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 Ailaros wrote:
And here we are again.

In order to have as much content as all the marine books put together, you're going to need to have a book that's nearly as long as all the marine books put together. You can do a tiny amount of consolidation (like not repeating the stat lines), but you're not going to have very much.

Almost all the vehicles, the overwhelmingly vast majority of weapons, most of the infantry and basic HQ types, all of the "what are space marines/history of the space marines" fluff, etc. The vast majority of it you can amalgamate.

And so we have another thread asking if marine players should spend $250 for a super-codex and all the non-marine players saying yes and all the marine players saying no.

And again, absolutely zero reason to believe this would be the case. Dozens of other gaming companies do $50 hardcover, full color books with 150-250 pages and have for years.

Why on earth a combined SM book would need to be $250, or even significantly more expensive than normal codex books (which have increased 250% in price in seven years anyway) is beyond me.

Or are we just assuming some sort of absurd insanity where GW would try to physically press all the existing books together and charge the same price as all of them individually?

I'm a marine player and I want this.

A general merge would make sense.
There are much more chapters out there than those given by the specific released codices.
I'd opt for a trait system which should allow to play any customized chapter.
Why should BA be treated differently as Bloodravens.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
And here we are again.

In order to have as much content as all the marine books put together, you're going to need to have a book that's nearly as long as all the marine books put together. You can do a tiny amount of consolidation (like not repeating the stat lines), but you're not going to have very much.

Almost all the vehicles, the overwhelmingly vast majority of weapons, most of the infantry and basic HQ types, all of the "what are space marines/history of the space marines" fluff, etc. The vast majority of it you can amalgamate.

And so we have another thread asking if marine players should spend $250 for a super-codex and all the non-marine players saying yes and all the marine players saying no.

And again, absolutely zero reason to believe this would be the case. Dozens of other gaming companies do $50 hardcover, full color books with 150-250 pages and have for years.

Why on earth a combined SM book would need to be $250, or even significantly more expensive than normal codex books (which have increased 250% in price in seven years anyway) is beyond me.

Or are we just assuming some sort of absurd insanity where GW would try to physically press all the existing books together and charge the same price as all of them individually?

On the size of the combined book I present my Space Marine army list. This is adapted from my rewrite and it's a little more granular than GW is ever likely to do but the combined book is absolutely possible (also some of this is homebrew brainstorm).

HQ (All characters are available with Jump Packs, Bikes, or Terminator armour in addition to the base power/artificer armour)
Command Character. Starts as a Force Commander (WS/BS5, 2 Wounds), Captain and Chapter Master are statline upgrades the same way the GK Grand Master is now. You need to be at least a Captain to have Relics.
Librarian. Starts as a Codicier with the current statline, the ML2 Epistolary is tied to a statline upgrade.
Chaplain. Starts as a regular Chaplain, Reclusiarch is a statline upgrade.
Techmarine. Starts with a two-wound specialist character statline, the Master of the Forge is a three-wound statline upgrade.
Character Dreadnaughts. Librarian, Chaplain, or super-Venerable (non-Special Character Bjorn/Murderfang, basically).
Command Squad/Honour Guard: Permit Bike/Jump Pack/Terminator command squads, but they have to be equipped the same as the character they're going with.

Troops
Tactical Squad. One heavy or special per five, let them specialize a bit more, and give them the 30k once per game shoot twice trick to make them more worth taking. Swap bolter for pistol/chainsword free for everyone, no bolter/pistol/chainsword.
Scout Squad. Pretty much unchanged.

Elites
Vanguard Veterans. Jump Packs, foot with transport, or Bikes, but always with melee weapons; two per five can have upgrade pistols or special weapons. If on Bikes they have Skilled Rider.
Sternguard Veterans. Pretty much unchanged.
Terminators. Let everyone mix and match melee and ranged weapons.
Dreadnaughts. Pretty much unchanged.
Centurion Assault. ...If you really want to...

Fast Attack
Assault Squad. Unchanged.
Land Speeders. Unchanged.
Stormtalon. Adjust its wargear so you can approximate the Nephilim.
Bikes. These do NOT have Skilled Rider.
Attack Bikes. I'm debating throwing open the doors and letting them have any heavy weapon on the sidecar because I can't think of a good reason they couldn't.
Scout Bikes. Unchanged.

Heavy Support
Devastators. Give them a better AA option than spending 25pts/gun on flakk missiles but otherwise unchanged.
Devastator Centurions. If you really want to.
Thunderfire Cannons. Should be accompanied by a revision to make the artillery rules less dumb but otherwise unchanged.
Predator. Put the relic loadouts in the core SM book, people might take it. Also give it some of the Baal Predator guns, we can't lose those entirely.
Whirlwind. More missile loadouts in the core book but otherwise unchanged.
Vindicator. Unchanged.
Hunter/Stalker. Yet again, if you really want to.
Land Raiders. The Helios at least should be in the core book, I can't be the only person who wants the Ares back, and the plain ordinary Godhammer needs some toy to make it workable.
Stormraven. Give it varying missile loads and we're pretty much there.

