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As most people have probably noticed by now, space marines aren't doing so hot these days, and I keep bringing it up everywhere. Specifically, space marine infantry is bad. Marines are supposed to use a lot of elite infantry, but it's just not very good in 8th edition. This is mostly due to overall changes from 8th edition. I wrote about these in detail some time ago so I won't go into it all as that's its own whole big post. You can read it here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/751394.page

I'll just do a short summary:
1) AP changes reduced the effectiveness of 3+ armor. Bolters used to ignore horde infantry's armor due to old Ap5, but now don't. Other old ap5 weapons often became ap-1 or got a special rule, but bolters got screwed.
2) Changes to templates/blasts and special weapons in general hurt marines as they often relied on a couple powerful weapons in a squad do a lot of work. Flamers used to be able to get 5-10 hits on hordes, now they get 1d6 and don't ignore armor.
3) Marines used to rely on high damage, low shot anti armor weapons like meltas and powerfists to kill vehicles. This no longer works due to AV system changes, and the 8th edition version of all these weapons being crappy.
4) Marines are hit really hard by transport and rapid fire changes. Moving, then disembarking and rapidfiring was a standard tactic (and it used to actually kill things due to old ap5).
5) Instant death changes destroyed the ability of a sergeant with a powerfist to be an effective counter to characters.
6) The new morale mechanics were supposed to be a check on the power of hordes, but actually just end up punishing large squads of marines most, forcing us into 5 man MSU all the time. Re-rolling morale doesn't help.

...and much more that you can read in that link. The best example of all this is probably the humble tactical squad. A unit that was once a reliable all-rounder, but hardly overpowered by any standards. But it was durable, provided anti-character and anti-vehicle in the form of a powerfist, provided decent anti-horde with bolters, and then covered a bit of another role with its special/heavy weapon. And it could get around well and stay alive with a cheap rhino. In close combat it was hardly an offensive powerhouse, but it was durable enough that against non-melee specialists, it could often lose less models and thus pull off a sweeping advance, wiping out a whole unit. This was a good system because it meant tacs could destroy squishy shooting units like guard or firewarriors effectively, but weren't going to do much to a real melee unit. If they'd just had enough attacks to kill that many guard or firewarriors, then they'd also kill a lot of boyz or banshees, which they shouldn't have. That's all lost now in 8th.

The culmination of all this stuff is that marine infantry just doesn't do much for its points cost. It is less effective per point both offensively and defensively than lots of cheaper troops. A tactical marine would have to cost like 10 points to be mechanically efficient, but it would be boring and 1 dimensional compared to what they used to be, and wouldn't feel much like a space marine. Rather than just dropping their points, it would be nice to see marines get some buffs to warrant their current cost. Ideally, we'd get a new codex that totally reworks their statline, weapons, traits, etc. but that's not likely to happen until a whole new edition comes. And we got primaris who sort of do this already, but they actually suffer from pretty much all the same issues. If intercessors were 13pts a model like tacs they would be mechanically efficient, but also boring and 1 dimensional and not feel like space marines. And most other primaris are just trash for their cost, or have weird split roles that they can't perform either of well enough to warrant using.

So a full re-work is out. But as we've seen from Bolter Discipline beta rule, the designers are aware that there are problems, and it may be possible to address them with further beta rules so that we can get the most popular faction and one of the largest sections of the model range back onto the playing field. So let's share some ideas, and see if we can inspire the designers, or at least let them see that this is something people care about. For the sake of keeping this thread on track, I hope you all will mostly just grant me the premise here and talk about what you think would be fun and what you think would be viable, not argue endlessly about how marines are actually fine because of Gman lists, or how marines don't deserve to be good because they were in past editions, or about how GW is planning to squat the whole range in favor of primaris so this doesn't matter (they might, but in the meantime we still want to play, and primaris need help too.) If you think there is no problem, you haven't been paying attention for the last 2 years.

I'm of the opinion that marines need an offensive buff, especially in melee, and a defensive buff. To keep it easy to implement as a beta rule, it shouldn't change any points or stats and shouldn't be too difficult to keep track of, or add a laborious amount of rolling. And if it's a couple smaller rules, then they could be implementing 1 at a time to avoid breaking the game. Marines should regain some of their ability to kill horde infantry with small arms and in melee, but shouldn't really be getting stronger versus elite units (we already have enough options for special and power weapons, especially on elite marine units.) They also need to get more durable against small arms, but not really against high str and ap weapons, as those are supposed to be very effective against marines. In light of that, here's some rules I think would help and why.

Superhuman:
Astartes are demi-gods with superhuman strength, training and experience. And of course, superhuman sized equipment far more effective than standard human versions.
Armor saves of 5+ or higher cannot be taken against attacks made by units with this rule, regardless of the weapon they are using. Armor saves of 4+ or higher cannot be taken against attacks made by models with this rule if the attacking weapon has AP-1.

Models with this rule add +1 to their armor save unless the attack has higher strength than their toughness, or ap-3 or better.

Units with this rule can only lose 1 model to morale at a time, unless they are suffering a leadership penalty, in which case they can lose additional models equal to the lost leadership.

The first part restores 5th ed style AP rules for marines, which would fix their ability to kill hordes with small arms and in close combat. This would give a ~33% increase in effectiveness of bolters vs guard, for example. And 16% vs boyz. The line for AP-1 weapons is necessary to have stuff like heavy bolters and autocannons not be worse vs these targets than regular bolters.

The defensive part makes them more durable vs small arms fire, which is currently too efficient. But it doesn't help them vs high strength, high AP weapons that are meant to kill them effectively. This is also a move back towards 5th ed style defensive efficiency.

