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That dedicated anti-air is still quite inefficient against triple helldrake. Displacement only gets you so far, and there are still the actual CSM to deal with. Plague marines are still badass in 6th edition.

The marine anti-air tanks needed to be Rhino upgrades, not heavy support slots.

Displacement can cull helldrake casualties down to about 4 per turn. On a unit that costs nearly 200 points and shows up late.

If the anti-air shoots down the helldrake AT ALL that game, it's going to be efficient for its points.

You can't really count on ST 7 AP 4 to ever kill hell drakes. I guess there's the spear thingie, but one shot is hellalame.

As I said, displacement only gets you so far, there's still vector strike + barbeque. The saving grace IS rolling for reserves. But once they show up, you're up against the wall.

I even have this thingie cut out to help place my models at max displacement. Doesn't seem to help that much vs helldrakes. Or more specifically, CSM in general, But maybe BA are just that fething gimp. It's hard to tell.

My gripe about our dedicated AA is that it interferes with the rest of our heavy support options. The HS portion of the dex is so overcrowded with units I need to take over the dedicated AA.

EDIT: Misread initially, ignore.

 Tyberos the Red Wake wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Sounds like the sort of thing a bad player would say to explain how someone else could be using the same army successfully...

You would be 100% right, if not for the fact that all major GTs are flooded with Tau, Tau/Eldar, Eldar/Tau, Eldar, and Chaos Daemons in the winners' brackets. There's been a grand total of 3 C:SM finalists spread throughout the greater-than-3 amount of tournaments, and each one has used allies and scouts over tactical marines. It really says a lot.

You mean all these GT that happened before the new C:SM even came out?
And when it came out it didn't take a mere week for people to get the grips of the new codex, build power lists, and master playing them and go for GT wins?
WEll I'll be damned, the new codex must suck.


Also, why marine players keep crying for assault transports?
You are not an assault army, accept it.
C:SM is a hybrid army, assaulting the shooty and shooting the assaults. you can never truly master any one aspect, but you will be decent in both without even trying.

Because people buy in to the Movie Marine crap.

 BoomWolf wrote:

 Tyberos the Red Wake wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Sounds like the sort of thing a bad player would say to explain how someone else could be using the same army successfully...

You would be 100% right, if not for the fact that all major GTs are flooded with Tau, Tau/Eldar, Eldar/Tau, Eldar, and Chaos Daemons in the winners' brackets. There's been a grand total of 3 C:SM finalists spread throughout the greater-than-3 amount of tournaments, and each one has used allies and scouts over tactical marines. It really says a lot.

You mean all these GT that happened before the new C:SM even came out?
And when it came out it didn't take a mere week for people to get the grips of the new codex, build power lists, and master playing them and go for GT wins?
WEll I'll be damned, the new codex must suck.


Also, why marine players keep crying for assault transports?
You are not an assault army, accept it.
C:SM is a hybrid army, assaulting the shooty and shooting the assaults. you can never truly master any one aspect, but you will be decent in both without even trying.

Because non-assault transport blow chunks in 6th, unless you are Eldar or IG. Hell, I'd rather have Ork trukks for my BA than Rhinos. That's why. And the new codex does suck. It won't make a dent in the meta. You wait and see.

As a marine player who suffered through 2nd edition, I don't want to be back in that spot. And given this codex, I think that's where the marines will be after the Orks and Nids drop.

 BoomWolf wrote:
You are not an assault army, accept it.
C:SM is a hybrid army, assaulting the shooty and shooting the assaults. you can never truly master any one aspect, but you will be decent in both without even trying.

Because being hybrid sucks.
It'd be okay if hybrid means you can make a 'decent' shooting OR a 'decent' close combat list.
Hybrid means that you: a) get shot down before getting into melee or b) don't have the firepower to stop melee armies that will kick your ass in melee.

Non-assault transports only bother you if you even bother to assault out of them. look at sisters, they got no assault transports and they SPAM them, and WORK. (and that "codex" is one of the least flexible, compared to SM who is undoubtfully the most flexible)

Being hybrid is great, you just don't know how to play hybrid. you don't pull a a "decent" list in either one, you pull a decent list in both at once.

You should play the reverse game against non-hybrid codex.

If they are assault oriented like demons-you avoid direct confrontation and shoot them down so by the time they get into the assault game, you already raked such an edge that your "decent" assault stats are enough to handle his weakened assault army.
Get early edge to prevent the endgame fall.

When facing dedicated shooting armies you charge into them, hoping to melee them ASAP (as even your less-then-divine assault is enough to beat them in CC), while using your shooting powers to make sure they don't rank up too much of an edge over you while you do so.
Prevent early edge to secure endgame sweeps.


Now, I wont say its EASY, but its a valid tactic.