Dedicated Transports
Rhino. Unchanged, can be taken as FA empty.
Razorback. Unchanged, can be taken as FA empty.
Drop Pod. Maybe a slight price increase, can be taken as FA empty.
Land Speeder Storm (Scouts only). Can be taken as FA empty, maybe let you put more stuff in there to expand the options a bit. Fill one with allied Joakery and call it the monkey boat, you know.
Land Raiders (Terminators only). See Heavy Support for what happens when they're not a Dedicated Transport.

Chapter Supplemental Section
Every Chapter gets their Chapter Tactics, additional units, sometimes additional wargear, and their Special Characters. One formation unique to each
Ultramarines. Chapter Tactics pretty much as now, some sort of special Ultramarines Honour Guard replace normal Honour Guard (everyone is a character for challenges, unique power axes, stuff like that). Battle company detachment that has the same FOC as a normal CAD but lets them use their Chapter Tactics more often instead of the Warlord trait reroll.
White Scars. Chapter Tactics pretty much as now, elite bike unit replaces Vanguard Veterans (automatic hit and run success, power lances, surprise attack makes their first shot of the game better somehow, choose where they come on from outflanking). Special detachment that's got lots of FA and lets all Bikes in your army turbo-boost and assault in the same turn one turn per game.
Imperial Fists. Chapter Tactics pretty much as now, unique Sternguard unit that's got special-ammo heavy bolters, option for boarding shields on power-armoured infantry. Special detachment that has additional Fortification slots and gains bonus VP if the other team does not have Linebreaker at the end of a mission.
Black Templars. Chapter Tactics pretty much as now, unique Crusader Squads replace Tactical/Scout squads. They need some kind of buff to compensate for losing the fusillade on Tac Marines, maybe BT units can assault out of Rhinos. Special detachment that has lots of Troops slots and gives them the old fail-Morale-test-run-forward rule back.
Iron Hands. Chapter Tactics pretty much as now, unique Immortals squad comes with better FNP, maybe Terminator-armour Sergeants. Special detachment that requires a lot of Dreadnaughts minimum and makes the FNP roll better.
Salamanders. Chapter Tactics pretty much as now, unique Terminator squad that puts combi-weapons or twin-linked special weapons on folks. Special detachment that has a lot of Elites, lets master-crafted weapons reroll any roll to hit instead of just one, and gives Salamanders characters EW.
Raven Guard. Chapter Tactics pretty much as now plus across-the-board Night Fighting, unique Saboteur elite power-armoured sniper/infiltrator unit that has a pregame hits mechanic and minefields. Special detachment that lets the Raven Guard make it night for longer, impose penalties to enemy Reserves rolls, and force the other guy to reroll the scatter dice for Deep Strikers.
Dark Angels. Lots of stuff to approximate but I'll try. Across the board Stubborn, the Deathwing rules, and Scouts on all Bikes/Land Speeders would be the , Deathwing Knights and Black Knights are the unique units and are either Elites or replace Command Squads/Honour Guard. The stasis bomb on a Storm Talon to approximate a Dark Talon, the stealth bubble on a Land Speeder Storm to be the Darkshroud, and teleport homers on bike sergeants could work as wargear upgrades. Two formations instead of one, one Ravenwing granting turbo-boost/shoot once per game and the other Deathwing granting a bonus VP for slay the warlord, negative VP for not getting slay the warlord, and Precision Shots to Deathwing units.
Blood Angels. Furious Charge across the board is one part of the Chapter Tactics, the other is Descent of Angels (scatter 1d6 Deep Striking). Unique units are Death Company and Sanguiniary Priests, Vanguard Veterans and Jump Pack-equipped Honour Guard/Command Squads can have Angelius boltguns and Glaives Encarmine, and they get a formation that lets them start rolling Reserves turn one and imposes a penalty to shoot any BA unit that Deep Strikes.
Space Wolves. Counter-attack across the board is one part of the Chapter Tactics, not sure what the other would be but it's got to be something. Blood Claws (with the option to purchase bikes/jump packs and become Fast Attack) replace Bikes, Assault Marines, and Scouts, add Thunderwolves. The airplanes make more sense to me as wargear conversions on a Caestus or a Storm Eagle if we're standardizing, not sure where that puts them in relation to the normal book.

