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So, I’ve gotten my hands on the new Space Marine base codex, and while it’s not jaw-droppingly spectacular, I have to admit I feel I’m getting my money’s worth with the new datasheets, stratagems and the like. I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth.

However, having had a peek at the Ultramarine and White Scars subcodex - I am completely unimpressed (and will not be buying ANY of them). They are simply a dumping ground for the soon-to-be Legends resin models or a primarification of such models, a bit of repeated fluff and some afterthought stratagems and relics. To me, not worth the money - I would have much preferred at least three custom units per chapter (that White Scars don’t get a special bike squad, vengeance squad or crazy cavalry unit baffles me), but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised - seems like if it isn’t Ultras, Angels or Wolves, GW can’t fathom some unique thing for these chapters. Hell, a “build your own unique Primaris Lieutenant from these Chapter-specific” abilities would have been nice, considering the custom character creation rules they’d first posted in CA2018. These subfaction Codexes just seem uninspired and do not hold value in my eyes.

What are other’s opinions of this new batch so far?

I think mechanically marines are in a better position then before the codex. It's not jaw dropping sure but at least we can see GW trying to make armies different than just my dudes are T4 and your dudes are T3

Seems to be a very nice book, probably fun to play with and the supplements open options to play the same models different way, although that costs a lot of extra money.

I haven't dug into any of the supplements yet, but in theory I think they are a workable idea. I could see the same concept being applied to the Traitor Legions as well (except EC and WE, who probably deserve full codexes), and possibly other subfactions like specific Eldar Craftworlds.

You must not be reading the same sub-codexes as everyone else, the extra strats, relics, warlord traits, and doctrine bonuses are huge. Ultramarines and White Scars pick up some really nasty tricks over the base codex, Ravenguard and Iron Hands do too just on the stuff we already know about.

New Vs Old

Old was more flexible but seemed bland between factions.

New is more specialised but the issue is that it's offensive spike Space Marines are still a low model count glass hammer.

The issue is for xeno having enough models on board b4 the sm die now.

The new codex (and the supplements) is how it should have been done in the first place.

The Codex + Supplement (UM in my case) seem crazy powerful.

My vehicles can back out of combat and shoot, and all my basic guys can move and fire twice with their bolt weapons at additional -1AP. Some of the stratagems are amazing, as are some of the Relics.

A squad of TH/SS Terminators can charge and kill two Knight Gallants in a round.

 Insectum7 wrote:
The Codex + Supplement (UM in my case) seem crazy powerful.

My vehicles can back out of combat and shoot, and all my basic guys can move and fire twice with their bolt weapons at additional -1AP. Some of the stratagems are amazing, as are some of the Relics.

A squad of TH/SS Terminators can charge and kill two Knight Gallants in a round.

On average or rolling perfectly?

They've done a real bang up job this time. Some things may prove a bit too good but that has yet to be proven one way or the other. Overall I'm impressed and actually considering coming back to marines again, something I swore off years ago.

 Stormonu wrote:
So, I’ve gotten my hands on the new Space Marine base codex, and while it’s not jaw-droppingly spectacular, I have to admit I feel I’m getting my money’s worth with the new datasheets, stratagems and the like. I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth.

However, having had a peek at the Ultramarine and White Scars subcodex - I am completely unimpressed (and will not be buying ANY of them). They are simply a dumping ground for the soon-to-be Legends resin models or a primarification of such models, a bit of repeated fluff and some afterthought stratagems and relics. To me, not worth the money - I would have much preferred at least three custom units per chapter (that White Scars don’t get a special bike squad, vengeance squad or crazy cavalry unit baffles me), but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised - seems like if it isn’t Ultras, Angels or Wolves, GW can’t fathom some unique thing for these chapters. Hell, a “build your own unique Primaris Lieutenant from these Chapter-specific” abilities would have been nice, considering the custom character creation rules they’d first posted in CA2018. These subfaction Codexes just seem uninspired and do not hold value in my eyes.

What are other’s opinions of this new batch so far?

I'm very happy with the Codex, especially with how it gives options outside of souping. I'm also quite happy with the supplements, even though the ones I will pick up aren't out yet. They're giving us more of what makes the chapters unique without going too far. Having a bunch of unique units would mean they're not codex compliant, which is the reason WHY they're bundled in Codex:Space Marines in the first place.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 John Prins wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
The Codex + Supplement (UM in my case) seem crazy powerful.

My vehicles can back out of combat and shoot, and all my basic guys can move and fire twice with their bolt weapons at additional -1AP. Some of the stratagems are amazing, as are some of the Relics.

A squad of TH/SS Terminators can charge and kill two Knight Gallants in a round.

On average or rolling perfectly?

