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So I was looking through the Blood Angels Codex today and I noticed that their Drop Pods only have a capacity of ten models. Same goes for the Space Wolf Drop Pod. But the Space Marine Drop Pod has a capacity of twelve models. Any ideas why the Design Team might have throttled back on the space available in Drop Pods?

they don't have drop pod assault do they? i'm not giving a reason, but if neither of them have it, it may be a trend too.

Thanks for pointing that out, very neat...

This does seem to put the nix on the idea from the SW book of having to choose between a sarge (WG) or 2 special weapons. BA can basically deep strike anything so I don't see as much need for the change in this codex.

Guess it's just a design thing they're implementing, one book at a time, and not a nefarious conspiracy to nerf SW Grey Hunters.

Orkestra:

There's some other things I've noticed though: The Blood Angels have Elite Chaplains and can buy groups of Sanguinary Priests as an Elite choice. It's a neat solution to the conundrum of wedging the command elements of the Blood Angels into the Force Organization Chart, but it does open the door to having to decide between the bonus weapons in Tactical Squads and having them enter the game in Drop Pods I suppose.

Joetaco:

All three versions of the Drop Pod have Drop Pod Assault.

As a side note I've noticed that Blood Angels Vanguard squads do not have Descent of Angels. Commander Dante does, despite having Tactical Precision. This codex gets curiouser and curiouser as I read it.

They might have done it to figure out a balance between the codices, since the space wolves and the blood angels would have their own unique things to their codices, they might

have logically thought that the Space marines vanilla could just use a little bit more capacity for theirs. Also along with fluff since Ultramarines are the highest population of space

marines, they might have figured that they would design their drop pods to help support that. This is my theory you can pull it apart but it sounds good for me atm.

My theory is that the guy who wrote the Marine stuff wanted to give them cool random bonuses, while the guys who wrote the others actually looked at the fig, and saw it can only physically fit ten guys.

Because they can deepstrike land raiders, and they have the Flying Fortress o' Doom that can carry both a tactical squad and a dreadnought?

Aduro wrote:My theory is that the guy who wrote the Marine stuff wanted to give them cool random bonuses, while the guys who wrote the others actually looked at the fig, and saw it can only physically fit ten guys.

It's a good theory, except the guy who wrote the Space Marine codex is the same guy who wrote the new Blood Angels one.

I think it's just a diversity thing. Maybe the design team wanted the vanilla SM to have the strongest Drop Pod armies, by being able to to have 10 men plus in IC or two. There's also the synergy in having Scout Biker squads with Locator Beacons. I don;t know for sure if the BA's have that.

Furthermore, SW have a different strength to their pods in that they can stuff Terminators in them. Vanilla SM can't.

The last i heard they were slightly embarrased about the 12 model capacity in the SM codex, as it goes against the rules-follow-model philosophy you see elsewhere.

With SW etc it makes sense - if you want a killer character, you sacrifice weapons, but normally only one. With SM if you wanted a character in there you lost both....

Nurglitch wrote:So I was looking through the Blood Angels Codex today and I noticed that their Drop Pods only have a capacity of ten models. Same goes for the Space Wolf Drop Pod. But the Space Marine Drop Pod has a capacity of twelve models. Any ideas why the Design Team might have throttled back on the space available in Drop Pods?

Did you also know that Storm Shields do different things depending on what Codex you read? And Assault Cannons? And Psycannons! And even Rhinos!!!

It's so much fun having all these different things with the same name that have different rules. Makes things far less confusing and makes a nice change from having lots of different things that all have the same rules (like Summoned Daemons).

Writing rules in a vacuum is fun!

Is there a "guideline", "FAQ", "optional houserule" or whatever they are called from GW that lets old codexes use rules for wargear and weapons from newer sources? Or did I just make that up?

I thought they did have drop pods with a 12 man capacity..?

Oh wait my bad, that's a flying LRC.

The DA FAQ suggests you "may" want to use the newer SM book for all wargear etc, but that is essentially restating TMIR.

Mellon wrote:Is there a "guideline", "FAQ", "optional houserule" or whatever they are called from GW that lets old codexes use rules for wargear and weapons from newer sources? Or did I just make that up?

You use what your codex says.

nosferatu1001 wrote:The DA FAQ suggests you "may" want to use the newer SM book for all wargear etc, but that is essentially restating TMIR.

Steelmage99 wrote:

Mellon wrote:Is there a "guideline", "FAQ", "optional houserule" or whatever they are called from GW that lets old codexes use rules for wargear and weapons from newer sources? Or did I just make that up?

You use what your codex says.

Thanks nosferatu, I read it closely. And it seems pretty clear to me that this is a case where The Most Important Rule could maybe do what it's name says... and be the most important rule. So, it would effectively overrule any old codex (and that is RAW, or tha east TMIRAW). Because TMIR is imnsho the single thing that actually makes this game work, despite being built on a mixup of shoddily written rules and sort of representative models. However, I must admit that it is hard to make a clear application of TMIR here. Maybe the question should be "Exactly how badly do you need to win at your game of toy soldiers?" Badly enough to force your DA opponent to use 4++ storm shields? Badly enough to requie that you are allowed to use 3++ storm shields in your DA army? It's a tricky one :-)

Excpet its not as easy as that.

