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 Sir Heckington wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Just play Kill Team.

Honestly, that's the answer to every "marines aren't good enough" complaint.

40k is about titans, not infantry men.

Well, 40k shouldn't be about titans imo. I think the 1250 game scale should be what it's aimed for. Titans, knights, and huge models like that should be on their way out into Apoc games or their own thing.

“Well,” 40k should specifically be about space marines fighting titans. The typical experience of space marines is having to fight knight engines, and bio titans. This truncated cottage-industry scale idea of 2x troops 1x hq with support fighting its mirror from another faction is a myth. It’s an economic artifact created from Citadel not having the resources to sell mass produced titans and flyers, or even tanks, and you can tell this because they had very complicated flyer rules and targeting vehicles rules even when they barely had a couple of metal/plastic tank kits that all the factions had to share.

Space marines should have to fight knight engines and up on the regular, and they should have vastly more exotic objectives and missions to achieve baked into the rules so you can’t avoid them. Not having that is one of the worst problems of 40k, because the games are iterative, like someone playing eight hours of first person shooter video games and at the end having almost no memory of what they did, since it’s just skirmish after skirmish after skirmish.

Marines fighting titans is the game and if you’re trying to play a better game it’s your job to figure out how to make that work.

To be transparent, I was exaggerating some. I was also referring to points efficiency at killing each other.

If I *cheat* and move the goal post to an overcharged Plasma shot (simpler, more reliable math) both are wounded on a 2+ and the MEQ drops to a 6+ save.

At that point, 4 points of Guardsmen are lost per wound, and 13 points of Marines are lost 5/6 times (Avg 10.8 points). And you can't really balance that

AND

Have MEQ and GEQ trade evenly in a shoot-out with their basic weapons. Because if a current Tactical Marine was balanced against a current Guardsman with their basic weapons, the MEQ would suffer against any weapons that "super kill" a Guardsman, like an overcharged Plasma Shot. There are other weapons in the game that further expose that imbalance.

So no matter how killy an MEQ becomes, it's still going to die in a points-inefficient way to powerful weaponry, compared to Guardsmen. So even if you balance a 13 point Tactical against a 4 point Guardsman, by boosting the kill power so that they trade evenly, as soon as a Plasmagun gets involved the GEQ are going to start trading at an advantage.

(Hint: That's what Guard does. Winning strategy in a nutshell. Attrition.)

So you need to make the points values between the two units closer, to allow high-power weapons to be less advantageous against MEQ then they are against GEQ, in terms of points efficiency.

I agree that allowing Super Heavies into "standard" 40k has irreparably created a situation in which ideal balance can't be achieved, because the structure in which the game has been framed doesn't allow sufficient granularity to differentiate (sufficiently) between MEQ and GEQ. The fix that doesn't require an overhaul of the entire system is to make it so that instead of being valued at thrice the price... make it twice.

I just can't help but be lyrical.

Marines just need to be chee-eeper!

I don't think it's an exaggeration. 40k started going down hill when baneblades were introduced in plastic kits. The decline is at its peak currently due to how split fire was changed in 8th ed. The fire power jam packed into titan/LoW class units are way overboard for what the game used to be.

 Sir Heckington wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Just play Kill Team.

Honestly, that's the answer to every "marines aren't good enough" complaint.

40k is about titans, not infantry men.

Well, 40k shouldn't be about titans imo. I think the 1250 game scale should be what it's aimed for. Titans, knights, and huge models like that should be on their way out into Apoc games or their own thing.

You can't put the trash back in the box. 40k IS about titans now. It's not going to change.

On a positive note, Kill Team is awesome.

 skchsan wrote:
I don't think it's an exaggeration. 40k started going down hill when baneblades were introduced in plastic kits. The decline is at its peak currently due to how split fire was changed in 8th ed. The fire power jam packed into titan/LoW class units are way overboard for what the game used to be.

So restrict all super heavies to APOC only?

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 Sir Heckington wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Just play Kill Team.

Honestly, that's the answer to every "marines aren't good enough" complaint.

40k is about titans, not infantry men.

Well, 40k shouldn't be about titans imo. I think the 1250 game scale should be what it's aimed for. Titans, knights, and huge models like that should be on their way out into Apoc games or their own thing.

You can't put the trash back in the box. 40k IS about titans now. It's not going to change.