And lastly, this fixes the problem of 10 man marine units being basically the only thing in the game that actually suffers meaningful morale loses, but lets morale killer mechanics still matter.

This rule isn't perfect, but it is relatively simple and would put regular Marines in a much better situation. I'm not claiming it would fix marine armies. It doesn't touch a lot of problems like anti-tank from marine squads. But it would make marines feel more like marines again, and maybe people would need to ask themselves "What if my opponent brings a ton of marines?" when making their lists.

Would you want to play with rules like this? How would you like to see marines be fixed?

My biggest beef with marines vs. Hordes is flamers and whirlwinds, both of which used to be excellent for horde clearing duty. Flamers were amazing at killing GEQs, and the Whirlwind packed flamer artillery.

2nd is the Drop Pod. I'd like it to be able to strike on turn 1.

3rd is Land Raiders being shut down by CC engagement. For a tank that has long had an assault ramp, with versions sporting Frag Launchers and main weapons like Flamers, having a single model within 1" preventing it from firing is a big problem.

I think the beta bolters went a long way to helping marines vs. GEQ already, so just those three things are my top picks atm.

I am sorry if you felt as if I were dismissing most of your suggestions, but I doubt GW will "improve" marine infantry by putting even more rules in the datasheet.

I think most of the Space Marine units, not just infantry, are not cost-effective simply because of Guilliman.
The Space Marine codex seems to be designed on the premise that the player always takes Guilliman, the force-multiplier that significantly improves performance of any Space Marine units.
This unfortunately led to terrible internal balance, as anything other than Ultramarines Guilliman list is simply not worth taking in competitive and "casual"(although I seriously doubt and hate this term) games.
It also forces Space Marines players to rely on rather static gunline as the sole effective tactic, which is mitigated should there be plenty of of objective and decent number of terrain pieces on the board.

I would rather see Guilliman's aura let only wound rolls of 1 to be re-rolled, have his points cost dropped, and have almost all of the options in Space Marines codex(models, stratagems, points cost) revised to a reasonable level.

Unfortunately, that would require a revamp of the entire codex which will take a long time.
Beta rules are simply not enough to improve the current status of the codex.

Sagittarii Orientalis wrote:
I am sorry if you felt as if I were dismissing most of your suggestions, but I doubt GW will "improve" marine infantry by putting even more rules in the datasheet.

I think most of the Space Marine units, not just infantry, are not cost-effective simply because of Guilliman.
The Space Marine codex seems to be designed on the premise that the player always takes Guilliman, the force-multiplier that significantly improves performance of any Space Marine units.
This unfortunately led to terrible internal balance, as anything other than Ultramarines Guilliman list is simply not worth taking in competitive and "casual"(although I seriously doubt and hate this term) games.
It also forces Space Marines players to rely on rather static gunline as the sole effective tactic, which is mitigated should there be plenty of of objective and decent number of terrain pieces on the board.

I would rather see Guilliman's aura let only wound rolls of 1 to be re-rolled, have his points cost dropped, and have almost all of the options in Space Marines codex(models, stratagems, points cost) revised to a reasonable level.

Unfortunately, that would require a revamp of the entire codex which will take a long time.
Beta rules are simply not enough to improve the current status of the codex.

I get what you mean, and it is a good concern. Guillman is certainly a complicating factor. But these problems exist across lots of factions that can't take him, and even Chaos marines too (who don't have the same sorts of problems with their daemon primarchs as they don't provide as many buffs.) If we did gets rules helping out marines, Gman may need some changes. But that is viable because he's just one unit, so its possible to keep tweaking him as they have before.

That said, I'm not sure he'd actually be a problem with the sorts of changes I'm suggesting. He used to be one with razorback spam, but that's because razorbacks were nasty. He does a lot, but he's still expensive, and there's a lot more options to kill stuff like him than there was in the early days of 8th.

I think this belongs in proposed rules since its basically just a wish list of all things suggested in proposed rules.

Yeah definitely not a fan of making heavybolter effectively AP-3 and Bolter AP-2, that's way too much, You're basically saying get a 3+ or die.

Marines have more issues than most due to GW refusing to recost them, like they have taken 5 or 6 points out of primaris models from codex to now to make them meh to ok. But tacs are still the same points.

Also if your fighting guardsmen it's not that marines suck at killing then, they are just stupidly durable for their 4 points, basically only guard kill guard efficiently.

Ice_can wrote:
Yeah definitely not a fan of making heavybolter effectively AP-3 and Bolter AP-2, that's way too much, You're basically saying get a 3+ or die.

Marines have more issues than most due to GW refusing to recost them, like they have taken 5 or 6 points out of primaris models from codex to now to make them meh to ok. But tacs are still the same points.

Also if your fighting guardsmen it's not that marines suck at killing then, they are just stupidly durable for their 4 points, basically only guard kill guard efficiently.

It makes bolters ap-2 vs guard and ap-1 vs orks, and heavy bolters ap-2 vs 4+ armor. This means the same effectiveness of these weapons as in previous editions, which was decent but not incredible. Of course now we have offensive auras and all, but so does most everyone. These weapons should be effective vs lightly armored infantry, and weren't broken vs them for the entire previous history of the game.

The problem isn't just guardsmen. Marines are also inefficient at killing Boyz, Guardians, Gaunts, etc. I'm not too hot on 4pt guardsmen either, but this issue is not only them by any means.

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
How would you like to see marines be fixed?

