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actually- termies are 9ft. PA marines are less.

Space Marines are pretty forgiving to play outside of meta/tourny play. They are affordable to collect, easy to paint. Very noob friendly army.

I started 40k with Imperial Guard, and got pretty overwhelmed and disheartened as I had trouble building good lists and winning games. I sold them and started Space Marines, and they really got me hooked.


I ran into a kid who was maybe 12 years old in the GW shop. He had Vulkan, 2x 5 man Tactical squads with no special weapons, 5x AOBR termies, a vindicator, a AOBR Dreadnought, a techmarine at 1000pts. He sounded pretty cocky so I brought my MSU style 1k pt list and went to town. I got a little cocky myself and squandered my troops. At the end of turn 5 I had lost all of my troops but still had 2x vindis, 3x MM/HF speeders and 2 razorbacks on the field, and he had a lone space marine on the top floor of a ruin out of contest range holding an objective. If a 1 or 2 was rolled he would have won the game. Thankfully, the game continued and I was able to table him, but it was pretty scary to almost lose to a list like that.

Getting cocky in the face of cocky kids wont do anything to temper their personality, only make it worse. Be a gentlemen. If you really think you should smash his face in, do so with grace, and remember that even though he doesnt know half the rules you do, somewhere he picked up his negative personality trait, and if you come across as a mentor to him instead of an opponent you stand a greater chance of having fun, mature games with him 5 years down the road.

It may be GW's job to sell us minis, but it is our job to maintain a solid player community.

It may be GW's job to sell us minis, but it is our job to maintain a solid player community.

Because they sell.

10-foot-gaint-Mutants! Raaagh!!!

But the real reason is, LD issues nullified and 3+ makes the entry level a little bit nicer

Easy to play, but difficult to master. Thats the SM gamer motto.

Because they're actually quite easy to start with.

All the units have obvious roles (Devastators shoot big guns, Assault Squad hurts things in combat, Terminators are awesome) etc. etc. They have the richest background in 40k (Whether chaotic or not) The nicest models, the most codexes, and they easily mold into multiple themes/playstyles (I.E. Space Wolves are close combat vikings, Blood Angels are noble yet angry as hell close combatants)

Honestly, there's so many options that they take the cake. Other codexes like Imperial Guard, Necrons, and Tyranids have multiple units that can be confusing, and don't exactly fit a specific purpose, and are harder to theme. (I.E. what's the difference between a Leman Russ and a Demolisher?{This question is rhetorical})

Lots of reasons really. They are the most highly supported army in terms of GW production kits, their armor takes paint/wash REALLY well, and there is a ton of fluff about em.

The thing i like the most about marines is the kits being highly cross-compatible. nothing quite like bashing parts from a host of different kits to make one badass looking set of armour!

Go to Lenton.
Have a look at the massive statue outside GWHQ.
I'll give you a hint, it's not an Imperial Guardsman.

Laughing God wrote:this game was actually called SM at one point and everything else just kind of branched off that theme, so SM are kind of 40ks backbone.

No.

Space Marine was 6mm scale and post-dates Warhammer 40,000.

I thiunk to be honest a SM army is a very good starting point.

The army is simple, most of the statlines are the same so are easy to remember, very few complex special rules (e.g. synapse, mob rule, WBB, power from pain etc etc) to remember and figure out (when as a n00b, you're probably still stuck on combat results and vehicle rules).

From a hobby side, the army requires very little skill to make to a passable standard (not amazing standard, but a a passable one). everything is basically a variant of the same generic kit, so easy to put together, especially if using push-fit AoBR marines, very few impossible models (exception being thunderfire cannon) so most beginners can get a good crack at assembling models before branching out into complicated kits. Painting as well is a good beginner model, great for teaching how to establish a solid base colour (lots of flat surfaces to practice using multiple thin coats to get an even finish), not many comlex details for untrained hands, and they do take washes quite well so you can teach the basics quite easily on marines.

But alas, it does mean we see a lot of them, and most of them not modelled above a passable standard...

Space Marines are just GWs pin-up boys.
They are a solid army that new players can play and win with. I know, I've made a total mess when playing Space Wolves yet still won. And when played with skill they are very effective.

andyroo9000 wrote:and they are a bit more fun to paint

Really?
Personally I don't like painting Space Marines one bit. Now Orks on the other hand, they are fun to model and paint

marv335 wrote:Go to Lenton.
Have a look at the massive statue outside GWHQ.
I'll give you a hint, it's not an Imperial Guardsman.

