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I know I'm not the only person in the world (or for that matter on this forum) who thinks that SM get too much love, but what I'm starting to wonder is whether it is actually counter-productive and ultimately damaging to GW?

Let me explain...

The only thing that is encouraged by the current release policy is proxy armies. People have already said 'I'll just add some Baal preds and use my existing models' - instant BA army, just add water...

Now, from a consumer point of view, this could be a good thing as a core of models with a few unique pieces could easily transfer from codex to codex. Paint in a neutral colour and you have your Ultradarkblack Bloodwolfangeltemplar Marine army. Great!

BUT - I don't think this is what the vast majority of SM players want. What they want is for each marine army to be different. Of equal power and value in-game but to have elements unique to that chapter. Things that let it play in its own style but don't make any one chapter overpowered in comparison to the others. This would also help GW as it would encourage people who want more than 1 marine army to get more than 1. More importantly, it would encourage people who play a specific chapter to stick with it, rather than proxying it or simply shelving it until their chapter gets an upgrade (how many DA players still play using the DA codex?)

The question is how could this be achieved? The best answer would seem to be a return to the old (3rd ed) style core codex with supplementary books - although I think with clever writing (not GW's stongest suit, I know) you could cover more than ever before with just two books - a core Codex:Space Marines (for smurfs/codex chapters) and a supplementary Codex:Astartes that gave all the variant army lists, special characters and unique units for the other legions and their successors.

Just my $0.02 but what do you think? Is the endless proxying good or bad for the game - and if bad how do you fix it?

I think proxying too much/too long is bad. However, allowing SM armies to buy chapter specific kits to add to their force is actually a good thing.

I know I want to run my fairly good sized Marine force as different chapters depending on the day of the week. GW is doing a great job of making each new Marine dex different and I gotta try them all. It's not even a power level thing... there are simply builds in BT/SW/BA/SM that are not available to the other books. Variety is the spice of life and all that.

At the same time, I have NO intention of buying 30 more Tacticals to run as GHs or buy a bunch of red Assault Marines when I already have a ton of blue ones. So I have two choices... I can either buy a few DC/Sang Guard/Baal Pred kits and mix them in with my regular army... or I can just ignore them completely because I don't want to rebuy all the other supporting stuff. When I start a full fledged second army, I sure as heck am not doing another Marine one.

"It's the economy, stupid" (not calling you stupid... just using the quote)

Why "waste" my money on buying a bunch of models I already have, just painted in a different color when I can instead put that money towards a completely different army that isn't MEQ?

That's the point (in a roundabout way) - people who want the do-all marines still could, but people who want to play whitescars, dark angels, whatever wouldn't feel that they need to use somebody else's codex to make their army playable.

Personally I feel 40k is slowly becoming Space Marine 40k, with too much of an emphasis on Space Marine customisability. Chaos players for example, shouldn't have to use a space marine dex to make their army playable.

I agree with the OP I would love a return to supplement books. The Eldar: Craftworlds book was brilliant. Also, it saves on shelf space (something GW are always trying to do) It would also allow people to buy 2 books, then go "Ooh the Dark Angels look cool, why don't I buy Azrael and see how it goes." Or whatever. It makes the variety of chapters more accessible, and when the majority of your audience is the younger generation, if you give them easily accessible information, they are more likely to buy stuff.

Who wants to trawl through 5 different codices to find the best chapter for you, when you can just look through 2? =D

Oshova

But wolves are waaaaaaayyyy different from regular marines, thats why the whole supplementary idea wont work well

The supplement type thing was horrilbe to use. You had to flip back and forth between two books to see what you could do and what you couldn't and not everything in the main book was usable or they would switch things around. It's much simpler to just use one book.

I think it's time for another civil war though. It's nice that there are all of these chapters with different rules, but it would be nice to have the fights be more in story line with the universe instead of simply fights.

I guess the way to do that is to split up the chaos marine codex a lot. Put different rules out for the chaos chapters. The other thing would be to make another race with as much flexibility as them. That's the real reason they are popular is that they are easy to learn and forgiving of mistakes. More armys like that would be good.