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Starting from the assumption that Terminators are currently an expensive model for what they can do (i.e. overpriced or under-powered); I was thinking of ways to make them more valuable for their points, and I think I came up with a good solution.

Any Terminator may now switch out their Storm Bolter and Power Fist for a Heavy Bolter and Power Sword for free. What do ya'll think? With this one change Terminators can suddenly shoot, and be a threat at shooting in exchange for for losing some of their melee punch. Imagine coming down in the middle of battle and getting off 15 to 30 Heavy Bolter shots into the the enemy or against rear armor, heck you probably wouldn't even have to teleport in with that 36" range, suddenly you have a hard target who can hold objectives. Yeah, you would lose some anti tank ability but you could always run a couple of Chain Fists or Thunder Hammers (and drop the HB). I think it's an interesting idea, and I'm curious what others might think. Be nice.

Anything that involves redoing the plastic kit and ripping arms off existing models isn't a workable solution, I think.

I wouldn't be against just giving the Storm Bolter a better statline, though.

I agree with Blackfang. I think it's better to alter cost or improve existing options.

Try using Genestealers and then tell me how Terminators are over costed and/or under powered.

First you have to explain EXACTLY how they are over costed or under powered. Just saying something without proof means nothing.

Genestealers I say are way over priced. Compared to a Space Marine, SM get to shoot, have grenades, and for what a point or two more than a Stealer. So that is why Stealers are over priced. They can't do as much as SM do and their better Initiative means squat when a SM is hiding and cowering in terrain. So it gets to go first. If the Stealer is hiding and cowering in terrain, then the SM can shoot at it and then use it's grenades against them as well. A Stealer can't do that.

So why is a Terminator over costed? How is it under powered? Once you start saying why, you are half way to your answer. Right now without any explanation or reason, you are just pulling answers out of thin air.

Davor wrote:
Try using Genestealers and then tell me how Terminators are over costed and/or under powered.

First you have to explain EXACTLY how they are over costed or under powered. Just saying something without proof means nothing.

Genestealers I say are way over priced. Compared to a Space Marine, SM get to shoot, have grenades, and for what a point or two more than a Stealer. So that is why Stealers are over priced. They can't do as much as SM do and their better Initiative means squat when a SM is hiding and cowering in terrain. So it gets to go first. If the Stealer is hiding and cowering in terrain, then the SM can shoot at it and then use it's grenades against them as well. A Stealer can't do that.

So why is a Terminator over costed? How is it under powered? Once you start saying why, you are half way to your answer. Right now without any explanation or reason, you are just pulling answers out of thin air.

Genestealers are overcosted. It's possible they even are more overcosted than Terminators are. However, it has no real relevance to the topic.

For proof, read the damn threads. People have been explaining how they are twice the toughness of a tactical marine for 3x the price, poor firepower and mobility, low attack count etc. all over the forum, in the various Terminator threads that have popped up.

I don't read every thread. I can only read what the poster made. So I don't know what other people are complaining about.

If we go by your example, I would say that Terminators are properly costed, it's that Tactical Marines are under costed. See there is the revelance for me brining in Genestealers. To compare to a tactical Marine, then that would mean every other unit is not costed properly so instead of trying to change everything to tactical marines, maybe the solution would be to change the price of tactical marines instead. So this way Genestealers and Terminators wouldn't need to become cheaper and then be "under costed" compared to other units and would be easier to properly cost the tactical marine.

Come on, SM get cheaper, get grenades for free, they don't have to choose what grenades they have, they can have both and the price is lower to what it was before or stays the same, I think is the problem.

A different way of looking things. Instead of making things cheaper, find out what the problem is, and maybe make the other unit more expensive.

TL;DR Instead of making multiple units change to be cheaper, the solution could be to make the compared unit more expensive.

A different way of looking at things, so yes it is relevant.

But that is flawed. If you make Tactical Marines more expensive, they just become overcosted too.

Or are you saying the price ratio of Genestealer VS Necron Warrior/Dire Avenger/Fire Warrior/IG Veteran et cetera ad nauseam is fine?

If your solution to genestealers being OP is to nerf everything else instead of buffing them, then that is fine with me as the end result is the same, but it seems a bit unnecessary for one unit.

The problem ITT is that Terminators are overcosted compared to the majority of the game.

 Ashiraya wrote:
But that is flawed. If you make Tactical Marines more expensive, they just become overcosted too.

Or are you saying the price ratio of Genestealer VS Necron Warrior/Dire Avenger/Fire Warrior/IG Veteran et cetera ad nauseam is fine?

If your solution to genestealers being OP is to nerf everything else instead of buffing them, then that is fine with me as the end result is the same, but it seems a bit unnecessary for one unit.

