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Hi all.

So, to my utter surprise, after reading up on space marines, I really really got into them. I got enough together to make a balanced 1500 point army, I generally still play 5th edition but may dablle in 6th edition soonish (Im in a club, rather than a games workshop, so were all ok with sticking to 5th untill were all sorted out for 6th.)

Most of the others in the club play something other than space marines, including one of each variant (Blood angels, space wolves, grey knights), as well as pretty much every other army, so the thing is a huge mixup. However, I was advised that simply, vanilla space marines suck, or at least do not hold up as well as most of the other armies. Especially in the light of there being the other space marine variants that apparently, are just better. So, my question is, is a vanilla marine army still viable? Or am I up to seeing my lovely new army get wiped off the board time after time.

Im not a power player. Even if they suck, im sticking with marines for the time being, I like them. But are they bad? When compared to their varients, or other armies, or both?

Thanks all

They've always been the army that is right in the middle of balance, I believe. Also, they're updated regularly, so we can't really tell until the new codex is dropped soon, seeing as VIth just came out.

Vanilla Marines don't suck, but a lot of their tricks are better done by other Codices. Combat Tactics and/or Vulkan are still good though.

Sorry that I can't help too much more, but I'm not a Vanilla player myself, so I'm not too certain of what advice to give you other than that.

Vanilla marines suffered in 5th compared to the later 5th ed books. C: BA, GK, and SW all do what vanilla marines do for better and/or cheaper. Vanilla marines do have some solid SC that really help out the army (Vulkan jumps to mind), but generally they're overshadowed by the options in the other MEQ books.

What 6th ed will do to the armies remains to be seen, but overall, the other MEQ books are generally just 'better'. By better I mean simply that the similar units are cheaper or more effective in the other books, like the difference between a vanilla Tac squad, Grey hunters, BA Assault squads and whatever it is you decide to run as troops in the GK book.

They're not a bad army and will perform well against many of the other codices, but you'll find yourself in an uphill battle against BA, GK and SW.

Thats not too bad, as most of the players like to use non-space marine varients. Only one grey knight player, and one space wolf player, and one has a BA army that they never really use.

But on the topic, any rough estimate on when we might be seeing such updates? I know they released little blister-additions to all the codex's, but those were more just hotfixing rules to fit into 6th edition.

Check out the rumours thread in, well, News & Rumours...

Thank you, will do

Space Marines are a solid army and you should be alright. Sure they'll have a hard time competing with some other armies, but if you're all playing with the same mindset and nobody's going for really hardcore cutthroat lists you should be fine. As has been stated, they're generally around the middle in terms of power in this edition, like they always have been.

TH/SS are one of the best units in the game, just the rest of the army doesn't match up to the other space marine books

Almost everything vanilla marines can do is done better by one of the other codexes,
but that dosent mean their bad.
As stated above, Vulkan lists are mean (I run one), they also happen to, IMO anyway, be one of the best gunline marine armies out there.