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 CrashGordon94 wrote:
And it's useful in those other places, same thing here. That's why there's reason to care.
Besides there have been proposals for S5 and for Special Ammo if it was necessary to change the attack profile (which it isn't), way better than just plonking Heavy Bolters on them, particularly since Martel's now basically demanding that because of range. Screw that! Termies are legitimately supposed to be short-ranged. Of course that doesn't sit right with Martel, but that's just reason to ignore his input, listening to him will get you a horribly broken, one-dimensional, unfluffy, boring, model-invalidating and just all around awful unit.

I don't agree with Heavy Bolters, though it would actually make them decently threatening. However, the Storm Bolter itself is not threatening. No amount of added shots is going to change that, because S4 is literally everywhere else. Hence why the S5 suggestion makes sense. Nobody WANTS to stock up on Bolter stats anyway.
Add in my proposed change for Teleport Shunt like GK's have, and we are actually talking about a unit that fulfills a role.

...S4 being "literally everywhere else" doesn't magically make it useless or unusable.
I'm not adverse to the S5 idea, but I don't want to get too carried away on their shooting. It's just that the idea that S4 is automatically unusable is baloney.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
...S4 being "literally everywhere else" doesn't magically make it useless or unusable.
I'm not adverse to the S5 idea, but I don't want to get too carried away on their shooting. It's just that the idea that S4 is automatically unusable is baloney.

I agree with you here. I like the idea of S5 bolters, but assault 3 works just as well imo. Either way I am in favor of special ammos. Assault 3 might be better in conjunction with special ammos because it moves more room to play with the profiles imo. But, that is just my personal preference.


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I don't agree with Heavy Bolters, though it would actually make them decently threatening. However, the Storm Bolter itself is not threatening. No amount of added shots is going to change that, because S4 is literally everywhere else. Hence why the S5 suggestion makes sense. Nobody WANTS to stock up on Bolter stats anyway.
Add in my proposed change for Teleport Shunt like GK's have, and we are actually talking about a unit that fulfills a role.

I don't completely agree with you on storm bolters. You can't expect too much for a 5 pt upgrade imo, but I do agree with your idea of a teleport shunt. That would make them vastly more useful so long as it is a once per game thing. I do think SBs and HBs need some changes. I just don't think they need to be HUGE changes.

S5 merely makes the shooting slightly better. It is fine for a 5 point upgrade, considering you can already take a Bolter standard.

Heavy Bolters need 4 shots I'm thinking. Pinning would be cool but killing power is what's needed. Nobody is afraid of Heavy Bolters overall. Therefore, just adding another shot makes them better for horde duty, which IS supposed to be their purpose.

Bolt Weapons as a whole need reworking. I had always figured that, based off the fluff, they'd have Rending, but then Necrons glance everything on a 6 and Eldar actually have Rending against anything with a Toughness value.
Actually, a lot of codices need to be rewritten haha

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
...S4 being "literally everywhere else" doesn't magically make it useless or unusable.
I'm not adverse to the S5 idea, but I don't want to get too carried away on their shooting. It's just that the idea that S4 is automatically unusable is baloney.

Unfortunately, against a lot of powerful lists, it's not baloney. S4 is mostly good against lists that terminators don't need buffs to deal with.

^Yes, yes it is. Just because stupid OP crap exists doesn't mean S4 is useless, it just means stupid OP crap exists.

Which makes S4 useless in a lot of cases. And since most marine lists already have more S4 than they know what to do with, why would I waste an elite slot on more S4 shooting?

I keep thinking more and more that what we need to do is start handing out nerfs to a lot of weapons to reduce the amount of ap2 and then go from there to reevaluate things. The game is such a mess that I also sometimes wonder if it would be better to start from scratch....

It's not just AP2, it's wound spam as well. Being only T4 W1 makes terminators very fragile in 7th ed.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
^Yes, yes it is. Just because stupid OP crap exists doesn't mean S4 is useless, it just means stupid OP crap exists.

You're still missing the point. I can get S4 with Tacticals, Scouts, and Bikers. Plus Sternguard do more damage for the buck compared to Tacticals. Since Special Ammo should be special to them, Terminators need something to stand out. Them throwing out MORE S4 shots doesn't fix them, the Stormbolter, or give them a roll to fulfill.

Martel732 wrote:Which makes S4 useless in a lot of cases.

No, it makes the stupid OP crap stupid OP crap. S4 can still be useful.