How GW should have done it at the start of 8th - make all marines primaris statline, make template weapons more effective against large units (or infantry in general) and reset armour values for the new system rather than copy/pasting from earlier editions with guard/cultists having 7+ among others.

Though it's a constant struggle against the scale of the game as it moves further from its skirmish roots.

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
As most people have probably noticed by now, space marines aren't doing so hot these days, and I keep bringing it up everywhere. Specifically, space marine infantry is bad. Marines are supposed to use a lot of elite infantry, but it's just not very good in 8th edition. This is mostly due to overall changes from 8th edition. I wrote about these in detail some time ago so I won't go into it all as that's its own whole big post. You can read it here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/751394.page

I'll just do a short summary:
1) AP changes reduced the effectiveness of 3+ armor. Bolters used to ignore horde infantry's armor due to old Ap5, but now don't. Other old ap5 weapons often became ap-1 or got a special rule, but bolters got screwed.

Hrm, I don't think this is a complete picture. Yeah Bolters don't ignore flak armor anymore, but at the same time, Marines get a save in the open against weapons like battlecannons, power axes, krak missiles, and plasma, instead of nothing. Likewise, standing in cover actually means something for Marines against small arms fire, unlike in the 3E-7E Paradigm era, while Guardsmen with a toe in cover no longer get a 4+ cover save against literally everything. They lose out in some areas, win out in others, but on balance don't seem to come out too bad here.

Most AP5 weapons didn't get AP-1, mainly just Necrons (who used to have the Gauss ability). AP-1 is the equivalent of old AP4. Tau didn't get AP-1 on Pulse weapons for instance, nor did Dark Eldar.

2) Changes to templates/blasts and special weapons in general hurt marines as they often relied on a couple powerful weapons in a squad do a lot of work. Flamers used to be able to get 5-10 hits on hordes, now they get 1d6 and don't ignore armor.

3) Marines used to rely on high damage, low shot anti armor weapons like meltas and powerfists to kill vehicles. This no longer works due to AV system changes, and the 8th edition version of all these weapons being crappy.

I think this is a matter of specific weapons being poorly balanced than anything inherently wrong with the system. Flamers are just bad in general, this is a problem with Flamers, not just Marines. Plasma being cheaper than Meltas is bonkers, and they need to have an easier time wounding, but that's not a fault of the AV or Armor changes, that's just piss poor implementation, much like the Vanquisher cannon. Fixing these weapons would fix issues across a number of armies.

4) Marines are hit really hard by transport and rapid fire changes. Moving, then disembarking and rapidfiring was a standard tactic (and it used to actually kill things due to old ap5).

Marines can however rapid fire and charge now, something they haven't been able to do...ever. The transport rules are a bit awkward, but this hits other armies at least as hard. The fact that you can once again assault out of a transport at all is a big plus over the previous editions, much less being able to disembark, rapid fire, then charge, even if it means having to do so at the start of a turn and get into position the turn before.

5) Instant death changes destroyed the ability of a sergeant with a powerfist to be an effective counter to characters.

Powerfists however do multiple wounds now by default, and Marines were just as vulnerable to ID as anyone else, moreso for major HQ characters particularly than say, Orks, Necrons, Tyranids, Daemons, etc.

6) The new morale mechanics were supposed to be a check on the power of hordes, but actually just end up punishing large squads of marines most, forcing us into 5 man MSU all the time. Re-rolling morale doesn't help.

This is a fair point, but I think the bigger issue is the assault phase. Marines just don't have enough attacks to kill stuff without the old Sweeping Advance mechanic. Units didn't use to need to kill every model, just a couple and then they could break. I think increasing Marine attacks would help here.

Superhuman:
Astartes are demi-gods with superhuman strength, training and experience. And of course, superhuman sized equipment far more effective than standard human versions.
Armor saves of 5+ or higher cannot be taken against attacks made by units with this rule, regardless of the weapon they are using. Armor saves of 4+ or higher cannot be taken against attacks made by models with this rule if the attacking weapon has AP-1.

Models with this rule add +1 to their armor save unless the attack has higher strength than their toughness, or ap-3 or better.

Units with this rule can only lose 1 model to morale at a time, unless they are suffering a leadership penalty, in which case they can lose additional models equal to the lost leadership.

The first part restores 5th ed style AP rules for marines, which would fix their ability to kill hordes with small arms and in close combat. This would give a ~33% increase in effectiveness of bolters vs guard, for example. And 16% vs boyz. The line for AP-1 weapons is necessary to have stuff like heavy bolters and autocannons not be worse vs these targets than regular bolters.

The defensive part makes them more durable vs small arms fire, which is currently too efficient. But it doesn't help them vs high strength, high AP weapons that are meant to kill them effectively. This is also a move back towards 5th ed style defensive efficiency.

And lastly, this fixes the problem of 10 man marine units being basically the only thing in the game that actually suffers meaningful morale loses, but lets morale killer mechanics still matter.

This rule isn't perfect, but it is relatively simple and would put regular Marines in a much better situation. I'm not claiming it would fix marine armies. It doesn't touch a lot of problems like anti-tank from marine squads. But it would make marines feel more like marines again, and maybe people would need to ask themselves "What if my opponent brings a ton of marines?" when making their lists.

Would you want to play with rules like this? How would you like to see marines be fixed?

Unfortunately, I think recosting downward on a bunch of units by 10-25% (depending on the unit), fixing a few weapons that need fixing across many armies (e.g. flamers, meltas) and increasing the base number CC attacks across the board is a lot easier and substantially cleaner. With these, you'd really ramp up Tacs, but leave a whole lot of other units still hopelessly unusable.

