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I'm looking over my army and figuring out how to best adapt to the new changes. I don't want to buy/paint any new miniatures.

The 5/10 squad selection restriction will be greatly limiting no matter what.

6-Man Las/Plas Squads

These squads will be difficult to adapt. I have two squads in this configuration.

Option 1: 2x 5 Man squads with Plasma Gun.

This option gives a couple of low-cost maneouverable units, but severely hurts anti-tank/MC abilities. This is especially true as my Devastators use Missile Launchers. I'd be almost helpless against Monolith heavy lists. They also lose their ability to stand-off at range.

Option 2: 1x 5 man Plasma Gun, 1x 5 Man Lascannon

This option strike a balance. By nominally making them part of one squad (squad markings aside) I can field a special weapon and a heavy weapon. The difficult is that both squads are rather fragile. The output at anyone task is also reduced by 50%.

Either way anti-MEQ and anti-MC ability is crippled.

8-Man 4xML Devastators

This unit was formerly a darling of competitive Marine lists. All might not be lost here.

One option would be to cave into the cash grab and buy two more Marines. As a squad of ten it could be broken in half and allowed to fire at two targets. It loses durability, but gains a bit in flexibility.


Most of the rest of my units will be fine - 10 man command and tactical squads in Rhinos will get slightly cheaper, 10 member Assault Squads will stay the same, and there don't seem to be any major changes to the tanks that I've heard of yet.

My other concern is that GW will restrict doctrines so I can't take Dev squads as elites - (and thereby reducing the size of my army by ~450 points) but that's unclear at this stage.

i think it is premature to make assumptions on the outcome of everything just yet

we have no way of knowing what can be assembled until the codex actually arrives.. i was supposed to have a copy today but its snowed and iced up here so i didnt open the store today .. dannggit

When's it coming out exactly - I thought it wasn't until next year

I think he's talking about DA only. Personally, if the 5/10 marine squad thing comes back, I forsee a return to the bad old days of 2e, where loyalist marines are basically screwed competitively. If GW is stupid enough to do this, their SM sales will probably plummet. My guess would be that only a fraction of people moving away from SM will buy other armies, many of them will probably move on to other games or simply stop wargaming altogether.

gah, double post

so far it appears command squads can only be five strong

devs will be much stronger, i think the lascannon  is cheaper for them so you could mix that 2/2 with the missiles as they will deploy in different spots most of the time with the combat squads rule

and nothing is really getting cheaper(at least from what i know)but hidden weapons are supposedly same points as for ic(and you still pay for the vet upgrade), one good thing is that command squads are now vets(and so they would get 2 attacks)the attack line for space marines has been standardised(1 for basic, 2 for vet, 3 for hq, 4 for chapter master)

i think people are getting a little too worried so soon, when marines and chaos get hid like this it wont look so bad, although the number of marine armies probably will drop as choices in selection will go down but tactical flexibility will be a strongpoint as it should be for marines. if everyone didn't play min/max assault cannon, librarian w/ fear ,drop pods and hidden powerfists these changes wouldnt have been so drastic but as it is these armies will be pretty much demolished with the new points costs(at least you wont have nearly as much), now they just have to do something with the traits.

There is no proof of a SM Redux, only a single line rumor on Warseer, which the author himself said that may be tenuous. There are 33 pages of discussions on this ONE LINE  where some fanboys repeatedly have said that a Redux is comming. Thats it. One post in One line had at the bottom of possible codex releases: "Late 08 - Space Marine Redux".  No more than someone saying "Dark Eldar are comming in 08".  The author of that one line has said that it could be wrong.

So there have been no sightings, no conversations recored with any GW officials, no scrap nor shread of evidence. Is one line of a rumor that has taken the internet like storm. (Much like that sad rumor in the 80s of Rod Stewart having to get his stomach pumped) However, because its marines and it co-insides with the DA codex, everyone has been up in arms.