It depends on how much you invest into supporting them, but two Knights in one round I'd assume we're talking 10 Terminators with basically everything that can help them (Chaptermaster, Chaplain, Lieutenant, Librarian, Stratagems, ...) - that MIGHT be possible then

 Brother Castor wrote:
The new codex (and the supplements) is how it should have been done in the first place.

But very costly as a codex 8.2 release:

Codex, codex-based cards, codex upgrade (for UM or whatnot), codex-upgrade-based cards.

About 100 Euro in toto.

 wuestenfux wrote:

 Brother Castor wrote:
The new codex (and the supplements) is how it should have been done in the first place.

But very costly as a codex 8.2 release:

Codex, codex-based cards, codex upgrade (for UM or whatnot), codex-upgrade-based cards.

About 100 Euro in toto.

Yep I agree totally! I even started a thread at the time saying similar. That's why I wish they'd done it like this in the first place

Simply put, the Iron Hands book is massive. I more or less stopped playing 8th because of the overkill factor (units rolling 150+ attacks/shots, etc.). Rather than tone things down for balance, GW has gone the other direction and gone completely off the reservation with the absurdity of combos.

In short, it does nothing to interest me back into the game which had already gone a bit too mad.

 John Prins wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
The Codex + Supplement (UM in my case) seem crazy powerful.

My vehicles can back out of combat and shoot, and all my basic guys can move and fire twice with their bolt weapons at additional -1AP. Some of the stratagems are amazing, as are some of the Relics.

A squad of TH/SS Terminators can charge and kill two Knight Gallants in a round.

On average or rolling perfectly?

On average, no Character support.

10 Terminators charge, 31 attacks.
Fury of the 1st +1 to Hit

31×.666×.5×.83×3=25.7 wounds.

Fight Twice.

This is no rerolls to hit or wound, no Assault Doctrine. 2 dead Knights.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
With Chapter Master, Lt, Assault Doctrine, they manage 49 wounds before Fight Twice Stratagem. So. . . 4 Knight Gallants.

That's prior to any Litanies, too. Like the +1 Damage Litany.

Where is that. 83 coming from insectum? Would it not be. 333?

Iron Hands look like they were made by manager's kid who plays spehhs marines.

Not because just powerful rules - there's lots of powerful rules in game; but the way they were just slammed together without a second thought like "maybe should stop here".

 Stormonu wrote:
However, having had a peek at the Ultramarine and White Scars subcodex - I am completely unimpressed (and will not be buying ANY of them). They are simply a dumping ground for the soon-to-be Legends resin models

Legends won't be having models that are on sale so your claim here is false. Legends are for stats for models they DON'T have on sale. Them being in codex in fact means they aren't going away any time soon.

 fraser1191 wrote:
Where is that. 83 coming from insectum? Would it not be. 333?

3+ Save goes to 6+ Save, stopping 17% of wounds.

I agree that the supplements are rather disappointing. Sure, they make your army more powerful, there is no question about that. Too powerful, probably. The supplements contain a lot of unfun stuff that I'd rather not face. But aside Ultramarines who have bunch of characters and three bespoke units (none of which their successors can use) they do not really add anything interesting. And of course the internal balance is now utterly fethed. IH vehicles are so insanely much better than non IH ones that assigning proper point costs is completely impossible.

It completely baffles me how you can leave the Word Bearers dumpster fire burning when you know this is coming.

I don't think it's well implemented; and would have much rather had cost reductions than special rules, the units that I was hoping to get buffed didn't [except for the Vindicator], and the special rule based buffs are generally making the units that are already decent even better without addressing the poorly performing units.

As far as external balance goes, the Iron Hands Leviathan that's been being talked around sounds pretty concerning, and is unfortunately best countered by also being Space Marines and doing something that I just don't think should have been an option in the first place but otherwise things don't look egregious. White Scars, Ultramarines, and Raven Guard don't look like they're going to upset Guard+Knights as a meta choice.

We'll have to see what Imperial Fists do.

I don't like the fact that the new doctine rules mostly serve to make Space Marines more effective at shooting at vehicles and heavy infantry units with gakky assault rifles rather than making up the performance ground vs. light infantry units. I don't think more AP proliferation was something the game needed; and I definitely don't think that bolters should be effective against dreadnoughts. Vehicles already have an issue in that their armor saves are effectively meaningless except to deter small arms, which severely reduces the granularity and variation in vehicle profiles, and with high AP small arms [with an appreciably high rate of fire], they don't even have that.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I don't think it's well implemented; and would have much rather had cost reductions than special rules, the units that I was hoping to get buffed didn't [except for the Vindicator], and the special rule based buffs are generally making the units that are already decent even better without addressing the poorly performing units.

As far as external balance goes, the Iron Hands Leviathan that's been being talked around sounds pretty concerning, and is unfortunately best countered by also being Space Marines and doing something that I just don't think should have been an option in the first place but otherwise things don't look egregious.

We'll have to see what Imperial Fists do.