On a positive note, Kill Team is awesome.

On a less positive note, it's a trash mess that doesn't have options for gak. No Khorne berserkers? Raptors? Noise marines?!?

Also yes, I know it wont change, and I hate that. That's why I left them out of my homebrew, me and my dad are working on it! It should be fun, for us at least.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
I don't think it's an exaggeration. 40k started going down hill when baneblades were introduced in plastic kits. The decline is at its peak currently due to how split fire was changed in 8th ed. The fire power jam packed into titan/LoW class units are way overboard for what the game used to be.

So restrict all super heavies to APOC only?

Yes. Apoc should've never been 'soft merged' into 40k.

 Sir Heckington wrote:


On a less positive note, it's a trash mess that doesn't have options for gak. No Khorne berserkers? Raptors? Noise marines?!?

Also yes, I know it wont change, and I hate that. That's why I left them out of my homebrew, me and my dad are working on it! It should be fun, for us at least.

Yes, you are going to have way more fun putting some home brew in Kill Team than trying to do anything in 40k.

That game may as well be dead.

 skchsan wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
I don't think it's an exaggeration. 40k started going down hill when baneblades were introduced in plastic kits. The decline is at its peak currently due to how split fire was changed in 8th ed. The fire power jam packed into titan/LoW class units are way overboard for what the game used to be.

So restrict all super heavies to APOC only?

Yes. Apoc should've never been 'soft merged' into 40k.

Yeah I agree, all the LoWs and the new superheroes should never be part of a 40k game unless it's something like 5000 points. They're a plauge and unfortunately some of them (who said knights?) are the exact reason why SM suck, since many competitive metas are too much focussed on dealing with armored stuff. In meta where hordes need to be countered SM would do better. Also if soups were banned they'd do better.

So, we've concluded that we can't make marines cheaper enough to make them comparable to guard, and just boosting their wounds etc still won't do much due to the volume of high damage weaponry out there for killing superheavies.

I think that the best thing that can be done for marines (and which would make them much more fun to play) would be to give them more options to tool up a squad. They're the dedicated elite shock troops of humanity, but they get the same special weapons as guardsmen, with very few tricks? and they have to hang around their boss to do better (so lame).

I don't know how much the fluff supports this, but give them some gadgets and unique equipment that only a space marine could use. make each squad tooled up with anti-titan or anti-infantry wargear which is unique to marines, and leave the mass-production of plasma and flamer weapons to the guardsmen (obviously keep the options for people with older models). Even if it's a new primaris kit. I just feel that when your options are a marine with a plasma gun or a guardsman with a plasma gun, the guardsman is by far more points efficient. Whereas give marines a "liquid plasma gun" which does D3 auto-hits at shorter range, with 2 strengths (one overheating if it rolls a 1 on the D6 before it is converted to a D3). Give them a "melta sprayer" with a similar system. Give the marines some more scary wargear, and for cheap, and they will become more likeable.

As it is, marines have the same options as guard, but guard get orders, and are so, so much cheaper.

 some bloke wrote:
So, we've concluded that we can't make marines cheaper enough to make them comparable to guard, and just boosting their wounds etc still won't do much due to the volume of high damage weaponry out there for killing superheavies.

I think that the best thing that can be done for marines (and which would make them much more fun to play) would be to give them more options to tool up a squad.

Yeah, trying to change the SM profile is not useful at all. Take harlequins: their infantries are quite expensive, more than marines, not particularly great in melee for their points and definitely not good shooters outside a single gimmick. And yet their army, which only have 8 entries, works very well even without allies. The problem with SM doesn't lie in the status of their infantries, it's the lack of powerful combos that make other armies effective while they don't have any or just a single one, Guilliman's aura.

I don't think there's a fix that could improve SM to tournament levels, I think they'd just stay in the casual meta for this edition, like other major armies did in previous editions. They simply need a different codex, not some patches.

While I agree with you that Superheavies have damaged the experience of 40k, you can always just ask for "No TITANIC units please" when playing a game. Might be difficult if you've only a small local group, but there is a fix.

Part of the problem with messing with Boltguns to solve Space Marines is you're tackling a symptom not the problem.

