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I do think that terminators are the walking tanks, or as close as possible on TT, I mean, I have seen a well deep struck terminator squad just absolutely demolish an opponent. As for BL books, I have seen Marines shown as both cannon fodder and as demigod mega warriors.

Sometime the perspective the fluff is written from seems to be that starstruck guardsmen seeing Astartes for the first time.

morgoth wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Talking about tabletop, they are fine. Tabletop can't equilibrate marines with the Fluff they have now.

One of the problems that people has comparing marines against other races from a lore perspective is that they take them as a "different race"


Marines are part of the Imperium. They are the very, VERY best (Ok, Custodes and Grey Knights are even better, but those take armies for breakfast) and when you compare a Orc boy with the "Human Army" you can't compare them with the Marines and say "they are equivalent because they are both the basic troops": No, the basic troop for the Imperium is the Guardsman.

One of the problems in the fluff is the fact that Marines are ULTRA powerfull, but the others armies need their equivalent ultra powerfull things to stand a chance, but then thats translated in that the other armies have ultra powerfull anti marines units but in much bigger numbers.

But well. Lore is narrative, and in narrative the heroes win so this is a empty debate really. For example, you have Aspect Warriors that train for hundres of years or Tyranid Warriors that are rumored to be make taking space marines genes.

But you have way way less marines than Tyranid Warriors or Aspect Warriors, and individually your standard marine will be way way superior to those two examples. (That doesn't mean that it will win always. Fights don't work that way, just because you are superior doesn't mean, in a narrative perspective, that you are gonna win always. The situation, context, etc... of the battle, all maters) .

You're living proof that most people arguing here know nothing about other codex lore.

There aren't more Aspect Warriors than there are marines, and they are by fluff strictly superior to space marines in their own path.

Aspect Warriors are the Warrior Chaste of the entire Eldar race. Space Marines are the Ultra-Elite forces of the Human Race.
Eldar, by lore and nature are "Elite" in every thing they do. Thats why the Eldar Guardian, mere militia, are very very superior to the lowly Guardsmen.

I don't play Space Marines, so no, Space Marines aren't my codex. I play Tau, and I'm no Space Marine fanboy to defend them and put them in top because I like them.

But Martel and Vaktathi have it right. This debate as I said before is pointless because to every argument people can find Lore examples that contradict one anothers.

So please stop asumming things about other people, I have no time for ad hominems.

I don't think anyone is genuinely arguing that GW should push with that process - they won't, simply due to sales. But it'd be a fun narrative game to put together (for one side at least).

Personally I think it'd be fun to see 25 Space Marines across the table from 200+ Orks.

Probably best set up with an AI designed and players are controlling the marines (five per player or some such). You wouldn't want ta dedicated Ork player, as that'd be tough just getting your teeth kicked in. But as a co-op survival/wave mode thing? That'd be damn fun.

The fact you can have the head of the entire Chapter go on the table and be shot down instantly by some unlocky and lucky dice roles is symbolic of how I feel about this.

Well that's how it should be, no plot armor for noone.

In all honesty I have often held that the majority of the Marine fluff (one marine killing an entire army of [insert faction here], etc) is actually Imperial Propaganda, and in reality Marines whilst better than the average soldier are no where near as good as they are made out to be.

In all honesty though, this mess is GW's fault. In the beginning they made Marines out to be these amazing, godlike, demigods and over the years hyped them up so much that to even try and represent something that can apparently run so fast it is almost impossible to hit, can shoot accurately whilst doing so and wears as much armour as a tank whilst carrying a 50mm autocannon for a gun, etc, etc, etc is virtually impossible with the current rules, or indeed most wargames rules out there.

I personally scale Space Marines on the high powered scale, but I also recognise that it's practically impossible with how the game is to make them so elite without hurting every other faction.

GW have ensured Space Marines sell well, and because they sell well, Space Marines need to have large armies, because it's no use having 5 Space Marines in an army if they sell so well.
Therefore, if they want any semblance of balance, they either need to make Space Marines weak on the TT, or they have to make every other army larger, which would alienate all the non-MEQ armies.

Short of a full redesign and having Space Marines be a small army (which would run counter to GW selling lots of Space Marines), there's no real way to give SM the high powered treatment on TT.