Martel732 wrote:And since most marine lists already have more S4 than they know what to do with, why would I waste an elite slot on more S4 shooting?

Because Terminators have (or at least should have and will have with these sort of buffs) other elements than just shooting and S4 can still be useful. Of course YOU don't want it but that only proves you have ridiculously high standards.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:You're still missing the point.

No, you and Martel just don't have one.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:I can get S4 with Tacticals, Scouts, and Bikers.

And it often can be very useful on them, thus the same is true of it on Terminators.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:Plus Sternguard do more damage for the buck compared to Tacticals. Since Special Ammo should be special to them, Terminators need something to stand out.

Yeah! Like better Armor, Invulnerable Saves, powerful melee gear, Relentless, Heavy Weapons and the ability to Deep Strike.
These might not have been enough before, but there have been buffs for all of them! Certainly firepower needs a little attention so "assault" Terminators (whether they have their own slot or not) an auto-take, but "more S4 shots" would be perfectly sufficient. Just because you and Martel want a stupid game-breaker and won't be satisfied until you get one doesn't mean it's valid or the path to go when buffing Termies.

Everyone can agree the lasguns can be scary in high numbers and do a number on a unit. S4 is capable of the same, but better because it is already a higher strength, and coming from a model with better BS in space marines. So more S4 would be good, it would just need to be a decent amount of S4 added. Special firing modes would be cool, rather than special ammo that changes the profile of the weapon, more in line with orders that guard get.

Heck, just make them Salvo 2/4 and let them auto use a choice of Bring it Down, Suppressive Fire, Take Aim and Smite at Will, just change the names obviously.

Upto 40 S4 shots with those special rules attached would be good. 20 of them even.

Martel732 wrote:
Which makes S4 useless in a lot of cases. And since most marine lists already have more S4 than they know what to do with, why would I waste an elite slot on more S4 shooting?

To look at it another way, you'd be spending your elite slot on a (with proposed changes) rock hard, melee unit...that happens to have S4 assault 3 guns to thin the hordes while they're not in close combat.

Seriously we get it -you disdain terminators having S4 guns. Some of us agree and others don't. By all means offer fresh constructive suggestions, but can we move past re-ittirating the same points? -it's just going in circles.

Personally I would toy with giving storm bolters a version of the Tesla/Shock rule -- getting 2 extra hits on a roll of 6. With this, they do not step on the HB's toes (as it has superior S and AP). Conceptually it works well with them chrning out huge numbers of shots.

Perhaps make them RF 2 as well instead of Assault 2. This is a downgrade though.

,

Alcibiades wrote:

Perhaps make them RF 2 as well instead of Assault 2. This is a downgrade though.

Not neccessarily -for terminators it'd be superior to assault 3 I reckon: The vast majority of the time they'll be trying to close the distance to the enemy rather than hanging back so they'll be able to avail of the 4 shots at <12 range more often than not. And they can still shoot and charge a RF weapon because of relentless.

For power armoured troops this has more of an impact as it completely changes the role of the weapon.
They will now want to find themselves within close range of the enemy to avail of double the firepower, so a very deadly voley indeed.
My feeling would be that grey knights being able to pump out 4 shots per model would be OP'd. Sure they can no longer charge, but there might not be much left to charge with 40 bolter shots ripping from each squad...

All said I believe assault 3 is far more preferable to giving it salvo or rapid fire.

 thegreatchimp wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Which makes S4 useless in a lot of cases. And since most marine lists already have more S4 than they know what to do with, why would I waste an elite slot on more S4 shooting?

To look at it another way, you'd be spending your elite slot on a (with proposed changes) rock hard, melee unit...that happens to have S4 assault 3 guns to thin the hordes while they're not in close combat.

Seriously we get it -you disdain terminators having S4 guns. Some of us agree and others don't. By all means offer fresh constructive suggestions, but can we move past re-ittirating the same points? -it's just going in circles.

I don't think anything will help outside better firepower, though. This is 7th, not 3rd. I literally can't move past it.

And looking at it your way, melee units that are slow and lack durability suck in 7th. So terminators fail as a melee unit as well.

" but "more S4 shots" would be perfectly sufficient"

I would never take those tactical terminators over buffed assault terminators, just as I don't take tactical terminators now. We have a very important point, you just don't want to accept the reality of 7th ed. Tactical terminators are quite literally the worst unit in the BA codex, which is arguably the worst codex in the game. So the room for improvement for such a unit is ENORMOUS, not minor like more worthless shooting power.