I think Marines have much more a general overcosting problem than specific issues with armor mechanics or particular weapons, they have a lot of stuff that just straight up costs too much. Scale issues are another, related issue. When we have things like Knights and Custodes, it's hard for Marines to feel particularly elite or special. More to the point, they break the game scaling. Balancing Space Marine costs versus Guarsdmen and Dire Avengers is one thing, in that context it makes sense that a Marine costs many times what an Ork or Guardsman does, but then having to do so next to super units that don't really care about any of the differences between these infantry units, where they might as well all be Grots, then we have issues. Likewise, a lot of the detail that Marine squads are built around goes out the window, who cares what kind of power weapon a Sergeant has when facing a lance of Knights or a full on tank company? Who cares how much battle prowess a Marine combat character has when they're stuck facing down a Castellan or a Jetbike Custodes Captain? The game is trying to make too many different game scales and unit types work within the same ruleset and it has funky effects.

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Yeah definitely not a fan of making heavybolter effectively AP-3 and Bolter AP-2, that's way too much, You're basically saying get a 3+ or die.

Marines have more issues than most due to GW refusing to recost them, like they have taken 5 or 6 points out of primaris models from codex to now to make them meh to ok. But tacs are still the same points.

Also if your fighting guardsmen it's not that marines suck at killing then, they are just stupidly durable for their 4 points, basically only guard kill guard efficiently.

It makes bolters ap-2 vs guard and ap-1 vs orks, and heavy bolters ap-2 vs 4+ armor. This means the same effectiveness of these weapons as in previous editions, which was decent but not incredible. Of course now we have offensive auras and all, but so does most everyone. These weapons should be effective vs lightly armored infantry, and weren't broken vs them for the entire previous history of the game.

The problem isn't just guardsmen. Marines are also inefficient at killing Boyz, Guardians, Gaunts, etc. I'm not too hot on 4pt guardsmen either, but this issue is not only them by any means.

No going from a 4+ with -1 vrs a heavy bolter to not allowed to take a save is effectively making them Ap-3 not AP-2 as a 4+ save still saves on 6+ vrs Ap-2, it also means no cover, as you can't modify a save you can't take.
Also Primaris is a thing and just flat out autohitting 2 shot boltrifles with Ap-3 to anything but power armour or better is not a balance improvement and I play marines.
They need help but not that sort of game breaking change.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Unfortunately, I think recosting downward on a bunch of units by 10-25% (depending on the unit), fixing a few weapons that need fixing across many armies (e.g. flamers, meltas) and increasing the base number CC attacks across the board is a lot easier and substantially cleaner

You can play that army today with the beta sisters. Well, kind of.

I think you make alot of good points but are being a little unrealistic in how it could be fixed.

Looking at the new CSM codex tells us they they aren't really interested in rewriting things, they will however alter points and issue simple to implement Beta rules. They are not going to alter weapon or unit profiles.

Looking at these two ways of fixing stuff I think something along the lines of the following could fix alot of marine issues:

Reduce points on the flamer down to about 3pts, its still more expensive than a storm bolter and only really better in overwatch and alot worse most of the time.
Reduce points on melta down to around 9pts, needs to be less than a plasmagun due to the str8 making it unreliable at doing its primary job.
Reduce the cost of a rhino by 10pts.

Beta rules:

Droppod Assault: Droppods may arrive on the battlefield during the first battle round - only way to make them worth while, they cost to much otherwise and there is little room to place them from round 2 onwards due to the model being so damn big.

Assault Vehicle: Landraiders can fire their weapons after falling back from combat but at a -1 penalty. - They are designed to drive up to the enemy, this makes them able to do so.

Black carapace - Attacks made against space marine that have an AP value of -1 are resolved as if they have an AP value of 0 and if they have an AP value of -2 they are resolved as if they have an AP value of -1.

I think the Bolter Disciple rule help marine fire power a little but they still need a bit of a bump in durability. In cover they have a 2+ so improving their save or giving them a reroll is out, this makes them better against weapons that aren't designed to kill them and has the knock on effect of also working well on terminators.

I think these few rules would really help marines feel more like the super soldiers they are supposed to be, at the moment their units have very few unique special rules compared to other armies and these upgrades will help them operate more like they should do.


One other thing to bring up, I think there needs to be a reason to bring larger squads of marines, the combat squads rule is never used as taking two squads of 5 separately is better in every way as you get two srg's, more special weapons and most importantly more CP for filling more slots.

I don't know what form this rule could take but it would need to tack onto the existing combat squad rule as a simple errata, perhaps something like this:

Combat Squads: Before any models are deployed at the start of the game, a Squad containing 10 models may be split into two units, each containing 5 models.
Also Squads that contained 10 models before deployment lose 1 less model when they fail a moral test.

Not a big change but it mitigates the moral issues facing larger squads of space marines.

I’d like to see more marines on the tabletop and your ideas are interesting but don’t seem the kind of changes GW is likely to make.

I doubt they will ever give drop pods a turn one deep strike this edition, just seems not to be the direction they are taking the game. And the effectiveness of flamers and template weapons in general is a problem for all armies, not just marines, so I won’t address that here. There are other threads discussing this specifically.

The bolter discipline rule does a lot for improving the efficacy of marines when shooting so I don’t think we need to do anything else to improve marine bolters right now.

Survivability versus small arms fire, effectiveness in close combat, and morale should each be improved though.