Dont worry about any SM redux. I dont think it exists. Its probably a Blood Angels redux, or Space Wolf redux. If its scheduled for TWO YEARS from now, I think you have more than enough time to enjoy everything you have, as is.

 

This is all conjecture we have nothing in print, but if rumours are true. As far as a SM redux is concerned tacticals have nothing to worry about. if you get combat squads it will most likely be:

If you have a tactacal squad of ten marines with a veteran sergeant, you may choose to deploy them as two scoring combat squads.

They had combat squads right in front of our faces in battle of Macragge, I dont see why they ever got rid of them. Its an extra option and it fits the versatile nature of space marines. I would be happy to take combat squads aas youget cheap 'pure' heavy weapon squads plus useful mobile tactical/assault squads. You wont bother with las/plas, instasd have a stand alone lascannon unit and a mobile unit with melta or flamer. Very versatile - I cant see how anyone is saying it nerfs marines.

You remember how Guardians became practically unplayable after the minimum squad size was bumped up?

Currently, marine stand and shoot armies cannot provide all the neccessary firepower from Devestators alone. To produce the incredible amounts of weapons fire it takes, they use large numbers of cheap Tactical Squads to increase their long range capabilities.

Now, assume for a second that the changes are true. Marines will have to pay TWICE as many points for HALF as many weapons.

On the subject of Dark Angel Tactical Squads:

I think most people are so fixiated on the Las/Plas squads that they ignor the other heavy/special weapons. If I where building a shooty Dark Angel army, I would start with a core of this:

3 10-man Tactical Squads w/ Powerfist, Meltagun, Lascannon

2 10-man Devestator Squads w/ 2 Heavy Bolters and 2 Missle Launchers

You then deploy 3 Lacannon Combat squads and split the Devestators (so you have 4 squads with the same heavy weapon each), that is a standing core of 3 Lascannons, 4 Missle launchers, and 4 Heavy Bolters

Remember, Dark Angels tacticals get Bolt Pistols, Frag and Krak for free. So the other half of the Combat Sqauds have a Powerfist and a meltagun. I would avoid Plasma because it is not an assault weapon, because they have Bolt Pistols for Free, they can move-shoot-assualt like 3rd Edtion. So you can use them as counter assault units. Or better yet, you can give them Razorbacks and add to the Heavy Weapons you are fielding.

I don't think that the tactical changes have killed shooty marines by a long shot.

@Mahu

THis is one of the most intelligent posts that I have read on the subject. i wish you would go over to Warseer and talk some sense.

Is the squad still a 10 man squad in terms of transport options? If not well and good, but you can only put a unit in a razorback if it's under 6 models. Also, if you can split up the squads' transport options, why not put the melta half-squads into drop pods? That would let them stall advnces and use that melta gun sooner. I think that mauleed marines will still be doable, but straight shooting and termie heavy lists are on the fritz.
cheers

This is all completely subjective, but here goes.  The new Dark Angels codex strikes me as a lab rat for changes that might be levied on the rest of the marine armies out there.  Right now Las/Plas Tac squads are the no brainer build, but are way too cheap for what they can do.  I think the combat squads rule would be a welcome addition to the Marine army list.  I think that it will force players to use strategy rather than just jamming in as many min/maxed squads as possible.

I agree about the DA Codex being a bit of a labrat. It's the only reason I can think that they are so drastically different in army build than the Codex Marines.

If they were to change the Space Marines under this format, it makes me wonder what they are doing with Chaos, specifically the Undivided legions who are able to do the exact same thing.

While I don't mind folks building 6 man or 8 man strong Marine squads, I do miss the old fluff of the combat squads for Marines.

I don't even own a Marine army these days (not since 1st edition), but I wish some hardcore Marine players would take up the challenge to make this style army playable and winnable. It gets downright depressing to read all the whining before the codex even comes out.

