Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Skyhammer is not as broken as many people think - watch the latest frontline gaming batrep.

Null deployment hurts it.

I think for the most part, it depends what you compare them to.

Compared with Eldar, Necrons or other 7.5 armies, no, SMs aren't overpowered.

However, when you compare them to the 6th edition and most of the early 7th edition books (IG, CSM, DE, Orks, BA etc.), then they're definitely overpowered.

So, it kinda depends on whether you take the Post-Necron or Pre-Necron books as your benchmark.

I always laugh when Marine players bitch and moan about the Guard and how our stuff is soooo OP.

I mean sure we are so terribly over powered with our non existent armour saves, our weapons that are weaker than any other in the entire game, and our tanks..... How dare they ignore a Marines special snowflake save? How dare they! That they cost 150 points base for the advantage and have terrible accuracy matters not, with some luck they might kill a few marines in a single pie plate!

All this coming from the whiny Timmy across the board with his 3+ and better saves on everything, weapons that dont even give me a chance to have my saves, ability to completely neuter my army by dropping a Skyhammer on it and enjoying his time detonating my tanks with his trilas predator squadron and Devestators/basic marines assaulting them.

 master of ordinance wrote:
I always laugh when Marine players bitch and moan about the Guard and how our stuff is soooo OP.

I mean sure we are so terribly over powered with our non existent armour saves, our weapons that are weaker than any other in the entire game, and our tanks..... How dare they ignore a Marines special snowflake save? How dare they! That they cost 150 points base for the advantage and have terrible accuracy matters not, with some luck they might kill a few marines in a single pie plate!

All this coming from the whiny Timmy across the board with his 3+ and better saves on everything, weapons that dont even give me a chance to have my saves, ability to completely neuter my army by dropping a Skyhammer on it and enjoying his time detonating my tanks with his trilas predator squadron and Devestators/basic marines assaulting them.

Marine players bitch and moan about guard stuff?

is this more interweb hyperbole or your own anecdotals?

 Desubot wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
I always laugh when Marine players bitch and moan about the Guard and how our stuff is soooo OP.

I mean sure we are so terribly over powered with our non existent armour saves, our weapons that are weaker than any other in the entire game, and our tanks..... How dare they ignore a Marines special snowflake save? How dare they! That they cost 150 points base for the advantage and have terrible accuracy matters not, with some luck they might kill a few marines in a single pie plate!

All this coming from the whiny Timmy across the board with his 3+ and better saves on everything, weapons that dont even give me a chance to have my saves, ability to completely neuter my army by dropping a Skyhammer on it and enjoying his time detonating my tanks with his trilas predator squadron and Devestators/basic marines assaulting them.

Marine players bitch and moan about guard stuff?

is this more interweb hyperbole or your own anecdotals?

I honestly wish. I have Marine players and their derivatives whine about my Guard for being broken because I can bring tanks with AP 3 large blasts or complaining that my Infantry FRFSRF is broken because I managed to kill two Marines with 10 Veterans, one whom has a HB.

 master of ordinance wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
I always laugh when Marine players bitch and moan about the Guard and how our stuff is soooo OP.

I mean sure we are so terribly over powered with our non existent armour saves, our weapons that are weaker than any other in the entire game, and our tanks..... How dare they ignore a Marines special snowflake save? How dare they! That they cost 150 points base for the advantage and have terrible accuracy matters not, with some luck they might kill a few marines in a single pie plate!

All this coming from the whiny Timmy across the board with his 3+ and better saves on everything, weapons that dont even give me a chance to have my saves, ability to completely neuter my army by dropping a Skyhammer on it and enjoying his time detonating my tanks with his trilas predator squadron and Devestators/basic marines assaulting them.

Marine players bitch and moan about guard stuff?

is this more interweb hyperbole or your own anecdotals?

I honestly wish. I have Marine players and their derivatives whine about my Guard for being broken because I can bring tanks with AP 3 large blasts or complaining that my Infantry FRFSRF is broken because I managed to kill two Marines with 10 Veterans, one whom has a HB.