In the interest of keeping with the OPs premise- simple bets rules, easy to implement, similar to bolter discipline and not actually changing points or stat lines, here are my suggestions:

To improve protection against small arms fire:

Black carapace beta rule:

Space marines wearing Power Armour have an additional layer of protection provided by the black carapace - ignore AP -1

Close combat effectiveness:

Space Marines are living weapons and their bare hands are deadly weapons - on the turn that they charge Space Marines can make an additional close combat attack with their bare hands. Resolve this attack with the same characteristics as a melee weapon.

Morale:

Change ATSKNF to: when taking morale tests this unit rolls 2 dice and picks the lower.


I know these rules aren’t perfect, but I think they would certainly be simple and easy to implement, and would at least slightly improve marines in these 3 areas. I think these rules could easily be applied to all types of space marines ( except ATSKNF for Chaos, obviously) without being game breaking or too complicated.

Aash wrote:
Space marines wearing Power Armour have an additional layer of protection provided by the black carapace - ignore AP -1
on the turn that they charge Space Marines can make an additional close combat attack with their bare hands. Resolve this attack with the same characteristics as a melee weapon.

As always, these discussions slowly revolve back around to making marines primaris marines.

(as an aside, black carapace is a flexible fibrous subdermal layer used to anchor neural interface plugs - like tendons, not armour plating)

A.T. wrote:

Aash wrote:
Space marines wearing Power Armour have an additional layer of protection provided by the black carapace - ignore AP -1
on the turn that they charge Space Marines can make an additional close combat attack with their bare hands. Resolve this attack with the same characteristics as a melee weapon.

As always, these discussions slowly revolve back around to making marines primaris marines.

(as an aside, black carapace is a flexible fibrous subdermal layer used to anchor neural interface plugs - like tendons, not armour plating)

My bad regarding black carapace, regardless of the fluff, ignoring AP-1 ( resolving AP -1 as AP 0 if that wording is better) seems to me the most straightforward way of improving survivability against small arms fire without changing how the armour responds to more powerful weapons.

And yeah, the additional attack is borderline primaris, but if the additional attack is only on the charge, and is resolved with a basic melee stat line then it is a little different as it wouldn’t give any extra powerfist, power sword etc attack the way increasing the attack characteristic on the stat line would. I’d see the rule being applied across the whole marine range (infantry anyway) so primaris would also get the rule, keeping a difference between regular marines and primaris marines.

I don’t think a full and proper fix can be implemented without re-writing marines from the ground up, so I was trying to keep it simple and easy to implement.

Aash wrote:
I don’t think a full and proper fix can be implemented without re-writing marines from the ground up, so I was trying to keep it simple and easy to implement.

Circumstantial rules are always awkward. The primaris changes (wound, attack, super boltgun) really do address the most commonly raised issues in the most straightforward way.

The problem will eventually resolve itself as GW phase out oldmarines, it's just a shame they were so stuck to the old pre 8e statlines that they didn't make a clean break with 8th.

At least marines are getting beta rules to help them and new releases all the time. You might not like Primaris, but you can use them if you want to.

Other underpowered factions, not so much

-Primaris Intercessors may use any standard Marine transport
-Primaris may select any upgrade available to Tactical Marines

Bharring wrote:
-Primaris Intercessors may use any standard Marine transport

I'm not onboard with this, personally. I don't think they need Rhinos or Land Raiders or any of that jazz.

I'm 100% onboard with Stormravens and Drop Pods though. Hell, the fluffy bits for Shadowspear even have them deploying the strike force via Drop Pod.

-Primaris may select any upgrade available to Tactical Marines

Do you mean the Sergeant or the squad in general? Because they did make it so that the Sergeant can get most upgrades now.

Not down with the squad getting Plasma Guns or whatnot. I would open up some new grenades for the Astartes Grenade Launchers though!

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:

Sagittarii Orientalis wrote:
I am sorry if you felt as if I were dismissing most of your suggestions, but I doubt GW will "improve" marine infantry by putting even more rules in the datasheet.

I think most of the Space Marine units, not just infantry, are not cost-effective simply because of Guilliman.
The Space Marine codex seems to be designed on the premise that the player always takes Guilliman, the force-multiplier that significantly improves performance of any Space Marine units.
This unfortunately led to terrible internal balance, as anything other than Ultramarines Guilliman list is simply not worth taking in competitive and "casual"(although I seriously doubt and hate this term) games.
It also forces Space Marines players to rely on rather static gunline as the sole effective tactic, which is mitigated should there be plenty of of objective and decent number of terrain pieces on the board.

I would rather see Guilliman's aura let only wound rolls of 1 to be re-rolled, have his points cost dropped, and have almost all of the options in Space Marines codex(models, stratagems, points cost) revised to a reasonable level.

Unfortunately, that would require a revamp of the entire codex which will take a long time.
Beta rules are simply not enough to improve the current status of the codex.

I get what you mean, and it is a good concern. Guillman is certainly a complicating factor. But these problems exist across lots of factions that can't take him, and even Chaos marines too (who don't have the same sorts of problems with their daemon primarchs as they don't provide as many buffs.) If we did gets rules helping out marines, Gman may need some changes. But that is viable because he's just one unit, so its possible to keep tweaking him as they have before.

That said, I'm not sure he'd actually be a problem with the sorts of changes I'm suggesting. He used to be one with razorback spam, but that's because razorbacks were nasty. He does a lot, but he's still expensive, and there's a lot more options to kill stuff like him than there was in the early days of 8th.

Chaos has abbadon and kharn, both apply full rerolls.

Thanks for keeping it clean so far folks. A few points to respond to:

Most AP5 weapons didn't get AP-1, mainly just Necrons (who used to have the Gauss ability). AP-1 is the equivalent of old AP4. Tau didn't get AP-1 on Pulse weapons for instance, nor did Dark Eldar.

