Proof that space marine codex is the worst.

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**Bharring**

Read that as 'Painted as Alpha Legion', as the stratagem is Alpha Legion only. I said camo, but that was just being a little snide at the concept.

How many Berzerkers have you seen painted Alpha Legion?

**tneva82**

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
tneva82 wrote:
kombatwombat wrote:
That certainly is truth. It is also horrible game design. The idea that i am excluded from being competitive because I painted my dudes the colour that was shown on the 3rd Ed box set that I got them in is inexcusable.

Except since paint scheme has zero effect on what chapter tactic you must use it doesn't.

Well if you painted the army as Iron Hands and used Ultramarines Chapter Tactics it's kinda frowned upon.

Seen thap so many times don't buy it. And if you are that worried paint kneecap in different color. New scheme for your custom chapter

**Gene St. Ealer**

sennacherib wrote:
By the definitions found in this thread, Death Guard are a Horrible, Unworkable load of crap.

1. they have only got a few good units and not much variety since you can only take one set of chapter tactics. Terrible. Terrible.

2. The chapter tactics they do have only apply to infantry and dreads since they don’t even have bikes they can use. Ohhh. The horror.

3. The only good troop unit that they do have is the best 8n the game. Cultists are tops. Period. Pox walkers are too slow. Can’t get any work done. A terrible unit.

4. Foul blightspawn. Ok. Has some good special rules.

5. Foetid bloat drones. The only other good unit in the codex. It has that all powerful key word Fly and it’s pretty versatile.

6. Mortarion is junk. He dose t give his army 200% bonus the way that the row boat does. Just junk. Why would anyone take him.

Sorry for the sarcasm. But that’s how allmost all the space marine players in this thread would have responded. Only look at the best things others have, complain about not being the best etc. I am very much enjoying my codex despite having less than 1/3 as many unit choices as space marines get. I have units like defilers, possessed and plague marines which are frankly over costed. Terminators are too slow and the daemons not being usable in detatchment kind of stinks. However I very much enjoy playing them. I beat a Guard army yesterday. They scored 0 vp against me and surrendered at the bottom of turn 4 when I destroyed their bane blade in their deployment zone leaving them with a chimera and a nearly dead pask. They were unbeaten in our local league.

Point being. All codex have some units that are not the best. I fielded a defiler and it did pretty well. Sometimes with a good general and a little luck anything is possible. I feel like DG are in a fun place.

Yeah, this thread has had me wondering how many people have played competitive, yet non-max cheese tier games against DG. Obviously you've got things like Mortarion that will make a splash, but that book seems to have pretty strong internal balance, with a lot of viable options that can put the hurt on people. Nurgle DPs, Typhus+Poxwalkers, that crazy flamer, and those drones can all do work, and the DG psychic tree actually seems really freaking good too.

I'll make what may be an outrageous claim: the codexes are not too imbalanced when people are taking strong stuff that's not necessarily tournament cheese. At the tournament cheese level, there are imbalances. But at that level, you also can't complain that you have to rely on Guilliman/Mortarion/Magnus as a crutch because by the nature of playing pedal to the medal, you have to make sacrifices and spam the best stuff (and those things are the best stuff in the book). Tournament metas are kind of toxic by default; it's impossible for the game to be fully balanced. But codex armies have a wide variety of decent options available to them, even if they're not optimal.

**sennacherib**

Bharring wrote:
Shadow Spectres have been a Craftworld unit for a long time. IIRC, technically Corsairs could take them, but they were not Corsairs.

I was calling out FW, Soup, and Primarchs as 3 different things this thread has been discounting. FW isn't in the codex (and Spectres are FW). Soup isn't an individual Codex (and the Chaos lists and anything with Ynnari are Soup).

I don't consider FW units added directly to codecies to be Soup, but it isn't part of the Codex. It would be relevant when ranking armies, but now we have about a dozen more that SM outperform (Orkz, Necrons, DE, etc. Even Corsairs, if you want to count them).