That's not marine player specific bro. That's just salty players who want to complain about whatever they're facing. Especially bad cases of they're complaining about guard. Please don't pull people like me into such a sweeping generalization.

 niv-mizzet wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
I always laugh when Marine players bitch and moan about the Guard and how our stuff is soooo OP.

I mean sure we are so terribly over powered with our non existent armour saves, our weapons that are weaker than any other in the entire game, and our tanks..... How dare they ignore a Marines special snowflake save? How dare they! That they cost 150 points base for the advantage and have terrible accuracy matters not, with some luck they might kill a few marines in a single pie plate!

All this coming from the whiny Timmy across the board with his 3+ and better saves on everything, weapons that dont even give me a chance to have my saves, ability to completely neuter my army by dropping a Skyhammer on it and enjoying his time detonating my tanks with his trilas predator squadron and Devestators/basic marines assaulting them.

Marine players bitch and moan about guard stuff?

is this more interweb hyperbole or your own anecdotals?

I honestly wish. I have Marine players and their derivatives whine about my Guard for being broken because I can bring tanks with AP 3 large blasts or complaining that my Infantry FRFSRF is broken because I managed to kill two Marines with 10 Veterans, one whom has a HB.

That's not marine player specific bro. That's just salty players who want to complain about whatever they're facing. Especially bad cases of they're complaining about guard. Please don't pull people like me into such a sweeping generalization.

But 9/10ths of such player play Space Marines or one of their derivatives

In your area maybe. Over here it's a cron player and a dark eldar player. It's the player not the army.

 master of ordinance wrote:

 niv-mizzet wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
I always laugh when Marine players bitch and moan about the Guard and how our stuff is soooo OP.

I mean sure we are so terribly over powered with our non existent armour saves, our weapons that are weaker than any other in the entire game, and our tanks..... How dare they ignore a Marines special snowflake save? How dare they! That they cost 150 points base for the advantage and have terrible accuracy matters not, with some luck they might kill a few marines in a single pie plate!

All this coming from the whiny Timmy across the board with his 3+ and better saves on everything, weapons that dont even give me a chance to have my saves, ability to completely neuter my army by dropping a Skyhammer on it and enjoying his time detonating my tanks with his trilas predator squadron and Devestators/basic marines assaulting them.

Marine players bitch and moan about guard stuff?

is this more interweb hyperbole or your own anecdotals?

I honestly wish. I have Marine players and their derivatives whine about my Guard for being broken because I can bring tanks with AP 3 large blasts or complaining that my Infantry FRFSRF is broken because I managed to kill two Marines with 10 Veterans, one whom has a HB.

That's not marine player specific bro. That's just salty players who want to complain about whatever they're facing. Especially bad cases of they're complaining about guard. Please don't pull people like me into such a sweeping generalization.

But 9/10ths of such player play Space Marines or one of their derivatives

Your 9/10ths is not indicative of all play areas. stop trying to brush people (armies) with such a big paint roller. (But there ARE a ton of salty "People")

If marines were so good, BA wouldn't be god awful. I think that basically proves that it is a narrow band of units/formations we are really talking about here.

Space Marines are OP in the sense that some of their formations allow them to crush the already fairly terrible armies- Guardsmen and Orks after all aren't exactly the definition of a really powerful force. Even with their powerful formations though, they struggle to successfully combat Necron and Eldar cheese and rely on objective play.

Really, 40k is a food chain. High tier armies smack around the mid tier, mid tier beats up the lowest tier.

zerosignal wrote:
Skyhammer is not as broken as many people think - watch the latest frontline gaming batrep.

Null deployment hurts it.

It can...sometimes, however that's not really a functional option for all armies, and the formation rules have a built in defense against it, it allows the Marine player to decide during deployment whether they want everything to arrive on the first or second turn.

Martel732 wrote:
If marines were so good, BA wouldn't be god awful. I think that basically proves that it is a narrow band of units/formations we are really talking about here.

BA will always be awful.

 Desubot wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
If marines were so good, BA wouldn't be god awful. I think that basically proves that it is a narrow band of units/formations we are really talking about here.

BA will always be awful.

DA got some love. Maybe eventually BA won't be terrible.