Eldar and Orks got special rules (suriken ap boost on 6, dakka dakka.) Tau didn't, but firewarriors got a reasonable points cost and have access to a good deal of shooting buffs (and need them). Dark Eldar didn't get anything, but also suffer from warriors not doing much, similar to marines. So I guess i'll amend my claim to this: Some ap5 weapons became ap -1 or got a special rule and those are okay. Those that didn't are now bad.

You are right though that ap-1 ignoring 4+ would be too much. I was thinking mostly of heavy bolters, but I didn't consider what it would mean for intercessors.

The bolter discipline rule does a lot for improving the efficacy of marines when shooting so I don’t think we need to do anything else to improve marine bolters right now.

Bolter Discipline doesn't really help marine shooting. It just improves the range at which they get their full firepower. They still just don't do a whole lot with it (for their points.) They should be getting stronger at close range, but don't. It's not enough. If they got a 3rd shot at close range, or if it really had doubled their shooting like some people initially thought, then they'd have some decent firepower.

Space marines wearing Power Armour have an additional layer of protection provided by the black carapace - ignore AP -1

While this would help, it's not really going to solve the problem because a lot of the weapons they need to get tougher against are Ap0. It's too easy for marines to get gunned down by guard or shootas or even firewarriors right now. That's why I suggested a +1 save instead of just ignoring AP.

Change ATSKNF to: when taking morale tests this unit rolls 2 dice and picks the lower.

This is actually about the same mathematically and doesn't address the main problem: If you take a bunch of losses, the morale penalty is so big that you will fail the roll no matter how many re-rolls you have. It needs to be something that reduces casualties, or reduces the amount of penalty they can take from losses.

Chaos has abbadon and kharn, both apply full rerolls

No they do not.
Abaddon gives re-roll hit rolls.

Kharn gives reroll hit rolls to WE, but only within 1"

Guilliman gives reroll hits AND wounds for ultramarines, and re-roll hit rolls of 1 to imperium.

Bharring wrote:
-Primaris Intercessors may use any standard Marine transport
-Primaris may select any upgrade available to Tactical Marines

As you probably already know, I just can't get on that train. I'm not cool with loyalists being that much beefier than CSMs/Eldar/Crons etc. I'm fine with Primaris existing, but overwriting the design space of the OGMs is too much.

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
Thanks for keeping it clean so far folks. A few points to respond to:

Most AP5 weapons didn't get AP-1, mainly just Necrons (who used to have the Gauss ability). AP-1 is the equivalent of old AP4. Tau didn't get AP-1 on Pulse weapons for instance, nor did Dark Eldar.

Eldar and Orks got special rules (suriken ap boost on 6, dakka dakka.) Tau didn't, but firewarriors got a reasonable points cost and have access to a good deal of shooting buffs (and need them). Dark Eldar didn't get anything, but also suffer from warriors not doing much, similar to marines. So I guess i'll amend my claim to this: Some ap5 weapons became ap -1 or got a special rule and those are okay. Those that didn't are now bad.

Bladestorm on Shuriken isn't a replacement for AP5 - it's a replacement for how the game changed between 5E and 6E. Eldar have had that and AP5 since the 6E codex. It's the rule that says "Shuriken Catapaults aren't just weaker Boltgun", on a unit that pays a premium to have a better weapon than a Boltgun. Shuriken AP5 *did* go to AP0, just like Boltgun.

DakkaDakka is arguable. The weapons went from AP5 to AP0 with no special rule, then (much later), when the Ork codex came out, they also got a new rule.

Gauss weapons went from "Always wound vehicles on a 6" to "AP-1" - it's hard to frame that as AP5 being translated into AP-1.

As noted, DE, Marines, and Tau - among others - also went from AP5 to AP0.

So in almost every case, AP5 became AP0. In a single case, AP5 and a special rule translated to AP-1 with no special rule.

Bharring wrote:

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
Thanks for keeping it clean so far folks. A few points to respond to:

Most AP5 weapons didn't get AP-1, mainly just Necrons (who used to have the Gauss ability). AP-1 is the equivalent of old AP4. Tau didn't get AP-1 on Pulse weapons for instance, nor did Dark Eldar.

Eldar and Orks got special rules (suriken ap boost on 6, dakka dakka.) Tau didn't, but firewarriors got a reasonable points cost and have access to a good deal of shooting buffs (and need them). Dark Eldar didn't get anything, but also suffer from warriors not doing much, similar to marines. So I guess i'll amend my claim to this: Some ap5 weapons became ap -1 or got a special rule and those are okay. Those that didn't are now bad.

Bladestorm on Shuriken isn't a replacement for AP5 - it's a replacement for how the game changed between 5E and 6E. Eldar have had that and AP5 since the 6E codex. It's the rule that says "Shuriken Catapaults aren't just weaker Boltgun", on a unit that pays a premium to have a better weapon than a Boltgun. Shuriken AP5 *did* go to AP0, just like Boltgun.

DakkaDakka is arguable. The weapons went from AP5 to AP0 with no special rule, then (much later), when the Ork codex came out, they also got a new rule.

Gauss weapons went from "Always wound vehicles on a 6" to "AP-1" - it's hard to frame that as AP5 being translated into AP-1.

As noted, DE, Marines, and Tau - among others - also went from AP5 to AP0.

So in almost every case, AP5 became AP0. In a single case, AP5 and a special rule translated to AP-1 with no special rule.