People have been very specific about this conversation only being about codexes (in part because it's the only way to not make SM look good).

The refreshing voice of reason.
SM are strong and only going to get stronger with the points drops.

Also, Berzerker camouflage is red. Blood red, splashed with blood and more blood crusted on top under a mat of tissue and hair.

**the_scotsman**

sennacherib wrote:
Bharring wrote:
Shadow Spectres have been a Craftworld unit for a long time. IIRC, technically Corsairs could take them, but they were not Corsairs.

I was calling out FW, Soup, and Primarchs as 3 different things this thread has been discounting. FW isn't in the codex (and Spectres are FW). Soup isn't an individual Codex (and the Chaos lists and anything with Ynnari are Soup).

I don't consider FW units added directly to codecies to be Soup, but it isn't part of the Codex. It would be relevant when ranking armies, but now we have about a dozen more that SM outperform (Orkz, Necrons, DE, etc. Even Corsairs, if you want to count them).

People have been very specific about this conversation only being about codexes (in part because it's the only way to not make SM look good).

The refreshing voice of reason.
SM are strong and only going to get stronger with the points drops.

Also, Berzerker camouflage is red. Blood red, splashed with blood and more blood crusted on top under a mat of tissue and hair.

Reminds me of how I've always envisioned Space Marine scouts sneaking up on people.

"Shas-vre! That enormous human wearing brightly colored pauldrons emblazoned with Space Marine chapter regalia and carrying a bolter approaching our lines, perhaps that is a Space Marine? Should we open fire?"

"Ignore him, shas-la. Were he a space marine, he would obviously be carrying a banner proclaiming him as such and shouting loudly about it as he approached."

**Bharring**

That was the source of my snide. But the legions (and descendants) most likely to use cammo are AL and RG. Hence why they have that trait and stratagem.

**sennacherib**

Apart from being painted black I'm not sure RG are really considered camoflauge users. I see them more as lurking in shadows and fighting at night like night lords. . AL are the only legion I believe uses camo and for them its like a religion.

Other legion wear their colors proudly and stand high like knights of yore. Ensuring that they are seen. Proclaiming their lack of fear and causing terror in the enemy.

**Bharring**

At any rate, the core point is that, it's crappy to tell Iron Hands players to play Ultra Marines. But it's just as crappy to tell Khorne Berzerker players to play Alpha Legion. Or Uthwe to play Alaitoc.

And just as unfluffy for IH models to be UM marines as it is for Berzerker models to be infiltrating card-carrying members of Alpha Legion.

**TwinPoleTheory**

Gene St. Ealer wrote:
Yeah, this thread has had me wondering how many people have played competitive, yet non-max cheese tier games against DG. Obviously you've got things like Mortarion that will make a splash, but that book seems to have pretty strong internal balance, with a lot of viable options that can put the hurt on people. Nurgle DPs, Typhus+Poxwalkers, that crazy flamer, and those drones can all do work, and the DG psychic tree actually seems really freaking good too.

I really haven't piped up too much in defense of DG since I haven't really been across the table from them yet. I have someone in my regular group who is building/painting right now and we've theorycrafted a number of lists, there's definitely some crazy good combos in there.

Poxwalkers at S5/T5 wounding anything in the game on a 3+ at worst doesn't seem horrible to me, especially combined with The Dead Walk Again, having them wounding any troop unit in the game on a 2+ is pretty sweet too. DG definitely has some of the best buff/debuff auras in the game. Combining some of their new vehicles with Daemon units like Epidemius or what they will have access to when the Daemon codex comes out given that all their new vehicles are Daemons has a lot of potential, I just don't think it's really been fielded a lot yet or people just don't have a full grasp of the nuances involved in playing it yet.

**Unit1126PLL**

We also have to define what "worst" and "Bad" are in this context.

I assume people are talking competitively, what with mentions of balance and whatnot. Usually, in this context, bad = uncompetitive, and I don't believe Space Marines are uncompetitive.