Bloody hell!
They aren't subtle are they?

They could have made the eagle a bit bigger...

marv335 wrote:Go to Lenton.
Have a look at the massive statue outside GWHQ.
I'll give you a hint, it's not an Imperial Guardsman.

Yes, but what is that duff, winged figure on a block behind the Space Marine?

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:There are currently some 14+ Codexes for beginners to choose from. 6 of those use Space Marines in their forces, with 3 of them being much more popular than anything else. Space Marines also possess the most amount of cross-compatable pieces (by which I mean pieces that were actually designed to go together, not possible conversion pieces). The only others who have that perk right now are the Dark Eldar and normal Eldar, and that isnt alot (with most of the DE stuff being exclusive to their own race). Space Marine is also the iconic face of Warhammer, with Orks and Nids in the far second (Nids mostly because Starcraft players QQ at who's the knockoff of who, and Orks because of the memetic mutation status).

Friend did the research on the starcraft and wh40k.
Starcraft lost the funding from GW to do the 40k game but kept their stuff, edited so they couldn't get sued and continued with it(irritates me when alot of people say GW copied blizzard)


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marv335 wrote:Go to Lenton.
Have a look at the massive statue outside GWHQ.
I'll give you a hint, it's not an Imperial Guardsman.

I wanna add horns and various other spikes to that statue

JazzyJ wrote:Power armour sells plain and simple

This is more or less it. They simply look cool. Ive always liked the looks of SM, and love termies. Add to that the fact that in almost every piece of artwork of them they are dominating someone or something. It gives you the impression "these guys are awesome, they kill everything". The fluff and novels back it up too. Its not until you get into the other army codexes that you see them getting owned.

Friends of mine that have never even looked at a GW product still know a space marine when they see it. They are a staple paradigm in Sci Fi, every since Heinlein put Starship Troopers to pen.

Seriously, read it. Mobile Infantry are straight up Space Marines complete with drop pods and everything. Plus they kill the snot out of aliens (er xenos).

They are an amazing army and if used well can be really effective. They are also pwnage at 200pts kill-teams.

Fun fact:
space marines is an anagran of crap meanies.

zadelistol wrote:

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:There are currently some 14+ Codexes for beginners to choose from. 6 of those use Space Marines in their forces, with 3 of them being much more popular than anything else. Space Marines also possess the most amount of cross-compatable pieces (by which I mean pieces that were actually designed to go together, not possible conversion pieces). The only others who have that perk right now are the Dark Eldar and normal Eldar, and that isnt alot (with most of the DE stuff being exclusive to their own race). Space Marine is also the iconic face of Warhammer, with Orks and Nids in the far second (Nids mostly because Starcraft players QQ at who's the knockoff of who, and Orks because of the memetic mutation status).

Friend did the research on the starcraft and wh40k.
Starcraft lost the funding from GW to do the 40k game but kept their stuff, edited so they couldn't get sued and continued with it(irritates me when alot of people say GW copied blizzard)

I found out when my friend told me that Blizzard actually has to pay GW royalties for usage of the 40k themes. However if you look at all of Blizzard's stuff sans Diablo, it all reeks of GamesWorkshop. All sorts of parallels can be drawn between the fantasy and 40k factions to the Warcraft and Starcraft counterparts (not to mention that the dwarves and elves are almost outright copies). It's just the die-hard fans who cant accept that their beloved game developers, who they thought were so original, took the ideas from someone else.

Scott-S6 wrote:

Laughing God wrote:this game was actually called SM at one point and everything else just kind of branched off that theme, so SM are kind of 40ks backbone.

No.

Space Marine was 6mm scale and post-dates Warhammer 40,000.

Space Marines are still the backbone of 40k however, as evident that they saw fit to name a whole spinoff game after them. One of the first codexes were also Angels of Death and Space Wolves, this was before some armies even saw their codexes. Space Marines were also present in all of the starter sets, so there's a proportionally larger amount of players that dont really want to get out of the rut (with every release, half of the new players will be Space Marines, and the other half will be whatever the other army was in the deal. This means that, through 5 editions, almost everyone started with the Space Marine army. For those who are thrifters who only did the hobby on the side, they probably couldn't afford to start another army and just contiuned with SMs.