This is not all the way comprehensive and it's more likely GW would cut everyone back to just Chapter Tactics or cut Chapter Tactics back to one rule than giving everyone big Chapter Tactics plus adding extra units like this, but it's not an impossible problem and wouldn't result in a two-hundred-dollar bloated book (unless you're going to pay for the super-ultra-deluxe edition, of course).

Wow your suggestions for DA would really screw up my army lists and tactics. Gone are my maces gone are my banners and that's just to start with!

I love the fact that everyone spends their time complaining that the "special snow flake" chapters are not competitive and several people like to mock the Dark Angels specifically yet seem to have a problem with us having our own book. Why are you so threatened by this?

We pay the money for the codex, we pay the money for the lovely models and we pay the price for having a less competitive army. But despite all of that there are still loads of us. Why is there a need for my hobby to lose its flavour? what exactly are the advantages to other players?

Would GW make more money from this? Probably not if they don't have as many books to sell (yes I know we would all have to buy the combined codex but I know several players who play snow flake and non snow flake marines and have both books) and there would be much less incentive to buy specific model kits over generic ones.

I just can't understand why there is a problem with separate codex books...

Because half the release schedule, probably literally, is space marine Codexes being updated. If it was one book, other armies would have more room for releases. Also, Chaos factions are more different than the different SM chapters are, yet they get one book, while SM get what, 4? Why should they get special treatment like that?

To answer a question with a question, if they did it properly, you didn't lose many options, and they priced it reasonably, what would be the problem with one book...

 Jazzhands wrote:
Wow your suggestions for DA would really screw up my army lists and tactics. Gone are my maces gone are my banners and that's just to start with!

Who's to say all of that will survive another DA codex in the first place? The Banner of bolter-spam and Maces certainly aren't longstanding iconic DA wargear that have been there through multiple iterations of codex books and editions. Maces certainly weren't different from anything else for 14 years and a large number of editions before that. These things come and go.

It's exactly minutiae like this that people get over-fixated on when that might not survive a new edition or new codex intact anyway that make the conversation about combining Marine books far more frustrating than they need to be.

Lets face it Chaos need some love. The answer is not to take what little love other factions get (again thinking of DA) and reduce it but to bring out more for Chaos. it's not like GW wouldn't make money from it.

I can see your point about time for new stuff coming out but as GW seem to have moved up their release time scale they could easily fit it in.

Plus I don't mind if there are more chaos player to use my inner circle rules and special chaos smashing weapons against. They are supposed to be the arch enemy after all


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Jazzhands wrote:
Wow your suggestions for DA would really screw up my army lists and tactics. Gone are my maces gone are my banners and that's just to start with!

Who's to say all of that will survive another DA codex in the first place? The Banner of bolter-spam and Maces certainly aren't longstanding iconic DA wargear that have been there through multiple iterations of codex books and editions. Maces certainly weren't different from anything else for 14 years and a large number of editions before that. These things come and go.

It's exactly minutiae like this that people get over-fixated on when that might not survive a new edition or new codex intact anyway that make the conversation about combining Marine books far more frustrating than they need to be.

This is very true but with an individual codex there is much more room and chance that they will keep this flavour.
As the last time I played before 7th was 1st I have to admit coming back to the angels I was pleased with these additions. And while I accept that they might be new as regards codex updates I'm not keen on the idea they are streamlined out in a mega codex.

That said I wouldn't throw a table flipping huff and refuse to play my angels. They are my army and for good or bad I would play them. It all depends on what kind of game you are looking for. I played a super competitive player for the first time last week (3 necron flyers in a 1000 points game!) and had nowhere near as much fun as my fluff based games. I guess at the end of the day that is why I love my DA codex. it isn't competitive but its unique nature shines through. That is why I want to keep it.

The big advantage I see is if the books were merged, and done halfway decently, it would establish a precedent for more diverse codexes.

To be quite frank, if you're not playing SM you're avenue for variation and customization is extremely limited, especially those armies which are supposed to be very diverse like the Imperial Guard, Chaos Space Marines, Orks and so on. Marines get whole unneccesary books for subfactions (and books on subfactions of their subfactions), whereas the Guard have to be happy with a picture of regiments which aren't Cadians, same with Orks and Chaos gets marks which are supposed to represent the bewildering array of Chaos permutations.

Each individual Marine book, save the vanilla one, offers very little fluff-based customization, and very little to represent successors of these other chapters. They are very specifically for "Blood Angels," or "Dark Angels," with absolutely zero capacity to represent Lamenters, Guardians of the Covenant, or anything like that. Dark Angels are especially guilty of that, as the only way to play raven/deathwing is with Dark Angels specific characters; there's no bike captains, no generic deathwing leaders, on top of the lack of chapter masters or any kind of variance.