And when all else fails, TFC still single-handedly undo tau castle lists, and grav guns pretty much ruin the day for the current MC domination when armor is bad and T doesn't matter. so there is no godamn way the meta wont be effected, even if cheeselists wont come up.
After that we can all see the white scars assault armies coming and the salamander drop pods-both with high potential.
And even then, that's not counting the chapters like ultras or IH who are too hard to decipher their true potential before the real pros start testing them.

Crying right now that they will have zero effect on the meta is seriously deserving a bitchslap.
Chaos players would whore themselves in order to get what SM got. and yet all I hear from SM is whine.

Kangodo wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
You are not an assault army, accept it.
C:SM is a hybrid army, assaulting the shooty and shooting the assaults. you can never truly master any one aspect, but you will be decent in both without even trying.

Because being hybrid sucks.
It'd be okay if hybrid means you can make a 'decent' shooting OR a 'decent' close combat list.
Hybrid means that you: a) get shot down before getting into melee or b) don't have the firepower to stop melee armies that will kick your ass in melee.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. My shooting is NOT good enough to kill anything big before it gets into melee, and generally even a small amount of dedicated melee will kill double that amount of marine troops.

We are subpar at both shooting and melee. So if an army is all melee (like most of the armies i play), when even one unit makes it into my lines thats a huge obstacle. It will probably decimate several units if my rolls are not good.


Also, in response to BoomWolf, my comments were specifically set to question the older codex, and obviously I dont know how the new codex will preform. Secondly however, just the other day I was playing Blood Angels, and a group of 10 assault marines with a priest managed to get into my lines and destroy one group of 5 marines, as well as a 10 man assault squad with a captain set up for CC. This is after I had shot him down to 5 marines and a priest.

Maybe it was just bad luck, my poor shooting rolls and his good saves, but it seems to go like this more often than not.

 AtariAssasin wrote:

Kangodo wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
You are not an assault army, accept it.
C:SM is a hybrid army, assaulting the shooty and shooting the assaults. you can never truly master any one aspect, but you will be decent in both without even trying.

Because being hybrid sucks.
It'd be okay if hybrid means you can make a 'decent' shooting OR a 'decent' close combat list.
Hybrid means that you: a) get shot down before getting into melee or b) don't have the firepower to stop melee armies that will kick your ass in melee.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. My shooting is NOT good enough to kill anything big before it gets into melee, and generally even a small amount of dedicated melee will kill double that amount of marine troops.

We are subpar at both shooting and melee. So if an army is all melee (like most of the armies i play), when even one unit makes it into my lines thats a huge obstacle. It will probably decimate several units if my rolls are not good.

What is it that you are having issues with? I've been able to drop pretty tough units before they were able to get into melee through the use of Sternguard and lascannons. Everything else dies by Thunderfire cannons, flamers and bolters. The only units I really had trouble with were TEQ lists...those were hard to deal with. I never brought enough AP2 or higher to really deal with them, but the new Centurions will hopefully be able to fix that for me.

 AtariAssasin wrote:

I agree with this wholeheartedly. My shooting is NOT good enough to kill anything big before it gets into melee, and generally even a small amount of dedicated melee will kill double that amount of marine troops.

Then I think you need to re-examine your play style. Marine shooting is VERY good, and they have bar none the most options for kitting out basic units with special/heavy weapons in the game.

And while I agree, they aren't the best at close combat, a 3up save against punching is nothing to sneeze at when combined with stats of four and immunity to the morale section of the rules. Sure some monster CC unit will sweep the floor with troops, but if you play smart, you're only feeding that unit what you want it to eat. Not to mention we have our own CC monster units too (honour guard, THSS termies, vanguard vets(to a much lesser extent)).

Marines still suck and I"m not sure what dream people are chasing if they think the new book changed that when the net cost of everything stayed the same where it mattered or even went up for no reason. Pick a top army or stick to campaigns or something.

Marine shooting is not very good. It's mediocre to decent, because the ways the marines have to field their heavy weapons are not nearly as good as the Eldar or Tau. Also, marines still have a firepower cap because of model count.

Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it.

In my melee, i tend to fail a decent amount of 3+, and when an opponent only needs 5 units to do 20 attacks its not hard to fail some. And then when you lose your combat, I also tend to get sweeping advanced. Daemons are just scary, rending/high toughness/flying/lots of wounds.

In my possibly incredibly bad luck, the only unit that is worth its weight in gold is Sternguard. They generally always preform for me. However, my experience with melee is any of my dedicated melee won't hold up against anything specifically melee. And no way i'm making it across the board against tau shooting... they're scary too.

 AtariAssasin wrote:
Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it.

In my melee, i tend to fail a decent amount of 3+, and when an opponent only needs 5 units to do 20 attacks its not hard to fail some. And then when you lose your combat, I also tend to get sweeping advanced. Daemons are just scary, rending/high toughness/flying/lots of wounds.