I don't like the fact that the new doctine rules mostly serve to make Space Marines more effective at shooting at vehicles and heavy infantry units with gakky assault rifles rather than making up the performance ground vs. light infantry units. I don't think more AP proliferation was something the game needed; and I definitely don't think that bolters should be effective against dreadnoughts.

We have bolters. And those get to be AP-1 in the tactical doctrine, how is that not helping vs light infantry? how is bolter drill not helping with that, either? How are extra attacks on the charge for all our units not helping?

nekooni wrote:


We have bolters. And those get to be AP-1 in the tactical doctrine, how is that not helping vs light infantry? how is bolter drill not helping with that, either? How are extra attacks on the charge for all our units not helping?

Any AP helps against any unit with a save sure, but it affects units with better saves much more than units with poor saves. Going from a 3+ to a 4+ is far worse than going from a 5+ to a 6+*. Even though marine damage has been upped across the board, it disproportionally affects tougher units over squishy units. So in sum, the new rules make marines very good at killing elite units, but only moderately better at killing light infantry. Which is a problem because cheap units have been more capable in general than elite units, meaning that there is even less reason to take those elite units.

*You lose 50% more marines per wound with AP -1 but only 25% more Guardsmen (as opposed to AP 0).

nekooni wrote:


We have bolters. And those get to be AP-1 in the tactical doctrine, how is that not helping vs light infantry? how is bolter drill not helping with that, either? How are extra attacks on the charge for all our units not helping?

Going from AP-1 to AP-2 against Guardsmen, Cultists, Boyz, Gretchin, etc is basically worthless. Even against T3 4+ models it's not a big deal.

But going for AP-1 to AP-2 against a Predator, or worse, the Stalker guns which are going to be AP-3 D2, is pretty bad news for a Predator when they formerly would have been at least mostly unconcerned.


The fundamental gist of it is that each point of AP is worth more against a better armor save unit than a high armor save unit. A predator [or other 3+ unit] takes 33% more wounds, but a guardsman takes only 16% more wounds from the extra point of AP; and the guardsmen were probably going to be tabled off anyway before the AP buff while the predator would have been marginally inconvenienced.


I already think the fact that tanks are T7 and T8 wasn't the ideal course. I think the default state of infantry weapons should have been wounding tanks on a 6+ with only exceptionally light vehicles being T7 and most standard tanks being T8 or T9. This would have had the added bonus of giving greater differentiation in AT systems, since with mostly T7 and some special T8 almost all the AT systems are effectively identical and S10 AT weapons like Railcannons and Demolishers are basically useless. Being mostly proof against assault rifle fire should not have been the standard that differentiates heavy from regular tanks.

I dunno, the UM ability to rapid fire bolters at full range on the move completely addresses any issues vs. light infantry. Not to mention the bonus attack in the first round of cc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dandelion wrote:

nekooni wrote:


We have bolters. And those get to be AP-1 in the tactical doctrine, how is that not helping vs light infantry? how is bolter drill not helping with that, either? How are extra attacks on the charge for all our units not helping?

Any AP helps against any unit with a save sure, but it affects units with better saves much more than units with poor saves. Going from a 3+ to a 4+ is far worse than going from a 5+ to a 6+*. Even though marine damage has been upped across the board, it disproportionally affects tougher units over squishy units. So in sum, the new rules make marines very good at killing elite units, but only moderately better at killing light infantry. Which is a problem because cheap units have been more capable in general than elite units, meaning that there is even less reason to take those elite units.

*You lose 50% more marines per wound with AP -1 but only 25% more Guardsmen (as opposed to AP 0).

The bolters are wounding the lighter models more often though. Also the percentage shifts for AP move around depending on cover.

 Shadenuat wrote:
without a second thought like "maybe should stop here".

Pretty much this...
I imagine they had an office meeting and jeff the intern went: "Don't you think think we have gone a bit OP?"

Don the manager thought about marine sales, the x mas bonus he'd get and said : "I think we can go more spesh"

I just see it as a return to the old ways. Marines on top with their rich supplement ruulz while most Xeno's deal with their favorite sub-faction in micro form inside a core book. I doubt Xeno's sub-faction micro rules will keep up with rich supplemental marine books. Not like we will ever see Supplemental: Black Heart / Leviathan / Bad Moons etc but that is the level of detail marine's are treated with so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Opinion: GW's financials benefit from book sales and OP rules sell.

In each of my games versus NuMarines, I faced something crazy that deleted a quarter of my army first turn. Triple Repulsors firing 40 shots each, snipers that put down every HQ from range, -4 Dreadnought and Daemon Engine saves, etc.

Run properly, Ultramarines are an unstoppable force that turns the center of the table into a kill zone. Mid-range armies are at a severe disadvantage.

Premium tasting paper. Satisfying crunch in the limited edition covers.