With a merged codex, as it is true, even if you include every single unique rule/wargear even at this state, it wouldn't take up more than a half-dozen pages in a codex, would allow a great deal more customization, and would, I hope, curb future ridiculousness. I would then hope that such a model could be applied to other armies; I know I'll never see the regiment builder again, but Guard could get a couple variants in the codex; Steel Legion, Tallarn, Mordian, etc with a few special rules and units unique FOC for them, do the same deal with Chaos; give the legions some love, give us some Ork Klans, etc.

Maybe then the codexes would actually have decent value, as the only one I own that I consider anywhere close to worth any money is the vanilla marine one. Also, amalgamated books, and developed books along these lines would provide excellent model fodder for GW; they're clearly running out of ideas for the codexes as is (Taurox, DJ speeder, Dinobots, Centurions, etc) and establishing a precedent for subfactions represented within the codex will give them all sorts of options; the old Guard lines, Legion-specific units, units for the other 1st founding chapters and so on without resorting to the incredibly dumb designs of late.

I would be happy to give up my DA codex if I could bring my 1980's Dinobots to the table.

Grimlock would kick ass!

That said I see all your points though I hope you can see why DA BA etc players are upset at the idea.

I think the sad truth is that GW will never be able to keep the customer satisfied and often don't seem to be even trying.

Against.
Luckily GW is never going to do this.

Experiment 626 wrote:
Absolutely not...

Not only would it destroy most, if not all of the flavour of the other 'big 4' chapters, but there would be no chance in hell of ever properly balancing the thing.
In the end, anyone who plays the non-Vanilla Chapters would be unfairly punished just to please a vocal minority, while the power gamers would simply have a field day trolling opponents with a broken as **** pile of gak.

Judging by the poll, it's not a "minority". There's no reason your snowflake Mary Sues have to stop being snowflake Mary Sues, either, or that they can't be balanced.

I'd personally enjoy seeing a central "power armor" book with supplements/formation dataslates for each chapter with some alternate unit swaps, a unique artifact table, some special characters, and stuff like that (like Farsight for Tau level of new stuff). I'd also like to see Chaos SM being done by supplement too honestly, that would help the problem of the loyalist space marines having all these "relics from the heresy" that the chaos marines somehow don't have even though they still use more heresy tech than the loyalists do.

Crazyterran wrote:I'm a marine player and I want this.

I like the whole IoM and I don't want this.

ImAGeek wrote:

If it was one book, other armies would have more room for releases.

Releases don't depend on specific codices. So far we have ..... in 7th ed... how many SM ?

ImAGeek wrote:Also, Chaos factions are more different than the different SM chapters are, yet they get one book, while SM get what, 4? Why should they get special treatment like that?

Points at 3rd ed SM vs 3rd ed CSM.
We could merge them too. A few rewrites and done.

ImAGeek wrote:To answer a question with a question, if they did it properly, you didn't lose many options, and they priced it reasonably, what would be the problem with one book...

This is 40k general discussion. The company to write and publish this would be Games Workshop. So.....


I'd prefer to wait and see how it goes for GW's Fantasy line of products before I'd guess if I was fine with them merging things.

 Jazzhands wrote:
Wow your suggestions for DA would really screw up my army lists and tactics. Gone are my maces gone are my banners and that's just to start with!

Unique relics for each army, and the Deathwing Knights were in the appendix section.

The banners are going to be first on the chopping block next book we get, you realize.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jazzhands wrote:
I would be happy to give up my DA codex if I could bring my 1980's Dinobots to the table.

Grimlock would kick ass!

That said I see all your points though I hope you can see why DA BA etc players are upset at the idea.

I think the sad truth is that GW will never be able to keep the customer satisfied and often don't seem to be even trying.

I am a DA player, I also play other armies and I think four separate Codexes with as much overlap as they have is a dumb idea.

 1hadhq wrote:

Crazyterran wrote:I'm a marine player and I want this.

I like the whole IoM and I don't want this.

ImAGeek wrote:

If it was one book, other armies would have more room for releases.

Releases don't depend on specific codices. So far we have ..... in 7th ed... how many SM ?

ImAGeek wrote:Also, Chaos factions are more different than the different SM chapters are, yet they get one book, while SM get what, 4? Why should they get special treatment like that?

Points at 3rd ed SM vs 3rd ed CSM.
We could merge them too. A few rewrites and done.

ImAGeek wrote:To answer a question with a question, if they did it properly, you didn't lose many options, and they priced it reasonably, what would be the problem with one book...

This is 40k general discussion. The company to write and publish this would be Games Workshop. So.....


I'd prefer to wait and see how it goes for GW's Fantasy line of products before I'd guess if I was fine with them merging things.

It's also a hypothetical discussion, it's never going to happen. Hypothetically, it could be handled well, in which case I don't see any problems with it. Forge World have proven it's doable. And there's no point pointing at what, 4 editions ago? Because that has very little bearing on the state of things as they are now.

