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Considering grey knights can take out tanks, deathwing maces don't bounce off power armour, and vanilla has 2 extra variants.... How are people finding terminators? I've not successfully fielded a competitive terminator army since 5th and I quit early 6th

I can't speak for other types, but my Scarab Termies are savage when properly supported. They're ok in melee as long as you steer clear of hordes.

I can't imagine it going well for you. In fact I would think that the situation is even worse than it was under the last Edition.

A number of changes have happened that make elite infantry less desirable in favour of swarms. For instance, the concept of an anti-infantry gun doesn't really exist any more, as they are inherently even better against elites.
As an example, a Flamer might be a good example of a horde-buster. A typical shot will kill off ~2 grunts (6pts) or 0.125 Terminators (6pts). The removal of templates has just left classic solutions being overly-effective against more expensive models, as they are based on the assumption that they are hitting more models.

Another factor built on this, is that the rise of Conscripts and Hormagaunts will lead to far more anti-infantry guns being fielded. Your Terminators will be expected to face down seas of high-ROF infantry murderers.
And lets not forget the return of 7pt Plasma Guns. When a Scion squad can remove twice it's own cost, off a Deep Strike, with essentially no counterplay? Scions are going to be popular and they are an absolute death-knell to anything you can use.

Finally, you are playing hyper-elite models in an Edition where people seem to be spamming either hordes or aircraft. You lack the firepower to stop the tide; even if every shot hit and killed, every turn, without casualties, you might not be able to remove a full mob.

It's a bad time to be a Terminator.

Even worse than before. Now AP is a thing their 2+ armour save now suddenly becomes 5+ even to basic weaponry and they simply don't output enough dakka or choppy to be worth it.

I had a unit of 10 normal terminators with 2 assault cannons.

they did one shot a rhino in CC which was nice, then procceded to get mauled by a near by ironclad. but that was my mistake

I can see a lot of power with them and the teleport homer which let me gitfo with 4 models that charged something else that was near it. unfortunately it was a imperial knight so not good.

THSS terminators have FAR more stay power but you got to make the charge.

Yep, its not a good time to be a terminator, but terminator lords can be quite awsome! With charge through walls and buildsings, and different buffs.

Terminators, are just as frail as they were in 7th. So many multiwound weapons and our transports are deathtraps unless you travel along with cheaper units that can die from the 1's when the taxi goes boom.

Honestly not seeing all that much justifying the doom and gloom.

Everyone has access to special weapons that do multi wound and -ap. but they are all expensive, in CC and expensive, or otherwise have draw backs.

you are not going to expect to see THAT many of those or otherwise they wont have that many things to hold objectives

they also gained a wound whichs makes them better regular infantry fire.


And you can always choose your battles and drop in and nuke them with bolter fire, charge them first or otherwise bunker down in cover to mitigate some of the AP which are all now tactical choices

Mozzamanx has clearly not played that many games of 8e and even less with Terminators. I play chaos and I run my Terminators with PF, combi-plasma and Icon of Wrath along side a Lord with combi-plasma and PF, then I deep strike them in front of the most dangerous target on the board: boy are they good. The plasma with re-rolls of a 1 and 2 damage a piece can really chew through targets and when they charge they do the same. Not only do they hit like a truck (and can survive much longer with 2W a piece, 5++ and a 2++ save which isn't ignored by everything), their first turn deep strike charge can tie up very dangerous shooting units for a few turns and even if they fail the charge they'll be drawing an awful lot of fire power.

In short, terminators are so much better than last edition and anyone who says otherwise has not played 8e enough (the same histerical people thinking that hordes are OP this edition).

Mozzamanx wrote:
I can't imagine it going well for you. In fact I would think that the situation is even worse than it was under the last Edition.

A number of changes have happened that make elite infantry less desirable in favour of swarms. For instance, the concept of an anti-infantry gun doesn't really exist any more, as they are inherently even better against elites.

... no

As an example, a Flamer might be a good example of a horde-buster. A typical shot will kill off ~2 grunts (6pts) or 0.125 Terminators (6pts). The removal of templates has just left classic solutions being overly-effective against more expensive models, as they are based on the assumption that they are hitting more models.