" but that only proves you have ridiculously high standards. "

No, because we are talking the worst unit in the worst codex.


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endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Everyone can agree the lasguns can be scary in high numbers and do a number on a unit. S4 is capable of the same, but better because it is already a higher strength, and coming from a model with better BS in space marines. So more S4 would be good, it would just need to be a decent amount of S4 added. Special firing modes would be cool, rather than special ammo that changes the profile of the weapon, more in line with orders that guard get.

Heck, just make them Salvo 2/4 and let them auto use a choice of Bring it Down, Suppressive Fire, Take Aim and Smite at Will, just change the names obviously.

Upto 40 S4 shots with those special rules attached would be good. 20 of them even.

Those lasguns are coming from troops slots, NOT elites. Plus marines can never, ever get the amount of lasgun shots the IG can so the comparison is tenuous at best.

That's why terminators need more durability Martel. Giving them S5 shots isn't really going to do much for them as your paying a gak ton for them to be able to krump in cc.

2 heavies per 5 works pretty well because it actually gives them some firepower that matters. s5 or assault 3 doesn't do that. It just makes them slightly better at killing the things that they were already killing.

Maybe unless we make powerfists optional. Basically the combination of tiny pop gun and huge expensive cc attack on a slow fragile expensive chassis is the worst possible combo in 7th. Although loyalist tac termies have always been garbage.

Martel732 wrote:

I don't think anything will help outside better firepower, though. This is 7th, not 3rd. I literally can't move past it.

And looking at it your way, melee units that are slow and lack durability suck in 7th. So terminators fail as a melee unit as well.

Yes Martel but the bulk of this discussion has revolved around increasing their durability. So by your own logic if they were more durable than they wouldn't suck in close combat. Mobility remains poor but that's noit a killer -they've always needed delivery systems to get them into the thick of it, as have a host of other cc units.

What you've highlighted about other units performance vs termies has actually being genuinely useful in stressing how much they need a buff. I'm just saying there's no point in stressing any more that you firmly believe S4 guns for terminators are useless, any more than there's any point in me harping on that plasma should be AP3. Point made many times already , you know what I mean?

An entire squad paying for power fists that is on foot is never going to be viable without real shooting.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:Which makes S4 useless in a lot of cases.

No, it makes the stupid OP crap stupid OP crap. S4 can still be useful.

Martel732 wrote:And since most marine lists already have more S4 than they know what to do with, why would I waste an elite slot on more S4 shooting?

Because Terminators have (or at least should have and will have with these sort of buffs) other elements than just shooting and S4 can still be useful. Of course YOU don't want it but that only proves you have ridiculously high standards.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:You're still missing the point.

No, you and Martel just don't have one.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:I can get S4 with Tacticals, Scouts, and Bikers.

And it often can be very useful on them, thus the same is true of it on Terminators.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:Plus Sternguard do more damage for the buck compared to Tacticals. Since Special Ammo should be special to them, Terminators need something to stand out.

Yeah! Like better Armor, Invulnerable Saves, powerful melee gear, Relentless, Heavy Weapons and the ability to Deep Strike.
These might not have been enough before, but there have been buffs for all of them! Certainly firepower needs a little attention so "assault" Terminators (whether they have their own slot or not) an auto-take, but "more S4 shots" would be perfectly sufficient. Just because you and Martel want a stupid game-breaker and won't be satisfied until you get one doesn't mean it's valid or the path to go when buffing Termies.

I've already showed Mathhammer when Banshees, who shouldn't be going after Terminators, have a good chance of wiping out a decent amount of the squad for the points. Go ahead and throw out the "powerful melee" thing again. I dare you.

And for the record, what's Relentless have to do with anything? Based off the fact they've had those weapons forever and they were just now turned Relentless, is it REALLY a buff?

The answer is that they don't NEED more S4 shots in the army. Two Tactical Marines are already more durable and throw out the same exact firepower for the points. Since Terminators won't get into melee very well without a change to Land Raiders or being given a Teleport Shunt, the Power Fist is wasted. And no amount of more S4 is going to make a Sisters player take Stormbolters or want us to keep them on our Terminator Characters, because there's more efficient means to get Bolter stats.

Therefore, to make Tactical Terminators more attractive, we buff the strength of the Storm Bolter. S5 puts out only a few more wounds than S4, but it allows better wounding of Monstrous Creatures or vehicles (which are intended targets) and does a marginal job of handling hordes better.
Storm Bolters are supposed to be the middle ground of Bolters and Heavy Bolters. Anything else suggested might as well just be a Combi-Bolter.