Posted By Mahu on 02/02/2007 7:08 AM
On the subject of Dark Angel Tactical Squads:

I think most people are so fixiated on the Las/Plas squads that they ignor the other heavy/special weapons. If I where building a shooty Dark Angel army, I would start with a core of this:

3 10-man Tactical Squads w/ Powerfist, Meltagun, Lascannon

2 10-man Devestator Squads w/ 2 Heavy Bolters and 2 Missle Launchers

You then deploy 3 Lacannon Combat squads and split the Devestators (so you have 4 squads with the same heavy weapon each), that is a standing core of 3 Lascannons, 4 Missle launchers, and 4 Heavy Bolters

It's a good detup, but torrent of fire rule may hurt 5 men squads with PF and meltagun.

I started playing Salamanders a year ago. I field the cheap 5 man Missile squads that hang back and take shots at whatever they can while being out of range of return fire in most cases. Duel meltas and a powerfist in rhinos. The new Dark Angels codex makes the way I play easier. 35 point Rhinos with free smoke and a light. 16 point Marines with Frag, Krak, Pistol and Bolter. The list I use is very fluffy and it is hard to be competitive but I usually tied. The new codex suits my play style and enhances it slightly, the points I am saving on Rhinos is made up for the extra cost of the Marines themselves. My Salamanders will be given a Dark Angels Green ink wash and away I go.

"It's a good detup, but torrent of fire rule may hurt 5 men squads with PF and meltagun."

I am with Mahu on this.

Yes, its five men rather than the usual six, but this way you are getting your lascannon fix and your mobile assault weapon fix with the same troop choice. Combat squads make marines what the were supposed to be.

10 man combat Devastators just makes DA efficient survivable Long Fangs. Frankly this is a vast improvement over the 8 man 4ml Dev squad, so much more flexible.

If SM lose double assault cannon out of this - good. I remember in the day Dakka posts on V3.0 marines, everyone knew assault cannon sucked then, everyone also knew that marines had some very solid builds. Mauleed's Ultras for one. They managed it without assault cannon before - why not now?

Because now sales of terminators will drop through the floor on the way to sub-basement C.

GW never seems to learn that the solution isn't making good choices more difficult to take. There's also pretty much NOTHING in the rules (except for the "cleanse and purify doctrine" that reflects the fact that two of anything is more than twice as good as one.

Right now the terminator squad with two assault cannons is a no-brainer, because in almost every situation its superior to the other weapons options. Terminators are effectively an assault cannon platform. On their own, they're just very expensive Marines that fall just as easily to AP2 weaponry as a regular Space Marine does.

What they should do is create an escalating scale of points (so that the second squad of terminators costs more, or the second duplicate weapon costs more within a squad), and make more widespread use of 0-1 or 0-2 limitation on units. Make doctrines/traits that allow those limitations to be superceded, at a suitable penalty.

Mostly because 4th edition rules or the DA codex prevent them from being used.

Rhino rush disapeared with the new transport rules.

SAFH marines rely on large numbers of min maxed squads, something you can't do in the DA codex.

In addition, most of the archtypes developed by the new marine codex (pod variations mostly) are made questionable at best, and unplayable at worst by the DA codex.

Well I've come up with a way for the DA to get their lascannon fix, assuming what I'm thinking is true:

Devastator Squad, 10 Marines, 4 Lascannons x2 Combat Squad that out into 4 5 Man Squads with two lascannons each.

Right now 5 6 Man Las/Plas tactical Squads = 115 * 5 = 575 which is 5 Lascannons and 5 Plasmaguns in 5 units.

Now you lose some ability you had in multiple units, but you will get 4 Squads with 8 total Lascannons, which works out pretty well firepower wise. Now if I'm right and the Lascannons didn't change point wise for Devs then they should be 305 for 10 Marines w/ 4 Lascannons. Works out to be 152.5 Points per 5 Man Squad.

