balance as the indexes.

But when your point of argument is that marines are the WORST, you don't have to prove that they're worse than Eldar, or Guard, or Nids. You have to prove that they're doing worse than Codex: GMNKD or Codex: Cawl.

This is all True, I think the debate has evolved from the OP statement. In my opinion the crux of the matter is that the 'Space Marine' in all its multifaceted forms is almost always a bad unit. And due to this fundamental observation that many have made of 8th, the 4 codexes that we have seen that are based upon this unit, feel bad to play. Because the people who want to play those codexes, often times want to use the conceptual core of those armies, because its what appeals to many about them when they select their race.

Oh my yes. I'm 100% with you on the fact that your basic marine is a not great unit, and hasn't been done any favors by 8th edition in general. The core problem is very similar to what you see in the Admech codex troops as well: any kind of elite infantry is really tough to make work currently, because expendable hordes are their natural predator.

I hope we see at the very least a points adjustment for all these codexes as well as some semblance of balance applied to Forgeworld with the upcoming Chapter Approved book. My overall point is that arguing that Space Marines have a problem that is somehow distinct and worse than the same problem experienced by Gray Knights, Admech, Death Guard, and Chaos Space Marine power armor units in general is in my eyes an unsupported assertion.

Martel732 wrote:
Tyranids are the #2 codex in the game, hands down. 2nd only to the IG.

Come on man, you can't drop a statement like that in the middle of this thread without at least some semblance of fraught mathhammer whinging to back it up. The codex has been out a week.

That said, I do think there are some really strong combos conceptually.

Actually, I can and I did. I'm tired of typing out mathhammer to have it dismissed with "git gud". So that's my opinion, and I think it will be borne out. Maybe I'm wrong.

Martel732 wrote:
Actually, I can and I did. I'm tired of typing out mathhammer to have it dismissed with "git gud". So that's my opinion, and I think it will be borne out. Maybe I'm wrong.

IOW: "I won't back up my position with data because when I do, people manage to see that it is wrong anyways. At least if I make an unfounded assertion it might make people wonder if I am right."

If you say so.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Actually, I can and I did. I'm tired of typing out mathhammer to have it dismissed with "git gud". So that's my opinion, and I think it will be borne out. Maybe I'm wrong.

IOW: "I won't back up my position with data because when I do, people manage to see that it is wrong anyways. At least if I make an unfounded assertion it might make people wonder if I am right."

True.

Mathematical analysis is a great way of analyzing a game based essentially on 1/6 mechanics mixed with statistics. Assuming that your own opinion is more factual than a fact is a biased statement and lacks any deapth of understanding.

Seems like this while thread boils down to
Ally units seem to be good. Especially forge world.
Codex space marine wants every codex option to be viable.
Some space marine players refuse to use allies despite repeated losses to armies using allies, despite having the largest ally base in the game.

Pretty sure CSM, deathguard, GK And every codex out there wants every option to be good. Almost every army would do better with allies because more options are better than less, and anyone whining about not winning all the time despite not taking advantage of allies has to accept their lot in life. They made that choice not to use allies. Deal with it.

Martel732 wrote:
Actually, I can and I did. I'm tired of typing out mathhammer to have it dismissed with "git gud". So that's my opinion, and I think it will be borne out. Maybe I'm wrong.

I hear you on this, after all this is the realm of hyperbole. I am going to be playing a few games against Tyranids in the coming weeks (GSC and pure Tyranids most likely), so I am curious to see how it plays out with the new codex rules.

I do think it's very strong, and there are some combos that should force opponents to make really bad decisions. If the Tyranids can make that first turn charge and sustain it I think they will do very well, but that's the problem with hand to hand in this edition, is sustaining assaults from round to round without getting reduced to an ineffective number by return fire.

Their anti-psyker mechanics are the best in the game, without a doubt, but that has the potential to be an investment without a return in a significant number of fights.

 sennacherib wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Actually, I can and I did. I'm tired of typing out mathhammer to have it dismissed with "git gud". So that's my opinion, and I think it will be borne out. Maybe I'm wrong.

IOW: "I won't back up my position with data because when I do, people manage to see that it is wrong anyways. At least if I make an unfounded assertion it might make people wonder if I am right."

True.

Mathematical analysis is a great way of analyzing a game based essentially on 1/6 mechanics mixed with statistics. Assuming that your own opinion is more factual than a fact is a biased statement and lacks any deapth of understanding.

Seems like this while thread boils down to
Ally units seem to be good. Especially forge world.
Codex space marine wants every codex option to be viable.
Some space marine players refuse to use allies despite repeated losses to armies using allies, despite having the largest ally base in the game.

Pretty sure CSM, deathguard, GK And every codex out there wants every option to be good. Almost every army would do better with allies because more options are better than less, and anyone whining about not winning all the time despite not taking advantage of allies has to accept their lot in life. They made that choice not to use allies. Deal with it.

Let's also be honest about skill, some people are simply not going to be as good, and this will color perceptions.

 BoomWolf wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

It's also amazing how SM FW stuff doesn't count when all competitive chaos lists spam FW units but no SM players say that chaos is competitive mostly because it can spam an underpriced FW HQ. Not to mention chaos soups with DG or TS superheroes or even ynnari, which are a soup by definition.

You know what's more amazing?
That isn't even a CSM unit that the chaos armies spam, it's a renegades HQ.
It's basically as if space marines spammed IG psykers

While that is true - CSM does not have to spam malefic lords to win - as proven by their most recent victories. Frankly it's kind of a joke that tournaments even allow malefic lords at this point. More to your point - space marines would also have to spam IG infantry to screen the IG psykers...in which if you keep optimizing your list - eventually it has no space marines in it.

So CSM > SM, because CSM can take Renegades
IG > Renegades
SM can take IG

How is an SM list based on IG not SM, but a CSM list based on Renegades is CSM?

I get that IoM might have more powerful options that CSM don't have, but that doesn't make CSM more powerful than SM.

Bharring wrote:
So CSM > SM, because CSM can take Renegades
IG > Renegades
SM can take IG

How is an SM list based on IG not SM, but a CSM list based on Renegades is CSM?

I get that IoM might have more powerful options that CSM don't have, but that doesn't make CSM more powerful than SM.

I don't know how you got to those conclusions based on my post. I have claimed that CSM doesn't need to take renegades to win/place high in events as proven by recent tournament data. It is also clear that AM don't need to spam smite to win ether.

I'm not arguing that space marine or CSM take allies...there is just no reason to not completely remove space marines from your list if you are going to include "allies" this isn't the case with CSM because they have several high quality units in their own codex.

Also - by comparison to space marines - GK actually have a GMNDK to offer as an ally choice. IT is at least a competitive option and doesn't have the problem of - why not just take full guard instead? It makes sense to include the GMNDK - they are beast mode.

"More to your point - space marines would also have to spam IG infantry to screen the IG psykers...in which if you keep optimizing your list - eventually it has no space marines in it."

IOW, SM can't match CSM's Maelific Lords build, because IoM is better at it than SM.

I wasn't commenting on the "CSM's have other stuff" in that comment.