Only thing that strikes me as OP about space marines is how many shots grav weapons have for how powerful they can be. Such an overpowered weapon when compared to plasmas or other faction guns, and I say this an Ork player who laughs at grav with our amazing 6+ armor.

Yeah i feel gravs are really there just to force people to buy more gak.

Its blatant power creep for profit.

It really is a fish to the face that such a powerful weapon that is so useful used to not exist then suddeny they go oh and they had these for a while now you just never noticed.


same with centurions.

Well I can say that I certainly appreciate having Grav for Dark Angels now. Certainly makes Veteran Squads more useful.

Vankraken wrote:Only thing that strikes me as OP about space marines is how many shots grav weapons have for how powerful they can be. Such an overpowered weapon when compared to plasmas or other faction guns, and I say this an Ork player who laughs at grav with our amazing 6+ armor.

Desubot wrote:Yeah i feel gravs are really there just to force people to buy more gak.

Its blatant power creep for profit.

It really is a fish to the face that such a powerful weapon that is so useful used to not exist then suddeny they go oh and they had these for a while now you just never noticed.


same with centurions.

Allow me to play devil's advocate:

Grav exists to compensate for the fact that Monstrous Creatures are significantly more durable than vehicles. Vehicles can be instakilled or otherwise be rendered useless, while an MC doen'st lose any effectivness until it loses its last wound. There needed to be a weapon that could address the imbalance between vehicles and MCs, and grav is that weapon.

The problem with grav is that it is easily spammed on certain platforms (i.e. Grav Centurions) and thanks to grav-amps can pose a threat to virtually any unit.

I do, however, agree that Centurions look stupid. The whole concept was a bad joke to begin with.

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Allow me to play devil's advocate:

Grav exists to compensate for the fact that Monstrous Creatures are significantly more durable than vehicles. Vehicles can be instakilled or otherwise be rendered useless, while an MC doen'st lose any effectivness until it loses its last wound. There needed to be a weapon that could address the imbalance between vehicles and MCs, and grav is that weapon.

There are 3 issues with that:

1) Grav is marine-only. If it's purpose is to counter MCs, then surely other races should also have Grav? Or, is it fine for MCs to be better than vehicles, so long as marines have an easily counter to them?

2) Grav doesn't just affect MCs. It also affects vehicles, killing even a land raider with just 2 6s (and often with rerolls). Not to mention being incredibly effective against MEQ and TEQ as well. It's too effective against far too many targets.

3) There are still many MCs (especially nid ones) that aren't particularly durable. Why punish these MCs even more, just because of OP nonsense like the WK?

The MC/vehicle imbalance needs a change to the core rules, and shouldn't be used as an excuse to give marines a stupidly OP weapon.

The Space Marines are OP and here is the recent wining 1850 list from a large 2 day tournament in the Seattle area...(from what i can remember) Skyhammer w/6man ASM w/flamers, 5 Man/Dev Melta x2; Alpha strike CAD
2 Tac 5man in Drop Pods, 3 Fast attack Drop Pods, Tiggy, a Librarian, 3 Dev Cents and last but not least allied inquisitor Coteaz...the psychic shenanigans with Tiggy, tons of grav, and Coteaz; more than one game ended on first turn with his opponent being tabled. This same list was modified for a 1250 tournament and he still tabled his first two opponents by turn 2/3 respectively and he took out the Eldar player facing him in the last round by tabling him first turn so yeah there is that...

vipoid wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Allow me to play devil's advocate:

Grav exists to compensate for the fact that Monstrous Creatures are significantly more durable than vehicles. Vehicles can be instakilled or otherwise be rendered useless, while an MC doen'st lose any effectivness until it loses its last wound. There needed to be a weapon that could address the imbalance between vehicles and MCs, and grav is that weapon.

There are 3 issues with that:

1) Grav is marine-only. If it's purpose is to counter MCs, then surely other races should also have Grav? Or, is it fine for MCs to be better than vehicles, so long as marines have an easily counter to them?

2) Grav doesn't just affect MCs. It also affects vehicles, killing even a land raider with just 2 6s (and often with rerolls). Not to mention being incredibly effective against MEQ and TEQ as well. It's too effective against far too many targets.