Not TOO bad of a nerf, and you do get a bit of added firepower out of it. And I think we can agree that 6 Man Las/Plas squads in Marines were under costed.

The only question now is what to use along side the support.

I just read the new DA codex this evening and to be completely honest it is the worst codex from GW that I have ever read. DA were my first army but I will no longer be playing them any longer. I was very curious to see who had written these rules then flipped to the first page... all my questions were immediately answered when I saw the name Jervis Johnson. It looks to me like he has finally gotten his revenge at long last. I hope this is the last codex he ever writes. Sorry for not sounding positive but that is how I really feel about it.

- Greenie

Can you do this? I thought you had to take a heavy in one, a special in the other... The one thing that comes to mind for replacing Las/Plas (vaguely) would be to take the 35 point Rhino, take 5 guys with a Meltagun and put them in there, then take 5 guys with a Lascannon, and use them where you used to use the Las/Plas. The Rhino is cheap, and the Marines can drive up, bail out and kill a tank pretty reliably. If they don't, it's still a pretty tough choice to waste your time killing the Rhino and the squad, neither of which is worth much of anything.

Posted By Green Bloater on 02/04/2007 7:30 PM
I just read the new DA codex this evening and to be completely honest it is the worst codex from GW that I have ever read. DA were my first army but I will no longer be playing them any longer.

Waaaah!!!

Posted By Green Bloater on 02/04/2007 7:30 PM
I was very curious to see who had written these rules then flipped to the first page... all my questions were immediately answered when I saw the name Jervis Johnson. It looks to me like he has finally gotten his revenge at long last.

Errr, "revenge?" What has Jervis got to avenge himself over? Having a job designing games for the past 20 years?  Or are you referring to all those batreps he lost in WD over the years?

Posted By Pariah Press on 02/05/2007 12:13 AM

Posted By Green Bloater on 02/04/2007 7:30 PM
I was very curious to see who had written these rules then flipped to the first page... all my questions were immediately answered when I saw the name Jervis Johnson. It looks to me like he has finally gotten his revenge at long last.

Errr, "revenge?" What has Jervis got to avenge himself over? Having a job designing games for the past 20 years?  Or are you referring to all those batreps he lost in WD over the years?

Revenge as in he comes to finish off the DA Codex he started to kill in early 3rd edition.

 

As for 10 men squad with melta, lascannon and sgt with fist.

Thos cost 220 pts... without the rhino... but the catch is taht the 5-men squad with Sarge w/Pfist and meltagun is a scoring unit costed at 125 pts... a little bit two steep for 5 guys... Like I said previously, torrent of fire will hurt them, plus 5 guys inCC against specialist don't last long enough... nevermind that that melatgun must kill something at least 100 points expensive before they die...

Yep. Keep in mind that the 3rd edition DA Codex was so horrible that GW had to change it to remove some of the dumber limitations. Seriously, who thought Dark Angels would be best represented by a trait making them too lethargic to move 1 turn out of 6? Or that Terminators (without an invulnerable save) would be worth 52 points each? Plus there were the instances of clearly not understanding the 3rd edition rules, such as Asmodai paying twice to have a power weapon.

Then compare that to the 3rd edition Blood Angels codex...

People didn't think much of Jervis Johnson when the 3rd ed. codex came out either.

How could GW ever let Jervis write another codex after he botched Dark Eldar and Dark Angels in 3rd edition. He also blew it with Blood Bowl. This is seriously depressing to say the least.

- Greenie

Dude if there is one thing you can't complain about with the 4th Ed DA Codex is that it's overpowered. In fact the biggest gripe people have is that they're underpowered (and thus can't compete with the powergaming lists that Nids, Tau, SM, and Eldar have in their 4th ed Dex's)

I think we'd probably have been better off if Jervis wrote all the 4th ed Dex's and cut the amount of crap that people can do.

I had my chance to look at the Dark Angels codex and honestly, I like it. I like it alot.

