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Hi there! I've been away from 40k for sometime....I stopped painting 40k around the time primaris marines were coming out and the last time I played was probably not long after dark vengeance released? I've been playing with dragons in dungeons and this past weekend my youtube playlist brought me to some 40k videos and I got the itch again. My wife would probably put me out of the house if she saw the bill for the deathguard boxes coming this week but that's my own problem with impulse control to figure out hahaha.

I picked up the recruit box at my local shop because I figured it was not a bad value, get some models and I can brush up on the current editions rules. Then I started looking at my old boxes that I haven't sold off. I have enough sprues to put together an additional 10-20 regular marines. I am leaning towards Black Templars for my imperial forces but are regular marines worth fielding? I mean I can paint them for the enjoyment of that part of the hobby but are they worth putting on the table in the current edition?

First of many questions getting back into the hobby I'm sure. Thanks in advance!

Marines have recently gotten a much-needed power boost in the latest Balance Dataslate from GW, granting them the Armor of Contempt rule (reduce the AP of incoming attacks by 1). Before the dataslate, they were in the bottom half of armies for sure.

Black Templars are certainly doing okay; they've gotten some new releases fairly recently and have good rules. If you like melee but don't mind some shooting mixed in, they are a good choice. Dark Angels are probably the strongest Marines though. Their Terminators are incredibly durable, especially with Armor of Contempt, as the opponent needs a 4+ to wound them even with a high-strength weapon.

Darn it. Dark Angles were my army of choice for decades. Last year I sold off an unfinished 3000 point ravenwing army and 1500 points of greenwing because I thought I wouldn't be going back to 40k. I kept my deathwing termies though. These are the breaks I guess! Thanks for the reply. Nice to know I can put these marines together and see where they fall and it wont be wasted effort!

Marines are in a good place right now. Templars are about as close to middle of the middle tier as it gets at the moment for marines. For my preferred space marine army lots of bodies marching to get stuck in. Current meta has a lot of mortal wound spam and templars have some of the bets tools against it. The problem is going to be the same as other marines. Templars are one of the better matchups to the best current army (tyranids) but will struggle vs Tau, Eldar and Harliquins who will play keep away while dropping too much power to deal with... or just come in an murder you in assaulty from across the table in the case of harlies

I disagree with the above statement of them being in the lower half of armies before armor of contempt. Depending on the chapter marines were mostly in the middle of the road as far as power. Not a bad place to be but certainly not dominating the tournament scene.

The issue was the armies that were on top absolutely toasted marines. Custodes, Craftworld, Harliquins and Tau all needed nerfing to be more in line than other books. GW instead just gave marines a tool to deal with those (admittedly they bodied custodes down to much and they are now a bottom 1/3 codex)

Space marines are now in the bottom of the top 1/3 to upper mid 1/3 depending on the chapter (except fists cause funny enough armor of contempt hurt them the most)