Do you allow the DA to have 2xassault cannon in a 5man squad of fearless, scoring terminators and a 3++ save agaisnt everything? Or do you make it so they cant have 2 terminator weapons? Are the points values correct - for example if they get cheaper SS (i cant remember if they do!) then shouldnt they pay more now?

It isnt rules dev in a vacuum either - it is called long development cycles for codexes, meaning when you want to make changes to a piece of wargear you inevitably have inconsistencies. The only options are to completely remove the older codexes (highly unpopular), update them all at once (highly infeasible), release a HUGE errata changing how they work (infeasible, especially given you will almost certainly need to rebalance points - you may as well release a whole new codex) or, you just accept the inconsistencies are there and leave it.

The last is the lesat contentious, as people who want to make changes will do, and you avoid invalidating codexes / requiring people to paste new pages into their codex.

Nurglitch wrote:As a side note I've noticed that Blood Angels Vanguard squads do not have Descent of Angels. Commander Dante does, despite having Tactical Precision. This codex gets curiouser and curiouser as I read it.

The jump pack entry states that having a jump pack grants DoA. If you upgrade Vanguard to get packs, then they get DoA - the only reason they don't have it is because they start without packs.

I don't give a gak I still prefer mine saying that Ultramarines are a large chapter that need a drop pod to reflect that.

If we go by Large Chapter than SW should get bigger capacity. They are still legion sized.

Darkness wrote:If we go by Large Chapter than SW should get bigger capacity. They are still legion sized.

No they're not.

There are two or three Chapters at anything over the Codex: Astartes' limits of 1000 active warriors. The Black Templars are thought to have 2.5k because of their large Crusade fleets and the Grey Knights have around about 4k - but they're exempt from the normal rules. The Ultramarines have a few more than a thouand, but not many.

actually the SWs still have DP assault, don't know about BAs though.

I think the offical reason as to why there is a difference, is that for the Marine codex, they went decided it would be easier to set the limit at 12, because of game mechanics or something like that, but then realised they should have kept to the fluff, and instead of recalling every Marine codex, they decided to ''fix'' the problem in later codexes.

Miraclefish wrote:There are two or three Chapters at anything over the Codex: Astartes' limits of 1000 active warriors. The Black Templars are thought to have 2.5k because of their large Crusade fleets and the Grey Knights have around about 4k - but they're exempt from the normal rules. The Ultramarines have a few more than a thouand, but not many.

Actually when you factor in vehicle crew, Techmarines, Librarians, Chaplains, HQ staff and other people, Chapters have closer to 1500-2000 Marines. Hell, even just looking at the Company Structure you see that every Company has more than 1000 people.

And there are going to be more than 'two or three' Chapters that have well over 2000+ Marines as Black Templars are not the only Crusading Chapter out there. All the Black Templars are is an archetype for a method of having a Marine Chapter.

and the Codex Astartes states 1,000 battle brothers. Battle brothers is also used when addressing Tactical marines specifically within the tomes.

therefore a chapter could through a little creative interpretation of the Codex have only 1,000 tactical marines, but could have anynumber of other types.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Miraclefish wrote:There are two or three Chapters at anything over the Codex: Astartes' limits of 1000 active warriors. The Black Templars are thought to have 2.5k because of their large Crusade fleets and the Grey Knights have around about 4k - but they're exempt from the normal rules. The Ultramarines have a few more than a thouand, but not many.

Actually when you factor in vehicle crew, Techmarines, Librarians, Chaplains, HQ staff and other people, Chapters have closer to 1500-2000 Marines. Hell, even just looking at the Company Structure you see that every Company has more than 1000 people.

And there are going to be more than 'two or three' Chapters that have well over 2000+ Marines as Black Templars are not the only Crusading Chapter out there. All the Black Templars are is an archetype for a method of having a Marine Chapter.

Well said.

IDK where the 4k grey knights comes from, but BT are for sure rather at 5-8k strong and I may throw in the 100 dreads of the SW,
not really a point towards SW as standard sized force if you apply the ultramarines 100 marines = 2 dreads structure.

The change in transport-capacity adds unneeded diversity, there are DP ( 10 ) and DP ( 12 ) and DP ( potms ) yet.
IMO BA don't need DP's they got LR to deepstrike....

Would be nice to know if the GK get the stormraven too and its transport-capacity then ( termies + dread ?).

if GKs get the storm raven i will be sooooo

Nurglitch wrote:Any ideas why the Design Team might have throttled back on the space available in Drop Pods?

The actual model came out with harnessess for 10 SM instead of 12.

JohnHwangDD:

That's a good reason to have a limit of ten in the first place.

If the SM Codex was written while the DP model was in development, then you can guess where there might have been a problem.