The problem ITT is that Terminators are overcosted compared to the majority of the game.

All I am trying to do is look at it from another point of view. I mean, once we start making something cheaper Terminators in this case to compensate for something against Tactical Marines (TM from now on) would be find, but then now that Terminator is way undercoated compared to the Genestealer. So now we have to make the Genestealer cheaper. So now it's a domino effect. What I am trying to say is, let's stop the Domino effect and then just make the TM more expensive instead of making everything else cheaper.

Now you bring up Dire Avengers/Fire Warriors/IG/Necrons etc. I really can't say since I am not familiar with them. If they are not priced appropriately then we need to throw out the bath water, find out exactly how much each stat costs and appropriately cost everything.

Tactical Marines were never the point of the argument. They were just used as a reference point since they are widely considered the most average unit in the entire game.

Genestealers are weaker, they should be enhanced.

Terminators are weaker. They, too, should be enhanced.

You seem consternated over the weakness of the Genestealers, which is understandable, since they are a very weak unit overall. Ideally, trying to bring down other units to their level is inefficient. It is better to buff them instead.

This would be really, really over powered vs my Dark Eldar. A unit of 5 Terminators would put out 15 Heavy Bolters shots at 36'', which ignore EVERY SAVE IN MY ARMY bar for Incubi and would cause havoc upon my vehicles, who's max AV is 11 bar the Dias. And the downside is...a shooting unit becomes slightly worse at Close Ciombat. At the very least, give them a price increase for this massive increase in fire power!

+1 A, a 4+ invuln and maybe +1 w. That would justify their cost. Maybe remove some AP2 from the game.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
This would be really, really over powered vs my Dark Eldar. A unit of 5 Terminators would put out 15 Heavy Bolters shots at 36'', which ignore EVERY SAVE IN MY ARMY bar for Incubi and would cause havoc upon my vehicles, who's max AV is 11 bar the Dias. And the downside is...a shooting unit becomes slightly worse at Close Ciombat. At the very least, give them a price increase for this massive increase in fire power!

But the HB fire wouldn't ignore your cover save, your FNP tokens, and I would still have to shoot down your vehicles (which most if not all have Jink and the reduce 6" from my max range if targeting the vehicle) before I get to the juicy insides. Yes this would make Terminators dangerous again, and they should be dangerous for 220+ points for a base unit of five.


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Davor wrote:
Try using Genestealers and then tell me how Terminators are over costed and/or under powered.

First you have to explain EXACTLY how they are over costed or under powered. Just saying something without proof means nothing.

Genestealers I say are way over priced. Compared to a Space Marine, SM get to shoot, have grenades, and for what a point or two more than a Stealer. So that is why Stealers are over priced. They can't do as much as SM do and their better Initiative means squat when a SM is hiding and cowering in terrain. So it gets to go first. If the Stealer is hiding and cowering in terrain, then the SM can shoot at it and then use it's grenades against them as well. A Stealer can't do that.

So why is a Terminator over costed? How is it under powered? Once you start saying why, you are half way to your answer. Right now without any explanation or reason, you are just pulling answers out of thin air.

Genestealers are under-powered; they should be able to outflank and assault.


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 TheCustomLime wrote:
+1 A, a 4+ invuln and maybe +1 w. That would justify their cost. Maybe remove some AP2 from the game.

That's not a bad idea, and is the flip side of the boost firepower coin I was flipping. A second wound especially would be awesome, but I don't see it happening. Hell, I don't see the HB thing happening either, I'm just throwing that up there for discussion (would be cool, IMO, if it did happen). How would you feel about Terminators receiving the 4+ invuln and FNP base?


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 lord_blackfang wrote:
Anything that involves redoing the plastic kit and ripping arms off existing models isn't a workable solution, I think.

I wouldn't be against just giving the Storm Bolter a better statline, though.

That's another option, the SB is definitely weaksauce now for a gun. Maybe increasing the range to 36" is in order (along with giving Termies FNP)? That would boost their ranged output somewhat and also help a bit with making them tougher to take down.

I repeat my earlier proposal. To avoid causing problems elsewhere, just make Terminator Armour grant benefits to equipped Bolt weapons.

It doesn't solve their main issue of them dying like chumps (Compared to their points cost) to anyone with decent shooting. A 2+ save is great until you take into account how easy it is to bear enough AP 2 firepower to make the point moot. Buffing their Stormbolters is not a bad idea but just makes them a glorified, slow Sternguard squad. Without special ammo.

Giving them a pile of heavy bolters and making them much worse in close combat?

Why wouldn't I just take heavy bolter devs?

How about making them immune to small arms fire somehow-like introduce an armour rule that doesn't let weapons with statlines less than ap2 get through except in CC. There is enough ap2 arround to still threaten them, but spamming lasguns at them won't do squat-as per fluff etc.

