Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

After seeing the results, and that 11% of the people actually believe Marines need a nerf, i should have voted 9 or less to balance out the scales rather than being reasonable.

10 points is a good price for what you get. You're getting a boltgun and crap melee.

If we were using the old AP system, and there were not that many AP2 or AP3 weapons out there, then i'd say 13 would be fine. In fact the more time goes by the more I think we should go back to the AP system. The -X to save game has forced people to build lists that focus entirely on invuln saves or chaff. I don't think that's good.

It's the 2nd ed effect. 2nd ed was all invulns or as cheap as you could get. Although more expensive models could be protected by chaff much more easily, but marines had no chaff.

 Marmatag wrote:
After seeing the results, and that 11% of the people actually believe Marines need a nerf, i should have voted 9 or less to balance out the scales rather than being reasonable.

People were voting 14+pts and saying that marines should have 2 wounds.

If you want a 9 point marine then ally-in sisters. Bolter and crap melee - everything you are looking for in a model.

A majority of people voted for 11 points.

I think people would still take scouts over tacticals for the alternate deployment option and I don't think 3+ armour is worth the same as deploying farther out. But I guess with the new deepstrike rule it's not as crucial

Basically that's why I voted 10. I already see sisters going down to 8 at the rate troop costs are dropping

 fraser1191 wrote:
A majority of people voted for 11 points.

I think people would still take scouts over tacticals for the alternate deployment option and I don't think 3+ armour is worth the same as deploying farther out. But I guess with the new deepstrike rule it's not as crucial

Basically that's why I voted 10. I already see sisters going down to 8 at the rate troop costs are dropping

Exactly. Sisters will drop to 8. Tac should drop to 10 and scouts also 10.

A.T. wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
After seeing the results, and that 11% of the people actually believe Marines need a nerf, i should have voted 9 or less to balance out the scales rather than being reasonable.

People were voting 14+pts and saying that marines should have 2 wounds.

If you want a 9 point marine then ally-in sisters. Bolter and crap melee - everything you are looking for in a model.

I don't want a 9 point marine. 10 seems fair.

I'd go with 14 or stay the same if they can pick up an extra wound.

Add an extra wound to Intercessors as well to keep the ratio intact.

Would immediately improve a lot of the durability issues all marine units have.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
A majority of people voted for 11 points.

I think people would still take scouts over tacticals for the alternate deployment option and I don't think 3+ armour is worth the same as deploying farther out. But I guess with the new deepstrike rule it's not as crucial

Basically that's why I voted 10. I already see sisters going down to 8 at the rate troop costs are dropping

Exactly. Sisters will drop to 8. Tac should drop to 10 and scouts also 10.

I realy wish I could say that your wrong, but sadly I suspect that your correct which does worry me for where this scale creep ends.

Scounts at 8 tacs at10 and intercessors at 12?

 Marmatag wrote:
I don't want a 9 point marine. 10 seems fair.

Well if you can stretch to 11 you could run Celestians...

The scale creep ends when their points equal their power points.

In another 18 months...

Ice_can wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
A majority of people voted for 11 points.

I think people would still take scouts over tacticals for the alternate deployment option and I don't think 3+ armour is worth the same as deploying farther out. But I guess with the new deepstrike rule it's not as crucial

Basically that's why I voted 10. I already see sisters going down to 8 at the rate troop costs are dropping

Exactly. Sisters will drop to 8. Tac should drop to 10 and scouts also 10.

I realy wish I could say that your wrong, but sadly I suspect that your correct which does worry me for where this scale creep ends.

Scounts at 8 tacs at10 and intercessors at 12?

Yes I hate to seem like some sort of Doom Sayer but 8th is currently a race to the bottom and anyone who denies that is probably at the bottom.

I'd love a marine with an extra wound and attack sitting at 15 for starters to see how it fits, then I'd see intercessors get the same treatment and either go back to 20ppm or 19 to maintain the roughly 1.5x cost

Ice_can wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
A majority of people voted for 11 points.

I think people would still take scouts over tacticals for the alternate deployment option and I don't think 3+ armour is worth the same as deploying farther out. But I guess with the new deepstrike rule it's not as crucial

Basically that's why I voted 10. I already see sisters going down to 8 at the rate troop costs are dropping

Exactly. Sisters will drop to 8. Tac should drop to 10 and scouts also 10.

I realy wish I could say that your wrong, but sadly I suspect that your correct which does worry me for where this scale creep ends.

Scounts at 8 tacs at10 and intercessors at 12?

