Just how "Elite" are marines supposed to feel?

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**Insectum7**

Martel732 wrote:
Well, once before. Then choose one weapon to fire. Resolve. Then check to see if tank can still see the unit before firing second weapon.

Right.
The whole situation makes me re-appreciate the older "measure LOS from the weapon mount" rules as well. That combined with firing arcs and armor facing made vehicles much more interesting.

**Martel732**

It also spawned arguments and created modeling for advantage. I think checking after each gun at least partially fixes it.

**catbarf**

Martel732 wrote:But there's not really a viable way to depict operational agility.

Unit1126PLL wrote:I think there is, just not in the current over-simplified 40k rulesset as it stands. But if we were to take the current 30k rulesset to an example:

The Solar Auxilia are much more agile than the Imperial Militia, even on the table top. The rules by which this is achieved are as follows:

1) Troops Choice Mobility:
- The Imperial Militia tends to have massive, unwieldy squad sizes. Minimum 20, except Grenadiers who are minimum 10 (and can therefore fit in transports), but can't take any special weapons at all and still fit in a transport (each special weapon taken also adds a body). This means that the Imperial Militia are either stuck to really really terrible firepower, or walking speed. And remember, if even a single model takes terrain, the whole unit must slow down. So not being able to fit between terrain easily basically means the Militia are always moving the highest of 2d6" rather than 6".
- The Solar Auxilia have 10 man squads who all have special weapons. These fit in transports armed with Demolisher cannons; alternatively, their 20 man squads still fit in transports armed with twin lascannons. It's much easier to make a force that moves faster and further on the table top than the Imperial Militia while still being effective. Their squad sizes (no larger than 20, and their 10-man squads do well) are small enough to maneuver in tight terrain where the Imperial Militia squads would feel unwieldy and be forced to only move the highest of 2d6.

2) Tank/Heavy weapon mobility:
- Both armies have Leman Russ tanks, but the Solar Auxilia tanks have Outflank and can be Fast for one turn, while Imperial Militia tanks are Heavy type and can take sponsons and loads of extra gun.
- Imperial Militia choices include heavy weapon squads on foot, while Solar Auxilia tend to have armored vehicles to carry their guns.
- Imperial Militia artillery are all towed guns, Solar Auxilia artillery are all self-propelled - meaning they can move and fire while the Imperial Militia cannot.

3) Special Rules:
- The Solar Auxilia have Move Through Cover on their smaller units (making them faster, on average, through terrain than the Militia), and all their tanks and transports have Explorator Adaptation which lets them re-roll dangerous terrain tests. The Imperial Militia lacks all of these, but tends to bring cheaper firepower.

So, in a 30k engagement between a Solar Auxilia army and a Imperial Militia army, you'll have an army that's slow, unwieldy, and prefers to dig in vs. an army that's smaller, faster, and concentrates its forces where the enemy is weakest (e.g. outflanking the heavier Russes with lighter ones typically gives the victory to the lighter Russes, even without their sponsons).

40k's modern rules lack the ability to reflect this as easily though. (to pursue the same example, there's no such thing as side armor anymore so outflanking a Leman Russ with another Leman Russ gets you exactly squat). And that's terrible, because I would argue that Solar Auxilia are much closer to the Imperial Militia (they even have the same tank chassis) than SM are to IG, yet the difference in playstyle is more obvious between them than between the latter two in modern 40k.

I think you guys are getting too hung up on raw combat ability, when 40K already has something that should directly reflect operational mobility- the scenario and objectives.

If you set up a 2k vs 2k standard pitched battle, then you're back to a meat grinder, regardless of tactical mobility through innate speed or ability to move through cover.

But if you set up an asymmetric scenario where the Marine player's objective is a command post that they need to seize and hold for one turn before extracting, while their opponent starts with only a small their force on the board (but a lot more trickling in as reinforcements), you get a completely different sort of game. The Marine player is then engaging in less of a slugfest and more of a smash-and-grab. Tactical mobility options become a lot more useful. Now take it a step further and have it influenced by FOC. The defender starts with their Troops and HQs on the board, but not their Elites, Fast Attack, or Heavy Support. So the Marine player has their opportunity to slaughter their way through Guardsmen- but better be quick about actually completing the objective, because the tanks are on their way.

That kind of scenario better fits the fluff of Space Marines than conventional warfare over open terrain. Not to beat a dead horse, but because Epic models the 'closing to contact' part of the battle too, you get these kinds of scenarios organically. Space Marines are operationally fast and coordinated, and can apply overwhelming firepower to a small point and then redeploy before reinforcements can arrive.