A flamer shot can kill:
-1.2 scions (12 points)
-0.15 terminator (7.2 points) 3.5 * .5 * .167 / 2 * 48

And you know...you actually have to KILL the terminator, so uhh 23.3 flamer hits, please.

23.3 flamer hits = 7.8 dead scions.

Looks like scions are screwed in this edition! LAMENT MY BROTHERS! LAMENT!

Another factor built on this, is that the rise of Conscripts and Hormagaunts will lead to far more anti-infantry guns being fielded. Your Terminators will be expected to face down seas of high-ROF infantry murderers.

That they get better saves against.

And lets not forget the return of 7pt Plasma Guns. When a Scion squad can remove twice it's own cost, off a Deep Strike, with essentially no counterplay? Scions are going to be popular and they are an absolute death-knell to anything you can use.

Well, which is it? Anti-termie weapons everywhere or anti-horde? And why are scions dropping on your terminators? Surely you aren't footslogging them?

Finally, you are playing hyper-elite models in an Edition where people seem to be spamming either hordes or aircraft. You lack the firepower to stop the tide; even if every shot hit and killed, every turn, without casualties, you might not be able to remove a full mob.

It's a bad time to be a Terminator.

I used two squads of Scarabs against some sisters of battle. Comparatively, they did OK (judged against the rest of my army at least, which did terribly). Showed up and blasted about 20 sisters off the board turn 1, then in the next turn helped Smite celestine to death and rocketed one of those organ tanks for a few wounds.

The only problem was that on his turn 1 he used double-tapping heavy bolter squads to clear out my screen of Tzaangors and charged 20 rubrics with celestine. Between a squad of Repentia, Celestine, some Rhinos, and some Seraphim, he was able to pretty much stunlock the core of my army into submission while his shooters cleaned me up.

Lesson learned: have some melee units, and despite Rule of 1, 20 man squads of rubrics are a baaaaad idea.

My wolf guard worked well for me they killed 30 strong boyz mob and a dreadnought pretty handily in a few turns.

That was th/ss backed up by a wolf priest.

Daedalus81 wrote:
I can't speak for other types, but my Scarab Termies are savage when properly supported. They're ok in melee as long as you steer clear of hordes.

Thousand Sons made off like bandits with our terminators. I'd be confident saying we got the best ones in the game.

 Desubot wrote:
Honestly not seeing all that much justifying the doom and gloom.

Everyone has access to special weapons that do multi wound and -ap. but they are all expensive, in CC and expensive, or otherwise have draw backs.

you are not going to expect to see THAT many of those or otherwise they wont have that many things to hold objectives

they also gained a wound whichs makes them better regular infantry fire.


And you can always choose your battles and drop in and nuke them with bolter fire, charge them first or otherwise bunker down in cover to mitigate some of the AP which are all now tactical choices

it's the useal hyperbole for the internet, about all I can conclude is people keep misreading lasgun as lascannon with the amount of high AP they seem to think exists. there where two ways to kill terminators, high AP anti tank weapons, OR, massed fire. which is less effective then it may have once been. a small selection of "medium armor crackers" are more effective, but... thats IMHO not a bad thing as the armor system has increased granularity instead of all or nothing now

A lot of these replies are very good and are making confident in sticking with 100% terminator force

Note that this edition is far more tactical than strategic; i.e: Your in-game decisions will be far more important than simple list composition.

While there are some disparages between some unit choices, the gap is far less pronounced here. If someone says x is better than y, in general it's more like a 5% more effectiveness rather than the huge gap like it was in 7th edition, meaning that if you're good to react on the fly and the dice are with you, you can not only mitigate that difference but also turn it on it's head.

My Deathwing Knights just laugh at hordes and are equally deadly again'st vehicles and monsters. But in Objetive play is not the first time I have lost a battle after losing like 20% of my army and my opponent losing 70% of his, but even the 30% remaining were more models than my 80% so they just graved all objetives and win

I only played one game against some Chaos Terminators.

They started on the board, which was probably a mistake on my opponent's part, then Celestine went after them and got in combat with them and their terminator-armored Chaos Lord.

To their credit, between them and the Chaos Lord, they did manage to make it through Celestine's first 7 wounds, and did remain in combat with her for a solid two-and-a-half turns.