If people are talking about other issues such as internal balance / fluff / grammar / other quality issues then I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm fairly sure the FW stuff is the worst though, they have more typos.

**Crimson**

tneva82 wrote:

Seen thap so many times don't buy it. And if you are that worried paint kneecap in different color. New scheme for your custom chapter

Doing 'counts as' is fine, but you really cannot do counts as Guilliman.

**sennacherib**

I won 5 out of 6 games in our local league with DG.
They are pretty good, the codex is fun since it’s got so many characters that all do something different for your army. They are a bit clunky to play and require that you know what your doing and build with that in mind. By SM player ITT it’s a junk codex without a win button. I mean I had to play soup and all so you know....

However. Pox walkers at best can only wound lower T models on a 3+ unless you use CP and those are precious with pox walker hordes. You use 2 per turn. Makes using them for anything else a hard bargain.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

TwinPoleTheory wrote:
Gene St. Ealer wrote:
Yeah, this thread has had me wondering how many people have played competitive, yet non-max cheese tier games against DG. Obviously you've got things like Mortarion that will make a splash, but that book seems to have pretty strong internal balance, with a lot of viable options that can put the hurt on people. Nurgle DPs, Typhus+Poxwalkers, that crazy flamer, and those drones can all do work, and the DG psychic tree actually seems really freaking good too.

I really haven't piped up too much in defense of DG since I haven't really been across the table from them yet. I have someone in my regular group who is building/painting right now and we've theorycrafted a number of lists, there's definitely some crazy good combos in there.

Poxwalkers at S5/T5 wounding anything in the game on a 3+ at worst doesn't seem horrible to me, especially combined with The Dead Walk Again, having them wounding any troop unit in the game on a 2+ is pretty sweet too. DG definitely has some of the best buff/debuff auras in the game. Combining some of their new vehicles with Daemon units like Epidemius or what they will have access to when the Daemon codex comes out given that all their new vehicles are Daemons has a lot of potential, I just don't think it's really been fielded a lot yet or people just don't have a full grasp of the nuances involved in playing it yet.

**tneva82**

Crimson wrote:
tneva82 wrote:

Seen thap so many times don't buy it. And if you are that worried paint kneecap in different color. New scheme for your custom chapter

Doing 'counts as' is fine, but you really cannot do counts as Guilliman.

well Guillimann is bit different in that his buffs are best for ultramarines. But even presence of him doesn't really stop having 2 detachments of different chapter tactics with same models. You lose some buffing combo's but if you otherwise benefit you can bet somebody does just that to maximize efficiency.

**TwinPoleTheory**

sennacherib wrote:
However. Pox walkers at best can only wound lower T models on a 3+ unless you use CP and those are precious with pox walker hordes. You use 2 per turn. Makes using them for anything else a hard bargain.

Base S/T 3.
Typhus to S/T 4.
Putrescent Vitality to S/T 5.
Blades of Putrescence +1 to wound.
Veterans of the Long War +1 to wound.

Unless I missed something about stacking, that's wounding anything in the game on a 3+. I'm happy to be wrong if you'd point me to the relevant rules section.

**sennacherib**

TwinPoleTheory wrote:
sennacherib wrote:
However. Pox walkers at best can only wound lower T models on a 3+ unless you use CP and those are precious with pox walker hordes. You use 2 per turn. Makes using them for anything else a hard bargain.

Base S/T 3.
Typhus to S/T 4.
Putrescent Vitality to S/T 5.
Blades of Putrescence +1 to wound.
Veterans of the Long War +1 to wound.

Unless I missed something about stacking, that's wounding anything in the game on a 3+. I'm happy to be wrong if you'd point me to the relevant rules section.

Your good. “ unless you use a CP and those are precious......”
I only have 8 and to do cloud of flies and the dead walk costs 2 per turn. Makes using 1 for veterans of the long war a hard bargain.