Martel732 wrote:
An entire squad paying for power fists that is on foot is never going to be viable without real shooting.

Maybe so. but one of the major points proposed was to downgrade the standard loadout to storm bolter & power weapon, - also serving reducing the base cost - with the option to buy fists. Thankfully I play wolves so I already have this option. Much as I like having that advantage, I'd be willing to share it with my fellow chapters, for the greater good.

 thegreatchimp wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

I don't think anything will help outside better firepower, though. This is 7th, not 3rd. I literally can't move past it.

And looking at it your way, melee units that are slow and lack durability suck in 7th. So terminators fail as a melee unit as well.

Yes Martel but the bulk of this discussion has revolved around increasing their durability. So by your own logic if they were more durable than they wouldn't suck in close combat. Mobility remains poor but that's noit a killer -they've always needed delivery systems to get them into the thick of it, as have a host of other cc units.

What you've highlighted about other units performance vs termies has actually being genuinely useful in stressing how much they need a buff. I'm just saying there's no point in stressing any more that you firmly believe S4 guns for terminators are useless, any more than there's any point in me harping on that plasma should be AP3. Point made many times already , you know what I mean?

Also, I agree that plasma should be AP 3 and krak missiles AP 2.

Martel732 wrote:
Krak missiles AP 2.

Yeah, I agree. In the case of many weapons there's a big disparity between their ability to pierce tank armour and their ability to pierce body armour, which doesn't really hold up under examination and is really down to a ballancing mechanic, which while fuin, is more akin to something you'd see in an arcade game.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:Which makes S4 useless in a lot of cases.

No, it makes the stupid OP crap stupid OP crap. S4 can still be useful.

Martel732 wrote:And since most marine lists already have more S4 than they know what to do with, why would I waste an elite slot on more S4 shooting?

Because Terminators have (or at least should have and will have with these sort of buffs) other elements than just shooting and S4 can still be useful. Of course YOU don't want it but that only proves you have ridiculously high standards.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:You're still missing the point.

No, you and Martel just don't have one.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:I can get S4 with Tacticals, Scouts, and Bikers.

And it often can be very useful on them, thus the same is true of it on Terminators.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:Plus Sternguard do more damage for the buck compared to Tacticals. Since Special Ammo should be special to them, Terminators need something to stand out.

Yeah! Like better Armor, Invulnerable Saves, powerful melee gear, Relentless, Heavy Weapons and the ability to Deep Strike.
These might not have been enough before, but there have been buffs for all of them! Certainly firepower needs a little attention so "assault" Terminators (whether they have their own slot or not) an auto-take, but "more S4 shots" would be perfectly sufficient. Just because you and Martel want a stupid game-breaker and won't be satisfied until you get one doesn't mean it's valid or the path to go when buffing Termies.

I've already showed Mathhammer when Banshees, who shouldn't be going after Terminators, have a good chance of wiping out a decent amount of the squad for the points. Go ahead and throw out the "powerful melee" thing again. I dare you.

And for the record, what's Relentless have to do with anything? Based off the fact they've had those weapons forever and they were just now turned Relentless, is it REALLY a buff?

The answer is that they don't NEED more S4 shots in the army. Two Tactical Marines are already more durable and throw out the same exact firepower for the points. Since Terminators won't get into melee very well without a change to Land Raiders or being given a Teleport Shunt, the Power Fist is wasted. And no amount of more S4 is going to make a Sisters player take Stormbolters or want us to keep them on our Terminator Characters, because there's more efficient means to get Bolter stats.

Therefore, to make Tactical Terminators more attractive, we buff the strength of the Storm Bolter. S5 puts out only a few more wounds than S4, but it allows better wounding of Monstrous Creatures or vehicles (which are intended targets) and does a marginal job of handling hordes better.
Storm Bolters are supposed to be the middle ground of Bolters and Heavy Bolters. Anything else suggested might as well just be a Combi-Bolter.

You know Slayer-Fan, for all this talk of terminators being bad in melee and “potentially losing to a squad of banshee’s cause you have mathhammered it,” I couldn’t actually find the math for this anywhere in the thread. So, I decided to show you some mathhammer on it… with actual numbers. I’ll give the Banshee’s the charge since they’ll need all the help they can get and ignore overwatch since it statistically does nothing here. I’ll be rounding up or down with resulting numbers to make things simple.