Marines as they used to be were symbolised by having above average toughness combined with high quality armour and a ballistic skill that meant something given the way cover rules used to work, plus their LD value and special rules. Changing how bolters work is probably not going to help that much.

bouncingboredom wrote:
Part of the problem with messing with Boltguns to solve Space Marines is you're tackling a symptom not the problem.

Marines as they used to be were symbolised by having above average toughness combined with high quality armour and a ballistic skill that meant something given the way cover rules used to work, plus their LD value and special rules. Changing how bolters work is probably not going to help that much.

I agree, I think the problem is that there have been ever increasingly powerful weapons and units being put into the game for a long time. Space marine stats were put in at a time where there were a few, fairly generic weapons and the game relied heavily on tactics to win. Their 3+ save would shrug off the majority of shots, and if you faced a lot of AP3 then you hugged the terrain for a constant save. Now, every army has access to several weapons which will reliably blow chunks out of a titan, and cover gives you a 2+ save, which is then mostly (if not entirely) ignored by these weapons.

The problem is, as people have said, that the game has moved on to bigger things. The "infantry" now is anything with a stupidly powerful gun and enough wounds to tank a lot of shots. the tactics of 8th is to deal as much damage to the enemy as possible and remove their unit which was meant to do the same to you. Space marines exist for smaller things. All infantry is starting to blend into bugs under the boots of titans. do you find it harder to step on a big ant than a small one?

 some bloke wrote:

I agree, I think the problem is that there have been ever increasingly powerful weapons and units being put into the game for a long time. Space marine stats were put in at a time where there were a few, fairly generic weapons and the game relied heavily on tactics to win. Their 3+ save would shrug off the majority of shots, and if you faced a lot of AP3 then you hugged the terrain for a constant save. Now, every army has access to several weapons which will reliably blow chunks out of a titan, and cover gives you a 2+ save, which is then mostly (if not entirely) ignored by these weapons.

The problem is, as people have said, that the game has moved on to bigger things. The "infantry" now is anything with a stupidly powerful gun and enough wounds to tank a lot of shots. the tactics of 8th is to deal as much damage to the enemy as possible and remove their unit which was meant to do the same to you. Space marines exist for smaller things. All infantry is starting to blend into bugs under the boots of titans. do you find it harder to step on a big ant than a small one?

Basically. I remember ye olden days when a Tac squad with a flamer and a hevay bolter was a force to be reckoned with. Given how morale worked they could easily chew up units like ork boyz or guardsmen. Suitably tooled up for anti-tank they were a major threat to any vehicle on the table, while still having anti-infantry flexibility. Now they just seem like slightly prettier guardsmen.

I think the biggest thing to hurt them was the inability to one-shot a vehicle any more. It used to be that if a marine with a meltagun got within 6" of your vehicle, it was screwed. For them to have the same damage output this edition, they would need something with 3D6 damage at least.

In this edition, either hordes or vehicles are king, everything in between is wasting points on inconsequential things like good saves on low wound models. The key to victory appears to be simply maxing your wounds-per-point.

 some bloke wrote:
I think the biggest thing to hurt them was the inability to one-shot a vehicle any more. It used to be that if a marine with a meltagun got within 6" of your vehicle, it was screwed. For them to have the same damage output this edition, they would need something with 3D6 damage at least.

In this edition, either hordes or vehicles are king, everything in between is wasting points on inconsequential things like good saves on low wound models. The key to victory appears to be simply maxing your wounds-per-point.

Agreed. Currently the game is "bring the mostest badestest things that can blow the board in 1 turn" vs. "abuse how wound & damage works and bring as many little cockroaches that mathematically cant be wiped off the table in 5 turns". All the middle guys are screwed at the moment.

While I don’t agree in principle that MEQ *cant* be appropriately pointed, I believe the appropriate value for a Guardsman is 55 points for the base unit, and Marines should be 55 for 5. This lets BASIC MEQ trade favourably with BASIC GEQ, but tips back to balance in light of most armies favouring powerful upgrades / units that are more efficient against MEQ stats. It presumes a certain balanced approach to list building (that, for transparency ‘s sake is my preferred play style) so that the sum of the parts is balanced, rather than specific unit vs unit comparisons.

 greatbigtree wrote:
and Marines should be 55 for 5. This lets BASIC MEQ trade favourably with BASIC GEQ, but tips back to balance in light of most armies favouring powerful upgrades / units that are more efficient against MEQ stats. It presumes a certain balanced approach to list building (that, for transparency ‘s sake is my preferred play style) so that the sum of the parts is balanced, rather than specific unit vs unit comparisons.