**TwinPoleTheory**

sennacherib wrote:
[color=red]
Your good. “ unless you use a CP and those are precious......”
I only have 8 and to do cloud of flies and the dead walk costs 2 per turn. Makes using 1 for veterans of the long war a hard bargain.

Fair enough, definitely not a combo to be used every turn, but potentially very effective under the right circumstances in theory. Honestly using dead walk might be easier just to move them with 7" of a conscript screen before you gun it down. But that could also set up some really creative daisy-chaining also as you add models within unit coherency to the Pox walkers and effectively extend their charge range, not to mention extending the 7" aura for dead walk.

**sennacherib**

I’ve thought about running 10 pox walkers in a rhino, charging a conscript wall with the rhino and then dropping the pox walkers off before unleashing on the conscripts. Never tried it though. Usually I just screen them with (the best unit in the game compared to anything space marine apparently) cultists. 40 cultists die and make 40 pox walkers. It can be problematic to deal with after that. If the cultists are allied (WHAT!!!) in from an iron warriors detatchment with a Tzeentch marked daemonprince (best unit in the game) backing them, you can give them 5++ save and they are fearless. Pretty nasty in theory.

**casvalremdeikun**

As a Crimson Fists player, it sucks pretty bad that my Warlord Trait, Chapter Tactics, and Strategem all blow. Being barely above Grey Knights and Ad Mech (and even that is questionable) is just terrible. Yay for bottom tier.

**sennacherib**

But your not technically the worst!

**Slayer-Fan123**

Bharring wrote:
Read that as 'Painted as Alpha Legion', as the stratagem is Alpha Legion only. I said camo, but that was just being a little snide at the concept.

How many Berzerkers have you seen painted Alpha Legion?

This is actually a good question, as this is the first time PA Cult Marines have been available to any Legion not dedicated to a specific God.

I've seen two whole squads done so far. One of them where they were in the typical Alpha Legion colors, and another where they were just red with the appropriate Shoulder Pads. However the rest of that guy's army has all the Cult Marines like that.

In the gallery here we've had Alpha Legion Berserker Marines popped up.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:
Crimson wrote:
tneva82 wrote:

Seen thap so many times don't buy it. And if you are that worried paint kneecap in different color. New scheme for your custom chapter

Doing 'counts as' is fine, but you really cannot do counts as Guilliman.

well Guillimann is bit different in that his buffs are best for ultramarines. But even presence of him doesn't really stop having 2 detachments of different chapter tactics with same models. You lose some buffing combo's but if you otherwise benefit you can bet somebody does just that to maximize efficiency.

1. Play Ultramarines Chapter Tactics
2. Can't really paint up Rowboat that way
3. Nah just use multiple detachments

**Galas**

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Bharring wrote:
Read that as 'Painted as Alpha Legion', as the stratagem is Alpha Legion only. I said camo, but that was just being a little snide at the concept.

How many Berzerkers have you seen painted Alpha Legion?

This is actually a good question, as this is the first time PA Cult Marines have been available to any Legion not dedicated to a specific God.

I've seen two whole squads done so far. One of them where they were in the typical Alpha Legion colors, and another where they were just red with the appropriate Shoulder Pads. However the rest of that guy's army has all the Cult Marines like that.

In the gallery here we've had Alpha Legion Berserker Marines popped up.

As most Chaos legions aren't a cohesive force anymore and most of the Chaos Marines Forces are just a bunch of guys from all the legions it makes all sense to give them free access to all kind and type of Legion rules.

If I have a Custom Chaos Warband I can use whatever rules I want to represent their fighting stile (I know theres no Sucessors Chapter like rules in the Chaos Codex, but just see the Vectoriums of Death Guard). Khorne Berzerkers, for example, haven't been a cohesive force in thousands of years. They are small groups that band together to bigger space marine forces, so it makes sense for them to take whatever tactics are common to the warband of the Chaos Lord that has "hired" them.