The 10 Banshees and 1 Exarch get 34 attacks on the charge hitting one 4’s for banshees and 3’s for the Exarch. Of these: 18 hit.
Unfortunately this is where things go South for our furious females because all those strength 3 attacks only actually cause 6 wounds.
1 Terminator dies: YAY.
Now the pain-train begins: the Terminators get 8 attacks back with 4 hitting.
All 4 of these are going to wound after rounding and 4 banshees die. (We’ll assume the exarch will always live til the end.)
Things are now repeated; but, unfortunately for our space-elf friends, without the bonus charge attacks they will only get through a grand total of 3 wounds. (I rounded up for them)
Naturally, 3 wounds fail to get through the saves, and this only gets worse with every round.
Statistically, after the first round the Banshees will fail to kill another terminator - EVER.

So, as we can see from some actual math, the Banshees would probably have a better chance again Terminators if they stayed at range and tried to luck out on the Bladestorm ability of their pistols. Without the charge their chances of even killing 1 Terminator become slim indeed. In fact, the only way that Banshees don’t get absolutely slaughtered if if the Exarch brings an Executioner. Then, with that nice AP 2 on their side the Banshees will win after 2 full rounds of combat. (I still gave them the charge) Even in this scenario, the Exarch kills every Terminator except the one that the banshees get on the initial charge. Clearly, this problem with terminators sucking in melee isn’t true once actual math is involved.

Now, as to the actual changes: I was able to do some testing yesterday at my FLGS. We tried out my slightly modified version of Doom’s rules and the results were… ridiculous. If you have plenty of AP 2 (my tau) then they are basically the same. On the other hand, if you didn’t things were really bad. After doing the some more math we quickly figured out why. My initial judgement that TH/SS would not longer be worth it could not have been more wrong. If you lacked AP 2, then your odds of having a wound go through on those guys went from 1 in 6 to 1 in 18. Needless to say, 200% defensive ability increase over before was just a weee bit more than these guys need. Honestly, even the 100% increase we were seeing from the 4+ invulnerable regular ones was insane with their increased firepower. I watched a full squad take almost 800 points off the board in a game. The problem was that their efficiency was significantly higher in play than on paper because so many more of them were surviving to fire for multiple rounds. The Assault Terminator’s killiness was largely unaffected since they only got more tanky.

With all this in mind I decided to suggest something a little different this time around. SB’s become Assault 2 with RF. This makes them actually have to choose between good shooting and using their charge. 2 Heavy Weapons per 5 members. Toughness goes up to 5. (Better resistance to low strength spam while still being largely the same against low ROF high strength weapons.) And finally, Terminators can now sweeping advance. (This is to help the assault kill things a little faster overall - I mean, if a Dreadnought can still do it, right?)

I suppose you forgot the shooting too. The Mathhammer took place in another thread. You're also doing math where there isn't 175 points of Banshees (more if we put upgrades on the Terminators). 10 and an Exarch doesn't seem correct, but I don't have my computer in front of me.

It says a lot, though, that one of the supposedly terrible targets for Banshees actually has a good chance at losing.

Also don't forget they're going to be taken in the formation that gives them WS5, because it would be stupid to waste the Elite Slot on them. In that fairness when I did the numbers I did various CT's (like Imperial Fists attempting to shoot them before they charge, Carcharodons with Fear, Black Templars with Counter Attack did good though, etc).

What if we moved them out of the elite slot?

Terminator captain = Terminator Troops

How about adding a rule where they choose what benefit they get from the following list at the start of each turn.

Ignore the unwieldy property on any weapon carried

Ranged weapons gain the shred use

Reroll failed saves

Solves all of the issues with terminators while not allowing them to be too powerful all the time.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
How about adding a rule where they choose what benefit they get from the following list at the start of each turn.

Ignore the unwieldy property on any weapon carried

Ranged weapons gain the shred use

Reroll failed saves

Solves all of the issues with terminators while not allowing them to be too powerful all the time.

It could work I think

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
How about adding a rule where they choose what benefit they get from the following list at the start of each turn.

Ignore the unwieldy property on any weapon carried

Ranged weapons gain the shred use

Reroll failed saves

Solves all of the issues with terminators while not allowing them to be too powerful all the time.

They cant ignore Unwieldy. As unfluffy as it sounds, it represents the terminator being clumsy (which they are) and the opponent being more agile