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I have read in a couple places peoples opinion that the space marine codex is up towards the top of the tiers. Under the space elfs of course but the next step down.

what makes this so, is it just the free transports?

Centurionstar

Free transports is pretty stupid, but most armies don't have issues with Heavy Bolters or tackling AV11.

Free stuff in gladius. Centurions. Grav. Drop pods are also very important, specialy when they are free and scoring. Everything else they have is just normal good stuff.

Skyhammer can also be very annoying vs some armies, but only 100people around the world can use it, so its no biggy.

Grav cannons.

Way more than 100 people can use Skyhammer. Anyone with access to the rules can deploy it in practice.

Yea people use it at my club with out the "official" Sheet

Given the insanity of Tau, Eldar, and Necrons, there's not reason to be a jerk about Skyhammer. Skyhammer marines are actually easier for BA to deal with than those other three. Tau, Eldar, Necrons might as well be gods as far as the BA are concerned.

Cent star is probably the biggest offender. Gladius is expensive to run so you may not see it much locally, but a lot of people can run a cent star for cheap. Well, relatively cheap.

Skyhammer grants you exactly the rules to negate the weaknesses of the units involved, making them vastly more powerful than they have any right to be (relentless deepstriking Devastators and Assault-From-Deepstrike Assault Marines).

You also don't need to pay the "Compulsory HQ and Troops" tax for these, making it very points efficient too since you only pay for what you want.

On the other formations, the Demi-company is a CAD +1 if you're already planning on using most of those choices, as it gives everything ObSec. Other formations also let you spam units that before were either limited by choice slots or by points. You can have a 6 land raider army that literally ignores everything but the Wrecked result in 1500 points or field an entire army made up of only Vindicators and Techmarines.

People are forgetting that a gladius Strike force can utilize tank shock really well to potentially remove models from play.

Space Marines have specialist abilities and weapons that grant them the ability to tackle xenos. If you think about they have no monstrous creatures or strength D. Their units are well costed too. They are a jack of all trades which makes them quite tactical.

Mostly Grav-guns.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Space Marines have specialist abilities and weapons that grant them the ability to tackle xenos. If you think about they have no monstrous creatures or strength D. Their units are well costed too. They are a jack of all trades which makes them quite tactical.

Terminators and Tactical Marines are still garbage.

Martel732 wrote:
Given the insanity of Tau, Eldar, and Necrons, there's not reason to be a jerk about Skyhammer. Skyhammer marines are actually easier for BA to deal with than those other three. Tau, Eldar, Necrons might as well be gods as far as the BA are concerned.

Suddenly making someone play with official rules is being a jerk. What next,not allowing to play with recasts or paper cut outs, as an example of worse TFG?

Space Marines are not close to being Top Tier, they already are a Top Tier army.

Makumba wrote:
Skyhammer can also be very annoying vs some armies, but only 100people around the world can use it, so its no biggy.

This is not true, because of the rules leaked online multiple people have it and therefore can use it. Guaranteed you tried to pull the "but its not the original copy" argument it would not go over well for you and just make you look bad.

space marines have a lot of cheap effective tools to deal with virtually anything and you could run it in a tac list without much trouble. Besides, you can take literally any unit from your codex and fit it in a list with reasonable expectation of getting a positive result. Compared to csm, orks, harlequins and non-flyrant spam nids who need to think very hard to make even a semi-decent list. And than think even harder while playing.
I've recently run a few sm lists and after a long time playing orks and csm, sm provide a relaxed gameplay. While orks and csm are a struggle against your own rules and the superior cheaper stuff of your opponent.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Space Marines have specialist abilities and weapons that grant them the ability to tackle xenos. If you think about they have no monstrous creatures or strength D. Their units are well costed too. They are a jack of all trades which makes them quite tactical.

Terminators and Tactical Marines are still garbage.

I use neither. Biker Marines are the best and SW TWC are the new terminators. The mobility of the SM biker units is very powerful. Librarius Conclave is one of the most powerful psychic units in the game too. Scouts are a very solid troop choice for objsec.

DirtyDeeds wrote:
People are forgetting that a gladius Strike force can utilize tank shock really well to potentially remove models from play.

Y'know... at the cost of someone's arm, leg and soul to the Model gods

 Dozer Blades wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Space Marines have specialist abilities and weapons that grant them the ability to tackle xenos. If you think about they have no monstrous creatures or strength D. Their units are well costed too. They are a jack of all trades which makes them quite tactical.

Terminators and Tactical Marines are still garbage.

I use neither. Biker Marines are the best and SW TWC are the new terminators. The mobility of the SM biker units is very powerful. Librarius Conclave is one of the most powerful psychic units in the game too. Scouts are a very solid troop choice for objsec.

Yep. Space Marines have the best scouts in the game with Landspeeder Storms. It's five points cheaper than a standard Landspeeder, can carry people, and can cause blind! That's not even mentioning the fact it can move 30" in a turn and screws with enemy deep strikers.

Three units of scouts with boltguns in landspeeder storms will run you 285 points,

Makumba wrote:
Free stuff in gladius. Centurions. Grav. Drop pods are also very important, specialy when they are free and scoring. Everything else they have is just normal good stuff.

Skyhammer can also be very annoying vs some armies, but only 100people around the world can use it, so its no biggy.

Um what? How can only 100 use it

More than 100 copies were sold, I believe 100 alone were sold in Australia, not sure how many were sold in the usa.

The OP of that comment is probably an owner of the overpriced Skyhammer formation, which came with an exclusive single page datasheet that can be quite powerful.

However, this was copied and put online in several places. All one has to do is take a high res picture from the internet, print it, and voila! they can legally use the skyhammer formation.

Folks that say you need an original copy in hand are incorrect... I know many who own and use digital codex books/datasheets, which are not original paper!! Some tournaments frown on digital opies, so folks print off what they need and *gasp* use printed copies in those tournaments. Others use original books or datasheets because they have them handy or own them. Digital, printed/laminated, original sheets, and codex books are all acceptable unless you find a tournament that disallows one... I haven't found one yet.

Makumba wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Given the insanity of Tau, Eldar, and Necrons, there's not reason to be a jerk about Skyhammer. Skyhammer marines are actually easier for BA to deal with than those other three. Tau, Eldar, Necrons might as well be gods as far as the BA are concerned.

Suddenly making someone play with official rules is being a jerk. What next,not allowing to play with recasts or paper cut outs, as an example of worse TFG?

It's just not that important to me. Let them use it.

Vanilla Space Marines are the Poster Boy for GW. They get all the GW love. So many special snowflake chapter codexes. Space wolves, Dark Angel, Blood Angel, Black templars, GREY Knights, Vanilla Space Marines and countless other chapter tactics like White Scar, Iron Fist, Ultra Marines, etc...

Grimlineman wrote:
I have read in a couple places peoples opinion that the space marine codex is up towards the top of the tiers. Under the space elfs of course but the next step down.

what makes this so, is it just the free transports?

Formations that give free stuff (be it transports, or special rules, or other such things), gobs of Grav weapons that get gobs of rerolls that allow them to basically auto-terminate anything that isn't a Titan or sport an incredible invul save, and gobs of free special rules in general.

Same stuff that typically makes Necrons and Eldar very powerful.

They can basically take firepower, mobility, and resiliency in spades and only pay for one or two of them.