I don't think you can ever satisfyingly model operational mobility solely through combat mechanics at the tactical scale 40K depicts- Genestealer Cults are the closest with their blip mechanic, but even that is a pretty limited gimmick. You don't wargame special forces raids by setting up a team of SEALs opposite a Soviet tank battalion and then trying to figure out what special rules can make the SEALs feel 'right'. It's never going to feel 'right', even if you can make it balanced.

If you want alternate scenarios to work in the current tournament-oriented context of 40K, you need something akin to Dust Warfare's Battle Builder, where players can bid a predetermined number of points to adjust the conditions of the battle (including deployment types and victory conditions). Let the Imperial Guard player bid to have prepared defensive positions and a defend-the-point objective, while the Marine player can bid to have the scenario take place at night and allow them aggressive forward deployment. That way each army can adjust the conditions of the battle to suit their strengths and better fit their themes.

**Martel732**

No one wants to play vs marines with only a fraction of their army though.

Also, that scenario only makes sense for large cumbersome forces. Also, IG have a lot of air-mobile forces. I just have a hard time buying the whole quick insertion use narrative for marines. There are virtually no uses of that in my codex stories.

**Insectum7**

Martel732 wrote:
No one wants to play vs marines with only a fraction of their army though.

That's "realism".

**Martel732**

Again, only in very limited circumstances. Marines, like knights, seem really good at putting down peasant revolts, but seem miserable vs other actual militaries.

**Insectum7**

Martel732 wrote:
Again, only in very limited circumstances. Marines, like knights, seem really good at putting down peasant revolts, but seem miserable vs other actual militaries.

Ships with beyond-nuclear capability.

**Unit1126PLL**

Martel732 wrote:
Again, only in very limited circumstances. Marines, like knights, seem really good at putting down peasant revolts, but seem miserable vs other actual militaries.

Which is rather the point, isn't it?

The Marines are not designed to fight toe-to-toe with other militaries.

They're designed to fight other militaries when the tactical advantage presents itself. For example, while the IG might have airmobile forces, they take a bit of muscle from High Command to get places. So let's use your plasma gun problem.

A given rebellion (call them the Davros IV rebellion) has more plasma guns than there are Marines in the engagement area. The Davros IV rebellion is also led by a single charismatic figure, whose death would cause the rebellion to disintegrate. The Imperium has several options, but for the moment lets set aside the idea that Assassins are immediately available for "reasons" (i.e. they're all on the toilet at the same time or whatever).

The Imperial Guard could tackle the rebellion head on and smash it to pieces in a total war style conflict. Their airmobile style forces would be employed to support this conflict the way the 101st and 82nd supported American offensives in World War II (i.e. not dropped into Berlin to assassinate Hitler, but instead dropped in to support military objectives near the front).

The Space Marines could nibble at the rebellion from the sides, striking where they are weakest - i.e. where those plasmaguns aren't. If the enemy concentrates their plasma guns and anti-tank weapons forwards to try to fight the Imperial Guard, the Marines can hit rear areas and possibly assassinate the leader if he doesn't keep enough plasma gunners around him specifically. If the enemy heavily commits to defending their rear areas from the Space Marine drop, the Imperial Guard's heavy tanks smash through the defenseless front lines.

Essentially, even if the marines are outnumbered by the heavy weapons, they're more mobile than the heavy weapons and "peanut-butter spreading" your heavy weapons across your entire AO just means you never have enough where you need them against either the IG or the Marines together. So the Marines strike where the heavy weapons aren't, and the Guard strikes where the heavy weapons are. This is because their toolsets are complimentary - the Guard can suppress heavy weapons with artillery and endure heavy weapons with thick armor and large numbers. The Space Marines can shatter and destroy forces where heavy weapons are lacking, and have the speed to strike and withdraw before such weapons can be relocated to tackle them.

**Martel732**

Insectum7 wrote:
Martel732 wrote:
Again, only in very limited circumstances. Marines, like knights, seem really good at putting down peasant revolts, but seem miserable vs other actual militaries.
Ships with beyond-nuclear capability.

Relevance? So does everyone else who matters.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Unit1126PLL wrote:
Martel732 wrote:
Again, only in very limited circumstances. Marines, like knights, seem really good at putting down peasant revolts, but seem miserable vs other actual militaries.

Which is rather the point, isn't it?

The Marines are not designed to fight toe-to-toe with other militaries.