 Jazzhands wrote:
Wow your suggestions for DA would really screw up my army lists and tactics. Gone are my maces gone are my banners and that's just to start with!

I love the fact that everyone spends their time complaining that the "special snow flake" chapters are not competitive and several people like to mock the Dark Angels specifically yet seem to have a problem with us having our own book. Why are you so threatened by this?

We pay the money for the codex, we pay the money for the lovely models and we pay the price for having a less competitive army. But despite all of that there are still loads of us. Why is there a need for my hobby to lose its flavour? what exactly are the advantages to other players?

Would GW make more money from this? Probably not if they don't have as many books to sell (yes I know we would all have to buy the combined codex but I know several players who play snow flake and non snow flake marines and have both books) and there would be much less incentive to buy specific model kits over generic ones.

I just can't understand why there is a problem with separate codex books...

Because they are jealous GW spends so much time on SPEHS MAHREENS

For the record, I had a Dark Angels army, my very first 40k army, and got rid of them with the advent of the 6th edition book. They had become caricature, in an effort to justify their unique codex. A local Space Wolves player since, well, forever, who had endured the Thunderwolf with stoicism and grace boxed away his army in shame with the advent of Murderfang and Logan Claus.

The books being separate isn't even really the main problem; it's the constant enforcement and expansion on the ludicrous, ridiculous and caricature to justify their seperate books, and that the byprouct of that is a release cycle dominated by Space Marines. If GW had let these marines variants be, and used their releases to release re-dos of various older kits and conversion kits, you know, smaller releases, rather than adding Murderfang, the Flying Shoebox, Logan Claus, Ravendeathdarkwing and so on, the fact that they had seperate books wouldn't bother me all that much, still a bit unnecessary, but not something which would actively irk me, especially when armies still desperately in need of some diversity, backed up and encouraged by decades of fluff get nothing, while Light Blue Marines and Red Marines and Bone/Black Marines (lord knows the current dex doesn't want you to play Green Marines that aren't the Dakkabanner) keep getting increasingly bizarre, nonsensical, ugly and unprecedented stuff "which was there all along," in an effort to make them more different.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
For the record, I had a Dark Angels army, my very first 40k army, and got rid of them with the advent of the 6th edition book. They had become caricature, in an effort to justify their unique codex. A local Space Wolves player since, well, forever, who had endured the Thunderwolf with stoicism and grace boxed away his army in shame with the advent of Murderfang and Logan Claus.

The books being separate isn't even really the main problem; it's the constant enforcement and expansion on the ludicrous, ridiculous and caricature to justify their seperate books, and that the byprouct of that is a release cycle dominated by Space Marines. If GW had let these marines variants be, and used their releases to release re-dos of various older kits and conversion kits, you know, smaller releases, rather than adding Murderfang, the Flying Shoebox, Logan Claus, Ravendeathdarkwing and so on, the fact that they had seperate books wouldn't bother me all that much, still a bit unnecessary, but not something which would actively irk me, especially when armies still desperately in need of some diversity, backed up and encouraged by decades of fluff get nothing, while Light Blue Marines and Red Marines and Bone/Black Marines (lord knows the current dex doesn't want you to play Green Marines that aren't the Dakkabanner) keep getting increasingly bizarre, nonsensical, ugly and unprecedented stuff "which was there all along," in an effort to make them more different.

So GW put out some new models, you don't like it, therefore the separate codices have to go?

Seriously. SM will and always will be the best selling armies for GW, with variants being a close second. Don't get me wrong, I think the Logan Claus model is ridciulous, but I'd rather see them push out new ideas than keep rehashing old kits. I'm sorry you live in the past, but that's no reason to want to handicap current players.

Also, speaking of, what releases as far as BA and DA make them "caricatures and ludicrous"? Most people I know like the current DA and BA models because it adds some difference to the models rather than just having red or green marines.

Yes, *with* the caveat that there was a proper Trait System put in place for it.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
And here we are again.

In order to have as much content as all the marine books put together, you're going to need to have a book that's nearly as long as all the marine books put together. You can do a tiny amount of consolidation (like not repeating the stat lines), but you're not going to have very much.

Almost all the vehicles, the overwhelmingly vast majority of weapons, most of the infantry and basic HQ types, all of the "what are space marines/history of the space marines" fluff, etc. The vast majority of it you can amalgamate.

And so we have another thread asking if marine players should spend $250 for a super-codex and all the non-marine players saying yes and all the marine players saying no.

And again, absolutely zero reason to believe this would be the case. Dozens of other gaming companies do $50 hardcover, full color books with 150-250 pages and have for years.

Why on earth a combined SM book would need to be $250, or even significantly more expensive than normal codex books (which have increased 250% in price in seven years anyway) is beyond me.

