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TheSinheizer wrote:Absolutely. And it's ridiculous.

Look at the stuff they've released for those armies.
Look at what they've released for others.
It's obvious.
There isn't even a Codex for SoB even though are still being sold as a playable army. It's ridiculous.

This happened before to blood angels as well, they had a WD dex too.

Joey wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Joey wrote:

ZebioLizard2 wrote:Blood angels are not overpowered.

Space Marines with army-wide FNP and FC and fast vehicles.
They're not over-powered if you have an army that can withstand being assaulted army-wide by S5 MEQ with power weapons/melta bombs.

So that'd be... any army bar Tau?

Or Guard.

Guard has more than enough firepower to gun the BA down. Also, I'd imagine a powerblob list could take quite a beating in CC and still fight back...

sub-zero wrote:I'm a bit puzzled over GW's decision to make GKs such an "elite" army, you would think that they would lower the point values of the silver bastards just so you would have to buy more boxes of plastic crack to field a decent army. It seems counter-productive from a business standpoint.

Yes except that a box of 5 standard grey knights costs almost the same (in $) as a box of 10 tactical marines.

it makes sence, space marines have some of the best armor saves, and are enerally good at everything. people getting into the hobby are usually sci-fi enthusiasts and look at space marines and think starship troopers or the like and say oh i want an army of those.

to be honest even though I only have my space marined army as a teach others to play army and use my eldar and orks when people ask the easiest or most forgiving army to play i still will alway make my go to answer of space marines mos tthe paople I play with play space marines and then get into another army later once they decide to specialize., that is if they dont' jsut go to another space marines codex. and if you do change SM codexes you can even use your models. liek assaulting go blood angels, like super elites play GK, want all terminators play DA, want somethign different with different stat lines mixed units and a completely different feel from normal marines black templar. or if you want to auto win go space wolves since you can get everythign other marines get but better for less points, and pick off carachters and indviduals in a unit with broken psychic powers

Which is fine, marines can easily be the favorite army of GW. However, they need to keep the actual game balanced. There should be no "tiers." I should be able to pick up any codex and have it able to counter and be countered by every other book.

BewareOfTom wrote:Dont tell me what to do

This made me laugh!

But I agree, Games workshop seem to focus more on space marines than any other army.

Do thry really focus more of space marines per codex though? Since they have half the codexs, they get half the attention silly.

They are so clearly protaryed as the heros (even if they are quite questionable) and will draw in anyone that wants to play as the heros.

riverhawks32 wrote:Which is fine, marines can easily be the favorite army of GW. However, they need to keep the actual game balanced. There should be no "tiers." I should be able to pick up any codex and have it able to counter and be countered by every other book.

that's partially buisness, one of the reasons GW is still around vs other companies who try to make a balanced game is that with no power creep people stop buying models. think the new necrons, scarab farm and all these new vehicles chanegd how you play necrons and sell new models making alot of the old models obsolete or weaker. maybe they'll get buffs next necron codex when people have less of them or they'll be even more models to replace the new hotness.

with my orks i will be sad but i am willing to bet GW will make some new need to have models that aren't in the codex, perhaps grot taks which are currently a forgeworld unit, or some other need to have model just to sell plastic, they need to keep makign money and marines codexes providing they inroduce a new kit or two per codex release move plastic

Avrik_Shasla wrote:Is it me, or is Games Workshop really killing their greatest child by specifically releasing mostly Space Marine stuff, and making them very over powered? (Ie Grey Knights, Blood Angels).

Discuss...

Loaded questions are not a good way to start a serious or rational discussion.

They make a lot of marines because they sell a lot of marines. I have no interest in playing Eldar, Dark Eldar, Tau, or Necrons. I do like Orks and Space Marines, so that's what I buy.

I have no problem with playing 1000 games of my space marines versus someone else's space marines. Don't tell me how to enjoy my games.

I am curious, if you go through and look at unique units for sale, I don't think SM are even a third of GW's production.

Avrik_Shasla wrote:Is it me, or is Games Workshop really killing their greatest child by specifically releasing mostly Space Marine stuff, and making them very over powered? (Ie Grey Knights, Blood Angels).

Discuss...

Does this really need to be discussed in a new thread every 5 days or so? It's been this way for a while now.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Joey wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Joey wrote:

ZebioLizard2 wrote:Blood angels are not overpowered.

Space Marines with army-wide FNP and FC and fast vehicles.
They're not over-powered if you have an army that can withstand being assaulted army-wide by S5 MEQ with power weapons/melta bombs.

So that'd be... any army bar Tau?

Or Guard.

