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Again, it is power gamey or smart to make lists that maximize a given codex's firepower? If GW didn't write it, they could't put it in their lists. The whole gentleman's agreement of holding back falls apart once a couple people stop doing it.

 vipoid wrote:

[on snapfireing blast weapons]
But, of course, we all know the real reason why we can't. The developers realised that BS1 wouldn't work for those weapons, and were too lazy or unimaginative to conceive of a different penalty.

well it would work perfectly.... just let them always scatter... the little arrow on the hit symbol is there for a reason =)

RedNoak wrote:

well it would work perfectly.... just let them always scatter... the little arrow on the hit symbol is there for a reason =)

A few points:

- BS reductions don't work as well for blasts, because they always hit 1/3 of the time anyway and can still hit enemies even when they scatter.

- This doesn't affect flamer weapons at all.

- Obviously the designers didn't think that a BS reduction was appropriate for blast weapons - since we're just outright forbidden from snapshotting with them.

 vipoid wrote:

RedNoak wrote:

well it would work perfectly.... just let them always scatter... the little arrow on the hit symbol is there for a reason =)

A few points:

- BS reductions don't work as well for blasts, because they always hit 1/3 of the time anyway and can still hit enemies even when they scatter.

- This doesn't affect flamer weapons at all.

- Obviously the designers didn't think that a BS reduction was appropriate for blast weapons - since we're just outright forbidden from snapshotting with them.

Blasts and flamers are, quite frankly, horribly represented in 40k; the whole template thing makes them hilariously accurate, and creates problems like this when they introduce the idea of snap shots (and the fact that an Ork is as good at snap shots as a BS8 Assassin....)

I much prefer the model where either a) weapons which produce an explosive effect do a DX wounds, or b) has a DX profile for hits and misses, representing the explosive effect of not hitting your target, but still doing something; this allows more variation in scale, from say a direct fire AT weapon doing a D2, to a demolisher doing like 2d6 or something, would also mitigate that silliness where MCs only take one wound from a laser from space or building flattening demolisher cannon, whereas the tank beside them explodes magnificiently.

But that's another matter entirely

 MajorStoffer wrote:

Blasts and flamers are, quite frankly, horribly represented in 40k; the whole template thing makes them hilariously accurate, and creates problems like this when they introduce the idea of snap shots (and the fact that an Ork is as good at snap shots as a BS8 Assassin....)

I really hate the Snapshot mechanic.

Aside from just plain not making sense most of the time, it just adds so much faffing about to the game. There's never any penalty for snapshotting, so you're just rolling a lot of dice and hoping to get lucky. It's not tactical, it's not fun, it's not narrative.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
I much prefer the model where either a) weapons which produce an explosive effect do a DX wounds, or b) has a DX profile for hits and misses, representing the explosive effect of not hitting your target, but still doing something; this allows more variation in scale, from say a direct fire AT weapon doing a D2, to a demolisher doing like 2d6 or something, would also mitigate that silliness where MCs only take one wound from a laser from space or building flattening demolisher cannon, whereas the tank beside them explodes magnificiently.

I don't mind template weapons, though I don't think torrent flamers should exist - since they just remove all the weaknesses flamers are supposed to have.

With Blasts, I think I prefer the Warmachine method - where you only scatter if you miss or are out of range. The 40k system just seems weird to me. Especially since a shot can scatter 10-12" beyond it's maximum range and still detonate, but if you aim even a fraction of an inch beyond its maximum range it just vanishes into the aether.

 vipoid wrote:


I don't mind template weapons, though I don't think torrent flamers should exist - since they just remove all the weaknesses flamers are supposed to have.

With Blasts, I think I prefer the Warmachine method - where you only scatter if you miss or are out of range. The 40k system just seems weird to me. Especially since a shot can scatter 10-12" beyond it's maximum range and still detonate, but if you aim even a fraction of an inch beyond its maximum range it just vanishes into the aether.