In my possibly incredibly bad luck, the only unit that is worth its weight in gold is Sternguard. They generally always preform for me. However, my experience with melee is any of my dedicated melee won't hold up against anything specifically melee. And no way i'm making it across the board against tau shooting... they're scary too.

This is why I run siege assault vanguard.

Most armies most certainly do not have the weight of fire to kill marines protected by a Siege Mantlet (50 points flat fee for rerollable armor saves vs shooting) and Apothecaries (for feel no pain) before I'm in rapid fire range.

Or deal with the row after row of tanks I have.

I'm hoping they get updated so I can couple them with Iron Hands rules outside of house ruled games.

 AtariAssasin wrote:
Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it.

In my melee, i tend to fail a decent amount of 3+, and when an opponent only needs 5 units to do 20 attacks its not hard to fail some. And then when you lose your combat, I also tend to get sweeping advanced. Daemons are just scary, rending/high toughness/flying/lots of wounds.

In my possibly incredibly bad luck, the only unit that is worth its weight in gold is Sternguard. They generally always preform for me. However, my experience with melee is any of my dedicated melee won't hold up against anything specifically melee. And no way i'm making it across the board against tau shooting... they're scary too.

That's what drop pods are for!

When opponents bring Sternguard against me, they perform for a turn, and then I kill them.

The BA have a similar problem. I can't effectively use the DC, because nothing else I field can draw any heat off them. No one cares about assault marines, even BA ones.

Another Martel732 Bitch thread, or at least that is what it has turned into...

Martel plays BA, not generic SM to my knowledge. Most of his hate and rage is for how much of a beating they took with the edition change and some of it is warranted. Happens to a lot of armies at the edition changes.



The meta is constantly changing and will change even without a new codex drop. Tau and and Eldar were a similar and strong drop that has thrown the meta upside down as it has been with the vast majority of new Dex drops. Anyone remember IG in 5th? SW? BA ? GK? Necron? and is just a list of them in order. Almost every new dex is touted as OP and dominates the Tournament scene for a couple of months then interest shifts to the new Dex in Town and the meta and tournament scene changes.

We still have a number of new Codices coming for 6th Edition and I'm betting two of them are likely to hit the current meta like a hammer(most likely in the form of mass bodies aka Tyranids and Orks). We also have two more PA codexes on the Horizons SW and BA, both of those will undoubtedly have a meta impact as well. Not to mention any of the upcoming supplements which may have a couple of gems that unlock previously overlooked competitive builds.

As always the current dominating armies will depreciate in power as the edition moves forward and the meta will change and compensate.


To the OP, its still too early to tell just how well the SM book will do, I'm betting on helping the SM players out as it is basically a strict improvement over the old book. Is it likely to dominate like the Tau and Eldar, probably not, but it will be a good Mid Tier book.

 Theduke07 wrote:
Marines still suck and I"m not sure what dream people are chasing if they think the new book changed that when the net cost of everything stayed the same where it mattered or even went up for no reason. Pick a top army or stick to campaigns or something.

The problem has never been that marines suck, its that they're expencive. They're good, but you have to pay for that ability. They shoot even better now that you can pull all sorts of rerolling shenanigans with UM, and assault a bit better beause of the Scars and Raven traits.

2 years ago, having durable troops won you the game most of the time a mission was rolled. Today, having many troops wins you the game 5/6th of the time. Marines DON'T suck, they just aren't good at being cheaply spammed; and thats what's winning games now.

You know, for people that can do math and analyze what they are looking at, only the OP codices get touted as OP. I don't seem to recall a "OMG DA are OP!" phase. Even CSM, helldrake not withstanding, really got this moniker I think.

The demons are strong, but at least with them I get the sense my choices might make a difference. I get to shoot some of them. Assault some others. Maybe I can get a break.

The Eldar/Tau phenomenon is point and click army deletion. Unlike the demons (for the most part), the Eldar/Tau choose what dies and what lives. If there is something that the Eldar/Tau feel threatened by, it dies. I have no say in the matter. I just roll saves until I fail enough for the unit to be crippled and then they move onto the next biggest threat.

I really, really don't see anything in the marine codex to change this. I will agree that this is a mid tier codex. For now. After Nids and Orks drop, however, I don't think it's going to age well at all.

 AtariAssasin wrote:
And then when you lose your combat, I also tend to get sweeping advanced.

another bit of advice, marines are immune to being swept in an advance.

 davou wrote:

 Theduke07 wrote:
Marines still suck and I"m not sure what dream people are chasing if they think the new book changed that when the net cost of everything stayed the same where it mattered or even went up for no reason. Pick a top army or stick to campaigns or something.

The problem has never been that marines suck, its that they're expencive. They're good, but you have to pay for that ability. They shoot even better now that you can pull all sorts of rerolling shenanigans with UM, and assault a bit better beause of the Scars and Raven traits.

