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.
2019/02/08 16:45:06
Subject: Proposed improvment of Space Marine via the amendment of character ability and Chapter Tactics
Since half year into 8th edition when marines, which are the early codexes are found underpower, improving Space Marines have become a hot topic in rules and stats improvement. Many people had made proposals including dropping in points, improving units stats etc, and hot debates erupted around them.
Apart from being weak, the play style of Space Marines encouraged by the special ability (i.e. reroll to hit aura) granted in 8th edition, is boring. It made marine army a static gunline or blob bubble of advancing phalanx surrounding the HQ units, hugely deviates from the fluff that SM is a highly mobile, flexible, precise strike force at squad level but can tip the balance of a war when coordinated properly, like a sword pierce the heart of enemy. The gunline forces acting like Emperor's hammer should be the strategic for Imperial Guard.
Proposal:
In view of the above, this article would attempt to propose improvement for marines on a "special rule / special ability" level, the proposals are based and inspired by the abilities in the current edition as well as the previous editions. I am trying to improve the competitiveness of Space Marine, and at the very least, get them out of the boring play style, making them more fun to play. The ideas are presented below and detailed wordings may need chages to make it more strict in terms of forming the game rules. Looking for comments from all dakkanuts.
Lets start from the basic buff from generic characters of those everyone who play marines would likely to take no matter what chapter you play:
Characters' buff ability admendment:
Spoiler:
Captain:
Master Strategiest (in place of the reroll 1s to hit):
Any Chapter unit within 6" of any model with this ability may shoot even if they fall back out of combat in the prevailing movement phase of the turn, but they must -1 to their hit rolls.
Lieutenant
Battle Heros (in place of the reroll 1s to wound aura):
Any Chapter unit within 6" of any model with this ability may charge in the even if they fall back out of combat in the previous movement phase, but they must -1 to their hit rolls in the incoming fight phase.
Commentry:
Spoiler:
Fluff wise, the commanders of the Space Marines are not acting as mentors of the soilders that telling each soilder how to better aim at enemy with bolters or chainswords. Their role in battle are commanding officers, and they are masters in controlling the flow of the battle, they know when and which units should tatically withdraw to fight and luring enemy into a trap while some others should stay in combat to buy time for their brethen. Under their masterful coordination, any of their well trained superhuman soilders could perform organized retreat, compared to the under-trained newbies who fall back from enemy chargers in a total disarray.
Gaming wise, these new auras offers flexibility on tabletop battles, preserves the ultility of space marine units. As anybody dragged into combat would lose their initiative, ss they can only attack on the guys within 1" of them. For many other factions that focused on melee or especially are hordes type armies themselves this will not be any problem. But for marines which are high points cost per model and relatively low model / unit counts relying on "everyone do their part", not able to take any action other than putting a 1 or 2 attacks (i.e. usually it yields a pittyful 6 to 11 attacks from a units depends on unit type or loadouts), hurts the whole battle prowess of marine much harder than the armies with high model counts. However, offerimg them an uncoditional ability to fall back and shoot / charge may be too OP and unfair to other factions. So considering an aura buff granting such ability maybe sufficient.
Chapter Tactics and Chapter specific characters:
Chapter Tactic is another aspect that may warrant improvement. The 8th edition Chapter Tactic is mostly weak and many of them doesn't look fitting the background of the Chapters really well. In fact, I think some of the Space Marine Chapter Tactic in previous editions are better fit than the current ones. Thus, the following modification of Chapter Tactics and abilities for their special are proposed, making references to both current and previous editions.
Lets begin with the GW poster boy: Ultramarine, which is also the main faction I played for my whole 5 years of 40k game experience.
Ultramarine: Chapter Tactic:
Spoiler:
Combat Doctrines: A battleforged army contains any Ultramarine detachment gain a Tactical Doctrine, a Devastator Doctrine and an Assault Doctrine. Each doctrine can only be activated once per battle at the start of any turn and the activated doctrine last untill the start of your next turn. Only one doctrine can be activated in each turn unless specifically specified.
Tactical Doctrine: All Ultramarine units may reroll to hit rolls of 1 and to wound rolls of 1 for the duration of the turn. While all Ultramarine Tactical Squads and Intercessor Squads may reroll all to hit and to wound rolls.
Devastator Doctrine: All Ultramarine units may reroll to hit rolls of 1 and to wound rolls of 1 in shooting phase and charge phase. In addotion, when the doctrine is activated, all weapons carried by Devastator Squads, Centurion Devastator Squad, Hellblaster Squad and Aggressor Squads add 1 to their number of shot stats (e.g. Heavy D3 becomes Heavy 1+D3, Rapid Fire 1 becomes Rapid Fire 2, Assault 6 becomes Assault 7, etc.)
Assault Doctrine: All Ultramarine units may reroll to hit rolls and may reroll to wound rolls of 1 in the fight phase. In addition, all Ultramarine Jumppack and Bike units may reroll one or both dice determinig their charge distances in the charge phase.
Proposed admendment of buff ability for Special Character:
Spoiler:
Marneus Calgar: Chapter Master of Ultramarine: All Ultramarine units within 9" of Marneus Calgar at the end of the movement phase may shoot in the incoming shooting phase even if they had fallen back from combat in this movement phase.
Master Tactician: If Marneus Clagar is your Warlord, you gain an extra Command Point. In addition, once per game you can select an extra set of either Tactical Doctrine, Assault Doctrine or Devastator Doctrine to activated at the start of the turn which no other doctrine is being activated, even if the Doctrine you selected have already been activated in previous turns.