Dark Angels are now the most cost effecent Marines out there. Every one of their units, if you tried to build the same out of codex Marines is cheeper. Sure the list is more restrictive. But that only balances the codex rather nicely.

I bet, just like with the Eldar Codex, once people are building and playing lists made from this codex all the whineing will stop.

Now, back to my original build. After looking at the codex, I realized that taking mixed heavy weapons in Devestator squads is useless, since the combat squads are determined at deployment. But because combat sqauds is determined at deployment, this give Dark Angels extreme flexibility to adapt to different opponents in a tournament.

I believe Deathwing is still Viable too. Its better to consider a Deathwing squad as an Assault Terminator Squad with an Assault Cannon than a Terminator squad with one less Assault Cannon. Deathwing Assault means you can jump a Lysanderwind before they jump you and even if you fail to do that, Deathwing can out assault regular Terminators.

I still see a lot of potential with this codex.

Mahu - if you like the codex so much I highly encourage you to start a brand new DA army. I mean that in the nicest way possible too. There are certainly some nice looking new minis being released.

In terms of griping about it being under-powered, it is. Who would field this in attempt to compete against other better armies such as Ultramarines and eldar for tournament play? The rules are highly restrictive and take the fun out of being able to design an army with character. The HQ choices are a joke. Jervis now says DA would not use terminator honors (including HQ suited in terminator armor), but this is the same guy who made it mandatory for DA HQ to take terminator honors in 3rd edition. This is his payback to all the DA players who hated him for writing their 3rd edition codex.

Here are a few of my gripes:

Scouts as an elite choice; Scouts are novice Marines at best. Sure they represent a small percentage of the Chapter but they are not elite by a long shot. The classification of elite should be reserved for veterans. Take a look at Wolf Scouts as a comparison - Wolf Scouts have existing fluff that represents them as veterans plus they have access to special rules, power weapons, special weapons, and meltabombs. Who is going to field scouts in a DA army as elites when you can take dreadnaughts, veteran Space Marines, or terminators?

As I said above DA HQ have three attacks with no access to terminator honors. DA HQ have been nerfed in a big way with a very limited selection of wargear. Now only the special character Azrael can take the Sword of Secrets. MotRW on a jetbike is a fantastic looking miniature and I will buy just to collect it. He has some cool rules and more wargear than most other DA HQ, such as the admantium cloak and an iron halo. The Raven Sword now counts as a master crafted power weapon and the MotRW only has three attacks. Truly lame.

For every HQ you take you can also field one command squad, but the command squad is a separate unit from the HQ... so you will have to roll for them separately if they are held in reserve. That one just does not make any sense at all. There is no terminator command squad for HQ in terminator armor. Who is going to deep strike a single HQ all by his lonesome?

You have to take ten Marines in a tactical squad to get one heavy weapon. Five Marines with a special weapon just does not cut the mustard. A powerfist for the veteran sergeant costs 25 points. What is up with that???

I do not like the new layout of the codex. You have to constantly fill back and forth through the codex to find entries for each unit.


There is some cool stuff in the codex but it is all ruined by the bad things in my opinion. Some people are already asking if GW is going to rewrite this codex. I am planning to run my DA army as a successor Chapter and use the rules for Ultramarines. I sure am glad I painted mine using the pre-heresy color scheme.

- Greenie

Right now, without having seen the new codex, I would play something like this:

Master of the Ravenwing on Speeder

2x Full Ravenwing Squadrons- 6 bikes, 2 melta guns, powerfist?, attack bike w/multi-melta, Tornado
2x 1 Tornados
1x10 Assault Marines- 2 flamers, powerfist

1x 10 Man Devastators squad w/ 4 lascannons, rhino

That still nets you alot of mobility, 5 assault cannons (1 BS5 twinlinked) 4 meltas, 2 multi-meltas, and 4 lascannons. Also has something like 13 scoring units. That rhino would be used for mobile terrain for the assault marines.