I reconciliated the fluff and the tabletop version of hte Space Marines with a very easy calculous. A single Space Marine is worth 10 guardsmen. a single Cadian is worth three normal guardsmen. Thus a Space Marines is worth three Cadians. Codex Space Marines price them at 14 pts. Guardsmen, which are those from Cadia or the even superior Catashan, are worth 5 pts. Thus, tabletop and fluff completly match. When Space Marines wreck entire squads of Guardsmen by themselves in the fluff, they usually are heroic Space Marines fighting pretty crappy guardsmen in the first place.

A Space Marines worth much more than three Cadians... all of this "Space Marine feats are Imperial Propaganda" is good as personal headcannon but please don't bring it to a minimal serious conversation about lore.

Space Marines are select from the most deadly worlds out there, where of every hundreds or thousands of candidates only a handfull are chosen. Cadians are a very well trained and militariced type of Guardsmen but they count in the hundreds of millions dispersed for the galaxy.

Obviously, a Space Marine can die with a shoot from a Lass-cannon of a guardsmen heavy team for example, just like in Fantasy you had that history where a Empire Great Cannon killed a Chaos Dragon with a single shoot to the head in one of the Chaos Sieges to Nuln. And I don't think anyone will agree the fact that a great cannon is more powerfull than a Chaos Dragon.

Space Marines can't be made to mach their fluff in the tabletop. Not only because that will kill GW (Literally. Imagine buying a box of 10 Tactical Marines and using that to make an army, GW will broke! ) but because people will end with enormous collections of Space Marines that they can't use to anything. And thats totally ok. People can field a good bunch of lovely marines, have them be a "slightly" more powerfull basic troop, and call it a day.

Maybe Cadian Kasrkins, tho the gear is a big factor in this.

Thunderwolf Cavalry - Officially the Space Wolves deny that they even exist and sightings are rare enough that they manage to keep this denial valid.

When was the last time anyone played against a list with Space Wolves but no TWC?

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
Thunderwolf Cavalry - Officially the Space Wolves deny that they even exist and sightings are rare enough that they manage to keep this denial valid.

When was the last time anyone played against a list with Space Wolves but no TWC?

Five years and two editions ago...

 Galas wrote:

morgoth wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Talking about tabletop, they are fine. Tabletop can't equilibrate marines with the Fluff they have now.

One of the problems that people has comparing marines against other races from a lore perspective is that they take them as a "different race"


Marines are part of the Imperium. They are the very, VERY best (Ok, Custodes and Grey Knights are even better, but those take armies for breakfast) and when you compare a Orc boy with the "Human Army" you can't compare them with the Marines and say "they are equivalent because they are both the basic troops": No, the basic troop for the Imperium is the Guardsman.

One of the problems in the fluff is the fact that Marines are ULTRA powerfull, but the others armies need their equivalent ultra powerfull things to stand a chance, but then thats translated in that the other armies have ultra powerfull anti marines units but in much bigger numbers.

But well. Lore is narrative, and in narrative the heroes win so this is a empty debate really. For example, you have Aspect Warriors that train for hundres of years or Tyranid Warriors that are rumored to be make taking space marines genes.

But you have way way less marines than Tyranid Warriors or Aspect Warriors, and individually your standard marine will be way way superior to those two examples. (That doesn't mean that it will win always. Fights don't work that way, just because you are superior doesn't mean, in a narrative perspective, that you are gonna win always. The situation, context, etc... of the battle, all maters) .

You're living proof that most people arguing here know nothing about other codex lore.

There aren't more Aspect Warriors than there are marines, and they are by fluff strictly superior to space marines in their own path.

Aspect Warriors are the Warrior Chaste of the entire Eldar race. Space Marines are the Ultra-Elite forces of the Human Race.
Eldar, by lore and nature are "Elite" in every thing they do. Thats why the Eldar Guardian, mere militia, are very very superior to the lowly Guardsmen.

I don't play Space Marines, so no, Space Marines aren't my codex. I play Tau, and I'm no Space Marine fanboy to defend them and put them in top because I like them.

But Martel and Vaktathi have it right. This debate as I said before is pointless because to every argument people can find Lore examples that contradict one anothers.

So please stop asumming things about other people, I have no time for ad hominems.

Chillax bro, the only thing I'm assuming is that you don't know Eldar fluff in depth, which is the case. There's nothing wrong about that.

See, in the lore, Eldar farseers are the best psykers in the galaxy and eldrad is number one bar none.

On the tabletop it's tigurius... i.e. space marines are more powerful on TT than in lore in this case...

And aspect warriors are not a warrior caste. Most Eldar are actually Aspect Warriors, that is except on Ulthwe or Iyanden, where guardians and wraith constructs outnumber aspect warriors.

