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Hulksmash wrote:
-Good all bike armies (no RW is not a good all bike army)

As a ravenwing player I beg to differ! But now I have to go buy typhoons, in 2500 pts of ravenwing I have not a single one

Wah Wah, boo hoo.

I like it. More flexibility.

scuddman wrote:Well, the army is very very good against classic mech armies. It's not a hard counter, but it's not necessarily an uphill battle either. You can't bubble wrap effectively to stop deepstriking cyclone termies..not really.

And the short range of most melta spam armies combined with deathwing placement + deep strike control means that melta spam armies really struggle to get in against the terminator alpha strike.

I used this type of army pretty often against eldar until Dark Angels/5th edition came out.

What beats lots of termies? Foot armies. Las/plas guys. Plasma cannon devestators. Lasguns. Cheap pieplates..like from a whirlwind or the new eldar spinner. Oblits do a great job.

Those are army types that we haven't seen in a while because of mech spam.

So if this does force many of the older list types to come out, was the simple errata release a bigger balancing factor for 5th edition than the codex releases thus far in your opinion?

It depends. I've been talking about scout bikes for a long time, but there seems to be alot of resistance to them.

People seem to be really excited about terminator alpha strike, so I imagine it will impact the meta. It remains to be seen how well this style of army will develop. Doublewing is not an army for the faint of heart. You'll ahve 20-25 models on the table tops...one screw up and a bad run of the dice on that critical first couple of turns and your army will implode.

But, what I figure will happen, is that the really good mech players will deliberately design hard counters to terminators. It's a simple transition for mech players to add plasma guns, lascannons, and plasma cannons. That's true for both razor and chimera spam. Last I checked, long fangs can take plasma cannons..which is a very hard counter..and can also take their own versions of terminators. Obviously IG have plenty of AP2 shooting and pieplates.

I do think this is a better balancing factor for 5th because it adds another army type that can compete against the top mech builds. I'm not saying that doublewing/crusader wing is better than mech. That is not true at all.
But what terminator armies do is circumvent alpha strike while delivering their own controlled mini alpha strike. The idea of a one dimensional "leafblower" army falls flat against it. Terminator armies are small and cover very little space, yet can move and shoot adequate heavy weapons. On top, the traditional antideepstrike strategies don't work very well against doublewing armies.

PBS...doublewing is fearless.
Mystics...cyclones have 48" range. I don't need to be anywhere near to be effective, and I can place the termies where I want.
Delaying your deepstrike...countered by deathwing assault.
Bubblewrapping...cyclones have 48" range. Ravenwing have scout...allowing terminators to be placed.

Adding 3++ and 2 shot cyclones finally gave the deathwing units the resilience and firepower they needed.

scubasteve04 wrote:Ok I admit I was furious when I saw the updates and QQed a bit. I am not trolling. A lot of people in this thread bring up valid points and the Vanilla marines are in fine shape and will always be competitive.

In my opinion though, they are still on the bottom of the barrel as far as the MEQ codexes go (C:SM, BA,BT,DA,SW) Even if its by a small 1% margin, they are still on the bottom. Scout bikes, thunderfires, relic blades, ironclads, storms for the nilla codex compared to expensive troops, transports, limiting FOC does not matter when you min-max everything that is good in the 4th ed codexs (75pt typhoons, 2x HW tank hunter terminators for BT, army wide 3++ for DA, ect) and take full advantage of the recent amendment.

My problem is DA/BT getting these updates to cyclone, SS, ect, without the points cost increase. The entire codex needs to be rebalanced before major updates like these can be implemented for balancing purposes. Why don't Tau, or Necrons, or any older codexes get amendments? GW is going overboard on MEQ, and its really getting boring to keep getting MEQ vs MEQ matchups on the tabletop.

I still love codex:space marines, and I will play them religiously since the day I started playing Salamanders.

They should pay 5th ed prices for the 5th ed cyclones, but it's not the end of the world that they don't. Even in a BT full 5 termie squad army we're only talking about 10 CSM in the entire army. That's 100 points out of over 1300 spent, which comes to less than a 10% discount off the 5 units. It's not that big of a deal.

ML spam has been around since space wolves were released. The excessive BT pwnage of mech is only bad news for mech, it's just not going to do much against other terminator based lists.