Well you know, the Warp is a finicky beast, it does so like to swallow ordnance whole which has the tenacity to aim beyond its Omnissiah-appointed range.

Maybe that's what's responsible for the continually-exploding objectives; all those shots which tried aiming too far, reappearing over top of something important because reasons.

Last night I brought 50 grey hunters at least 45 had just bolters and... yeah I'm going to try to put more special weapons with them. I played against blood angels and yeah.... they didn't do much. On the plus side, his didn't do anything against me either. But he brought more special weapons than me and wiped me away.

Sorry to hear that. As sorry as I ever am when the SW lose, that is. Sounds like you don't have their obnoxious song and dance quite down yet, though. Go with double plasma in every squad and see if that works better for you. Look at it this way: it's a moral victory just from making BA shoot you to death, because you shut down their assaults pretty much by existing.

 Filch wrote:
5000 cultist generating 10,000 attacks in melee or 5000 las gun shots and 30 Black Templar tactical marines make all their armor saves thanks to plot armor.

If it was 300 Marines then I would absolutely believe it like king Leonidas and his 300 Spartan Body Guards defeating a horde of 5000. But just 30?

Fortunately game mechanics do not equal fluff.

Imagine Leonidas and friends.

Now make them huge.

Now give them super-space-armour.

Now give them obscenely large caliber rapid-fire explosive weapons.

RIP cultists.

What are you going to do with a lasgun against PA? Try to shoot through a ceramic material with a heat-based weapon? Please. You'd have to hit the eye to do anything useful, and even if the lasgun with its gak penetration manages to penetrate the armoured glass and destroy the eye, the Marine can fight on without both eyes thanks to autosenses.

So what are those poor, poor cultists going to do? Punch the PA until nothing but bloody ruin is left of their fists?

It's not plot armour. It's simply 40K =! IGhammer. The setting is filled to the brim with ludicriously lethal stuff that can kill human soldiers by the boatloads. It's part of the grimdark.

There is fluff of repeated lasgun hits defeating power armor, and power armor has numerous weak areas, not just the eyes but most joints (groin, neck, armpits, back of the knee, inner elbow, etc), often the lower abdomen has exposed components and/or is underarmored, the huge bulky and vulnerable power-backpack, etc. Not all areas are as equally well armored either, the massive shoulder pauldrons or breastplate will deflect a whole lot more than the helmet will. (much like in real life, you can get body armor that will protect against penetration by up to .308, but no helmet will stop even a 5.56 round, and even a 9mm that doesn't penetrate a helmet can take a combatant out of a fight).

Other, relatively common and simple weapons have been shown to be effective at killing Space Marines as well, there's a very clear instance in Storm of Iron where an Iron Warriors siege engineer is killed by a simple mortar.

Also, again, lets not forget the ultimate fate of Leonidas... (could only hold so much ground, was outflanked, encircled, and subsequently destroyed).

And I have a gazillion fluff examples of Marines tanking everything up to and including repeated Autocannon hits without being worse for wear. Or grenade bandoliers detonating at their feet, resulting in... intact armour.

But let's not start this dance again here.

Let us instead look to the Holy Graal (?) of fluff: The rulebook!

The entry for Space Marines say that while their numbers are few, they are nonetheless enough for any battlefield role.

Through sheer testosterone they manage to hold territory, apparently.

40K at its finest.

Martel732 wrote:
Sorry to hear that. As sorry as I ever am when the SW lose, that is. Sounds like you don't have their obnoxious song and dance quite down yet, though. Go with double plasma in every squad and see if that works better for you. Look at it this way: it's a moral victory just from making BA shoot you to death, because you shut down their assaults pretty much by existing.

Yeah my emphasis on boys over toys is starting to negatively impact me. He brought Mephiston who pretty much killed 20 guys and my warlord single handily and I was only able to cause 2 wounds since I had no powerfist with me. My reliance on basic weapons so I can bring more guys has a point of diminishing returns. One powerfist in the group would have easily taken that last wound off. Really cost me the game to only have chainswords.