This phenomenon is less seen in Fantasy since they switch around the starter races with every edition, and Empire isnt as popular as their Space Marine counterpart (and they're really a combination of Space Marines, Imp guard and Inquisition in one fantasy faction). I saw a boom of Goblin players here when 7th was released, and the GW website now apparently has High Elf and Skaven fever.

shrike wrote:actually- termies are 9ft. PA marines are less.

I think that's just the more normal sized ones. I'm pretty sure I've read that some are at least 10 ft. tall. I'll have to check later.

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
I found out when my friend told me that Blizzard actually has to pay GW royalties for usage of the 40k themes. However if you look at all of Blizzard's stuff sans Diablo, it all reeks of GamesWorkshop. All sorts of parallels can be drawn between the fantasy and 40k factions to the Warcraft and Starcraft counterparts (not to mention that the dwarves and elves are almost outright copies). It's just the die-hard fans who cant accept that their beloved game developers, who they thought were so original, took the ideas from someone else.

I'm having a hard time believing that. Not saying it's wrong, I'm just reaching for my salt packet. I'm not quite sure what all is encompassed within "40k themes", but I'd say that Aliens and Starship Troopers were more ripped off directly (which is what GW did as well) That's all a conversation for another time though.

Zerg definately, with hints of Eldar in Protoss and Space Marines in...well...marines of Terran. However with the other two races Blizzard did a good job of branching them off.

marv335 wrote:Go to Lenton.
Have a look at the massive statue outside GWHQ.
I'll give you a hint, it's not an Imperial Guardsman.

There's also one inside, that's in colour.

Protoss and Tau have a kind of similar look to them too.

Blizzard aside, I can think of a lot of reasons the SM are always the featured army and it isn't just about money and history. I think child psychology and an appearance of moral purity comes into the decision. This is just a theory though.

Marketing-wise it is easier to get kids into the game with something somewhat easy to understand and relate to. Marines are kind of human therefore kind of the 'good guys' in the eyes of a kid (before he starts reading too far into the fluff). Kids like superman. Kids want to be the quarterback, not the punter. Kids like heros. Given the choice between representing the elite superbadass action-movie star Rambo guy or the horde of evil commie soldiers that he kills in droves, kids want to be the action hero (even if the game balances out elitism and numbers a tad differently than an action movie).

Play-wise, they are simple to understand too, unlike Eldar or Dark Eldar who get spanked if they don't know what they are doing, Guard or Orks who might discourage parents because they need to buy so many more models, 'Nids who are just too wierd, or Chaos which could lead to upset moraly righteous parents, as could the Inquisition, or many of the skanky-battle-slut models of the SoB or DE.

Space Marines are 'pure' enough to be the "good guys" in a parent's mind, or a child's mind (until they start reading a little more into the Imperium of Man and its unscrupulous warmongering past and questionable moral motivations, but by then its too late). They can at first glance pass the political correctness test as the 'good guys' in a Tolkein-in-space kind of setting with the only difference that EVERYONE is bad, not just the badguys, at least they come over seeming as righteous and upstanding as the soldiers any good patriot is so proud of.

If they used CSM instead, the modelling and figure count and rules would be similarly easy, but what happy church-going parent is going to buy their child a game he wants to play because he can be in charge of bat-winged demons and guys adorned with skulls and spikes who pray to the god of blood and slaughter. I'm sure some cool parents would be happy to, and even encourage it (hopefully your dad listened to Black Sabbath and rode a Harly!) but the PC police at know that their overall audience, like 'pop' radio, has to be treated a little more delicately. Songs that might be offensive in content, or by artists with questionable scruples generally don't make it into top 40 playlists or Walmart shelves, because the station doesn't want to upset its more tender listeners.

You can't offend anyone with righteous, brave, honorable, loyal elite warriors... and the other army can be the bad-guys they are meant to defeat, so they are okay too.

This is just a theory. All of us vets take the imagery for granted because we are so used to it, we read the fluff, the fiction, etc. We know that it just sucks in the future, and even the heros are bastards, and there is never a happy ending just a lot of death and killing. But on the surface, the kids want a superhero. They want their knights in shining armor, action heros who save the day against all odds, and so on. It's okay to have bad guys in star wars because the good guys can beat them. If it was two armies of 'badguys' (chaos versus nids in a starter set?), kids might get confused. Kids need to have a 'good' and 'bad' to understand conflict.

yeenoghu wrote:Protoss and Tau have a kind of similar look to them too.

