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Would giving Terminators the option of replacing Deep Strike with Jump packs (mini, ventable reactors built into the terminator suit) be an option you would be willing to consider for Terminators? What should be the cost ... 5 pts/model? Free?

They would still have Deep Strike since the Jump type comes with that. Indeed Jump would make Termies much more worth it, but only if it was about a 5-10pt upgrade.
But sadly, it would probably a 15-20pt upgrade, so Termies would still not be that great.

Indeed, Jump Termies exist already and no one takes them competitively. Check out Blood Angel Sanguinary Guard. They many has Artificer Armour rather than Termie armour, but a 2+ is a 2+. the only thing that makes SGs different is the lack of invul save.

I'm not a fan of the idea, personally. Part of the identity of terminators is that they're ridiculously heavy, bulky slabs of armor that don't move as gracefully as their power armored counterparts. I feel like letting them jump around 12" a turn would kind of take away from this part of their identity. It would be like having initiative 5 orks with fleet or Tau infantry that are better in melee than death company. It just doesn't match their shtick.

Also, my first instinct regarding giving them jump packs is to change their type to jump infantry.... which would give them deepstrike. You could make a special rule taking deepstrike away, but that just feels odd.

What's your intention in considering giving them jump packs? What would you like to accomplish?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

And yes, I know that terminators aren't very effective right now and that this might help them somewhat.

Terminators base cost is too high as it is.

Any extra cost adds on before you even consider weapons upgrades.

Adding weapons +jump packs plus terminator premium.
Gets expensive.

And there already vanguard, assault marines, sang guard, death company etc.
What does it do adding another jump.option. When vanguard could just bring a pretty similar loadout, and are fluffy.

SG look so good on paper, too. 33 pts for 2+ armor, jump pack, veteran stat line and a power weapon. But 7th ed just gaks all over them.

From a thematic point of view this sounds like the Dawn of War 2 assault teleport ability, which I'd think would be a long charge move with Hammer of Wrath as opposed to a change to the unit type.

I wonder how balanced it would be if Terminators could shunt like Grey Knight Dreadknights/Interceptors can.

 Vankraken wrote:
I wonder how balanced it would be if Terminators could shunt like Grey Knight Dreadknights/Interceptors can.

More balanced than letting Dreadknights do it, that's for sure. Handing a risk-free nigh-uncounterable 43" threat range to a gun that effectively RFPs any infantry that doesn't have at least a 3+ was a terrible design decision.

(Also if the Dreadknight were weaker they might actually try and fix the rest of the Codex instead of trying to prop up comically overpriced infantry with the goddamn baby carrier...)

*deep breath*

Rant done. The shunt move would be interesting, but from a game role perspective it's not that different from the unit having Deep Strike and it has the design problem of being a rule the other guy doesn't get to interact with. Frooping a unit through their defenses and parking a melee deathstar in their face is going to be by necessity either useless (because the unit gets shot to death too easily) or completely unfun (because you get to steamroll in melee too easily), there isn't really room for a middle ground.

I think having a "mini-shunt" move would be interesting. Instead of a once-per-game 30" shunt like the DKs, what about an 18" relocate ability? Remove the unit from the board an place them within 18" as if Deep Striking, but they only scatter D6 and cannot charge afterwards. They can choose to do this every turn.

I'm not sure that allowing it every turn would really match the established fluff, but I like the idea of letting them do a once/game shunt (mini or otherwise) if they didn't deepstrike. Basically representing the idea that whomever is manning the teleporter tech has been spending their time readying the next jump.

 Galef wrote:
I think having a "mini-shunt" move would be interesting. Instead of a once-per-game 30" shunt like the DKs, what about an 18" relocate ability? Remove the unit from the board an place them within 18" as if Deep Striking, but they only scatter D6 and cannot charge afterwards. They can choose to do this every turn.

It sort of exacerbates the core issue, though, doesn't it? The fundamental problem with Terminators is that they're paying way too much for mediocre shooting because everyone's forced to pay for a powerfist in a pricing model that's been calibrated against the costs HQ models pay for powerfists, and they have a hard time getting into melee unless you're going to invest five hundred points in a squad and a Land Raider that's going to lose to anything that would let them make their points back. Giving them a shunt that prohibits charging doesn't really help them survive to melee.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Galef wrote:
I think having a "mini-shunt" move would be interesting. Instead of a once-per-game 30" shunt like the DKs, what about an 18" relocate ability? Remove the unit from the board an place them within 18" as if Deep Striking, but they only scatter D6 and cannot charge afterwards. They can choose to do this every turn.