They're designed to fight other militaries when the tactical advantage presents itself. For example, while the IG might have airmobile forces, they take a bit of muscle from High Command to get places. So let's use your plasma gun problem.

A given rebellion (call them the Davros IV rebellion) has more plasma guns than there are Marines in the engagement area. The Davros IV rebellion is also led by a single charismatic figure, whose death would cause the rebellion to disintegrate. The Imperium has several options, but for the moment lets set aside the idea that Assassins are immediately available for "reasons" (i.e. they're all on the toilet at the same time or whatever).

The Imperial Guard could tackle the rebellion head on and smash it to pieces in a total war style conflict. Their airmobile style forces would be employed to support this conflict the way the 101st and 82nd supported American offensives in World War II (i.e. not dropped into Berlin to assassinate Hitler, but instead dropped in to support military objectives near the front).

The Space Marines could nibble at the rebellion from the sides, striking where they are weakest - i.e. where those plasmaguns aren't. If the enemy concentrates their plasma guns and anti-tank weapons forwards to try to fight the Imperial Guard, the Marines can hit rear areas and possibly assassinate the leader if he doesn't keep enough plasma gunners around him specifically. If the enemy heavily commits to defending their rear areas from the Space Marine drop, the Imperial Guard's heavy tanks smash through the defenseless front lines.

Essentially, even if the marines are outnumbered by the heavy weapons, they're more mobile than the heavy weapons and "peanut-butter spreading" your heavy weapons across your entire AO just means you never have enough where you need them against either the IG or the Marines together. So the Marines strike where the heavy weapons aren't, and the Guard strikes where the heavy weapons are. This is because their toolsets are complimentary - the Guard can suppress heavy weapons with artillery and endure heavy weapons with thick armor and large numbers. The Space Marines can shatter and destroy forces where heavy weapons are lacking, and have the speed to strike and withdraw before such weapons can be relocated to tackle them.

I just don't think things would work out that way due to their lack of numbers. And again, this falls apart fast vs Xenos.

**Unit1126PLL**

Martel732 wrote:

I just don't think things would work out that way due to their lack of numbers. And again, this falls apart fast vs Xenos.

I don't disagree but I chalk that up to GW having no sense of scale.

**Insectum7**

Martel732 wrote:
Insectum7 wrote:
Martel732 wrote:
Again, only in very limited circumstances. Marines, like knights, seem really good at putting down peasant revolts, but seem miserable vs other actual militaries.
Ships with beyond-nuclear capability.

Relevance? So does everyone else who matters.

Having nukes is less important than deploying them effectively, and hitting first wins the exchange. The entire marine MO is predicated on dictating the terms. If they can't, then they don't engage. That's the principle from the fleet all the way down to the individual trooper.

**Martel732**

You can't always rely on that. gak goes wrong all the time. To me, this makes their purported MO absolutely unbelievable.

**catbarf**

Martel732 wrote:
No one wants to play vs marines with only a fraction of their army though.

That's why I gave some examples of how a 'scenario builder' could create conditions where Marines can carry out a more fluff-accurate role.

If you set as hard requirements that you're ONLY going to play meat grinder scenarios, and you expect both sides to be balanced around the same points level, and one side is bringing lots of tanks... You're going to have a lot of Marines dying to tanks. There's no way around that. You can only keep Marines feeling elite while still having a fair game if you do one of the following:
1. Don't play at a scale where Marines get hard-countered.
2. Use a scenario where the enemy doesn't have their full force immediately available.
3. Give the Marines a way to accomplish their objective without having to just slug it out.

In the fluff those are the three conditions under which we normally see Marines being used, and the successful zero-casualties Marines-kill-everything stories are generally when they have all three- they're not going up against tank companies, they're operating with surprise and can disassemble the enemy piecemeal, and they have a specific objective to complete that doesn't require them to sit around and wait for enemy reinforcements.

The problem with tabletop 40K is that #1 and #2 are complete non-starters, and #3 is barely featured and unpopular (especially in ITC, where the objectives skew heavily towards killing).

**Martel732**

I don't think that will even work. On the table, power armor has a 33% failure rate vs autoguns. GW needed to give some weapons AP +1. That's my take. Tabletop marines take crippling casualties even vs scut troops.

**catbarf**

Martel732 wrote:
I don't think that will even work. On the table, power armor has a 33% failure rate vs autoguns. GW needed to give some weapons AP +1. That's my take.