3) There are still many MCs (especially nid ones) that aren't particularly durable. Why punish these MCs even more, just because of OP nonsense like the WK?

The MC/vehicle imbalance needs a change to the core rules, and shouldn't be used as an excuse to give marines a stupidly OP weapon.

I agree that grav being marine-only is a problem. If IG/AM have plasma and melta, they should have grav too. Grav is only really effective against vehicles if spammed or with the use of grav-cannon + amp.

Tyranid MC's may be costed fairly (except for Flyrants), but there are plenty others that are not. Until those are fixed, grav is necessary.

themathes wrote:The Space Marines are OP and here is the recent wining 1850 list from a large 2 day tournament in the Seattle area...(from what i can remember) Skyhammer w/6man ASM w/flamers, 5 Man/Dev Melta x2; Alpha strike CAD
2 Tac 5man in Drop Pods, 3 Fast attack Drop Pods, Tiggy, a Librarian, 3 Dev Cents and last but not least allied inquisitor Coteaz...the psychic shenanigans with Tiggy, tons of grav, and Coteaz; more than one game ended on first turn with his opponent being tabled. This same list was modified for a 1250 tournament and he still tabled his first two opponents by turn 2/3 respectively and he took out the Eldar player facing him in the last round by tabling him first turn so yeah there is that...

So because Space Marines have some OP units and formations, the entire army is OP? I'd argue that the problem is with those units instead.

 TheNewBlood wrote:

So because Space Marines have some OP units and formations, the entire army is OP? I'd argue that the problem is with those units instead.

Its exactly the same reason necrons and eldar are OP

There is no thing as an OP army.

its the parts that make the whole.

 master of ordinance wrote:
Amassed bolter spam still works against most MC's.

Yeah, it does for sure. With that annoying Riptide bearing down on ya? Killing it with Tacs only takes 5 x 6 x 6 x 1,5 = 270 bolter shots.

Just get your 145 Tactical Marines into rapid fire range and hose down the Riptide.

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Vankraken wrote:Only thing that strikes me as OP about space marines is how many shots grav weapons have for how powerful they can be. Such an overpowered weapon when compared to plasmas or other faction guns, and I say this an Ork player who laughs at grav with our amazing 6+ armor.

Desubot wrote:Yeah i feel gravs are really there just to force people to buy more gak.

Its blatant power creep for profit.

It really is a fish to the face that such a powerful weapon that is so useful used to not exist then suddeny they go oh and they had these for a while now you just never noticed.


same with centurions.

Allow me to play devil's advocate:

Grav exists to compensate for the fact that Monstrous Creatures are significantly more durable than vehicles. Vehicles can be instakilled or otherwise be rendered useless, while an MC doen'st lose any effectivness until it loses its last wound. There needed to be a weapon that could address the imbalance between vehicles and MCs, and grav is that weapon.

The problem with grav is that it is easily spammed on certain platforms (i.e. Grav Centurions) and thanks to grav-amps can pose a threat to virtually any unit.

I do, however, agree that Centurions look stupid. The whole concept was a bad joke to begin with.

The problem lies in the points cost of grav, the ease of availability of the weapon, and the volume of shots it gets when these factors are linked to the power the weapon has. Same issue with MCs that are undercosted for how durable they are or how much firepower they can safely pump out. Its fine that the weapon exists but it does too much for too little. Force weapons are a good MC killer as are sniper and poision/fleshbane special rules but the issue lies in that GW doesn't offer many viable options for these weapons to be on the table. Instead of making an elegant solution to the problem or tuning the problematic elements to be more in line with the rest of the game GW just tries to one up the powerful stuff with even more powerful things to push sales. Grav is basically great vs MCs, Vehicles, and most medium to high armor infantry (only leaving weak armor horde units to be resilient to them but its not like its hard to kill things like that with other commonly available weapons or just enough volume of fire). Grav are an axe in the game of rock, papers, scissors in that it cuts paper and destroys scissors while it can chip away at rock with enough effort but its not quite as effective in defeating rock as paper.

 Vankraken wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Vankraken wrote:Only thing that strikes me as OP about space marines is how many shots grav weapons have for how powerful they can be. Such an overpowered weapon when compared to plasmas or other faction guns, and I say this an Ork player who laughs at grav with our amazing 6+ armor.

