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Preface:
1. I don't play Iron Hands; go figure.
2. I play GK, SW, AdMech & GSC; out of which only GK has been, mercifully, updated recently.
3. I'm a self-proclaimed Fluff Bunny and proud of it; take that as you will.
4. Am I a good player? Fair at best; I could definitely be a better player.
5. I haven't beaten IH since their last revision. Bitter about how good they are now? just a little bit. =)
6. Considering recent tourny results, they need a little nerfing.

My Observations:
Iron Hands are very durable, as they should be.
Iron Hands are too good at shooting, especially with heavy weapons.
They never leave Devastator Doctrine due to how good their shooting is.

My Proposed Solution:
Remove both army-wide re-roll 1's to hit & army-wide Move+Fire Heavy Weapons without penalty while in Devastator Doctrine.
Keep army-wide 6+ FNP.
Add a quasi-"Reanimation Protocols" rule (Repair Protocols maybe?), for Infantry only, that improves as you progress through the SM Doctrines.
For Example:
* While in Devastator Doctrine IH Infantry "reanimate" on a 6+.
* While in Tactical Doctrine IH Infantry "reanimate" on a 5+.
* While in Assault Doctrine IH Infantry "reanimate" on a 4+.

I feel this would bring IH shooting more in line with other Codex Chapters & make them a little bit sturdier in the process; the Flesh is Weak after all.
I expect many flames but consider IH broken beyond belief & in need of a good fix.

Remove all the Super Doctrines, period. They should not exist.

Lord Clinto wrote:Preface:
My Proposed Solution:
Remove both army-wide re-roll 1's to hit & army-wide Move+Fire Heavy Weapons without penalty while in Devastator Doctrine.
Keep army-wide 6+ FNP.
Add a quasi-"Reanimation Protocols" rule (Repair Protocols maybe?), for Infantry only, that improves as you progress through the SM Doctrines.
For Example:
* While in Devastator Doctrine IH Infantry "reanimate" on a 6+.
* While in Tactical Doctrine IH Infantry "reanimate" on a 5+.
* While in Assault Doctrine IH Infantry "reanimate" on a 4+.

I feel this would bring IH shooting more in line with other Codex Chapters & make them a little bit sturdier in the process; the Flesh is Weak after all.
I expect many flames but consider IH broken beyond belief & in need of a good fix.

I'm not sure how I feel about giving them a better version of necrons' main thematic rule. I'm also not sure it captures their fluff super well. Iron Hands are more durable thank other marines thanks to their bionics, sure, but are they especially good at getting back up in the middle of the fight after they've been rendered combat ineffective? Like, is it a thematic thing for a 10 man squad to drop down to 2 combat-capable marines in the first half of the fight, and then to be back up to 10 dudes again at the end of the fight? More so than, say, white scars or raven guard?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:Remove all the Super Doctrines, period. They should not exist.

I think chapter-specific doctrines could work. The issue is that they're an extra layer of benefits on top of normal doctrines. That, and the iron hands ones are just straight up too powerful.

I like the idea of "super doctrines" that replace other doctrines (maybe even other rules?) rather than stacking on top of them. So if you declare pre-game that you're using the Iron Hands doctrines, you'd lose access to the devastator, tactical, and assault doctrines and gain the ability to switch between a reroll 1's to hit doctrine, a move and shoot heavy without penalties doctrine, and a +1 to your FNP doctrine. Or something like that.

I think they should get the salamanders treatment with their super doctrine.

Make it more specific... maybe too specific. For example it would only apply to las-cannons

I like where you're going with this, but imo they don't need anymore durability with revivals given that they are already getting so many passives stacked on top of each other. So how about just remove the rerolling 1's to hit and that's it, no compensation just a flat nerf.

What if you went full supplement you lost access to core SM abilities, psychic powers, relics, traits and or strats ?

So no doctrines other than super doctrines. No core SM strats other than supplement strats?

Or just remove Super Doctrines. They reek of the same exact problems more formations had last edition.

The thing about Iron Hands is that it is more than one think that makes them good:

The Super Doctrine is a problem, but there exist Space Marines List that include multiple chapters that include Iron Hands.

The Chapter Tactic is a problem, but there are any Iron Hands Successor List about also.

That being said, I think there are a few key issues that need to be looked at:

The Super Doctrine is too much. It has two parts which stack, which I think should be an either or. I would say IH units don't suffer the to-hit penalty for moving when firing heavy weapons. If a unit already has a rule that prevents this penalty, the unit instead may re-roll ones to hit with heavy weapons.

The Chapter Tactic has stacking rules for vehicles that make them very appealing. I'd make that an or also. So all IH units hit on overwatch on a 5 or 6. Units ignore wounds on a d6 roll of 6 unless they are a Vehicle with a Damage table. Such Vehicles count their remaining wounds as double when checking on the Damage Chart.

March of the Ancients cost 2 (3?) CP. It is just too good for 1 CP. And the unit may not take a Warlord Trait.

Cogitated Martyrdom works in Infantry Characters not any Character.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Or just remove Super Doctrines. They reek of the same exact problems more formations had last edition.

Eh. I'm not sure I agree with you there. To my mind, the biggest sins of formations were:
1. They built your army for you by forcing you to take specific unit combinations.
2. They were used as a way to prop up bad units, which sounds nice but basically just gave the designers an excuse not to try harder to balance the units on their own merits.
3. They made already good units better for "free", threatening to make them OP.

Number 1 isn't really the case unless you're really feeling constrained by playing all-marines.If anything, I kind of feel like they make marine units you'd normally pass over in favor of non-marine allies more playable. You might look at a predator or something instead of a russ, for instance, if doing so meant keeping a super doctrine. I'm struggling to think of any especially weak units that are only desirable when benefitting from super doctrines, so 2 is probably out. 3 is the most likely candidate, but I'd argue that the cost of the super doctrines is giving up your soup. If splashing in, say, a loyal 32 makes your list X% better than your list without the loyal 32, then doctrines should power you up by roughly X% as well to make up the difference.

That issue lies with the Predator just not being a great tank, not the Leman Russ being done monster. If the unit doesn't look that good without Doctrines to begin with, there's a problem there.

Marines as a hole are too powerful, especially a few certain units (centurians, cough, cough) which can be fixed by points adjustments.

There are also some strats which likely need an additional CP bump or alterations on which units they can target.

FW units were obviously not considered when designing the codex and the dreadnoughts combine far too well with certain strats. GW already came up with a fix to this when the FW whirlwind was proving too good, they changed its keyword so it couldn't use codex strats. For the forgeworld dreads simply change their DREADNOUGHT keyword into RELIC DREADNOUGHT and they can no longer use all of the strats. This is a better fix for these models that upping the points as their points are fine for chaos, wolves and others who don't have the bonkers strats.

Ironhands are the real issue, with multiple effects stacking together to just make them murder machines. I think the following is a pretty simple fix which keeps the flavour of all the rules but prevents them all stacking together.

Chapter tactics - Keep the 6+++ as is. Keep the vehicles act on better profile. Change the overwatch on 5+ to only effect non-vehicle units. This means that their chapter tactic is more inline with other marines as each model only gets two benefits.

Super Doctrine - Change the Re-roll 1s o hit with heavy weapons to only effect non-vehicle units. Change the move and fire heavy weapons to only effect vehicle units. This keeps the fluff of Ironhands not needing captains and also keeps the imitation "Power of the machine spirit" for their vehicles but all their models don't benefit from both.

I've won a tourney with IH and they were far too good, a balanced game is a better game.