With regard to 'boys over toys', I usually think of it as referring to less essential items. Special weapons always struck me as being pretty integral.

I see toys as being stuff more along the lines of Attack Squigs and such. Nice upgrades, but not essential to the model's role.

I think that's more "Boyz before toys" though.

 vipoid wrote:
I wish I could play one of these games where:

- Every single weapon is AP3 and S6+, so T4 and 3+ saves are both entirely irrelevant. Most of mine seem to be S3 AP-, but I'm guessing they don't count.

- There are no templates, blasts or anything else that tend to hurt numerous, light-infantry more than less-numerous medium- or heavy-infantry.

- Every single one of my guardsman - even when I'm running multiple platoons - can fit perfectly into ruins without making themselves highly vulnerable to blasts/flamers, blocking LoS from their HWTs and/or exposing their HWTs to enemy fire.

- My guardsmen can still always fit into ruins even when advancing. And, either my enemies use no blasts/flamers whatsoever, or else these ruins are so extensive that I can still spread out just fine. Also, apparently said ruins do not impede their mobility in any way (presumably I never roll anything but 6s when trying to move through cover).

- This extensive amount of ruins nevertheless does nothing to limit either my firing lanes or the movement of my vehicles.

The first game I played against Imperial Guard in third edition (if I recall correctly) he had a drop troops army that had more special weapons than I had models in my Space Wolf army. Sure, lasguns suck, but the lasguns are just a tax you take for your special and heavy weapons, and tanks of course. In 6th/7th you can always take Vets in Chimeras as your troop tax, while taking masses of tanks which are fairly immune to most Space Marines weapons. In a Marine army the bolters are a tax you take to get special and heavy weapons, but Guard will get twice as many specials as Marines for the same points.

There are blast weapons that hurt lightly armoured troops more than heavily armoured troops, that is true. However the blast weapons that kill heavily armoured troops also kill lightly armoured troops, so why take the ones that only hurt lightly armoured troops? The last time I saw a Whirlwind was three editions ago, and I was using it. Flamers do kill guardsmen (if they're not in Chimeras) but how is anyone getting close enough to light your guys up? Also, flamers might be taken by players who regularly play against Guard, but how often are they taken in a meta dominated by Marines. Plasma and melta are used to kill Marines, but do little more to Guardsmen than bolters do.

If you're playing pure infantry Guard, as you seem to be implying and big ups for you doing that, lack of cover could be a problem, but then you just saturate the board with more wounds than the other player can actually inflict in a typical game. If unlucky a Marine player can lose 40 Marines to 95 Guardsmen in one turn of shooting. A Guard player cannot lose 95 Guardsmen to 40 Marines in one turn of shooting.

So how do we fix bolters, we have basically established that bolters suck, (I disagree, but hey my lasguns "match" my units statline /pissed of sarcasm I hate it when marine players complain). All of my complaining about your complaining aside how the feth do we fix these underpowered guns?

 The Home Nuggeteer wrote:
So how do we fix bolters, we have basically established that bolters suck, (I disagree, but hey my lasguns "match" my units statline /pissed of sarcasm I hate it when marine players complain). All of my complaining about your complaining aside how the feth do we fix these underpowered guns?

I think it's obvious bolters need a boost for 0 point cost. I couldn't care less if a few niche units that can take bolters now become strong units as a result - by all means if they are capable to wielding a .75 cal rifle with exploding rounds then by all means they should be blowing stuff up. In all fairness bolters have be downright bad ever since I started playing over a decade ago. It occurred to me that the biggest downfall marines have (they are really the only units that matter using bolters) is gaining no advantage from cover vs small arms fire. So wouldn't it be fair that marines also don't grant cover for their own shots? Give all bolters a -1 cover save modifier. Is this really that insane? I mean a wave serpent gets a range 60" potential 7 shot str 7 gun with ignore cover (basically for free.)