2 years ago, having durable troops won you the game most of the time a mission was rolled. Today, having many troops wins you the game 5/6th of the time. Marines DON'T suck, they just aren't good at being cheaply spammed; and thats what's winning games now.

The tactical marine has never really been up to snuff. Ever. They constantly struggle to beat their point value of practically anything in hand to hand combat, yet they are supposed to be "balanced". The Grey Hunter is what the tactical marine SHOULD be. So, in that way, Astartes marines do suck.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 davou wrote:

 AtariAssasin wrote:
And then when you lose your combat, I also tend to get sweeping advanced.

another bit of advice, marines are immune to being swept in an advance.

Which is actually a nerf, if you wanted to shoot the opponent on your turn. I'm not a huge fan of ATSKNF really. It's becoming moot because Tau/Eldar will just kill your marines.

Martel732 wrote:
That dedicated anti-air is still quite inefficient against triple helldrake. Displacement only gets you so far, and there are still the actual CSM to deal with. Plague marines are still badass in 6th edition.

The marine anti-air tanks needed to be Rhino upgrades, not heavy support slots.

Dedicated transport anti-air?

You are aware that is every bit as dumb as flying annihilation barges for dedicated transports right?

If you say so. It's not like the weapons they gave the "dedicated anti-air" tanks are taking over the world. They can't be squadroned and take up heavy slots.

It would have given the marines a fighting chance against Wave Serpents. Which they still lack.

Martel732 wrote:

 davou wrote:

 Theduke07 wrote:
Marines still suck and I"m not sure what dream people are chasing if they think the new book changed that when the net cost of everything stayed the same where it mattered or even went up for no reason. Pick a top army or stick to campaigns or something.

The problem has never been that marines suck, its that they're expencive. They're good, but you have to pay for that ability. They shoot even better now that you can pull all sorts of rerolling shenanigans with UM, and assault a bit better beause of the Scars and Raven traits.

2 years ago, having durable troops won you the game most of the time a mission was rolled. Today, having many troops wins you the game 5/6th of the time. Marines DON'T suck, they just aren't good at being cheaply spammed; and thats what's winning games now.

The tactical marine has never really been up to snuff. Ever. They constantly struggle to beat their point value of practically anything in hand to hand combat, yet they are supposed to be "balanced". The Grey Hunter is what the tactical marine SHOULD be. So, in that way, Astartes marines do suck.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 davou wrote:

 AtariAssasin wrote:
And then when you lose your combat, I also tend to get sweeping advanced.

another bit of advice, marines are immune to being swept in an advance.

Which is actually a nerf, if you wanted to shoot the opponent on your turn. I'm not a huge fan of ATSKNF really. It's becoming moot because Tau/Eldar will just kill your marines.

Feels almost as if you want marines to be all around good at everything. They aren't, and its meant to be that way. C:am is about tactics, you don't just throw dice at problems like Orks, you have to make clever use of combat squads to block assaults, heavy weapons to open transports and reserve shenanigans to control the direction of play. Its nowhere near as powerful as eldar or tau, but that's its appeal; You gotta think.

Likewise, grey hunters Don get to do things like put a heavy weapon on the table, split their squad and now twinlink an alpha hit (previously elect to fail)

Atsknf isn't fearless, if you want to leave combat you still can. In fact with I4 its no unreasonable to assume you will either, it just means that your dudes won't die for free when it happens, and that you get a free 3 inch move afterwards. Plenty of times has a single marine running for LOS blocking terrain saved me a kill point or gotten me a table quarter in the past. Atsknf is not a liability in the least

Looks like a bunch of the same arguments being hashed back and forth.

its only been two days since the release.

Has anyone tried the new centurions and drop pod grav guns? or tried that new chap master beat stick?

I got to play a small game with the new chapter tactics and i did relatively well with bolter drill.

The Grey Hunter really is what a baseline Marine should be. Especially given how much else got nerfbatted with PA armies this edition. At least give the Space Marines a bolter, pistol, and ccw. If the Space Marine is the new standard against how other units are judged, that standard should at least be set fairly high.

The fact that Space Marines just continually get weaker and weaker so you need to buy more of them seems to defeat the idea of them being elite. And if they aren't elite, then the makeup of the army should be adjusted then.

Right now, the fluff and points costs seem to suggest Space Marines are elite, but the rules don't reflect that. And that's why C:SM won't be very competitive without allies.

Martel732 wrote:
If you say so. It's not like the weapons they gave the "dedicated anti-air" tanks are taking over the world. They can't be squadroned and take up heavy slots.

It would have given the marines a fighting chance against Wave Serpents. Which they still lack.

I do agree that both the Hydra and Hunter/Stalker needed Interceptor, so the group has decided to house rule them in as having it.

It makes for a very bad day for heldrakes.