Khorne Berzerkers, Plague Marines, Rubric Marines and Noise Marines can be from different origins. Original members of the god-specific legions, created by the Black Legion, or "bought" to the Black Legion for other Chaos Lord to add them to their warband.

**Xenomancers**

casvalremdeikun wrote:
As a Crimson Fists player, it sucks pretty bad that my Warlord Trait, Chapter Tactics, and Strategem all blow. Being barely above Grey Knights and Ad Mech (and even that is questionable) is just terrible. Yay for bottom tier.

I feel for you man. I really do. This thread is for you.

Oh the topic of crimson fists. Have you run Kantor with an army of dreads? That sounds like it could be fun casually.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Galas wrote:
Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Bharring wrote:
Read that as 'Painted as Alpha Legion', as the stratagem is Alpha Legion only. I said camo, but that was just being a little snide at the concept.

How many Berzerkers have you seen painted Alpha Legion?

This is actually a good question, as this is the first time PA Cult Marines have been available to any Legion not dedicated to a specific God.

I've seen two whole squads done so far. One of them where they were in the typical Alpha Legion colors, and another where they were just red with the appropriate Shoulder Pads. However the rest of that guy's army has all the Cult Marines like that.

In the gallery here we've had Alpha Legion Berserker Marines popped up.

As most Chaos legions aren't a cohesive force anymore and most of the Chaos Marines Forces are just a bunch of guys from all the legions it makes all sense to give them free access to all kind and type of Legion rules.

If I have a Custom Chaos Warband I can use whatever rules I want to represent their fighting stile (I know theres no Sucessors Chapter like rules in the Chaos Codex, but just see the Vectoriums of Death Guard). Khorne Berzerkers, for example, haven't been a cohesive force in thousands of years. They are small groups that band together to bigger space marine forces, so it makes sense for them to take whatever tactics are common to the warband of the Chaos Lord that has "hired" them.

Khorne Berzerkers, Plague Marines, Rubric Marines and Noise Marines can be from different origins. Original members of the god-specific legions, created by the Black Legion, or "bought" to the Black Legion for other Chaos Lord to add them to their warband.

Yeah exactly - chaos mixing alignments is actually expected and it's always been that way. Space marines are supposed to be played as a single chapter - they are supposed to be uniform - It's asking a lot of a marine player to paint their army different colors to represent different chapters. And painting Guilliman anything but blue is pretty heretical. So having restrictions base on chapter for a crucial ability like the ability to enter from reserves and pinning it to ravengaurd. Or having Guilliman be the power house of the codex is really really poor design.

**casvalremdeikun**

Xenomancers wrote:
casvalremdeikun wrote:
As a Crimson Fists player, it sucks pretty bad that my Warlord Trait, Chapter Tactics, and Strategem all blow. Being barely above Grey Knights and Ad Mech (and even that is questionable) is just terrible. Yay for bottom tier.

I feel for you man. I really do. This thread is for you.

Oh the topic of crimson fists. Have you run Kantor with an army of dreads? That sounds like it could be fun casually.

No I have not. And honestly, if it wasn't for Kantor, I would probably be running Ultramarines tactics. But I love Kantor. He is one of my favorite models. And I want to play Crimson Fists. It just sucks that they have the worst rules of any of the Space Marines (besides maybe Grey Knights). They are deathly in need of some Errata to fix them.

It doesn't help that my other main army is Ad Mech.

**kombatwombat**

casvalremdeikun wrote:
As a Crimson Fists player, it sucks pretty bad that my Warlord Trait, Chapter Tactics, and Strategem all blow. Being barely above Grey Knights and Ad Mech (and even that is questionable) is just terrible. Yay for bottom tier.

The other Sons of Dorn share your pain.

From the point of view of Black Templars, you get a better Warlord Trait and Relic but a worse Chapter Tactic and Stratagem. I think we edge ahead of you there as the Chapter Tactic affects more units. Helbrecht and Kantor are a wash, but we do get the Emperor’s Champion and Cenobytes. But then, we have the curse of being an assault army in a Codex balanced around powerful shooting, so I think in the end we land in a similar situation to you guys.