On average it takes 18 Guardsmen Rapid Firing at close range to kill a single Intercessor. They're point-for-point the toughest basic infantry of any faction against regular small arms.

They don't have any problems going up against lasguns/autoguns. It's the dedicated anti-MEQ weapons that screw them over, and the current scenario design gives them no tools to avoid those.

**Insectum7**

Martel732 wrote:
You can't always rely on that. gak goes wrong all the time. To me, this makes their purported MO absolutely unbelievable.

Remember
A They are better at it than you are.
B: They have highly trained space magicians to help guide them.
C: They do screw up sometimes and it's disasterous.

**Martel732**

I was thinking old marines.

I'm just not sure they should be able to avoid anti-meq weapons, because such weapons have lots of other uses as well. It's the old offense outstripping defense issue. Marines don't have a gun radar. They really don't have any way to know what they are walking into at any given time.

**Insectum7**

Drop some scouts in and take a looksee. Gather information from orbit. Have your space magician feel for the confidence of the enemy. Use feints to determine strength. Rely on centuries of combat experience and make an executive decision.

**Martel732**

Insectum7 wrote:
Drop some scouts in and take a looksee. Gather information from orbit. Have your space magician feel for the confidence of the enemy. Use feints to determine strength. Rely on centuries of combat experience and make an executive decision.

And when none of that works?

**pm713**

Unit1126PLL wrote:
Martel732 wrote:

I just don't think things would work out that way due to their lack of numbers. And again, this falls apart fast vs Xenos.

I don't disagree but I chalk that up to GW having no sense of scale.

Does it really matter when everyone has a reduced scale? I know it's silly that 100 Marines are the force they're portrayed as but when everyone else has that reduced scale it's nowhere near as bad.

**JNAProductions**

Insectum7 wrote:
Drop some scouts in and take a looksee. Gather information from orbit. Have your space magician feel for the confidence of the enemy. Use feints to determine strength. Rely on centuries of combat experience and make an executive decision.

The scouts get eaten by Tyranids before they get to send back proper information.
In orbit, the navy is busy fighting off the Hive Fleet ships.
The Space Magician is busy trying to not have his head explode from the presence of the Hive Mind.
Feints might work, but...

Above all, you don't have time. You need to be in the battlefield yesterday to have the best effect, because the Tyranids are invading NOW.

**Insectum7**

Double post.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Insectum7 wrote:
Drop some scouts in and take a looksee. Gather information from orbit. Have your space magician feel for the confidence of the enemy. Use feints to determine strength. Rely on centuries of combat experience and make an executive decision.

And when none of that works?

Don't engage.

JNAProductions wrote:
Insectum7 wrote:
Drop some scouts in and take a looksee. Gather information from orbit. Have your space magician feel for the confidence of the enemy. Use feints to determine strength. Rely on centuries of combat experience and make an executive decision.
The scouts get eaten by Tyranids before they get to send back proper information.
In orbit, the navy is busy fighting off the Hive Fleet ships.
The Space Magician is busy trying to not have his head explode from the presence of the Hive Mind.
Feints might work, but...

Above all, you don't have time. You need to be in the battlefield yesterday to have the best effect, because the Tyranids are invading NOW.

Fire nukes into the invading swarm for as long as you can. When your chances to do so are about to run out, exterminatus the planet to achieve the greatest net loss of biomass to the nids as possible. Disengage from the battle but harass the Nid fleet to keep them expending energy, and send runner ships out to report and call reinforcements.

**flandarz**

The current rules of 40k (outside of scenarios) make it near impossible to represent Marines (or really most Factions) as they appear in the fluff. The closest you could probably get would be to revamp the entire Imperial line-up into one Faction, with Marines all being Elite choices, Militarum being Troops, Admech being the Heavies, etc. But no one wants that, so you gotta settle for Marines on the tabletop that operate differently than the fluff portrays them.

**Unit1126PLL**

If only there were some way to play 40k that was more customizable, some way to make it easier for players to grasp the fluff and implement it with mutual agreement...

...hmm. I think we should do a community one and call it Narrative Play. You could have scenarios like Meat Grinder, or perhaps Stronghold Assault, or maybe Planetstrike.

It's a pity none of this already exists.

**JNAProductions**

Unit1126PLL wrote:
If only there were some way to play 40k that was more customizable, some way to make it easier for players to grasp the fluff and implement it with mutual agreement...

...hmm. I think we should do a community one and call it Narrative Play. You could have scenarios like Meat Grinder, or perhaps Stronghold Assault, or maybe Planetstrike.