Or are we just assuming some sort of absurd insanity where GW would try to physically press all the existing books together and charge the same price as all of them individually?

On the size of the combined book I present my Space Marine army list. This is adapted from my rewrite and it's a little more granular than GW is ever likely to do but the combined book is absolutely possible (also some of this is homebrew brainstorm).

HQ (All characters are available with Jump Packs, Bikes, or Terminator armour in addition to the base power/artificer armour)
Command Character. Starts as a Force Commander (WS/BS5, 2 Wounds), Captain and Chapter Master are statline upgrades the same way the GK Grand Master is now. You need to be at least a Captain to have Relics.
Librarian. Starts as a Codicier with the current statline, the ML2 Epistolary is tied to a statline upgrade.
Chaplain. Starts as a regular Chaplain, Reclusiarch is a statline upgrade.
Techmarine. Starts with a two-wound specialist character statline, the Master of the Forge is a three-wound statline upgrade.
Character Dreadnaughts. Librarian, Chaplain, or super-Venerable (non-Special Character Bjorn/Murderfang, basically).
Command Squad/Honour Guard: Permit Bike/Jump Pack/Terminator command squads, but they have to be equipped the same as the character they're going with.

Troops
Tactical Squad. One heavy or special per five, let them specialize a bit more, and give them the 30k once per game shoot twice trick to make them more worth taking. Swap bolter for pistol/chainsword free for everyone, no bolter/pistol/chainsword.
Scout Squad. Pretty much unchanged.

Elites
Vanguard Veterans. Jump Packs, foot with transport, or Bikes, but always with melee weapons; two per five can have upgrade pistols or special weapons. If on Bikes they have Skilled Rider.
Sternguard Veterans. Pretty much unchanged.
Terminators. Let everyone mix and match melee and ranged weapons.
Dreadnaughts. Pretty much unchanged.
Centurion Assault. ...If you really want to...

Fast Attack
Assault Squad. Unchanged.
Land Speeders. Unchanged.
Stormtalon. Adjust its wargear so you can approximate the Nephilim.
Bikes. These do NOT have Skilled Rider.
Attack Bikes. I'm debating throwing open the doors and letting them have any heavy weapon on the sidecar because I can't think of a good reason they couldn't.
Scout Bikes. Unchanged.

Heavy Support
Devastators. Give them a better AA option than spending 25pts/gun on flakk missiles but otherwise unchanged.
Devastator Centurions. If you really want to.
Thunderfire Cannons. Should be accompanied by a revision to make the artillery rules less dumb but otherwise unchanged.
Predator. Put the relic loadouts in the core SM book, people might take it. Also give it some of the Baal Predator guns, we can't lose those entirely.
Whirlwind. More missile loadouts in the core book but otherwise unchanged.
Vindicator. Unchanged.
Hunter/Stalker. Yet again, if you really want to.
Land Raiders. The Helios at least should be in the core book, I can't be the only person who wants the Ares back, and the plain ordinary Godhammer needs some toy to make it workable.
Stormraven. Give it varying missile loads and we're pretty much there.

Dedicated Transports
Rhino. Unchanged, can be taken as FA empty.
Razorback. Unchanged, can be taken as FA empty.
Drop Pod. Maybe a slight price increase, can be taken as FA empty.
Land Speeder Storm (Scouts only). Can be taken as FA empty, maybe let you put more stuff in there to expand the options a bit. Fill one with allied Joakery and call it the monkey boat, you know.
Land Raiders (Terminators only). See Heavy Support for what happens when they're not a Dedicated Transport.