Guard has more than enough firepower to gun the BA down. Also, I'd imagine a powerblob list could take quite a beating in CC and still fight back...

You'd be wrong. Blendernaughts, DC, Sanguinary Guard, even assault marines with a chaplain, will all squish blob guard with virtually no casualties. There are "people" on this board who insist that you can break 2+/FNP with lasgun shots. They are wrong.
And no army can wipe out another in a single turn of shooting anyway. It's just deploy ->get charged ->lose.

Of 278 GW 40k model kits (be it blisters or boxes) for sale at me FLGS... 89 are SM or varients there of, so yeah, less than 1/3rd... and also consider how many of those 89 are characters (32, so that's only 57 items that are SM units out of 278).

The more you know...

Lobukia wrote:Of 278 GW 40k model kits (be it blisters or boxes) for sale at me FLGS... 89 are SM or varients there of, so yeah, less than 1/3rd... and also consider how many of those 89 are characters (32, so that's only 57 items that are SM units out of 278).

The more you know...

Right. 1/3. 1/2 of armies are Space Marines, so they're actually under-represented.

TheSinheizer wrote:Absolutely. And it's ridiculous.

Look at the stuff they've released for those armies.
Look at what they've released for others.
It's obvious.
There isn't even a Codex for SoB even though are still being sold as a playable army. It's ridiculous.

Umm well... Id say they have released just as many nice models for the Xenos as they have for space marines. If not more.
In fact considering 90% of all the space marine stuff is all interchangable between every army (including some for IG even) theres a lot more "cool stuff" for the xenos than for the imperium. The new necron models for a start are pretty tempting to me, and I only started collecting an imperium army for the first time a couple weeks ago.

And your arguement seems to be that releasing a sisters of battle codex would improve things? Isnt that just yet another imperium army, just with a couple more big flamery add-ons for the same old tanks?

SoB should be forgotten about, at least until chaos and eldar get their new codexs. Just my opinions.

Though it might be because Im waiting for the Eldar codex with bated breath so I can finally find out if it was worth me keeping hold of all my Eldar bits n bobs.

Bookwrack wrote:Can you shut down a cylindrical argument?

Ok, now this just made me laugh.

*sigh* back to work...

ZebioLizard2 wrote:Blood angels are not overpowered.

The top three are Space Wolves, Gray Knights, and Imperial Guard.

Blood angels are above vanilla, aka, a bit above the mid tier.

agreed BA are strong but not too strong.
GK are silly and SW are undercosted. IG benefit from vehicles being so good right now and IG have the best vehicles(and the best way to kill vehicles).

I've given into crons, when i first started warhammer a good 8 years ago now space marines werent what tempted me to buy a set to see the hubbub, it was those shiny crons walking dead across a battlefield ready to exterminate everything in its way, space marines just seemed like a religious force following in the name of an emperor (god), Then came the space wolves for me, a viking-esk army which i found greatly appealing and thus my second army came to be, Then with the release of the new dark eldar the speed of which i adore my third army happened out of them, I dont think games workshop is killing a brand, grey knights are suppose to be the be the most elite in all of the 40 k universe, its practically in their job description, so if games workshop make more models for marines its because its what a lot of starter players get into for the ease of access so they can jump into games right away without needing to much strategy so they put them in high production.

Its all really what you have a taste for in your own personality, i like vikings undead warriors and fast things and those are my three armies, not EVERYONE is going to buy a space marine army its just that they are easy, you can make anything out of them, create your own stroies for them easily and play them easily thats why i think games workshop put so much time into them, you can do it with any army really you just need a good enough imagination (: just my opinion though .

Joey wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Joey wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Joey wrote:

ZebioLizard2 wrote:Blood angels are not overpowered.

Space Marines with army-wide FNP and FC and fast vehicles.
They're not over-powered if you have an army that can withstand being assaulted army-wide by S5 MEQ with power weapons/melta bombs.

So that'd be... any army bar Tau?

Or Guard.

Guard has more than enough firepower to gun the BA down. Also, I'd imagine a powerblob list could take quite a beating in CC and still fight back...

You'd be wrong. Blendernaughts, DC, Sanguinary Guard, even assault marines with a chaplain, will all squish blob guard with virtually no casualties. There are "people" on this board who insist that you can break 2+/FNP with lasgun shots. They are wrong.
And no army can wipe out another in a single turn of shooting anyway. It's just deploy ->get charged ->lose.

That's because it's literally a hard counter to blobsquads, which aren't exactly fully competitive enough to count anyways.

It'd be like complaining that DA is overpowered because I took a full terminator deathwing army against tyranids.