Codex Marines still have a monopoly on null zone, and because of that codex marines have null zone they actually have a leg up on any other codex's terminators in a terminator on terminator bash.

Nullzone + 30 assault terminators will beat DA Deathwing in CC
Nullzone + 30 assault terminators will beat BT ML spam tac termies in CC
Nullzone + 30 assault terminators will beat Logan Wing in CC
Nullzone + 30 assault terminators will beat BA assault termies in CC
Nullzone + 30 assault terminators will beat 30 CSM terminators in CC

scuddman wrote:Well, the army is very very good against classic mech armies. It's not a hard counter, but it's not necessarily an uphill battle either. You can't bubble wrap effectively to stop deepstriking cyclone termies..not really.

And the short range of most melta spam armies combined with deathwing placement + deep strike control means that melta spam armies really struggle to get in against the terminator alpha strike.

I used this type of army pretty often against eldar until Dark Angels/5th edition came out.

What beats lots of termies? Foot armies. Las/plas guys. Plasma cannon devestators. Lasguns. Cheap pieplates..like from a whirlwind or the new eldar spinner. Oblits do a great job.

Those are army types that we haven't seen in a while because of mech spam.

Massed thunderfire cannons, which outrange cyclones and slow these foot armies would be fun as well.

Except that thunderfire cannons have the survivability of a tissue.

Oh noes! The other MEQ codices got their equipment set to the standard of Vanilla marines! That's weird? They're completely different apart from the fact that they are the SAME!

So what if the other MEQ codices got updated? Vanilla marines still have great advantages. Besides, Vanilla marines were the best as soon as they came out, but before that MEQ codices were better. It's just a cycle. Besides, most 40K players are sick of the Vanilla marines being pretty much indestrutible, and so lavished on by GW.

Gavo wrote:Except that thunderfire cannons have the survivability of a tissue.

3+ cover is nothing to sneeze at, and it's a force multiplier for scouts in the same terrain piece (2+ cover with camo cloaks). Survivability is fine for a 100 point unit.

Gavo wrote:Except that thunderfire cannons have the survivability of a tissue.

Which is why you have multiple threats on the table and place them as far out of range as you can.

Considering units in a vacuum can lead you to making huge errors.

If there are plasma cannon devestators on the board, I'm pretty certain they get shot at first. (if not..please please shoot the thunderfire first. My devestators will love you long time.) The thunderfire will mostly get ignored. The terminator heavy army doesn't have a whole lot of cheapo shots that they can throw around.

scuddman wrote:If there are plasma cannon devestators on the board, I'm pretty certain they get shot at first. (if not..please please shoot the thunderfire first. My devestators will love you long time.) The thunderfire will mostly get ignored. The terminator heavy army doesn't have a whole lot of cheapo shots that they can throw around.

TFC will pay for it's self by nothing more than the simple act of giving plasma cannon devestators a 3+ cover against a 20+ missile per turn missile spam army. Now it takes 5.4 krak missile shots to kill a single devestator which will probably be an ablative wound.

Lemmie get this straight

You're comparing 1 army to 6 others. Picking the best parts of the 6 others your comparing the 1 army to. Showing how the specialized army in that one or two instances does it better than the 1 army, for all 6 competing armies across the board.

Then you're using this as evidence as to why that one army sucks?

Tell you what

Compare Tau
to
IG
Tyranids
DE
Eldar
Chaos
and Daemons

And see if you have the same thing happen.

If you do.

There's a flaw in your model.

The issue with plasma devs is that if the Terminators have a ride they're out of luck. For a several popular armies this seems to be a problem and will need to be addressed with lascannons or a switch to close range melta. My bikes will likely cry against plasma though.

I'm not sold on walking terminators, cyclones or not the AV 14 ride is nice and if played right might be able to avoid unnecessary losses that are critical in a low model count army. Deathwing Assault and getting 2 krak shots into rear or side armor is a definite bonus, but I don't know how much I like the idea of walking slow units across the board with only limited firepower in return. Might take care of mech, but seems to be of much more limited use against horde.

Correct me if I'm incorrect. This is theoryhammer and don't have the experience to back it up.

Valhallan42nd wrote:Massed thunderfire cannons, which outrange cyclones and slow these foot armies would be fun as well.