It sort of exacerbates the core issue, though, doesn't it? The fundamental problem with Terminators is that they're paying way too much for mediocre shooting because everyone's forced to pay for a powerfist in a pricing model that's been calibrated against the costs HQ models pay for powerfists, and they have a hard time getting into melee unless you're going to invest five hundred points in a squad and a Land Raider that's going to lose to anything that would let them make their points back. Giving them a shunt that prohibits charging doesn't really help them survive to melee.

Partially disagree. Iirc a tac marine is 13 points and a terminator is 35. A power fist for a character is 25. A storm bolter is like, 5 or something. So if they were actually paying the character price for their gear, they'd be paying something like 43 points plus whatever GW decided the cost of terminator on a one-wound guy would be. But you're right about them being too pricey for what they get.

I know people often complain about terminator shooting, but I've never really thought of them as a "shooty" unit. To me, they're basically tac marines with an assault cannon mixed in terms of shooting. Even non-assault terminators, in my eyes, should be striving to get into melee where they can hide from ranged AP2 and bring their power fists to bare. So their shooting isn't great, but I've always thought of it as a nice bonus rather than their main role.

They are difficult to get into melee because land raiders are expensive and deepstriking is risky/inaccurate. Giving them a shunt move, however, might not be a bad way to help deal with this. On the tables I generally play on, there tends to be some line of sight blocking terrain here and there, so shunting where the majority of your enemy's guns can't find you and then assaulting something the following turn isn't a bad way to go. Especially if you have the option to shunt on turn one so that you're getting into melee sooner. Even with shunt, they could probably do with a bit of a price drop or durability boost, but being able to hide them behind cover on turn 1, shunt them behind more cover on the bottom of turn 1, and then go looking for assault charges on turn 2 really isn't too shabby.

If you shunt them right in front of the enemy, then it's to be expected that they'll get shot up and/or assaulted by the ideal weapons for taking them down, but that's not really the terminators' fault at that point.

Terminators want to fight big things in CC, but big things ignore their armor. There are no good CC targets for tactical terminators.

Martel732 wrote:
Terminators want to fight big things in CC, but big things ignore their armor. There are no good CC targets for tactical terminators.

What about high toughness things like bikes? Or MCs that aren't great in melee (riptides). Or expensive vehicles that are tough to kill with shooting like serpents, russes, or shrouded land speeders? Or T4 tyranids with multiple wounds apiece? Or heck, you can just toss them into some generic infantry units that get too close and count on the terminators to come out on top.

Sure, a lot of these things aren't necessarily tournament winning units, but not every opponent is fielding a tournament list either. And a space marine list in a tournament probably isn't bringing terminators anyway so...

Terminators in casual games have some decent targets, even if those targets are just basic infantry. Normally, terminators aren't amazing, even in a casual game. Something like shunt might make them more viable in such games.

EDIT: Also, assault terminators (who would also theoretically be possible targets of a shunt/jump pack option) are actually pretty okay GMCs and such. Sure, you *might* lose guys to D-strength attacks or stomps, but a 3+ invul is going to shut down an expensive melee attack more often than not.

Terminators in Casual games don't have good targets either because Honour Guard exist.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Terminators in Casual games don't have good targets either because Honour Guard exist.

You mean because honor guard are just more cost-effective at similar tasks? Having a better alternative doesn't invalidate the less cost effective option. Especially in casual games. Or did I misunderstand your point?

Wyldhunt wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Terminators want to fight big things in CC, but big things ignore their armor. There are no good CC targets for tactical terminators.

What about high toughness things like bikes? Or MCs that aren't great in melee (riptides). Or expensive vehicles that are tough to kill with shooting like serpents, russes, or shrouded land speeders? Or T4 tyranids with multiple wounds apiece? Or heck, you can just toss them into some generic infantry units that get too close and count on the terminators to come out on top.