In my opinion, the only "problem" is that the background does not reflect what people play. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that most folks can't really afford to collect several armies. Either they have the time but not the money, or they have the money but not the time to prep all of it, or they have neither.

However, the problem also also exacerbated by how we play. We tend to play pickup games and tournies, not narrative games around a campaign that makes sense. Even if GW incremented the background to reflect a new Age of Heresy/Apostasy/Aquarius, the same faction would end up squaring off against itself for no reason other than there's only a handful of chapters (including GK) that people would choose. The only way to avoid that is if you have everyone in an area playing a different faction. With 50% of their codices representing the same overall faction and that faction have the broadest fan appeal, you have this problem.

But, I don't get a sense that people don't enjoy the game because of it. They may not enjoy playing against a particular army and that particular army may have all sorts of issues, but all-MEQ/all-Loyalist isn't going to kill the game. What will happen is as long as there's viable non-Imperials, enough people will start switching to those if they get sick of Loyal-MEQ and maintain some level of equilibrium.

To the OP, Xenos are fun and all (I even have two non marine armies that I use regularly) but Space Marines are the protagonists in this universe. If you don't believe me go take a look at the cover of the original Rogue Trader (or even second and third ed.) and tell me what you see.

Niiru wrote:

TheSinheizer wrote:Absolutely. And it's ridiculous.

Look at the stuff they've released for those armies.
Look at what they've released for others.
It's obvious.
There isn't even a Codex for SoB even though are still being sold as a playable army. It's ridiculous.

Umm well... Id say they have released just as many nice models for the Xenos as they have for space marines. If not more.
In fact considering 90% of all the space marine stuff is all interchangable between every army (including some for IG even) theres a lot more "cool stuff" for the xenos than for the imperium. The new necron models for a start are pretty tempting to me, and I only started collecting an imperium army for the first time a couple weeks ago.

And your arguement seems to be that releasing a sisters of battle codex would improve things? Isnt that just yet another imperium army, just with a couple more big flamery add-ons for the same old tanks?

SoB should be forgotten about, at least until chaos and eldar get their new codexs. Just my opinions.

Though it might be because Im waiting for the Eldar codex with bated breath so I can finally find out if it was worth me keeping hold of all my Eldar bits n bobs.

I don't play SM, so I don't know a whole lot about them. I do know of course that GW sell a huge HUGE array of SM minis to choose from, and the Black Reach pack usually gets spammed to noobs as a way to get into 40k and, (this IS going purely on what I've heard) they're plugged as being relatively easy to play. I can't help but feel that it destroys the beauty of the game in the sense that you choose the army you like most, but if you do, options for some of the others are be relatively very limited.

Releasing a SoB Codex would of course improve things for SoB players (they could actually have a new Codex instead of trying to hunt down the old issue in White Dwarf).
My point about SoB was to highlight that other armies get so neglected in favour of others, (SM), when it should surely be more equal in terms of material over the whole catalogue of armies.

Marines are the 'poster' army of 40k, they're intentionally designed to be accessible to beginners and have enough gimmicks to remain competitive in more experienced circles. Other armies tend to require more experience/cash to get into, but when you know how they work you can wipe the floor with any Marine list ever written.

GW's focus on Space Marines is merely there because they're supposed to be the 'basic' army. They don't require a lot of money to get into, they don't require a lot of cleverness to build a list you can win with, they don't require you to memorize a couple of dozen special rules to be able to play. They're easy. Most complaints about the 'competitiveness' or the 'brokenness' of certain armies can easily be replaced with complaints that some armies are easier to play and cheaper to buy than others.

Give me the cash, and I'll trounce you with a Sisters of Battle list. Give an experienced player the Tau Codex, he'll wipe the floor with an army list that's won major tournaments. The problem with most any list isn't whether it's competitive or not, but the barriers to entry: money required to get a workable list, and experience required to win with it.

No new Vanilla SM stuff since- Planetstrike?
No new Dark Angels since 2009
No new Black Templars since 2009
No N=new Blood Angels for over a year

Face the facts!

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

TheSinheizer wrote:Absolutely. And it's ridiculous.

Look at the stuff they've released for those armies.
Look at what they've released for others.
It's obvious.
There isn't even a Codex for SoB even though are still being sold as a playable army. It's ridiculous.

This happened before to blood angels as well, they had a WD dex too.

Which achieved...?

You make it sound as if GW were considering fan feedback or something. At least you could BUY a BA army in the stores and role it out with some new rules so there was some point in doing that. But once you cease selling the models of the core army it pretty much means bringing out new rules was a rather unasked for bit of attention which pretty much amounted GW saying 'four more years'....