Except what kind of masochist wants to go through the pain and suffering of assembling 3 thunderfire cannons? That has to be one of the most frustrating kits since the old metal ork dread.

BAH! Dremels make short work of them.

I never noticed that my codex is weak compared to say, BA or SW. I usually crush them under foot too often to notice or care.

Luco wrote:The issue with plasma devs is that if the Terminators have a ride they're out of luck. For a several popular armies this seems to be a problem and will need to be addressed with lascannons or a switch to close range melta. My bikes will likely cry against plasma though.

I'm not sold on walking terminators, cyclones or not the AV 14 ride is nice and if played right might be able to avoid unnecessary losses that are critical in a low model count army. Deathwing Assault and getting 2 krak shots into rear or side armor is a definite bonus, but I don't know how much I like the idea of walking slow units across the board with only limited firepower in return. Might take care of mech, but seems to be of much more limited use against horde.

Correct me if I'm incorrect. This is theoryhammer and don't have the experience to back it up.

While this is true, mech spam beats landraider builds pretty hard. Just too many cheap melta shots. And then the squads inside the landraiders are whooping on 5 man squads or on guardsmen. Melta vets with 3 meltaguns pretty much hard counter mech land raider armies.

What makes mech armies crazy is that they're good against both other mech types, infantry, and hordes. They have some units that are good against them, but there isnt really a hard counter to them.
Anything that can stand up to a mechspam army has weak spots to other armies.

Deepstrike and foot terminators lose pretty bad to hordes of all variety. Powerfists are the wrong answers at killing hordes of boyz. IG..forget it. It's a bad matchup..period.

The FAQ update us the best thing GW has done since they stopped Jervis-hammer, and you whine about it? Troll

I'm guessing GW will see an increase in terminator + codex DA/BT sales now, and then they may actually learn to update their codexes with FAQ's, just like we always wanted

SM played for fun is most likely going to create weaker builds then SW, BA, BT & DA ...

... but if you take any time working with them then you build one of power builds normally revolving round a character. Heck normally Vulkan giving TL weapons to all and master crafted thunder-hammers.

scuddman wrote:If there are plasma cannon devestators on the board, I'm pretty certain they get shot at first. (if not..please please shoot the thunderfire first. My devestators will love you long time.) The thunderfire will mostly get ignored. The terminator heavy army doesn't have a whole lot of cheapo shots that they can throw around.

I agree with TFC's being ignored as well. The few times I've played against them, I've honestly never felt them being a huge impact in the game, at least in competitive lists. The first time I played against them was with my Bike Army list, and while their Subterranean shots were annoying, they never really impacted my game that much. MEQ's will get their regular saves against all of their firing modes as well.

That all said, I don't think TFC's are that effective against MEQ's in general. Stick to the Dakka Pred instead, or invest 20 more points for a Las/Autocannon Pred.

Now back on topic:

Scubasteve, I'm glad that you've (for lack of a better phrase) "calmed down" a bit on all this C:SM bashing. I agree with Tri, that if played casually, the builds do tend to be weaker (especially when certain lists are built around fluff), but from a competitive stand point, C:SM is, IMHO, still one of the best MEQ codices in the game. And don't worry, they'll get an update soon. I don't think it's fair that other codices get put on the backburner either, but GW knows that Vanilla marines are the "Flagship Army of 40K".

How does a company not support updating and revamping their strongest marketing item? The answer is simple: They don't. Does this mean that the Tau, Necron, and other races have their codices push back? Yes. Does it suck? Only if you play them. So the bottom line is:

KingCracker wrote:If you dont like a certain codex, stay the hell away from it, plain and simple.

QFT. Again.

scubasteve04 wrote:I still love codex:space marines, and I will play them religiously since the day I started playing Salamanders.

Vulcan lists are still quite competitive. The TL ability added to flamers and meltas is very solid. I don't think that the changes to the other codex's are going to make you lose every game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

augustus5 wrote:C:SM is by no means the worst.

Once people adjust to seeing 25-30 termies on the table they'll not be so fast to jam pack every special weapon option with melta and add in some plasma for balance.

My prediction is that within a year there won't be a ton of people still spamming terminators.

In the meantime, I'll be breaking out my terminator collection and spam some myself.