Sure, a lot of these things aren't necessarily tournament winning units, but not every opponent is fielding a tournament list either. And a space marine list in a tournament probably isn't bringing terminators anyway so...

Terminators in casual games have some decent targets, even if those targets are just basic infantry. Normally, terminators aren't amazing, even in a casual game. Something like shunt might make them more viable in such games.

EDIT: Also, assault terminators (who would also theoretically be possible targets of a shunt/jump pack option) are actually pretty okay GMCs and such. Sure, you *might* lose guys to D-strength attacks or stomps, but a 3+ invul is going to shut down an expensive melee attack more often than not.

Riptides are fine in CC. They have smash and insane saves. Go get your expensive 2+ save models in CC with a model that ignores the save.

But what it really boils down to is that their shooting is SO BAD.

I honestly don't like the idea much. Imo to make termies viable and on par with other stuff, give them t5 and 2 wounds. That better represents the whole, hulking thick power armor and give them one more wound representing the armor.

Right now they are just as tough as a marine but with a 2+ always bugged me they are not T 5 or 2 wounds.

Right now centurions are pretty much what terminators should be like, but at a cheaper cost.

Therefore we need to fix Terminator offense, not make them as durable as Centurions.

Sorry but not my cup of tea. Terminator's main problem wasn't their speed, but rather their cost-to-performance ratio. Giving them jump packs unnecessarily buffs them in a field they were never suppose to be in.

This topuc has been done to death. Centurions have basically eaten Terminators lunch. There is no mathematical space left to squeeze in terminators. The original sin here is the storm bolter being straight up garbage like all bolt weapons.

Martel732 wrote:
This topuc has been done to death. Centurions have basically eaten Terminators lunch. There is no mathematical space left to squeeze in terminators. The original sin here is the storm bolter being straight up garbage like all bolt weapons.

This is why I think they need 2 would t5

What if we gave terminators rapid fire on storm bolters?

Terminators are supposed to be slow, plodding but almost unstoppabke (really a rules clean up for them would be to exchange relentless and their running restrictions for Slow and Purposeful). So giving them Jump Packs of sorts really stops them from being terminators anymore.

The Shunt idea is interesting, but the terminators rely on teleportation provided by their ships rather than personal teleportation. Perhaps the ability to go back into Ongoing Reserve in the movement phase. Then they deep strike back the following turn is the best emulation of this. Apologies to Swooping Hawks.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
This topuc has been done to death. Centurions have basically eaten Terminators lunch. There is no mathematical space left to squeeze in terminators. The original sin here is the storm bolter being straight up garbage like all bolt weapons.

This is why I think they need 2 would t5

What if we gave terminators rapid fire on storm bolters?

S4 AP5 is basically not a threat to most units in 7th ed.

Jefffar wrote:
Terminators are supposed to be slow, plodding but almost unstoppabke (really a rules clean up for them would be to exchange relentless and their running restrictions for Slow and Purposeful). So giving them Jump Packs of sorts really stops them from being terminators anymore.

The Shunt idea is interesting, but the terminators rely on teleportation provided by their ships rather than personal teleportation. Perhaps the ability to go back into Ongoing Reserve in the movement phase. Then they deep strike back the following turn is the best emulation of this. Apologies to Swooping Hawks.

Nah they need to kee relentless, slow and purposeful does not allow for over watch which is really dumb seeing as how they have always been able to overwatch

This problem goes away in a D10 based system, because then broadsides and riptides can be 3+, and we can leave terminators at 2+. A bit off topic, but in the current system, there is literally no niche for the terminator.

Deathwatch does Terminators better but not by much.

They need some of the 30k boosts.

Like they got 2 wounds. Some have more powerful weaponry and helps ots more balenced.

They need more wounds, maybe a T boost and more firepower.
There rules are stuck several editions ago.

What if they could teleport shunt like a Dreadknight once per game?

 jhe90 wrote:
They need some of the 30k boosts.

Like they got 2 wounds. Some have more powerful weaponry and helps ots more balenced.

They need more wounds, maybe a T boost and more firepower.
There rules are stuck several editions ago.

You can't give multiple wounds because MANZ.

Weapons, maybe, but all their weapons have been passed by as well.

Can't give T boost, because that's centurion.