They actually function like the Shock Troopers they were meant to be due to offensive power. Durability is about the same, but Terminators always had garbage durability (don't let anyone fool you into thinking the 2D6 on a 3+ was any good. It really wasn't). I can dig the offensive power of Tactical Terminators now. Assault Terminators get the most from the second wound.

Can't speak for Chaos Terminators as I haven't fiddled with the Chaos index much (I'm more focusing on the Loyalist side of things until I get bored), but with access to Combi-Weapons they're definitely better than before.

Chaos Terminators look pretty good. The change to combi weapons has greatly buffed them.

I'd be interested to know if any Chaos players out there are having any success with a Termi Heavy list.

 Desubot wrote:
I had a unit of 10 normal terminators with 2 assault cannons.

they did one shot a rhino in CC which was nice, then procceded to get mauled by a near by ironclad. but that was my mistake

I can see a lot of power with them and the teleport homer which let me gitfo with 4 models that charged something else that was near it. unfortunately it was a imperial knight so not good.

THSS terminators have FAR more stay power but you got to make the charge.

Woo! 10 termies one shot rhino in CC? 10 terminators before on charge could without that much luck wipe out land raider in CC in 7th ed so somehow being able to one shot rhino in CC doesn't sound like their CC ability has then much to cheer for

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Even worse than before. Now AP is a thing their 2+ armour save now suddenly becomes 5+ even to basic weaponry and they simply don't output enough dakka or choppy to be worth it.

Excuse me, but please explain to us what 'basic weaponry has -3?

Played 4 games with my Wolf GUard Terminator army.

As long as your rolls are average, you're good.

Almost the entire army has storm shields, so basically for +5 points I have models with 3++ and 2 wounds.

That being said.....as I pointed out, average rolls needed.....I lost 18 terminators, most with storm shields, plus Logan Grimnar, Arjac and Njal, 2 10 Deathwing, 4 Ravenwing and Sammael. My rolling was horrid ( and I actually wiped out the 5 man DW assault squad and chaplain in 1 turn.).

My next game I played a guard army with 10 Deathwing Terminators and I didn't lose a model until turn 3. I stomped all over him.

Logan Grimnar is a beast with the Axe Morkai. He can use it 2 handed, at -1 to hit ( so hitting on 3's) but he can reroll misses. It causes 3 damage per wound.

tneva82 wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
I had a unit of 10 normal terminators with 2 assault cannons.

they did one shot a rhino in CC which was nice, then procceded to get mauled by a near by ironclad. but that was my mistake

I can see a lot of power with them and the teleport homer which let me gitfo with 4 models that charged something else that was near it. unfortunately it was a imperial knight so not good.

THSS terminators have FAR more stay power but you got to make the charge.

Woo! 10 termies one shot rhino in CC? 10 terminators before on charge could without that much luck wipe out land raider in CC in 7th ed so somehow being able to one shot rhino in CC doesn't sound like their CC ability has then much to cheer for

Pretty good honestly.

considering taking out a land raider now is far far far harder. not really going to miss 1 shot manning melta guns.

tneva82 wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
I had a unit of 10 normal terminators with 2 assault cannons.

they did one shot a rhino in CC which was nice, then procceded to get mauled by a near by ironclad. but that was my mistake

I can see a lot of power with them and the teleport homer which let me gitfo with 4 models that charged something else that was near it. unfortunately it was a imperial knight so not good.

THSS terminators have FAR more stay power but you got to make the charge.

Woo! 10 termies one shot rhino in CC? 10 terminators before on charge could without that much luck wipe out land raider in CC in 7th ed so somehow being able to one shot rhino in CC doesn't sound like their CC ability has then much to cheer for

Taking out a Land Raider in 7th is an entirely different story from taking out a Land Raider in 8th. There is very little in the game that can 1-shot a land raider in 8th, you're looking at Lord of War class models only. Which is a good thing, really, vehicles suffering from rocket tag syndrome is why they sucked so much in 7th.

Arachnofiend wrote:

Taking out a Land Raider in 7th is an entirely different story from taking out a Land Raider in 8th. There is very little in the game that can 1-shot a land raider in 8th, you're looking at Lord of War class models only. Which is a good thing, really, vehicles suffering from rocket tag syndrome is why they sucked so much in 7th.