Or, just reduce the cost of marines/

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Or, just reduce the cost of marines/

They've been trying that for five editions now, and it just doesn't work. Marines can only be so cheap because they have to be more expensive than units that are obviously inferior. A Battle Sister, for example, should not be more expensive than a Marine with the same equipment because she isn't as good. A guardsman cannot be as expensive as a Battle Sister, an Ork is obviously better than a Guardsman but worse than a Marine too.

Yet points spent on aspects that don't matter are a literal waste. If your Marine never gets into combat, then the points spent because their strength and initiative stats are better than those of a Battle Sister are wasted. If a Sister had toughness 4 she would be exactly as useful at range as a Space Marine is. Because they are "flexible" Marines pay for stats and wargear they are unlikely to use.

Tau pay for decent armour and one of the basic best guns in the game, and that's it. You don't want them in combat so you don't pay points for their non-existent combat ability. You just pay for what they do, which is shoot things. Necrons are much the same, you pay for their insane durability and their shooting power and again that's it. They might fold in combat, but good luck getting there.

Eldar, fragile? Sure, they're not tough, but again you only pay for what you want. You buy close combat aspect warriors if you want melee (nobody does) or you pay for ranged units and tanks (which everyone does).

Orks, strange as it may seem, do likewise. They might not have the best BS, but they do roll lots of dice. In 40k, as in every other Games Workshop game, he who rolls the most dice wins.

Tyranids demonstrate the Marine problem quite ably. They pay for having better than average melee ability, which doesn't matter for the first turn or two of the game. For a third of the game they don't do much except get shot at. They have to pay extra to engage in ranged shenanigans.

Daemons are good at melee, and make it work by breaking the rules the rest of the armies have to operate under. They also only pay for the stats they use.

Dark Eldar of course pay for speed, which unfortunately is one of the most worthless stats in an IGOUGO style game. To engage with the enemy they have to be in range of enemy retaliation and while they can dish out some damage, when targeted they fold like wet cardboard.

Chaos Marines are, of course, just Marines without ATSKNF and those handy Chapter traits. Take every bad thing about Marines, and then take away every good thing about Marines, and you have Chaos Marines.

I suspect there's really nothing we can do to make Marines "worth it" except perhaps double the points value of everything, make games twice as large, and then try to figure out exactly what each army is worth against every other. For example, starting with an army of a Captain, 10 terminators, 30 tactical marines and a devastator squad, and play them against an Imperial Guard army consisting of four full platoons over multiple games to see how they compare. If the Imperial Guard are consistently winning try adding a squad to the Marine side, if they're consistently losing try adding a platoon to the Guard. Eventually that'll give us a feel for what each unit is "worth" relative to all the others. We then ascribe some arbitrary points to each unit and compare them around the game table. Is 200 points of Marines equal to 200 points of Dark Eldar? No? Increase the numbers of Dark Eldar (or Marines) in 200 points. That's the kind of play-testing that I'm fairly sure GW doesn't do.

What if bolters get 1 extra shot? 2 at 24" and 3 at 12"?

Would more shots make it better?

If that idea doesnt work then what if we give every marine 2 bolters? If they can shoot a bolter one handed and hold a knife in the other then they could dual wield bolters like Cypher gunslinging pistols. I have seen plague marine modeled like that. Being given back gunstocks will allow holding and shooting 2 bolters like 2 sub machine guns.

What was this thing about bolters with barrage rule?

 The Home Nuggeteer wrote:
So how do we fix bolters, we have basically established that bolters suck, (I disagree, but hey my lasguns "match" my units statline /pissed of sarcasm I hate it when marine players complain). All of my complaining about your complaining aside how the feth do we fix these underpowered guns?

