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 Kaldor wrote:

 blood guard26 wrote:
yeah, and as tirelessly discussed already in this thread, they are under extremely underpowered on the table top. (otherwise they would have to roll five dice and get five 1s to fail their armour save and have like ten attacks: acid spit, shoulder charge, warcry, short sword x 2, pistol whip, stomp and charging)

Except that's not the case. As I just explained, the Marines that we are exposed to in the background are all the protagonists of their various stories. They wear loads of plot armour and carry plot weapons. They are not good examples of what regular Marines are capable of.

Regular Marines very closely match their table-top abilities. Their strength lies in their ability to concentrate force. To accurately mirror this on the table-top would not require boosted Marine stats. It would require scenarios like: Marines have four times as many points as the defender. Marines may take free drop pods. The Marine force has three free Thunderhawk Gunships.

And so-on. Because their real strength is their ability to easily project overwhelming force into a small area.

Yep it's plot armor. It happens to other armies too. Lets not forget firewarrior. If firewarror had been a better game and went on into a series of FPS, we would be complaining that tau fluff didn't mach TT.

Nothing about Space Marines makes much sense from any sort of realistic perspective. Their power varies highly from author to author and reaches levels of the most absurd of fanfic proportions in some books while in others they're just really tough infantry. Their numbers make zero sense and they lack very critical capabilities and most marine chapters would be near extinction after just a couple years of operation at the rate at which it apparently takes to recruit new members, nevermind that they're often described as operating at 50-60% capacity which historically for most disciplined professional military units is the "combat ineffective" point at which a unit is in immediate danger of collapse.

Maybe that's there point. One of the major themes of the IoM is that everything a brink. I don't see why that shouldn't also be the case with SMs.

Orblivion wrote:I partially agree with you Kaldor. I agree with you that the main SM character of an SM book is always going to be above and beyond, but I think it's clear from other BL books that their combat ability is still quite fearsome. The main characters of the Eldar Path books show a significant amount of fear/respect whenever Space Marines enter the picture.

And there's other books where the Gaunt's Ghosts shoot them a dozen a time or a bunch of cultists overruns them with knives. Ironically, the last one is actually the book featured as an accompanying product for GW's new starter set.
In the end, how Space Marines - or any other army! - are represented in a product always depends on the opinion of the person writing them. And amongst novel authors, these opinions are as varied as amongst the people here on dakka (applying not only to how powerful they are as characters but even to things such as how big they grow). As Kaldor mentioned, the vast majority of novels focuses on Space Marines being the heroes, so unsurprisingly they have much more opportunities to benefit from "plot armour", that narrative device which requires the hero to win at the end. Readers have an expectation, and if they buy a book advertised as telling epic stories of Astartes doing hero stuff, then this is, most of the time, exactly what the author will have written.

For better or for worse, lack of canon means we can cherrypick which of the many versions of Astartes we as individual gamers want to adopt. The important thing, however, is to remember that they are all just different interpretations, and to be aware of which sources propagate which vision. Pointing towards some outsourced products and say they represent "true" Marines is just misleading to newcomers who might actually believe that without checking up GW's own fluff. Same thing like with how big Marines get or how old they can become. It's important to differentiate between personal preference (example: the computer game Space Marine being a "better" representation) and facts (example: Codex Angels of Death detailing lasgun vulnerability of Marine power armour, or Colonel Straken strangling a CSM Lord in melee in the Planetstrike Codex).

DemetriDominov wrote:Really, you're over thinking it.

No, I'm just comparing what I read in GW's own books to what I see in various novels, computer games, movies, and people's posts on dakka - and notice a certain bias in the fandom.

The bias in itself isn't bad per se, it just becomes an issue when it results in a twisted representation towards other readers. I advocate more caution: don't go and say "X is the truth", but maybe instead say "well X shows it this way, and Y shows it that way - I think Y is crap and maybe you like X more".

Objectivity is always at risk when we talk about our favourite armies, but we can still try our best.

The main issue here is there is no such thing as "official" cannon. Every author (including those writing the codexes) will have a different view of what a space marine is capable of. As mentioned the fluff has changed a great deal since the early days, when marines were just gene modified criminals in power armour (if that were still the case the rules would be "accurate"). It is also impossible to make a war game "realistic", especially not on a D6 based system and with GW trying to also consider marketing and game balance. (necromunda and inquisitor might be "more realistic" due to greater depth of rules). If you think about it there is no need for miniatures at all, you just need a set of rules and some bases.

As mentioned most of the BL books focus on a main character, who either has exceptional combat abilities like a captain or who have heaps of plot armour (more often than not both). Nobody ever seems to focus on the regular line marines unless the plot calls for it.

IMO marines on the table top should be slightly better but not up to the levels of "movie marines" (perhaps +1 S,T and wounds). As mentioned marines are more often than not not used how they are "supposed" to be used. It would be interesting to see therefore in 5th ed how well a small allied detachment of marines would fare in concert with IG. The marines would be able to strike at the heart of the enemy from drop pods and the guard take all the casualties.