What an Aspect Warrior is, is an Eldar, by nature vastly superior to a Space Marine in everything but brute strength, resilience and utter lack of finesse. An Eldar who has trained for hundreds of years in one single path which has been refined since the fall, i.e. forever. So yes, as long as the contest is related to the aspect, like a cc aspect cc fighting a sm, or a shooty aspect shooting a sm, the aspect has a serious advantage, by lore.



40k lore is mostly about entities which are all far better and stronger than your regular modern day army dude and that puts many of them in the same power bracket.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
Thunderwolf Cavalry - Officially the Space Wolves deny that they even exist and sightings are rare enough that they manage to keep this denial valid.

When was the last time anyone played against a list with Space Wolves but no TWC?

Five years and two editions ago...

Better answer than I'd actually hoped for.

How about Tau without their equally rare XV104 Riptide?
Eldar's even rarer Wraith constructs?

The problem between tabletop and fluff is the question of rarity.
AM are the most common force in the IoM, outnumbering the Marines by billions to one, a human can serve long and hard for the Imperium of Man and never even encounter a Space Marine. How many people here can claim their FLGS can boast half the number of SM armies in AM armies?

morgoth wrote:

 Galas wrote:

morgoth wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Talking about tabletop, they are fine. Tabletop can't equilibrate marines with the Fluff they have now.

One of the problems that people has comparing marines against other races from a lore perspective is that they take them as a "different race"


Marines are part of the Imperium. They are the very, VERY best (Ok, Custodes and Grey Knights are even better, but those take armies for breakfast) and when you compare a Orc boy with the "Human Army" you can't compare them with the Marines and say "they are equivalent because they are both the basic troops": No, the basic troop for the Imperium is the Guardsman.

One of the problems in the fluff is the fact that Marines are ULTRA powerfull, but the others armies need their equivalent ultra powerfull things to stand a chance, but then thats translated in that the other armies have ultra powerfull anti marines units but in much bigger numbers.

But well. Lore is narrative, and in narrative the heroes win so this is a empty debate really. For example, you have Aspect Warriors that train for hundres of years or Tyranid Warriors that are rumored to be make taking space marines genes.

But you have way way less marines than Tyranid Warriors or Aspect Warriors, and individually your standard marine will be way way superior to those two examples. (That doesn't mean that it will win always. Fights don't work that way, just because you are superior doesn't mean, in a narrative perspective, that you are gonna win always. The situation, context, etc... of the battle, all maters) .

You're living proof that most people arguing here know nothing about other codex lore.

There aren't more Aspect Warriors than there are marines, and they are by fluff strictly superior to space marines in their own path.

Aspect Warriors are the Warrior Chaste of the entire Eldar race. Space Marines are the Ultra-Elite forces of the Human Race.
Eldar, by lore and nature are "Elite" in every thing they do. Thats why the Eldar Guardian, mere militia, are very very superior to the lowly Guardsmen.

I don't play Space Marines, so no, Space Marines aren't my codex. I play Tau, and I'm no Space Marine fanboy to defend them and put them in top because I like them.

But Martel and Vaktathi have it right. This debate as I said before is pointless because to every argument people can find Lore examples that contradict one anothers.

So please stop asumming things about other people, I have no time for ad hominems.

Chillax bro, the only thing I'm assuming is that you don't know Eldar fluff in depth, which is the case. There's nothing wrong about that.

See, in the lore, Eldar farseers are the best psykers in the galaxy and eldrad is number one bar none.

Is there a codex citation for that? Because looking at the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th and 7E codex books and entries for Farseers and Eldrad, I'm not seeing a passage that states that either Farseers are *the* best psykers in the galaxy (despite otherwise confirming that they are indeed very powerful) or that Eldrad is *the* most powerful psyker bar none. I mean, there's dudes like Ahriman, who, despite his otherwise lackluster tabletop performance, was given Psychic Mastery Level 4 above and beyond the Level 3 that Tigurius and Eldrad make do with for a reason beyond just gameplay.

And aspect warriors are not a warrior caste. Most Eldar are actually Aspect Warriors

Is there a codex citation on that? I've never heard this claim before.

that is except on Ulthwe or Iyanden, where guardians and wraith constructs outnumber aspect warriors.