The most important changes should make sure that’s a strong presumption, that people actually bring mixed armies and they do infantry heavy as often as they do knight lists. So assuming you get marines to trade points favorably with guardsmen, you should give all infantry some special ability so that people actually put guardsmen, guardians, aspects, and kabalites unmounted and on the field for marines to kill.

I think that this game is already suffering from offensive power creep, so what is needed is more durability, not other units with increased firepower.

If you want to close the gap between Space Marines and other better armies, make them more resilient, not more shooty.

Instead of change the bolter or lower the ppm cost, think of a rule that make the SM more resilient vs light weapons, as once they were.

They need a brand new rule for their Astartes power armour that could made their cost worth the actual 13 ppm

They're already quite resilient though. They need the tricks that make other armies shine instead. SM are already very resilient against light weapons, they just melt against high AP values. Probably the game needs to shift towards more infantries than tanks, heavy elites, superheroes and superheavies. At the moment SM seem to be too squishy because competitive metas are full of anti tank, and people build their lists with the concept of 1-shotting a knight, which is IMHO very silly. It should take 3+ turns to kill a kngiht thanks to firepower. But they're so OP, along with other armored stuff and superheroes, that must be countered. SM suffer from this meta. The fact that they can ally countless units with no drawbacks, including lots of overpowered stuff, sure doesn't help as well.

Nerf knights and superheroes into the ground and SM will survive more easily.

Give them effective stratagems, traits, psychic powers and close combat auras and they'd be top tiers or solid mid tiers once again.

No, Space Marine aren’t resilient enough. There is too much fire out there.

The Deer Hunter wrote:
No, Space Marine aren’t resilient enough. There is too much fire out there.

They're more resilient as ever rulewise, only the former AP4 weapons are now more effective and they're not even that common. Against AP2 or AP3 they used to get no save at all, now it's a 6+ or 5+. The amount of firepower is insane for many armies, and that is due to the bad design of pushing the armored stuff. That is the issue that shoud be addressed, focussing the game towards infantries and some supporting vehicles once again.

The whole "less tanks" thing has bolted. It now needs to be embraced and balanced accordingly. They missed a trick by not changing up the strength and toughness of models to decompress the stats. I.e guard s/t 3, eldar s/t 4, orks 5, marines 6, deathguard 7, custodes 8 etc. With the new way in which wounds are worked out it would not have increased time and allowed marines and other elites to feel tougher. Hopefully they do this in 9th along with binning I go you go.

Secondly, power armour is no longer resilient enough for how much it costs. There is too much ap flying around for it to be cost effective in its current state. It needs to be a 2+ save. More elite units like termies and custodes etc would get a 1+ save that still fails on a 1.

The humble bolter needs a buff. As marines are few, a buff to rapid fire 2 would give them horde clearing potential. I dont want to make them ap-1 as it would mean another thing that makes marines less resilient but it could be an option.

There are a few more changes they would need too but i want to not get too far away from the bolter.

another change could be the complete removal of ap from weapons and let AP rely completely on wound rolls

something on the lines of

STR < = Toughness >>> no AP
STR = Toughness >>> - 1AP on 6+
STR >= Toughness >>> -1AP on 5+ -2ap on 6+
STR 2x Toughness >>> -1AP on 4+ -2AP on 5+ -3AP on 6+
melta weapons roll 1d6 for extra str

SELECT few weapons can have aditional -1 ap depending on factions but it should be not be implemented.

the problem is that most space marines are shafted because of this stupid AP meta

i know its not directly discussing bolters but it is in a small way
im proposing -1 ap in select circumstances on bolters vs low toughness but i feel this should extend not just to bolters but everything.

What about low weapon with good AP, what do they get if AP goes away?

Don't be silly, no-one uses Hotshot Lasguns /s

Whilst I have different ideas about the core astartes bolter statline, i do think they should have an alt fire mode for hordes. Nothing complex, just

Range 24", Rapid Fire 2, Str 3, Dmg 1, Sv 0

Using the exploding rounds as aibursts, firing to spread shrpanel, punch through targets into ones beyond, etc, etc.