Blizzard aside, I can think of a lot of reasons the SM are always the featured army and it isn't just about money and history. I think child psychology and an appearance of moral purity comes into the decision. This is just a theory though.

Marketing-wise it is easier to get kids into the game with something somewhat easy to understand and relate to. Marines are kind of human therefore kind of the 'good guys' in the eyes of a kid (before he starts reading too far into the fluff). Kids like superman. Kids want to be the quarterback, not the punter. Kids like heros. Given the choice between representing the elite superbadass action-movie star Rambo guy or the horde of evil commie soldiers that he kills in droves, kids want to be the action hero (even if the game balances out elitism and numbers a tad differently than an action movie).

Play-wise, they are simple to understand too, unlike Eldar or Dark Eldar who get spanked if they don't know what they are doing, Guard or Orks who might discourage parents because they need to buy so many more models, 'Nids who are just too wierd, or Chaos which could lead to upset moraly righteous parents, as could the Inquisition, or many of the skanky-battle-slut models of the SoB or DE.

Space Marines are 'pure' enough to be the "good guys" in a parent's mind, or a child's mind (until they start reading a little more into the Imperium of Man and its unscrupulous warmongering past and questionable moral motivations, but by then its too late). They can at first glance pass the political correctness test as the 'good guys' in a Tolkein-in-space kind of setting with the only difference that EVERYONE is bad, not just the badguys, at least they come over seeming as righteous and upstanding as the soldiers any good patriot is so proud of.

If they used CSM instead, the modelling and figure count and rules would be similarly easy, but what happy church-going parent is going to buy their child a game he wants to play because he can be in charge of bat-winged demons and guys adorned with skulls and spikes who pray to the god of blood and slaughter. I'm sure some cool parents would be happy to, and even encourage it (hopefully your dad listened to Black Sabbath and rode a Harly!) but the PC police at know that their overall audience, like 'pop' radio, has to be treated a little more delicately. Songs that might be offensive in content, or by artists with questionable scruples generally don't make it into top 40 playlists or Walmart shelves, because the station doesn't want to upset its more tender listeners.

You can't offend anyone with righteous, brave, honorable, loyal elite warriors... and the other army can be the bad-guys they are meant to defeat, so they are okay too.

This is just a theory. All of us vets take the imagery for granted because we are so used to it, we read the fluff, the fiction, etc. We know that it just sucks in the future, and even the heros are bastards, and there is never a happy ending just a lot of death and killing. But on the surface, the kids want a superhero. They want their knights in shining armor, action heros who save the day against all odds, and so on. It's okay to have bad guys in star wars because the good guys can beat them. If it was two armies of 'badguys' (chaos versus nids in a starter set?), kids might get confused. Kids need to have a 'good' and 'bad' to understand conflict.

QFT

This is actually why I started Space Marines a few years back (switched to Necrons, then Chaos, then back to Marines but that is a story for another day ). They were the good guys, the superheroes, the Superman of the 41st Millennium.

Now that I'm a little older, read a lot of the fluff, and just understand things a little more..... I still think the Space Marines are pretty bad . No, I'm not a Space Marine fanboy. I still have a little Chaos in me to make sure of that I just think the Space Marines are still the superheroes of 40k (in a very grimdark way of course).

same , when i started space marines thought they were the big guys of 40K but now i favour imperial guard because they really have better stories i really look like the heroes even though in the game they get blown to bits TRYING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hypothetically close your eyes and try to imagine this.

You are 12 years old. You love superman (or what ever your choice superhero was at the time). Then you hear about this game where you can play an entire army of supermans (supermen?). Wouldn't playing as superman, most righteous and good person ever, instead of the huge bug/whiny alien/dumb green guy/the dude with all the spikes on him, seem the more logical choice?

On a more real note, Space marines are incredibly cheap to collect. All of the units have a model, most of which are plastic. Plus, search for "warhammer 40k space marine" on ebay, and you are going to get far more hits than any other race. Plus they are included in the starter set which makes them even more easy to collect. Simple to collect, simple to paint, simple to field. They are a very good starter army, no question about it.