It's a pity none of this already exists.

Why should Marines feeling how they're supposed to be Narrative only?

While I'm perfectly willing to make concessions for the sake of the game, the broad strokes should feel accurate even in Matched play.

**Insectum7**

JNAProductions wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
If only there were some way to play 40k that was more customizable, some way to make it easier for players to grasp the fluff and implement it with mutual agreement...

...hmm. I think we should do a community one and call it Narrative Play. You could have scenarios like Meat Grinder, or perhaps Stronghold Assault, or maybe Planetstrike.

It's a pity none of this already exists.
Why should Marines feeling how they're supposed to be Narrative only?

While I'm perfectly willing to make concessions for the sake of the game, the broad strokes should feel accurate even in Matched play.

Then you need to very very carefully define what you are looking for. You are contending with the idea that in-universe, marines (really all sides) are only trying to engage in battles from a position of srong advantage, but at the same time trying to make a game that starts with giving both sides a roughly equal chance of success.

**Sgt_Smudge**

If Marines were to be accurate, Marines armies would be minuscule.

The problem is that GW wants Marine players to be able to take an army, and for the opposing army to not also break the bank (any more than it currently does). So, they make Marines weaker compared to their fluff in order for Marine players to be able to put their whole army down.

For what it's worth, I played a Solohammer game a few days ago where I basically took two squads of Terminators and threw them against about three times their cost in Genestealers on a Zone Mortalis board. The catch? I had the Genestealers come in via infinitely respawning waves, so even though over the course of the mission my Marines killed about 47 Genestealers (for the cost of 6 of their own), they didn't fight them at once.

That, more than anything else, is the power of the Space Marine - high force concentration. They have the speed and intelligence to engage precisely where needed, and the arms and armour to engage the enemy's elite troops. IMO, a basic Space Marine should be equal to the elite troops of an enemy, because, relatively speaking, a Space Marine IS an elite troop of the Imperium. Or, to put it a different way, if the Imperium was treated as it's own single army, like Orks are, then Space Marines would be an Elites slot, like Meganobz or Battlesuits. But, Space Marines are treated as their own unique force by GW, and so also need to be fieldable as their own army - so suffer a deal of nerfing to make them more tabletop palatable.

**Insectum7**

So if the Terminators killed 47 to their 6, are they really nerfed for the tabletop?

In my opinion the basic marine is more or less fine on the tabletop, and comparable to the better incarnations in the fluff. See the Astartes-related discussion earlier. A squad of marines can easily defeat 10 GEQ, and if the GEQ can't bring their numbers to bear, the Marines can just continue to kill them off piecmeal pretty effectively.

The issue for MEQ on the tabletop is that the tabletop is essentially a pitched tank battle in which MEQ take part. And I am all for anti-vehicle weapons pulverizing MEQ. If you want to get deeper into it, I think that the man-portable anti-armor weapons have gone down in effectiveness, as well as the protection that terrain gave to infantry in older days. Change those balances and elite infantry in cover with heavy weapons fare better against tank armies, and Marines start to get more capable while not dumping on other infantry stats-wise.

**catbarf**

Sgt_Smudge wrote:
If Marines were to be accurate, Marines armies would be minuscule.

The problem is that GW wants Marine players to be able to take an army, and for the opposing army to not also break the bank (any more than it currently does). So, they make Marines weaker compared to their fluff in order for Marine players to be able to put their whole army down.

I think that's getting it backwards- Marines in the fluff used to line up pretty well with Marines on the tabletop, being the best basic infantry but still relying on special forces tactics to make up for lack of numbers, and sustaining heavy casualties when caught in a knock-down drag-out open fight. It wasn't until the late-2000s, and particularly the Horus Heresy series, that Black Library started to power-creep Marines to absurd levels.

Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Or, to put it a different way, if the Imperium was treated as it's own single army, like Orks are, then Space Marines would be an Elites slot, like Meganobz or Battlesuits. But, Space Marines are treated as their own unique force by GW, and so also need to be fieldable as their own army - so suffer a deal of nerfing to make them more tabletop palatable.

The Primaris range is already there. Primaris line up pretty well to Ork Nobz, hold their own against Genestealers, and can take on any of the Aspect Warriors. But for a lot of Marine players this apparently isn't enough.

**Blndmage**

Since I've posted this twice now, and the arguments ave had it ignored, yet again, I'll mention Movie Marines. I think, when compared to what they currently have, Movie Marines aren't the silly broken thing they were when they were made.