A scout is equal in value to a tac marine IMO. He loses armor and weapon options for infiltrate ability. It is a straight fair trade off IMO - they should have the exact same point cost.

I propose a 3 point drop on all power armor marines including CSM except bezerkers. 5 points on all gravis armor and terminator armor units (with additional buffs for terminators) Centurians down 20 points.
Intersessors I think are special case and would need to drop to 14 from 15 - just to keep them compeititve with 10 point tacs (that or a 6+FNP) - it would also be great if they got a real heavy weapon/stalker bolters were buffed/had a transport too.

If marines were 10 points I'd field 120+ if them.

DeathWatch, DA, BA all make it impossible to have a base cost for marines balanced across chapters.

The strats and tactics are so powerful for BA that pricing vanguard vets for them is different than what those same models do in a ultra-marine army.

DW intercessors are solid to good troops. Those same models in a black templar army are not worth close to the same amount of points.

It's crazy that GW thought they could have a base cost for units that are used across such a wide variety of armies and somehow have it balanced. It's like marines and guard paying the same price for weapons, it just doesn't work.

I've been crying about it since the IG codex dropped that vanilla marines were going to be bottom tier. Now that we are mostly through the codexes the only dex worse than the space marine one is grey knights. Given the price increases in the last CA and most recent FAQ GW doesn't see it this way and this hope that somehow GW will all of a sudden get the picture is a lost cause.

Forget about your current paint jobs and conversions. Run your intercessors and aggressors as DW, some DA inceptors and some BA characters. Put the rest of them high up on the shelf so you don't have to look at them. Do your best to never field tacs, termies, dreads or anything else you've seen in a GW battle report, book, picture or poster and you will have a lot less aggravation.

Marines don't need a points decrease, they need a stats reworking across the board. IMO all SM infantry needs to go up a wound, and all bolters need to be ap-1.

bananathug wrote:
DeathWatch, DA, BA all make it impossible to have a base cost for marines balanced across chapters.

The strats and tactics are so powerful for BA that pricing vanguard vets for them is different than what those same models do in a ultra-marine army.

DW intercessors are solid to good troops. Those same models in a black templar army are not worth close to the same amount of points.

It's crazy that GW thought they could have a base cost for units that are used across such a wide variety of armies and somehow have it balanced. It's like marines and guard paying the same price for weapons, it just doesn't work.

I've been crying about it since the IG codex dropped that vanilla marines were going to be bottom tier. Now that we are mostly through the codexes the only dex worse than the space marine one is grey knights. Given the price increases in the last CA and most recent FAQ GW doesn't see it this way and this hope that somehow GW will all of a sudden get the picture is a lost cause.

Forget about your current paint jobs and conversions. Run your intercessors and aggressors as DW, some DA inceptors and some BA characters. Put the rest of them high up on the shelf so you don't have to look at them. Do your best to never field tacs, termies, dreads or anything else you've seen in a GW battle report, book, picture or poster and you will have a lot less aggravation.

Well, this is type of hyperbole I come to dakka for. Just exquisite!

If you want to play or do cool conversions with marines - do it. But this constant obsession with what is or is not top table competitive needs to end. It doesn't apply to 98% of the people that frequent this site.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
Marines don't need a points decrease, they need a stats reworking across the board. IMO all SM infantry needs to go up a wound, and all bolters need to be ap-1.

That has already happened. They got an extra attack too.

 Crimson wrote:

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
Marines don't need a points decrease, they need a stats reworking across the board. IMO all SM infantry needs to go up a wound, and all bolters need to be ap-1.

That has already happened. They got an extra attack too.

Now we just need to give them more special weapons. Then we can delete "primaris" from all their names.

No I mean all SM infantry. 3 wound primaris, 2 wound tacs.

I'd run marines as such:

No primaris or oldboys, roll them all into one single statline, building off of the primaris base.

All astartes pattern bolters use the bolt rifle statline, with the following additional faction rule:

Astartes Pattern Bolt Weapon: When a Rapid Fire, Assault, or Heavy weapon with this rule fires at a target within half of its maximum range, increase the amount of shots fired by 1.

So a bolter firing within 15" would fire three shots, a heavy bolter within 18" would fire four shots, a storm bolter within 12" would fire five shots, and so on.

All that for 16ppm.

 Fafnir wrote:
I'd run marines as such:

No primaris or oldboys, roll them all into one single statline, building off of the primaris base.