What an Aspect Warrior is, is an Eldar, by nature vastly superior to a Space Marine in everything but brute strength, resilience and utter lack of finesse. An Eldar who has trained for hundreds of years in one single path which has been refined since the fall, i.e. forever. So yes, as long as the contest is related to the aspect, like a cc aspect cc fighting a sm, or a shooty aspect shooting a sm, the aspect has a serious advantage, by lore.

The problem is, much like with Marines, the lore is not consistent enough to back up this paradigm. There's tons of lore examples of CC oriented Aspects being easily dispatched by Marines in melee combat and shooting oriented aspects being swiftly dispatched by simple bolter fire just as much as there is vice versa. It all depends on the author, subject source, etc. Some stories treat the Eldar as godlike beings, nigh angels of the battlefield that even Space Marines find extremely difficult opponents, others treat them as basically "advanced cannon fodder".

Much as I usually like to rag on Marines, as personal combatants, they're not really "utter lack of finesse" combatants either, they are highly skilled, experienced, and practiced fighters well versed in advanced fighting techniques, they're not just stupid brutes.

Also, as someone who spends 3-4 nights a week behind a sword (well, a feder), when it comes to this type of combat, there is very definitely just as much to be said for size, strength and resilience as there is for speed and agility, particularly as it doesn't take much to go from blade dancing to grappling distance where the importance of size and strength is magnified. There's a reason weight classes exist in martials arts competitions. Likewise, it is very easy to get hit in melee combat even with a dramatic skill advantage, particularly if the other person is suicidal (intentionally or not, lots of people just blank out and think only about landing a hit, not defending themselves), and double-kills and afterblows are extremely common outcomes of sword bouts, and if you can take a hit or two without dying or being incapacitated, and get in your hit that your opponent cannot physically withstand and they die or are incapacitated, well, that's a gigantic combat advantage even if the opponent possesses a higher level of skill.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
Thunderwolf Cavalry - Officially the Space Wolves deny that they even exist and sightings are rare enough that they manage to keep this denial valid.

When was the last time anyone played against a list with Space Wolves but no TWC?

Five years and two editions ago...

Better answer than I'd actually hoped for.

How about Tau without their equally rare XV104 Riptide?

I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen a Tau army without one in the last 4 years since they were released, and still have fingers left over.

Eldar's even rarer Wraith constructs?

Hrm, less so than with the other armies and their stuff, mainly because they have *so* many good things, but they are certainly a coin flip on appearances.

The problem between tabletop and fluff is the question of rarity.
AM are the most common force in the IoM, outnumbering the Marines by billions to one, a human can serve long and hard for the Imperium of Man and never even encounter a Space Marine. How many people here can claim their FLGS can boast half the number of SM armies in AM armies?

Indeed

On much the same note, I've lost track of how often I've seen Vulkan He'Stan issue a combat challenge to..Vulkan He'Stan, or how many times I've killed Longstrike or Abaddon

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
Thunderwolf Cavalry - Officially the Space Wolves deny that they even exist and sightings are rare enough that they manage to keep this denial valid.

When was the last time anyone played against a list with Space Wolves but no TWC?

IMHO SM different chapters have sense only because of typical stuff. SW without their 4-5 typical units are SM, same for BA or DA. Playing SW without a significant part of the list composed by TWC, wulfen, fenrisian wolves or their dedicated dreads doesn't make any sense. It's positive that specific chapters always include some unic stuff, that other chapters don't have. That's why I think those wolfy units should be among the best options in the SW codex, and even BA and DA should rely mostly on their typical units/heroes.

Riptides can be badly nerfed instead as tau have an entire catalogue that is dedicated to them, they don't have units in common with other armies. In fact even the less competitive tau units are typical of that army, as much as riptides.

 Blackie wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
Thunderwolf Cavalry - Officially the Space Wolves deny that they even exist and sightings are rare enough that they manage to keep this denial valid.

When was the last time anyone played against a list with Space Wolves but no TWC?

IMHO SM different chapters have sense only because of typical stuff. SW without their 4-5 typical units are SM, same for BA or DA. Playing SW without a significant part of the list composed by TWC, wulfen, fenrisian wolves or their dedicated dreads doesn't make any sense. It's positive that specific chapters always include some unic stuff, that other chapters don't have. That's why I think those wolfy units should be among the best options in the SW codex, and even BA and DA should rely mostly on their typical units/heroes.

Riptides can be badly nerfed instead as tau have an entire catalogue that is dedicated to them, they don't have units in common with other armies. In fact even the less competitive tau units are typical of that army, as much as riptides.