I also think that were going to see a lot more Null Zone libbies added to squads. This lowers the SS effect from 2/3 save to 45%, making them much more vunerable to AP2 fire. With only 5 wounds per termie squad, that will be their counter.

Other armies will also adjust. Eldar can move quickly. Dark Eldar can pour enough wounds that 1's will be rolled, etc...

For anyone that thinks that Vanilla Marines are the s0XX0r, they just won a 50 man Ironman tournament last weekend. Vulkan Marines.

And, they won Wargamescon, a 100+ person tournament.

So there you go.

Stop feeling bad and start looking for creative ways to use your dex in a new way. In an ever changing game, if you stay static, you will get passed up.

schadenfreude wrote:
Codex Marines still have a monopoly on null zone, and because of that codex marines have null zone they actually have a leg up on any other codex's terminators in a terminator on terminator bash.

Nullzone + 30 assault terminators will beat DA Deathwing in CC
Nullzone + 30 assault terminators will beat BT ML spam tac termies in CC
Nullzone + 30 assault terminators will beat Logan Wing in CC
Nullzone + 30 assault terminators will beat BA assault termies in CC
Nullzone + 30 assault terminators will beat 30 CSM terminators in CC

Aside from a Librarian and 30 Terminators costing only 1,300 points (Plus Shrike if your plan is to give them Fleet), why do we never see 30 Terminator builds (or 30 Sternguard + Pedro builds for that matter) dominating tournaments? Can you post up some battle report links here for us where people have run the 30 Terminator lists at all?

I'm not saying that it's horrible, just that it's hardly ever used and there's probably a reason for that beyond, "I don't feel like paying $300+ for 30 Terminators".

Yup CSM are the wosre, if you COMPARE ALL the OTHER SM CODEX at ONCE. When compared 1 on 1 the do just fine.

@Nuggz
I think no one has that many terminators! Haha.

But I played a 20 assault termie list with shrike and if we had not had a Wolfstar to fight them in combat, we would have gotten crushed. It is a Brutal list.

The release of BT in some ways has made codex SM better.

I'll use a 2000 scout/terminator list as an example:

Librarian in termie armor with a ss
Chaplian in termie armor
30 assault terminators mix th/ss and lc as desired (probably a 60/40)
25 scouts in 4 squads with 4ML, 4 teleport homers, and 20 camo cloaks

1995 points.
9 Kill points
5 scoring units, 4 of which have camo cloaks

The hard counter to this list is mech IG chimera spam, but now that BT is a hard counter to mech IG we're going to see a lot less mech IG and a lot more all terminator list. The list is a real beatstick when used against any other terminator list.

Mathhammer for the Chaplian's unit against other terminators.

Codex V BT: multi charge 10 v 10
16 LC swing on I4, 12 hit due to chaplain, 9 wound, 8/9 fail invos due to nullzone, 2 out of 10 BT terminators survive.
I1 BT swing 4 power fists, 2 hit, 1&2/3 wound, 1 & 1/9 fail a 3+ invo
Net result before codex TH swing is 8 dead BT and 1 dead codex marine
The 2 surviving BT now take 18 thunderhamer swings and get beaten to a pulp.

Codex V DA Deathwing: multi charge 10 v 10
16 LC swing on I4, 12 hit due to chaplain, 9 wound, 5/9 fail invos due to null zone, 5 out of 10 DA terminators survive.
DA swing back 10 attacks, 5 hit, 4 & 1/6 wound, 1 & 2/9 fail invos round up to 2.
Codex power fists 12 attacks, 9 hit, 7 & 1/2 hit, 6 & 1/4 wound round down to 6, wound allocation=CML get pasted with an 8/9 chance of failing their invos, 3 wounds onto the TH/SS, 1 & 2/3 fail invos leaving 1-2 TH/SS termies alive.
Net result from the 1st round of CC=8-9 dead DA, 2 dead codex marines.
12 LC will paste the 2 surviving DA on I4 before they can swing next round.

Space wolves will do almost as well as DA as they have a lot of I4 regular power weapon attacks, but very few storm shields so most of them would get shredded by the 9 lightning claw wounds. It's just really had to mathhammer against SW because they have a bazillion different ways they can equip their terminators.

Due to nullzone codex marines should come out on top in any termi on termi rumble.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

NuggzTheNinja wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:
Codex Marines still have a monopoly on null zone, and because of that codex marines have null zone they actually have a leg up on any other codex's terminators in a terminator on terminator bash.