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AnomanderRake wrote:Marines are the 'poster' army of 40k, they're intentionally designed to be accessible to beginners and have enough gimmicks to remain competitive in more experienced circles. Other armies tend to require more experience/cash to get into, but when you know how they work you can wipe the floor with any Marine list ever written.

GW's focus on Space Marines is merely there because they're supposed to be the 'basic' army. They don't require a lot of money to get into, they don't require a lot of cleverness to build a list you can win with, they don't require you to memorize a couple of dozen special rules to be able to play. They're easy. Most complaints about the 'competitiveness' or the 'brokenness' of certain armies can easily be replaced with complaints that some armies are easier to play and cheaper to buy than others.

Give me the cash, and I'll trounce you with a Sisters of Battle list. Give an experienced player the Tau Codex, he'll wipe the floor with an army list that's won major tournaments. The problem with most any list isn't whether it's competitive or not, but the barriers to entry: money required to get a workable list, and experience required to win with it.

You need the cash to put any SOB into the field and the fact you picked them is indicitive in of itself. Also, marines aren't any cheaper to do than other armies. A meched up marine army comes at the same price n model count as a meched DE or tau force. Since most people trip out elite armies rather than hoarde even if they have the option most armies I see are 30 models with loads of armour; marine or non-marine and they cost the same.

Its also not that GW pushes one army. They are pushing half the range with marine related stuff and codexes. If they wanted a beginner army surely vanilla would suffice since a beginner has no other marine models so there would be no reason to point at marine +1 aside from theme.

The fact we're going into a new edition with so many marines done when before 5th armies like DE, and Necrons were in such a poor state that it took massive releases to counter the decay.

zeshin wrote:To the OP, Xenos are fun and all (I even have two non marine armies that I use regularly) but Space Marines are the protagonists in this universe. If you don't believe me go take a look at the cover of the original Rogue Trader (or even second and third ed.) and tell me what you see.

IIRC SM being gunned down in famous last stands

The Rogue Trader book was full of marines meeting grisly ends if i remember it right.

Back then they were drugged up psychotic pond scum in power armour too, that couldn't even spell four letter words ( 'kil kil kil' for example, i love that guy )


I have no problem with Marine armies kicking off on each other in general, as part of the gaming scene. The problem with Protagonists is that they need Antagonists to fight. Protagonists just fighting each other doesn't really cut it.

I just get tired of the pairups in tournaments reading something like:

'turn one -

Jim- Space marines vs Bert: Space marines,
Gary :Blood Angels VS Larry ark Angels
Sam: Grey Knights VS Terry: Black Templars
Vince: Space Wolves Vs......woah we have someone not playing marines ! You don't see that often..

(any resemblence to gamers living or dead is purely coincidental )

The Bolter-porn BL novels don't exactly help the situation either Nothing like a whole room of Bolter-buddies trying to give you a 'fluff' enema about how superxpaladocious all Marines are.

It sometimes feels like my DE or Orks wandered into an inter-chapter live fire training exercise My Daemons, of course, deliberately crashed that exercise for Tzeentch's own ends

Fair enough on the tournament pairings, but I think GW has made it clear they don't give two feths about tournaments and just want a fun game of marines (dying heroically) vs. some horrible xenos scum.

So... what would fix all of this?

If people want marines, its tough to promote other armies to new players without dumbing them down.

Should xenos armies be a little cheaper ($, not points) to encourage migration to them? Make the rules give xenos some sort of advantage?

This is like complaining that the majority of WoW players are hack'n slash human warriors instead of mages and rogues. Gamers gravitate towards the "elite human fighters" (AKA space marines)... that's just the lay of the land in gaming.

Space Marines are the most popular armies for alot of reasons. The primary reason is cost and ease of use. Everything in the Space Marine army is either plastic or fine cast, has all the models represented in that form, and a pretty darn cheap compared to other armies. This, coupled with the ease of transferring an army across Codex' makes a Space Marine army have alot more variety. A Speeder is still a Speeder, it just matters what Codex you're carrying at the time.

Secondly is the actual history-fluff of 40K. The Horus Heresy is an incredible draw for alot of people because of the Primarch Shenanigans that happened. That's why people are starting to churn out pre-heresy Space Marine armies and expect people to care, especially those who have no real affinity (or have a bad opinion of) Space Marines already.

Thirdly, they're so ridiculously easy to paint.

This is like complaining that the majority of WoW players are hack'n slash human warriors instead of mages and rogues. Gamers gravitate towards the "elite human fighters" (AKA space marines)... that's just the lay of the land in gaming.

That's a terrible comparison.

Fanastic points being made by AnomanderRake & KplKeegan.
Takin' 'em all on board.