These are dark days for the Sons of Dorn...

**Voss**

Xenomancers wrote:

Yeah exactly - chaos mixing alignments is actually expected and it's always been that way.

For a value of 'always' that ignores the legion and god specific lists that introduced the current iteration of chaos armies to the world, and the books that included them.

So perhaps 'post 3rd edition retcon' is more accurate?

**sennacherib**

My apologies to all the fluff minded SM players. I hope CA improves your gaming experience.

As a chaos player I have very little sympathy to SM players shinning about not being the best but for those non hyper comparative fluff minded gamers I feel you.

**tneva82**

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

1. Play Ultramarines Chapter Tactics
2. Can't really paint up Rowboat that way
3. Nah just use multiple detachments

Ummm I said multiple detachments. One detachment of ultramarines, one detachment of whatever you feel gives more efficiency than you would gian by having more ultramarines to buff. Whole army could still look like ultramarines though.

And as for painting up Guillimann...What does that matter? If you prefer say imperial fist colour scheme you can paint Guillimann like that as well. Rulewise you still have to use ultramarine tactic for that detachment(though other detachments can be whatever you wish. Like white scars if you feel so inclined) but painting wise whatever suits you.

**Arachnofiend**

tneva82 wrote:
Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

1. Play Ultramarines Chapter Tactics
2. Can't really paint up Rowboat that way
3. Nah just use multiple detachments

Ummm I said multiple detachments. One detachment of ultramarines, one detachment of whatever you feel gives more efficiency than you would gian by having more ultramarines to buff. Whole army could still look like ultramarines though.

And as for painting up Guillimann...What does that matter? If you prefer say imperial fist colour scheme you can paint Guillimann like that as well. Rulewise you still have to use ultramarine tactic for that detachment(though other detachments can be whatever you wish. Like white scars if you feel so inclined) but painting wise whatever suits you.

You can pretty easily paint your dudes black and say they're Iron Hands but count as Ultramarines for mechanics, but painting Guilliman black and saying he's Ferrus Manus is a bit more of a stretch and I'm not gonna blame people for being uncomfortable with doing that with their collection.

**tneva82**

Arachnofiend wrote:
You can pretty easily paint your dudes black and say they're Iron Hands but count as Ultramarines for mechanics, but painting Guilliman black and saying he's Ferrus Manus is a bit more of a stretch and I'm not gonna blame people for being uncomfortable with doing that with their collection.

We don\t have rules for Ferrus Magnus so pretty pointless. It's just iron hand coloured Guillimann within detachment using Ultramarine chapter tactics. Why claim anything about Ferrus Magnus?

Now if we would get Ferrus Magnus then that would be different. Though technically by the book it would still be okay to use him as Ferrus Magnus. Albeit THAT would often be out of many tournaments since they still generally require WYSIWYG models which Guillimann as Ferrus Magnus(when there would be official Ferrus Magnus model) most definitely isn't.

**Trade_Prince**

tneva82 wrote:
Arachnofiend wrote:
You can pretty easily paint your dudes black and say they're Iron Hands but count as Ultramarines for mechanics, but painting Guilliman black and saying he's Ferrus Manus is a bit more of a stretch and I'm not gonna blame people for being uncomfortable with doing that with their collection.

We don\t have rules for Ferrus Magnus so pretty pointless. It's just iron hand coloured Guillimann within detachment using Ultramarine chapter tactics. Why claim anything about Ferrus Magnus?

Now if we would get Ferrus Magnus then that would be different. Though technically by the book it would still be okay to use him as Ferrus Magnus. Albeit THAT would often be out of many tournaments since they still generally require WYSIWYG models which Guillimann as Ferrus Magnus(when there would be official Ferrus Magnus model) most definitely isn't.

You can claim that those are just very very very very very dirty Ultramarines