If you don't mind rebuilding your termies and ripping off arms, why don't you look in the csm direction. Csm termies are playable and do quite well. They don't benefit from stuff that loyalists have like atsknf (which is a big deal) and chapter tactix but have their own benefits like possibility to be taken in minsquads of 3 and having combi-weaponry.

So, why don't you combine sm termies and csm termies and get a playable sm version with some benefits and restrictions.

Termies come in a minimum squad of 4 + sergeant. Can purchase up to 10. [loyalist part]
Termies come stock with stormbolters and power weapons. [csm part with sb instead of c-b]
They cost 31 ppm and can purchase weaponry allowed to current sm termies + they can replace power weapons with a power fist for 9 pts [csm cost but loyalist's weaponry]

So you geat a squad of 31 ppm termies - 155 per min squad down from 200 pts. Thus, you deal with the problem of paying for powerfists you'll never gona use. Buy 1 or 2 if you feel needed but still it's a discount for the same...or even better effectiveness. With minimum rules tweaking.

You can probably use lightning claws from an assault termie kit that you never use anywayz but i feel that regular sergeant power weapon arm is gona be better since LC should cost extra for termies with Pw base

 Ailaros wrote:
Giving them a pile of heavy bolters and making them much worse in close combat?

Why wouldn't I just take heavy bolter devs?

Because Terminators are Relentless.

 mekugi wrote:
How about making them immune to small arms fire somehow-like introduce an armour rule that doesn't let weapons with statlines less than ap2 get through except in CC. There is enough ap2 arround to still threaten them, but spamming lasguns at them won't do squat-as per fluff etc.

Because it punishes certain armies more than it does others. Imperial Guard would have no problem dealing with Termies like that. Orks would.

Make storm-bolters Salvo 2/3.

Problem solved.

Terminators are worth taking because they can legitimately concentrate firepower from a small footprint, it doesn't make them hideously OP/Change them to be unfluffy.

And Stormbolters now become a weapon that is suited to Terminators (relentless means they can fire maximum shots all day every day, son) which is nice and fluffy, and good on the tabletop.

 MagicMan wrote:
Make storm-bolters Salvo 2/3.

Problem solved.

Terminators are worth taking because they can legitimately concentrate firepower from a small footprint, it doesn't make them hideously OP/Change them to be unfluffy.

And Stormbolters now become a weapon that is suited to Terminators (relentless means they can fire maximum shots all day every day, son) which is nice and fluffy, and good on the tabletop.

I would welcome this change to Terminators but do not feel it is enough, by itself, to balance Termies. Combine your idea with FNP and that would probably make Terminators a viable choice.

I'm still in the camp of making them toughness 5 myself

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
I'm still in the camp of making them toughness 5 myself

I agree. Fluff-wise it'd make sense too, what with how much more protective Termie armor is than a regular set of power armor. Also, nurgle termies at t6 would be pretty awesome lol.

Let's face it, Nurgle Terminators should be obscenely hard to kill.

I want t5 meganobz too.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Anything that involves redoing the plastic kit and ripping arms off existing models isn't a workable solution, I think.

I wouldn't be against just giving the Storm Bolter a better statline, though.

Salvo 2/4 24"

I think Storm bolters/Heavy Bolters should at least get Fleshbane.

A squad of 5 of my Deathwing Termies killed an Imperial Knight just using Powerfists and thanks to my rather lucky save rolls they survived the whole game with only two loss'....

However my Dreadnaught and Predator got blown up on turn one, I think Armour needs looking into more.

However occasionally Termies are pretty useless, I remember when I had a squad of 20 Guards just for the fun of it and they flashlighted an entire squad of Terminators down in one turn.

Unfortunately anecdotal displays of luck does not make them a good unit.

Tactical marines are in no way undercosted. I feel like they're just south of being right. Like if they had +1 A to help with their abysmal melee, I think that would cover it, and make them actually "tactical."

Terminators are pretty heavily over costed. The value of equipment can vary based on who wears it. A 4 wound chapter master gains large benefits from being loaded out with 2+ armor and a power fist. A 1 wound marine is not a good foundation to pile points on, and his wargear should cost significantly less. (The same needs to apply to death company with their jump packs!) T5, 2 wounds, and -1 to any poison wound rolls would be a good start. Everyone in the game still has a chance to hurt t5, even gretchin, but they wouldn't drop like flies to lasgun fire, splinter weapons, and bolters. Also 25 point lascannons and dark lances wouldn't easily knock out 2 or 3 for a 25 vs 120 point trade.

Sanguinary guard also have the same issue, being 40 a man is way too steep for a 1 wound marine statline. It doesn't matter what you're wearing at that point.