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In the lore it's said that only a few space marines could take entire planets by themselves yet in game an entire platoon can be taken out in an instant. Obviously this is to make the game playable but what would the stats and points of a lore friendly marine be?

 lolman1c wrote:
In the lore it's said that only a few space marines could take entire planets by themselves yet in game an entire platoon can be taken out in an instant. Obviously this is to make the game playable but what would the stats and points of a lore friendly marine be?

The lore varies...wildly, and in the most extreme respects, should be treated mostly as propaganda or as the result of factors not replicatable on the tabletop (e.g. surprise against a rogue planetary governor). We have stories where a single marine is sent to stop a Dark Eldar raid or a single squad stops a demonic invasion, and others where they are commonly felled by common mortars, concentrated lasgun fire, a simple Ork Choppa, and other such things.

For the most extreme fluff stuff basically just use Primarch stats for every basic Tac marine

Games workshop released the "Movie Marines" list, which is suppose to be what marines in the fluff is suppose to be like.

This was with 4th edition rules btw, so think 7th edition, but the cost of everything is twice as high as it is normally.

Basically each marine was a T6, 6 wound or something monstrosity (still infantry). BS 2+. Chainswords were power weapons, Bolters were Assault Cannons that actually had the Assault rule (and this was with 4th edition rend, which worked on the To Hit roll rather than To Wound).

Oh and the marines had a 4+ chance of getting right back up if killed, as it would be his stunt double that actually got shot or something like that (forgot the actual rule, but they did specifically mention Stunt Doubles).

Basically if you want a good approximation, play Space Marines with each marine using the profile of a Dreadnought. That's pretty close.

What you're referring to is colloquially referred to as "Movie Marines" --- they even released rules for them back in 2004-2005 or so.

The problem you'd have is making it fun to play. You couldn't play a normal game of 40K with movie marines (i.e. 10 Space Marines vs. 1500 points of Orks). There's only so much "I shoot...I don't do anything" that most people can handle.

I've got a buddy who wants to do a Dawn of War version of 40K for the table top - very doable.

The easiest way to do what you'd like is to find a kick-ass Space Marine and simply use those stats/costs for every marine. Use a Space Marine Captain but just run a squad of them and change up the wargear. Bump some wargear and bump some weapons (or simply swap stats). For instance, a bolter would probably be Rapid Fire 4 with Strength 6, and a -2 save modifier as standard or something --- allowing a single Space Marine to mow down the better part of a squad if it got close enough.

Again the issue would be creating them just good enough that the opponent would enjoy trying to fight them, vs. slinging bb's at a tank and not accmoplishing anything.

Yeah, just run an army of Lieutenants, Captains, etc. Give them combi weapons for super bolters, and whatever CC weapons you want to represent super strength. Boom, done.

The hard part about designing lore friendly marines is determining what 'lore friendly marines' are.

It is not a simple matter, as Vaktathi correctly mentioned.

There is also a lot of propaganda.