I'll concede the original point, but the wider point of these factions being efficient for their cost when shooting these weapons due to various factors (rules, buffs, cost), and marines not being efficient with them, still stands.

Certainly. Although I'd add that many of the factions pay a a premium (at least in theory) to have a better weapon. The Boltgun should be better per-model than the Lasgun, but not the Shuriken Catapault or Pulse Rifle.

Bharring wrote:
Certainly. Although I'd add that many of the factions pay a a premium (at least in theory) to have a better weapon. The Boltgun should be better per-model than the Lasgun, but not the Shuriken Catapault or Pulse Rifle.

I'd agree with that. It does kind of raise the question of what exactly each of these models/units should be capable of doing.

If you pit tacs against Guardsmen, should their firepower and durability per point be the same vs each other? What about tacs vs guardians and warriors? How do we account for difficult to quantify factors like the advantage of being a horde unit that can screen things?

Perhaps Tacs should outshoot guardsmen without orders, but lose with orders. And then also outfight them in melee with and without orders?

Personally, I think that marine infantry should outperform other non-specialist infantry per point in most all ways, but in return have weaker support vehicles and more vulnerability to hard counter weapons like plasma and power weapons. This is essentially how it always worked in the past, and that was fine. Soup might screw it up, but if we got incentives to do mono-faction armies, that could help (soup is its own issue.)

Ex. Tac marines vs guard infantry could have the same firepower, but then tacs could have 50% more durability per point compared to the guardsmen. This would be fine because while those tacs would stomp the guardsmen, they'll get absolutely mulched by guard tanks and heavy weapons with good AP, which will be in abundant supply. We should have the situation we had in the past where there was an appreciable differences in the effectiveness of weapons vs GeQs, MeQs, and TeQs. Right now there is not because a lot of low ap weapons are efficient enough to kill MeQs and TeQs just fine, and a lot of high ap weapons kill horde units efficiently enough too. We no longer have the phenomena of bringing too much anti-horde and not being able to efficiently kill marines, or bringing to much anti heavy infantry that is wasted on hordes. That's a lot of depth we've lost.

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Certainly. Although I'd add that many of the factions pay a a premium (at least in theory) to have a better weapon. The Boltgun should be better per-model than the Lasgun, but not the Shuriken Catapault or Pulse Rifle.

I'd agree with that. It does kind of raise the question of what exactly each of these models/units should be capable of doing.

If you pit tacs against Guardsmen, should their firepower and durability per point be the same vs each other? What about tacs vs guardians and warriors? How do we account for difficult to quantify factors like the advantage of being a horde unit that can screen things?

Perhaps Tacs should outshoot guardsmen without orders, but lose with orders. And then also outfight them in melee with and without orders?

Personally, I think that marine infantry should outperform other non-specialist infantry per point in most all ways, but in return have weaker support vehicles and more vulnerability to hard counter weapons like plasma and power weapons. This is essentially how it always worked in the past, and that was fine. Soup might screw it up, but if we got incentives to do mono-faction armies, that could help (soup is its own issue.)

Ex. Tac marines vs guard infantry could have the same firepower, but then tacs could have 50% more durability per point compared to the guardsmen. This would be fine because while those tacs would stomp the guardsmen, they'll get absolutely mulched by guard tanks and heavy weapons with good AP, which will be in abundant supply. We should have the situation we had in the past where there was an appreciable differences in the effectiveness of weapons vs GeQs, MeQs, and TeQs. Right now there is not because a lot of low ap weapons are efficient enough to kill MeQs and TeQs just fine, and a lot of high ap weapons kill horde units efficiently enough too. We no longer have the phenomena of bringing too much anti-horde and not being able to efficiently kill marines, or bringing to much anti heavy infantry that is wasted on hordes. That's a lot of depth we've lost.

So in low point games - limited heavy support like in kill team - Guard get mulched. So for the same points they will have equal firepower but have less durability. Should guard heavy weapons get cheaper so they have 50% more firepower per point (bespoke points?).

Is small arms really mowing down Space Marines? 9 Lasguns - AKA a full squad - in rapid fire range and with FRF,SRF do on average TWO (2) wounds to T4 3+save. The maths is (9 lasguns x 4 shots = 36 total shots)x(3/6 to hit)*(2/6 to wound)x(2/6 fail save)=TWO. The above shooting T3 5+save does 6 wounds by the way.

Tygre wrote:

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Certainly. Although I'd add that many of the factions pay a a premium (at least in theory) to have a better weapon. The Boltgun should be better per-model than the Lasgun, but not the Shuriken Catapault or Pulse Rifle.

I'd agree with that. It does kind of raise the question of what exactly each of these models/units should be capable of doing.

If you pit tacs against Guardsmen, should their firepower and durability per point be the same vs each other? What about tacs vs guardians and warriors? How do we account for difficult to quantify factors like the advantage of being a horde unit that can screen things?

Perhaps Tacs should outshoot guardsmen without orders, but lose with orders. And then also outfight them in melee with and without orders?

Personally, I think that marine infantry should outperform other non-specialist infantry per point in most all ways, but in return have weaker support vehicles and more vulnerability to hard counter weapons like plasma and power weapons. This is essentially how it always worked in the past, and that was fine. Soup might screw it up, but if we got incentives to do mono-faction armies, that could help (soup is its own issue.)