Chapter Supplemental Section
Every Chapter gets their Chapter Tactics, additional units, sometimes additional wargear, and their Special Characters. One formation unique to each
Ultramarines. Chapter Tactics pretty much as now, some sort of special Ultramarines Honour Guard replace normal Honour Guard (everyone is a character for challenges, unique power axes, stuff like that). Battle company detachment that has the same FOC as a normal CAD but lets them use their Chapter Tactics more often instead of the Warlord trait reroll.
White Scars. Chapter Tactics pretty much as now, elite bike unit replaces Vanguard Veterans (automatic hit and run success, power lances, surprise attack makes their first shot of the game better somehow, choose where they come on from outflanking). Special detachment that's got lots of FA and lets all Bikes in your army turbo-boost and assault in the same turn one turn per game.
Imperial Fists. Chapter Tactics pretty much as now, unique Sternguard unit that's got special-ammo heavy bolters, option for boarding shields on power-armoured infantry. Special detachment that has additional Fortification slots and gains bonus VP if the other team does not have Linebreaker at the end of a mission.
Black Templars. Chapter Tactics pretty much as now, unique Crusader Squads replace Tactical/Scout squads. They need some kind of buff to compensate for losing the fusillade on Tac Marines, maybe BT units can assault out of Rhinos. Special detachment that has lots of Troops slots and gives them the old fail-Morale-test-run-forward rule back.
Iron Hands. Chapter Tactics pretty much as now, unique Immortals squad comes with better FNP, maybe Terminator-armour Sergeants. Special detachment that requires a lot of Dreadnaughts minimum and makes the FNP roll better.
Salamanders. Chapter Tactics pretty much as now, unique Terminator squad that puts combi-weapons or twin-linked special weapons on folks. Special detachment that has a lot of Elites, lets master-crafted weapons reroll any roll to hit instead of just one, and gives Salamanders characters EW.
Raven Guard. Chapter Tactics pretty much as now plus across-the-board Night Fighting, unique Saboteur elite power-armoured sniper/infiltrator unit that has a pregame hits mechanic and minefields. Special detachment that lets the Raven Guard make it night for longer, impose penalties to enemy Reserves rolls, and force the other guy to reroll the scatter dice for Deep Strikers.
Dark Angels. Lots of stuff to approximate but I'll try. Across the board Stubborn, the Deathwing rules, and Scouts on all Bikes/Land Speeders would be the , Deathwing Knights and Black Knights are the unique units and are either Elites or replace Command Squads/Honour Guard. The stasis bomb on a Storm Talon to approximate a Dark Talon, the stealth bubble on a Land Speeder Storm to be the Darkshroud, and teleport homers on bike sergeants could work as wargear upgrades. Two formations instead of one, one Ravenwing granting turbo-boost/shoot once per game and the other Deathwing granting a bonus VP for slay the warlord, negative VP for not getting slay the warlord, and Precision Shots to Deathwing units.
Blood Angels. Furious Charge across the board is one part of the Chapter Tactics, the other is Descent of Angels (scatter 1d6 Deep Striking). Unique units are Death Company and Sanguiniary Priests, Vanguard Veterans and Jump Pack-equipped Honour Guard/Command Squads can have Angelius boltguns and Glaives Encarmine, and they get a formation that lets them start rolling Reserves turn one and imposes a penalty to shoot any BA unit that Deep Strikes.
Space Wolves. Counter-attack across the board is one part of the Chapter Tactics, not sure what the other would be but it's got to be something. Blood Claws (with the option to purchase bikes/jump packs and become Fast Attack) replace Bikes, Assault Marines, and Scouts, add Thunderwolves. The airplanes make more sense to me as wargear conversions on a Caestus or a Storm Eagle if we're standardizing, not sure where that puts them in relation to the normal book.

This is not all the way comprehensive and it's more likely GW would cut everyone back to just Chapter Tactics or cut Chapter Tactics back to one rule than giving everyone big Chapter Tactics plus adding extra units like this, but it's not an impossible problem and wouldn't result in a two-hundred-dollar bloated book (unless you're going to pay for the super-ultra-deluxe edition, of course).

I think a combination of what GW is doing and your idea is the perfect way to go.
A standard Space Marine codex like yours and the current one. About 3-4 special units per Chapter Tactic, and then we have the generic Relics. After that, we have supplements for additional units per Chapter Tactic, with different FOC's and all that special junk, and then additional relics for those.
It definitely can work, but the question is whether or not GW would out in that effort. I certainly would...

I think they had plenty of character in the books they had for 2nd edition. Space Marines, Space Wolves, Angels of Death. All other marine armies (not counting Grey Knights, shudder) can easily be run as exceptions to the rules of each of those three books.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Space Marines Ultramarines, Space Wolves, Angels of Death. All other marine armies (not counting Grey Knights, shudder) can easily be run as exceptions to the rules of each of those three books.

Fixed that for you.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
For the record, I had a Dark Angels army, my very first 40k army, and got rid of them with the advent of the 6th edition book. They had become caricature, in an effort to justify their unique codex. A local Space Wolves player since, well, forever, who had endured the Thunderwolf with stoicism and grace boxed away his army in shame with the advent of Murderfang and Logan Claus.

The books being separate isn't even really the main problem; it's the constant enforcement and expansion on the ludicrous, ridiculous and caricature to justify their seperate books, and that the byprouct of that is a release cycle dominated by Space Marines. If GW had let these marines variants be, and used their releases to release re-dos of various older kits and conversion kits, you know, smaller releases, rather than adding Murderfang, the Flying Shoebox, Logan Claus, Ravendeathdarkwing and so on, the fact that they had seperate books wouldn't bother me all that much, still a bit unnecessary, but not something which would actively irk me, especially when armies still desperately in need of some diversity, backed up and encouraged by decades of fluff get nothing, while Light Blue Marines and Red Marines and Bone/Black Marines (lord knows the current dex doesn't want you to play Green Marines that aren't the Dakkabanner) keep getting increasingly bizarre, nonsensical, ugly and unprecedented stuff "which was there all along," in an effort to make them more different.