But then again doesn't really show their abilities have exactly grown if somebody is cheering TEN TERMINATORS take out transport. That should be obvious result. We are talking about 260 pts before weapons of h2h nastyness against <100 pts light transport after all! If you cheer about that then their relative killyness has actually gone down so need to be looking for survivability to find boost.

And not that their survivability has really gone up either. All the previous terminator killers ignore save just as well as before, the extra wound has mostly lost meaning thanks to the plethora of multi wound weapons(especially reroll to hit plasmas oh so common now) and with lots of weapons weakening their armour which didn't before they die like dogs now as well.

tneva82 wrote:

Arachnofiend wrote:

Taking out a Land Raider in 7th is an entirely different story from taking out a Land Raider in 8th. There is very little in the game that can 1-shot a land raider in 8th, you're looking at Lord of War class models only. Which is a good thing, really, vehicles suffering from rocket tag syndrome is why they sucked so much in 7th.

But then again doesn't really show their abilities have exactly grown if somebody is cheering TEN TERMINATORS take out transport. That should be obvious result. We are talking about 260 pts before weapons of h2h nastyness against <100 pts light transport after all! If you cheer about that then their relative killyness has actually gone down so need to be looking for survivability to find boost.

And not that their survivability has really gone up either. All the previous terminator killers ignore save just as well as before, the extra wound has mostly lost meaning thanks to the plethora of multi wound weapons(especially reroll to hit plasmas oh so common now) and with lots of weapons weakening their armour which didn't before they die like dogs now as well.

But not only did the terminators survivibily increase so did transports.

you cant keep looking at models the same way as it was from 7th

vehicles of all kind are no joke any more.

key thing that i didnt mention, they over wounded the rhino from full health by at least 3. i would of punched out a dread, rhino, razorback, vindicator, pretty much any non heavy vehicle.

could of also gotten into a unit of smaller vehicles and crippled them or otherwise easily wiped out a non high invul unit of infantry (some being worth killing way more than others)

Terminators got major buff in 8 ed. My Deathwing army is soooo much powerfull than it was in 7ed. On over dozen games against necrons i've lost only once so far in 8ed in very tight game. I won against infantry spam and against vehicles spam, it doesn't matter. Earlier in 7ed i usually won maybe one game out of 10 with same opponent. Same thing with vanilla space marines. 5 games against razorback spam and no single lost. Terminators, dreadnoughts, landriders are winners in 8ed.

Wolf Guard Termies look extremely good. TH/SS unit led by Arjac and a Wolf Priest are brutal. 3 attacks each (thanks to Arjac), rerolling misses (thanks to the WP) and rerolling 1s to wound (thanks again Arjac).

A 5-man squad led by these 2 characters can easily demolish a Knight on the charge. The only downside is you really have to invest in a Land Raider Crusader to deliver them. But since that can then supply some of the dakka you need to stop them getting swamped by hordes, that is not a bad choice anyway.

I ran some vanilla terminators the other day - five man with 2 chainfists and an assault cannon. Overall I was pleased with their increase in firepower- stormbolters throwing out quite a bit of dakka now- but somewhat disappointed in their melee abilities. Managed to get a charge off on a Hell Drake (boy have those guys changed!) and thought "well that's toast now", but the -1 to hit with power fists and somewhat lacklustre 2 damage on the Chainfists was underwhelming. In the end it flew away with and was finally taken down by a scout with a sniper rifle- from the unit it had charged in the first place!

 Aben Zin wrote:
I ran some vanilla terminators the other day - five man with 2 chainfists and an assault cannon. Overall I was pleased with their increase in firepower- stormbolters throwing out quite a bit of dakka now- but somewhat disappointed in their melee abilities. Managed to get a charge off on a Hell Drake (boy have those guys changed!) and thought "well that's toast now", but the -1 to hit with power fists and somewhat lacklustre 2 damage on the Chainfists was underwhelming. In the end it flew away with and was finally taken down by a scout with a sniper rifle- from the unit it had charged in the first place!

Chain fists fall into a very niche role now. They're meant to take on 2+/3+ vehicles without an invuln - their benefit is mostly lost on a heldrake.