Nullzone + 30 assault terminators will beat DA Deathwing in CC
Nullzone + 30 assault terminators will beat BT ML spam tac termies in CC
Nullzone + 30 assault terminators will beat Logan Wing in CC
Nullzone + 30 assault terminators will beat BA assault termies in CC
Nullzone + 30 assault terminators will beat 30 CSM terminators in CC

Aside from a Librarian and 30 Terminators costing only 1,300 points (Plus Shrike if your plan is to give them Fleet), why do we never see 30 Terminator builds (or 30 Sternguard + Pedro builds for that matter) dominating tournaments? Can you post up some battle report links here for us where people have run the 30 Terminator lists at all?

I'm not saying that it's horrible, just that it's hardly ever used and there's probably a reason for that beyond, "I don't feel like paying $300+ for 30 Terminators".

You rarely see them because mech IG is a hard counter to the list, and other heavy mech lists can give them a really hard time especially BA razorback spam. Now that BT are going to be on the tournament scene BT are a hard counter to mech IG and BA razorback spam, and we will start to see a lot less mech ig and razorback spam out there. The meta game changed overnight due to that BT list, and thus the codex marine 30 terminator list went from almost irrelevant to a top tier contender overnight.

Reecius wrote:@Nuggz
I think no one has that many terminators! Haha.

*Ahem*... Actually, I do... And while I have yet to field 30 in a Non-Apoc game, once I'm done with painting my last 10 Assault Terminators, I look forward to trying them in a regular game.

My personal take on the reason why I think we don't see that many Terminators in tournaments is for a few reasons:

1. "Comp Scores" are more of a deterrent factor in many tournaments now these days, and anyone who strolls up with 30 TH/SS Terminators (or some combination of them) is bound to get hit low in that category.

2. At 40 points/model, that's 1200 points minimum we're talking about being spent on 30 models. Most tournaments are usually around 1850, which leaves 650 points for at least 2 Troop choices and an HQ. Not to say that it's impossible to achieve, but now you're looking at a lot of Terminators that are going to be doing a lot of walking. Even with 1 Land Raider, you've got at least 25 who have no transport. And in a game where movement is vital, even 30 TH/SS Terminators will be hard pressed to walk that far and still be in strong enough numbers to fight in CC.

Anyways, I digress.... Please continue with your .......

Rurouni Benshin wrote:

Reecius wrote:@Nuggz
I think no one has that many terminators! Haha.

*Ahem*... Actually, I do... And while I have yet to field 30 in a Non-Apoc game, once I'm done with painting my last 10 Assault Terminators, I look forward to trying them in a regular game.

My personal take on the reason why I think we don't see that many Terminators in tournaments is for a few reasons:

1. "Comp Scores" are more of a deterrent factor in many tournaments now these days, and anyone who strolls up with 30 TH/SS Terminators (or some combination of them) is bound to get hit low in that category.

2. At 40 points/model, that's 1200 points minimum we're talking about being spent on 30 models. Most tournaments are usually around 1850, which leaves 650 points for at least 2 Troop choices and an HQ. Not to say that it's impossible to achieve, but now you're looking at a lot of Terminators that are going to be doing a lot of walking. Even with 1 Land Raider, you've got at least 25 who have no transport. And in a game where movement is vital, even 30 TH/SS Terminators will be hard pressed to walk that far and still be in strong enough numbers to fight in CC.

Anyways, I digress.... Please continue with your .......

That's why I would stick with scouts. As objective holders they can go to ground with camo cloaks for a 2+. Also if you wanted to deep strike the entire army the scouts can outflank. If you deep strike some of the army they can have teleport homers. They are inexpensive troops that seem to have a good synergy with assault termies.

schadenfreude wrote:That's why I would stick with scouts. As objective holders they can go to ground with camo cloaks for a 2+. Also if you wanted to deep strike the entire army the scouts can outflank. If you deep strike some of the army they can have teleport homers. They are inexpensive troops that seem to have a good synergy with assault termies.

Yes, all very true. However, it wouldn't really match the fluff with the way I was putting my list together... First Company Ultramarines don't really employ the use of Scouts, let alone Tactical Marines.