Ex. Tac marines vs guard infantry could have the same firepower, but then tacs could have 50% more durability per point compared to the guardsmen. This would be fine because while those tacs would stomp the guardsmen, they'll get absolutely mulched by guard tanks and heavy weapons with good AP, which will be in abundant supply. We should have the situation we had in the past where there was an appreciable differences in the effectiveness of weapons vs GeQs, MeQs, and TeQs. Right now there is not because a lot of low ap weapons are efficient enough to kill MeQs and TeQs just fine, and a lot of high ap weapons kill horde units efficiently enough too. We no longer have the phenomena of bringing too much anti-horde and not being able to efficiently kill marines, or bringing to much anti heavy infantry that is wasted on hordes. That's a lot of depth we've lost.

So in low point games - limited heavy support like in kill team - Guard get mulched. So for the same points they will have equal firepower but have less durability. Should guard heavy weapons get cheaper so they have 50% more firepower per point (bespoke points?).

Is small arms really mowing down Space Marines? 9 Lasguns - AKA a full squad - in rapid fire range and with FRF,SRF do on average TWO (2) wounds to T4 3+save. The maths is (9 lasguns x 4 shots = 36 total shots)x(3/6 to hit)*(2/6 to wound)x(2/6 fail save)=TWO. The above shooting T3 5+save does 6 wounds by the way.

1) Nobody cares how the game plays at 500pts.

2) Let's do a comparison:

8 lasguns + bolter sarge + bolter commander =68pts
5 tacitcal marines = 65pts.

Guards kill exactly 2 marines, which is 26pts
Marines kill 3 guardsmen, which is 12 points.
So even if they are at 24inch range and the guard lose half their shots, they're still about even in raw killing power.

Marines won't take morale losses from that. Guardsmen could take up to 2. So that would be 12-20pts lost total. If you were dealing with a larger size or number of units, like 2 guard squads vs 10 marines, then the marines could take losses.

Do you see the problem? Marines are more efficient shooting other marines than shooting guard, which is just silly. Guardsmen specifically can move down space marines at nearly double the points efficiency. They aren't that often because people aren't fielding lots of infantry vs lots of tacs for other reasons. But the reason we don't see lots of marines fielded is because small arms weapons like guardsmen are too good at killing marines. Guard can put out a lot of str3, str4, and str5ap-1 shots from various units. These are supposed to be anti horde weapons, and they used to not be very efficient at killing MeQs. But now in 8th, they are.

Tygre wrote:

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Certainly. Although I'd add that many of the factions pay a a premium (at least in theory) to have a better weapon. The Boltgun should be better per-model than the Lasgun, but not the Shuriken Catapault or Pulse Rifle.

I'd agree with that. It does kind of raise the question of what exactly each of these models/units should be capable of doing.

If you pit tacs against Guardsmen, should their firepower and durability per point be the same vs each other? What about tacs vs guardians and warriors? How do we account for difficult to quantify factors like the advantage of being a horde unit that can screen things?

Perhaps Tacs should outshoot guardsmen without orders, but lose with orders. And then also outfight them in melee with and without orders?

Personally, I think that marine infantry should outperform other non-specialist infantry per point in most all ways, but in return have weaker support vehicles and more vulnerability to hard counter weapons like plasma and power weapons. This is essentially how it always worked in the past, and that was fine. Soup might screw it up, but if we got incentives to do mono-faction armies, that could help (soup is its own issue.)

Ex. Tac marines vs guard infantry could have the same firepower, but then tacs could have 50% more durability per point compared to the guardsmen. This would be fine because while those tacs would stomp the guardsmen, they'll get absolutely mulched by guard tanks and heavy weapons with good AP, which will be in abundant supply. We should have the situation we had in the past where there was an appreciable differences in the effectiveness of weapons vs GeQs, MeQs, and TeQs. Right now there is not because a lot of low ap weapons are efficient enough to kill MeQs and TeQs just fine, and a lot of high ap weapons kill horde units efficiently enough too. We no longer have the phenomena of bringing too much anti-horde and not being able to efficiently kill marines, or bringing to much anti heavy infantry that is wasted on hordes. That's a lot of depth we've lost.

So in low point games - limited heavy support like in kill team - Guard get mulched. So for the same points they will have equal firepower but have less durability. Should guard heavy weapons get cheaper so they have 50% more firepower per point (bespoke points?).

Is small arms really mowing down Space Marines? 9 Lasguns - AKA a full squad - in rapid fire range and with FRF,SRF do on average TWO (2) wounds to T4 3+save. The maths is (9 lasguns x 4 shots = 36 total shots)x(3/6 to hit)*(2/6 to wound)x(2/6 fail save)=TWO. The above shooting T3 5+save does 6 wounds by the way.

The problem is those 2 marines cost 6.5 guardsmen.
Also unfortunately what drudge is describing as much as no-one wants to admit it is exactly what primaris marines do currently, the issue they have is slightly different and is more of a short term fixable issue, 1W powerarmour marines at this point kinda need an edition change to be competatively viable IMHO, and arr probably not likely to be the same after said edition change.
Heck look at the amount of rules that have to be pumped onto and doubel digit point cost troops custodes are the other extreme and aren't realy that great. 8th edition is a buckets of dice edition, marines just can't be that kind of army due to fluff.

I like how everyone always compares infantry to guardsmen, guardsmen are just flat out the best infantry right now, not only for ds denial, output and CP, but because they get VPs with their Move move move order, which shouldnt really exist.

To add:
Skitarii vanguards went from AP5 to AP0 and nerfed special rule
Skitarii rangers went from AP4 to AP0, lost their special rule and now have -1ap on a 6 to wound, both losing their fnp and going from LD 10 to LD 6/7

My point is: Marines are fine, especially now with the bolter rule. IMO they should do less damage gunning in comparison to others, but be good at holding objectives.
The problems are CP generation, soup, and guardsmen orders.