I guarantee you, my intention is not to nerf or get rid of Thunderwolf Cavalry. The point I was trying to make is that numbers on the tabletop are nothing like the numbers in the fluff, Space Marines are fine, what is awkward is the units that make up most of a fluff army simply doesn't get used on the tabletop, the bodies that Bolterfire chews up just aren't being used.

Vaktathi, Eldrad is ML4 and jas always been...

morgoth wrote:
Vaktathi, Eldrad is ML4 and jas always been...

Ah, it appears you're correct, misread my book. Either way, he's not the only ML4.

 Vaktathi wrote:

morgoth wrote:
Vaktathi, Eldrad is ML4 and jas always been...

Ah, it appears you're correct, misread my book. Either way, he's not the only ML4.

That's not the point.
The point is that in the lore, Eldar Farseers and Eldrad specifically are miles above anything that's human and not the Emperor, yet on the tabletop... Eldrad isn't even played and Librarian Conclaves with Tigurius are an auto-take, with Tiggy being present in most top-tier IoM lists ever since Tiggy got crazy good rules.

In other words, Space Marines are also often much better on the tabletop than they are in the lore.

There is no such thing as an accurate representation of Space Marines, because GW's lore itself represents Space Marines in the lore in wildly disparate ways.

morgoth wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

morgoth wrote:
Vaktathi, Eldrad is ML4 and jas always been...

Ah, it appears you're correct, misread my book. Either way, he's not the only ML4.

That's not the point.
The point is that in the lore, Eldar Farseers and Eldrad specifically are miles above anything that's human and not the Emperor,

I understand that point, but, again, do you have a citation that explicitely states this? They're clearly very powerful, and Eldrad is clearly one of the most insanely powerful psykers around, but never outright states them as being miles above *anything* human (if we're including characters like Ahriman in that) that I can see from their codex. I might concede that Eldrad specifically is more powerful than anything *Imperial* (as opposed to *human*), but Farseers in general versus Space Marine librarians or powerful Inquisitors has always been portrayed as a relatively even match.

I'm totally calm, but... what?

Aspect Warriors are the eldars that have decide to go one of the Warrior paths of their society, they are the "Real" Warriors of the Eldar. The Guardians are just militia, yes, "elite" militia because they are still Eldar, but they are militia nonetheless.

And heres comes your problem. You are comparing a Eldar to a Space Marines as if they where a case of Species vs Species. But no, you can't compare a Eldar vs a Space Marine. You need to compare a Eldar to a Human, and I agree, normal trained humans are more resistent and have more strenght that an eldar, but that diference don't compensate for the enormous advantage that a normal Eldar had in speed, reflexes, and even mental speed reaction vs a normal human.

But now, we aren't talking about humans here, we are talking about Space Marines, the best of the best, humans that in their normal forms where the most prominent of their kin in a early age, that go in a long and very dangerous biological augmentation process to end as "Super heroes" lite. Space marines are leagues above a normal human in strenght, resistance, speed, and basically, everything.

A nude Eldar against a nude Space Marine, normally, can't do nothing. Thats it, Space Marines are, don't counting Tyranids and Orks, the most powerfull in a "Nude" state race out there.

Now we can add equipement. I'll give you that. Eldar Aspect Warrior equipement is better than Space Marines equipement, vastly superior, but that doesn't means a bolter shell isn't gonna explode the head of a Eldar if they hit it in the helmet.

And now we add the time of training. This is not a case of Fantasy elves vs Fantasy Humans. Eldars live, normally, 1000-1500 years, reaching like 2000 the oldest cases (I'm ignoring here Eldrad that lives 10.000 without an explanation). And then you have space marines, where the older alive is Dante with 1100 years. Logan Grimnar if I recall correctly has something like 800-900 years. So the age difference of a SPace Marine vs a Aspect Warrios isn't that big.

I aggre with you in the aspect that biologically Eldars are the most powerfull psykers in the galaxy without counting things like Demons of Empowered people by gods like Ahriman. We can discuss that maybe a Tyranid Zoanthropoe specially done by the Hive Mind can be a more powerfull psiker than a Eldar, but thats entering in teories here.


So, we can agree to disagree. I still remain that to me a generic Space Marines is superior (Not VASTLY superior, but superior) to an generic Aspect Warrior.

And, I apologice if I was a little snarky in my previous post. I don't like when people, in a legitimate lore discussions, attack others with the "Learn you lore bruh!"

There is definitive answer. It's all subject to the whims of the author.