Desubot wrote:Yeah i feel gravs are really there just to force people to buy more gak.

Its blatant power creep for profit.

It really is a fish to the face that such a powerful weapon that is so useful used to not exist then suddeny they go oh and they had these for a while now you just never noticed.


same with centurions.

Allow me to play devil's advocate:

Grav exists to compensate for the fact that Monstrous Creatures are significantly more durable than vehicles. Vehicles can be instakilled or otherwise be rendered useless, while an MC doen'st lose any effectivness until it loses its last wound. There needed to be a weapon that could address the imbalance between vehicles and MCs, and grav is that weapon.

The problem with grav is that it is easily spammed on certain platforms (i.e. Grav Centurions) and thanks to grav-amps can pose a threat to virtually any unit.

I do, however, agree that Centurions look stupid. The whole concept was a bad joke to begin with.

The problem lies in the points cost of grav, the ease of availability of the weapon, and the volume of shots it gets when these factors are linked to the power the weapon has. Same issue with MCs that are undercosted for how durable they are or how much firepower they can safely pump out. Its fine that the weapon exists but it does too much for too little. Force weapons are a good MC killer as are sniper and poision/fleshbane special rules but the issue lies in that GW doesn't offer many viable options for these weapons to be on the table. Instead of making an elegant solution to the problem or tuning the problematic elements to be more in line with the rest of the game GW just tries to one up the powerful stuff with even more powerful things to push sales. Grav is basically great vs MCs, Vehicles, and most medium to high armor infantry (only leaving weak armor horde units to be resilient to them but its not like its hard to kill things like that with other commonly available weapons or just enough volume of fire). Grav are an axe in the game of rock, papers, scissors in that it cuts paper and destroys scissors while it can chip away at rock with enough effort but its not quite as effective in defeating rock as paper.

Sniper is pretty bad :/ It requires a LOT of luck and then they can still take armor and FNP most of the time. its not to be relied on.

If Gravs still allowed armor saves i think it wouldnt be as bad. (It should be an assault type weapon that applys a lot of on hit effects like slowing the whole unit down, or concussive/staggered/whatever to make charging into them easier like if hitting the unit pins them powerful in the right combo.)

Mechanicus has grav as well.

I thought grav killed HP3 vehicles in 2 hits, but required 3 for an HP4 one like a Land Raider (first hit does 1 HP and immobiilize, second does 1 HP + immobilize = 2HP, 1 HP left)?

OP versus Eldar? Certainly not.

OP versus everything else? Certainly.

 techsoldaten wrote:
OP versus Eldar? Certainly not.

OP versus everything else? Certainly.

Exactly, this.

Gladius > Eldar.

The marines are actually a quite balanced army. It's the gladius force and the skyhammer who are ruining a very well designed book. Skyhammer not so much for being OP, rather than ruining the fun of the enemy (nobody wants to see their models getting off the table before they even get a chance to move for the first time). But gladius raeps the shift out of the game completely. Having free transports would be powerful but okayish (a cashgrab bullshift move but at least okayish), but giving all the army (including drop pods) obsec pushes it way over the top in objective games. An astartes player can claim d3+3 objectives on the first freaking turn of the game for having all objectives scored just by dropping empty pods on the objective markers in his opponent's side of the table. Then if you are the opponent, you just have to have a lot of troops to contest that (not even claim it, merely to deny) and this goes for EVERY turn because the drop pod keeps being there and keeps being obsec. You have to either waste resources shooting useless pods that cost no points in hopes that you get an objective and let the marine army kill you or focus on killing the marines and keep losing on objectives time after time after time. And exactly how many obsec units can you sport against the gladius' 25-30+ ones, even if you waste tremendous amounds of points in troops? 6 at best?

0 point cost ObSec AV12/12/12 vehicles with reliable deep strike on the first turn without a 3+ roll. Yeah.

 techsoldaten wrote:
OP versus Eldar? Certainly not.

OP versus everything else? Certainly.

I dunno, Necrons and Daemons seem to do fairly well against Astartes. As do Tyranids.