Roboute Guilliman: Primarch of the XIII Legion: All Ultramarines within 9" of Guilliman at the end of the movement phase may shoot or charge in the incoming shooting and charging phase even if they had fallen back from combat in this movement phase.
Author of the Codex: If you take Guilliman as your Warlord, you gain extra 3 CP. In addition, you gain one extra Tactical, Assault and Devastator Doctrines each to be activated once per game. Furthermore, you can activate more than one doctrine at the start of each of your turn, so long as you have sufficient sets of doctrines to be activated.
Commentry
Spoiler:
Although I honestly don't miss the OPness of the infamous Gladius Detachment of 7th edition, I actually quite miss the 6th/7th edition Chapter Tactic for Ultramarine as I feel it is the much more fluffy and well-written ones. In fluff, if there exist a human army that can most efficiently ultilize the combat prowesses of combined arms force, it is the Ultramarine. They mastered the arts of "sending the right unit into a fight at the right time", as well as the way to coordinating units in a fight to maximize the total destructive power. But the Chapter Tactic of current edition just totally failed to reflect this trait.
Game play wise, compare to current play sytle, the amended ones relived Ultramarine from the tag of "Guilliman gunline army". As of now, any units regardless their relative position to the commanders, could get the reroll to hit / wound buff, though only for a designated turn(s) and phases of the game , but the buff would hopefully ensure the Ultramarine army to unleash hell on enemy should the player are masterful in planning and positioning, getting the right unit into the right poisitions to make the best use. In achieving this, an Ultramarine player would be better to fight like a real Ultramarine commander, instead of a point and click army / fighting strategy.
One of the side effect of this change maybe that the Ultramarine would once again become the "alpha strike" army. This might make Droppod and Rhinos great again as it can ferry the Tactical Squads into position and ultilize the to reroll all hit and wound rolls.
Please feel free to leave any comments and advices. The proposed amendment for other Chapter Tactics will come up in no time and will be posted in this thread. Stay tuned for it. I will post the write up ASAP. Thank you for your attention and reading.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/02/08 16:50:26
2019/02/08 17:30:04
Subject: Proposed improvment of Space Marine via the amendment of character ability and Chapter Tactics
Tactical is minor rerolls, Assault is even less rerolls with a minor charge boost, whereas Devastator practically DOUBLES the effectiveness of your heavy weapons guys.
Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne!
2019/02/08 19:42:10
Subject: Proposed improvment of Space Marine via the amendment of character ability and Chapter Tactics
Martel732 wrote: I can always count on your condescending replies, though.
Of course I'm being condescending towards posts that aren't constructive in their arguments or ideas.
If you want to prove that AP-1 weapons are a problem in general for Custodes, I more than welcome you to make the post about it. As it stands, it isn't a problem in the same way AP-1 really isn't a problem for Terminators, even when the weapon is D2!
CaptainStabby wrote: If Tyberos falls and needs to catch himself it's because the ground needed killing.
jy2 wrote: BTW, I can't wait to run Double-D-thirsters! Man, just thinking about it gets me Khorney.
vipoid wrote: Indeed - what sort of bastard would want to use their codex?
MarsNZ wrote: ITT: SoB players upset that they're receiving the same condescending treatment that they've doled out in every CSM thread ever.
2019/02/09 05:53:02
Subject: Re:Proposed improvment of Space Marine via the amendment of character ability and Chapter Tactics
I really like the general push away from auras and static units and towards mobility. Piling a bunch of bonuses onto a raw damage roll is satisfying in its own way, but easy access to damage optimization across most books means that's all most lists really focus on; how can I hit the enemy the hardest or up my defenses the most to withstand their attacks? It's not inherently bad, but it is less interesting than figuring out which units you'll want to cycle in and out of a fight, what their next targets will be, where you want to position your characters, etc. I don't think we need to get rid of to-hit and to-wound rerolls entirely, but de-emphasizing them in favor of less blunt choices is a welcome concept. I'd like to see more changes like that across other armies too.
That said, I'm not sure I'm a big fan of a return to tactical doctrines as you've presented them. Mostly because the concept, "special rules that give bonuses to units but can only be used a finite number of times each game, but you can get more uses of them depending on what units you choose," feels like it overlaps too much with stratagems. Doctrines feel like they're a second pool of stratagems that have uses as a resource instead of command points. In fact, those all seem like they'd be good inspiration for stratagems available to loyalist astartes in general. With buff auras no longer granting rerolls, the "doctrine stratagems" could become the new go-to source of rerolls. Heck, they even feel like the sort of thing that "COMMAND points" should represent. Though they'd obviously need a little tweaking.
Also, the devastator doctrine strongly favors some weapons over others, which seems weird. A lascannon effectively doubles its shots (100% increase in shot number) while a heavy bolter only gets 33% more shots, and that extra shot is of a lower quality than the lascannons.
The special character auras feel kind of underwhelming. Which might be fine, but it does change the perception of the characters. Marneus and Roboute stop being static bubble auras and start wanting to wade forward into the fray (which is good), but doing the same thing a normal captain or lieutenant does from slightly further away doesn't really scream, "Heroes of Legend."
tldr; I like the general concept but am not a fan of some of the specifics you've tossed out as examples.
ATTENTION. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
2019/02/09 07:18:45
Subject: Proposed improvment of Space Marine via the amendment of character ability and Chapter Tactics