I know it's petty and all, but fun fact: I'm a guard player, and I love my lasguns. Throwing buckets of dice at things which are cheap works quite often; guardsmen are ludicrous cost effective for what they do, and I never feel I'm being punished for firing them.

With marines, firing that boltgun is effectively saying "I'm just not going to use half of what I'm paying for," as that high I and S don't matter, and you're a lot more vulnerable as most AP1/2/3 weapons on the tabletop are guns. That's the fundamental problem; a Marine is a theoretical generalist who is actively bad at everything, and is unable to reliably perform multiple roles.

As to making bolters better, I firmly reject the whole "make things cheaper" route GW seems to go with; that doesn't often solve the problem (now basic troops are so close to one another, the balance difference between only a few points is silly) and makes the game clunkier and slower with more and more models to manage, but of course fits GW's business model.

At any rate, making the bolter better would buff the frankly lacklustre line troops of three codexes right off the bat; CSM, C:SM (and their coloured variants) and the Sisters, and slightly improve Guard as they've got a fair number of bolt pistol/bolter options in there. A higher rate of fire would be nice, but what I'd ideally like to see is bolters, standard, to have different ammo types; not as good as the Sternguard ones, but something. Make the Kraken bolt the standard round (St 4 Ap4 30'') as a bolter is supposed to be one of the best AP rifles in the setting, and then have a St 4 Ap - Assault 2 variant for charging in, and a St 3 Ap - rapid fire ignores cover version. And, of course, have this in a universe with cover is a modifier to hit, not this stupid save system.

Make the weapon reflect its supposed flexibility, and the intended flexibility of the troops which carry it. These are purely ballpark ideas, with commensurate point increases after playtesting (crazy concept that, testing)

How about assault 2?

Wait! I missed most of the discussion... How was it determined that bolters suck? Like in any dice game there are tons of bad rolls and crappy luck can ruin anyone's day, but I love me my bolters. There are two things my Chaos marine army always has lots of... Bolters and sorcerers. As far as basic weapons go, they're nothing, absolutely nothing to write home about. But, like the humble marine, are simply solid. The Tau outrage them, the Eldar catapults can pseudo rend and the gauss can kill a landraider, but the humble boltgun is a solid, decent gun.

It doesn't do enough damage for the price you are paying per marine. Basically, due the models GW has put out there, decent = poor.

Martel732 wrote:
It doesn't do enough damage for the price you are paying per marine. Basically, due the models GW has put out there, decent = poor.

But then, surely the problem lies with those other models that are making decent units poor by comparison?

In which case, we should be trying to fix those units, rather than buffing marines for the umpteenth time.

We gonna change every model that small amounts of S4 shots suck against?

The problem is that most of the time, S4 is not substantially better than S3 and a list like IG gets 3 X as many shots and only one worse BS. The ceiling on marine firepower is incredibly low.

 Filch wrote:
What if bolters get 1 extra shot? 2 at 24" and 3 at 12"?

Would more shots make it better?

Yep. Even without a range increase, giving them extra shots would make them feel more worthwhile without making Marines the new OP unit. That or Shred.

Yeah that's fine, never give them AP4 tho

stripeydave wrote:
My IG infantry would kill for bolters... But they have lasguns, so they can't.

lol

Again, Shred would make them far and away the most powerful small arm in the game, when they're not supposed to be. Giving them an extra shot would largely do the same thing, making them superior to Fire Warriors in most instances in the shooting arena, even on a point for point basis, and exploding their relative value next to something like guardsmen on a point for point invested basis.

The bigger issue honestly is that they can't make use of the versatility of their statline as effectively as they used to. I think the big kick there was the changes to transport functionality resulting in having to sit in the open for a turn, shooting and being shot at, before one can initiate an assault, even if the transport was stationary. I think reverting to the 4E/5E rules on being allowed to assault out of stationary transports would resolve many of the issues people have with tac marines and assaults in general.