THIS

So much THIS.

They've taken what was interesting and unique about the factions and run with it to the point of parody in the effort to justify their separate existence.


The Space Wolves are the best example of this. Ulrik's original claim to bad-assdom was that he killed three World Eaters in close combat by himself. It was impressive, reflective of his character, yet believable. Then they got into absurd crap like Space Wolves riding actual wolves, firing artillery by smell (then rushing forward said artillery to see the results, putting their artillery in danger and removing the point and purpose of said artillery), crashing Thunderhawks for giggles, etc.

Wonderwolf wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Space Marines Ultramarines, Space Wolves, Angels of Death. All other marine armies (not counting Grey Knights, shudder) can easily be run as exceptions to the rules of each of those three books.

Fixed that for you.

No, I wrote it deliberately that way it because I never liked the name when it dealt with all codex compliant vanilla chapters (like BT and Salamanders were back then).

When it comes to BA and DA I think the similarities far out weigh the distinctions. Even if they were outright merged they could each be handled simply as supplements rather than standalone books and accomplish the same amount.

 aka_mythos wrote:
When it comes to BA and DA I think the similarities far out weigh the distinctions. Even if they were outright merged they could each be handled simply as supplements rather than standalone books and accomplish the same amount.

I find it funny people are all over the merges saying that BA and DA could be covered with supplements, considering that in other threads people hate the idea of dataslates and supplements. Hypocrisy much?

 jreilly89 wrote:


I find it funny people are all over the merges saying that BA and DA could be covered with supplements, considering that in other threads people hate the idea of dataslates and supplements. Hypocrisy much?

Are they the same people saying those two contradictory things?

If not, then its not hypocrisy.

Plus, that simplifies the discussion that could be had over how supplements should work, and how GW produces them.

Codex space marines.
Followed by supplements (with formations/fluff/datasheets/cards ) for the following:

Iron Hands
White Scars
Black Templars
Dark Angels
Blood Angels
Imperial Fists
Ultramarines
Raven Guard
Red Scorpions
Carcharodons
Mantis Warriors
Raptors
Executioners
Astral Claws
Fire Hawks
Minotaurs
Star Phantoms
Red Hunters
Angels Revenant

Give a generic chapter tactic for space marines and reduce the cost of the main dex. Also reduce the cost of these supplements. So, I'd pick up the Space marines and decide to make a custom chapter. Keep the generic codex and paint my marines pink. If I wanted to pick up Dark Angels, I'd pick up the supplement and get more value for my buck because it'd include the formation, warlord trait, cards, dice, a full supplement worth of fluff, relics, and chapter rules.

 Blacksails wrote:

 jreilly89 wrote:


I find it funny people are all over the merges saying that BA and DA could be covered with supplements, considering that in other threads people hate the idea of dataslates and supplements. Hypocrisy much?

Are they the same people saying those two contradictory things?

If not, then its not hypocrisy.

Plus, that simplifies the discussion that could be had over how supplements should work, and how GW produces them.

Considering I've seen the same users in different threads saying those things, it is hypocrisy.

How would you have GW produce them and how should they work? People already say that the game is overbloated with rules. If you're going to roll DA and the like into a big SM codex, then I think the supplements should be rolled in as well. I see no point in paying for a $100-200 codex that still requires dataslates and formations to complete the factions


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Inkubas wrote:
Codex space marines.
Followed by supplements (with formations/fluff/datasheets/cards ) for the following:

Iron Hands
White Scars
Black Templars
Dark Angels
Blood Angels
Imperial Fists
Ultramarines
Raven Guard
Red Scorpions
Carcharodons
Mantis Warriors
Raptors
Executioners
Astral Claws
Fire Hawks
Minotaurs
Star Phantoms
Red Hunters
Angels Revenant

Give a generic chapter tactic for space marines and reduce the cost of the main dex. Also reduce the cost of these supplements. So, I'd pick up the Space marines and decide to make a custom chapter. Keep the generic codex and paint my marines pink. If I wanted to pick up Dark Angels, I'd pick up the supplement and get more value for my buck because it'd include the formation, warlord trait, cards, dice, a full supplement worth of fluff, relics, and chapter rules.

I'm sorry, but that sounds ludicrous. What would be in the codex SM, other than basic stats and weapon profiles? That and with people already complaining about the amount of time GW spends on SM, adding that many dataslates/formations would just exacerbate the amount of time. I'm sorry, I'd rather spend $150 for a codex Astartes than have a 1/4 inch book and have to buy supplements each time I want to try a new Chapter.