All astartes pattern bolters use the bolt rifle statline, with the following additional faction rule:

Astartes Pattern Bolt Weapon: When a Rapid Fire, Assault, or Heavy weapon with this rule fires at a target within half of its maximum range, increase the amount of shots fired by 1.

So a bolter firing within 15" would fire three shots, a heavy bolter within 18" would fire four shots, a storm bolter within 12" would fire five shots, and so on.

All that for 16ppm.

I like this except for the first thing, but that's just personal preference. I could get behind it.

 Insectum7 wrote:
If marines were 10 points I'd field 120+ if them.

Yep. The insanity knows no limits.

1 point extra for scions with power armor, ws3, t4, s4, etc?

Sign me up!

They should cost the same as a dire avenger.
So 8+4 for the catapult = 12.

For a marine, 10+2 for the bolter = 12.

Dire avengers should cost 9 total, not 12.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:
If marines were 10 points I'd field 120+ if them.

And still lose to Drukhari.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
If marines were 10 points I'd field 120+ if them.

Yep. The insanity knows no limits.

1 point extra for scions with power armor, ws3, t4, s4, etc?

Sign me up!

You mean pay 1 more point to lose cheap Plazma guns, being able to take all plasma, and deep strike.

By bringing TAC's down to ~10 points you're also inflating the value of a single point; There will be more cries of X doesn't match the output of a TAC! Lower points!

I find it is all too convenient to argue about marine point costs in a vacuum. They ARE the central game balance point - a bit like Ryu in any iteration of Street Fighter. I'd rather we see reduced AP effectiveness against marines and their heavy armoured equivalents (Which are universally agreed as bad, who runs terminators these days?).

How that reduced effectiveness is implemented? No idea. Could be as simple as: Halve any the AP value of any weapon fired at a < POWER ARMOR > unit, rounding down (minimum 0) to something complex like the suggested 5+ save rolling two dice (Which also has the the theoretical impact of halving the AP value).

Afterwards points need to be increased, not decreased. The idea of balancing a game where 4 points is the difference between a BS 5+, SV 6+ ork and a BS 3+, SV 3+ marine is mad; how do you balance with that level of granuality?

 Eonfuzz wrote:
By bringing TAC's down to ~10 points you're also inflating the value of a single point. Afterwards there will be more cries of X doesn't match the output of a TAC! Lower points!


I find its all too convenient to argue about marine point costs in a vacuum. They ARE the central game balance point - a bit like Ryu in any iteration of Street Fighter. I'd rather we see reduced AP effectiveness against marines and their heavy armoured equivalents (Which are universally agreed as bad, who runs terminators these days?).

How that reduced effectiveness is implement? No idea. Could be as simple as: Halve any the AP value of any weapon fired at a < POWER ARMOR > unit, rounding down (minimum 0) to something complex like the suggested 5+ save rolling two dice (Which also has the the theoretical impact of halving the AP value).

Afterwards points need to be increased, not decreased. The idea of balancing a game where 4 points is the difference between a BS 5+, SV 6+ ork and a BS 3+, SV 3+ marine is mad; how do you balance with that level of granuality?

Lowering Marines to be competitive with other units dose not inflate the value of a point because other units are already their.

 mew28 wrote:

 Eonfuzz wrote:
- snip -

Lowering Marines to be competitive with other units dose not inflate the value of a point because other units are already their.

And how often to we clamour that the units in the lower end of that bracket are overpowered? I've seen posts that: Orks Boyz are OP! Infantry is OP! Guard is OP! Dark Eldar is OP!

I've seen those cries before. Do we really want to have a bandaid fix (Horde marines), or an actual fix?

 Eonfuzz wrote:

 mew28 wrote:

 Eonfuzz wrote:
- snip -

Lowering Marines to be competitive with other units dose not inflate the value of a point because other units are already their.

And how often to be clamour that the units in the lower end of that bracket are overpowered? I've seen cries that: Orks Boyz are OP! Infantry is OP! Guard is OP! Dark Eldar is OP!

I've seen those cries before. Do we really want to have a bandaid fix (Horde marines), or an actual fix?

I mean making them a competitively priced unit is not a bandaid fix since they would be worth taking on their own merits rather then that free Rhino or Gmans buff Aura.

 mew28 wrote:
- snip -
I mean making them a competitively priced unit is not a bandaid fix since they would be worth taking on their own merits rather then that free Rhino or Gmans buff Aura.

A point reduction is a literal bandaid fix. I agree with the goal of making marines competitive - but I do not agree with reducing their point costs as a means to make it happen.