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Slowly building my Space Marine Army, and I've been curious about the Primaris Marines. However, I'm trying to cut my costs as much as I can while building my army (Buying Calth and Prospero boxes and getting additional Marines/Bits on eBay) as I'm already invested in many other games. If I'm already building most of the regular Space Marine Infantry units (Captain, Librarian, Chaplain, Vets, Terminators, Tacs, Devs, and Assault Marines), are there any Primaris Marines that I would necessarily need and/or may want the Primaris version as opposed to converting the regular Marine version?

The short answer is: No.

The long answer is: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

But in all seriousness, apart from the hellblasters having plasmaspam out the wazoo (which you can mimic with a Dev squad or sternguard with combi weapons), they're not much more powerful than regular marines. They have +1 wound, but with all the multi-damage weapons doing at least 2 wounds anyways this doesn't matter as much. Some units have new roles, but if money is tight it's not like those roles can't be filled by existing SM units. Think of them like the Centurion VS the Terminator; yes it technically fills a new niche, but it's not gamebreaking if you don't have them.

you don't need any Primaris Marines are in a "similer but differant" catagory.

that said, if you're looking for bolter centurions, you'd. IMHO be better off buying agressors instead, to save on points and real dollars costs.

They dont seem to fill any role that cant already be covered by the multitude of options for space marines.

I bought the three-pack of Primaris guys. I'm going to use a couple as Lieutenants to get that sexy reroll 1s to wound.

Other than that, I'm uncertain why anyone would need anything from them.

 daedalus wrote:
I bought the three-pack of Primaris guys. I'm going to use a couple as Lieutenants to get that sexy reroll 1s to wound.

Other than that, I'm uncertain why anyone would need anything from them.

don't even need primaris marines to be lts. you can take standard lts now.

Huh. I have not bought the codex yet. That is good to know.

Well, maybe I'll just have fun painting those guys however feels good then.

Primaris with Stalker bolt rifles make a decent back-field objective holder. 36" Range, AP-2 and 10 wounds for a min-sized squad makes them a nuisance to shift. Plus they get ObjSec-equivalent if Battleforged and still fulfill your Troop tax for Battalion detachments.

I'm leaning towards thinking that aggressors are better at being regular terminators than the regular terminators are. Slightly less durable, way more shooty. They are probably the best anti-infantry option in SM. Stuff them in a repulsor and go.

I won't be buying any of them.
I might trade someone for a few just to paint up.
I will need to put beaks on them, however,
and would likely use them as standard marines just taller,
or perhaps as characters.

If I had five or ten, I might consider a unit of primaris marines of some flavor or other just for kicks.

If I had the money/room/time, and the interest in the new rulebook (gonna wait for the revised edition with improved cover and terrain rules, added chapter approved or whatever, fixed vehicle cc rules, and fewer mistakes generally - maybe put the points at the end of the unit/army entry, as well as a summary of points in the back)
I would buy the new 8th box for the Deathguard stuff,
but will be avoiding numarines unless they fall in my lap.
As far as my imperials are concerned,
Girlyman and his new army are either posers or heretics,
or both.

The thing with Primaris is that if you remove the heavy and special weapon limitation on normal marines, their only real advantage over normal SMs melts away.

None, yet.

While I haven't done all the mathhammer on it (I'll leave that to someone who cares ) so far it seems that Primaris are equal or worse point for point to regular marines (that is, the amount of points it costs to delete an equal amount of enemy points.)

The only real reason to go full Primaris at the moment would be for specific vehicle, and to future-proof yourself.

One intercessor marine is 20 pts. He has 2 wounds, 2 attacks, his gun has 30" range, and AP-1. A normal space marine is 13 pts., has 1 wound, 1 attack, 24" range and AP0. Sounds like a good upgrade for 7 pts.

Thing is two Marines is 26 points, only 6 more than an Intercessor. For that they get:

Twice the amount of shots at a mere 6 inch penalty
Not die to multi-damage weapons.

They also have a bigger footprint, but unlike the above two this isn't strictly a bonus since it can go either way (it can help in claiming buffs and capturing objectives, but it also means harder to get cover for both of them and so forth).

All in all, both have their place, but the difference is so minuscule that if you really don't want primaris marines, there's not a lot of reasons to bend over backwards for them.

I would get 15 intercessors (these are the best primaris units) This way you can get a battalion with units that don't suck (aka tactical marines). The redemptor dread is good - maybe a little better than a standard dread but it's not a must include. The repulsor seems to be very good - many magnitudes better than a land raider or a predator - (I am getting 2 of them). Hell blasters are great too - the fact that they are durable and killy makes them superior to devs in my book.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Thing is two Marines is 26 points, only 6 more than an Intercessor. For that they get:

Twice the amount of shots at a mere 6 inch penalty
Not die to multi-damage weapons.

They also have a bigger footprint, but unlike the above two this isn't strictly a bonus since it can go either way (it can help in claiming buffs and capturing objectives, but it also means harder to get cover for both of them and so forth).

All in all, both have their place, but the difference is so minuscule that if you really don't want primaris marines, there's not a lot of reasons to bend over backwards for them.

Best to talk about unit prices. Intercessor squad properly loaded is 104 for a 5 man. This gives you a aux grenade launcher and a power sword on the serge. Proper load for a marine 5 man is between 80-100. So in reality the intercessors are very good for their points. They do a little less damage vs heavy targets than tacticals but they are twice as tough in CC and vs single damage weapons and even have the edge vs other troops due to 15" rapid fire and ap-1 bolters.

Let me tell you about the repulsor tank. When I first saw the model, I thought, wow, that's a silly amount of guns. Now that I have seen the rules, I was undervaluing the amount of guns. Its slightly less durable than a land raider, but holy wow can it take a TON of guns. Personally I am picking up some agressors, reivers and a repulsor for the time being. But i'm far more into models rather than rules. None of the primaris have struck me as extraordinary aside from the repulsor and the agressors standing still with bolters and the imperial fist's stratagem

The real difference between Primaris and normal Marines is what you are facing. Vs. small arms fire with 0 or -1 AP, you'll generally find the Primaris marines to be harder to shift on an objective compared to an equal number of points of vanilla marines. Index Primaris were probably slightly lower on damage (that -1 ap helps in a number of situations) than equivalent points worth of vanilla tactical marines, but the additional of the auxiliary grenade launcher evens out the amount of relative firepower - being able to lob a frag or krak grenade 30" downfield is a nice bonus to offensive power.

With the addition of the auto-bolt rifles and stalker bolt rifles, I think the difference between vanilla Tacticals and Intercessors has been closed nicely - Auto Bolt Rifles mean that you can effectively put out twice the firepower of a vanilla 10 man tactical squad at 24", and a squad of Intercessors with an aux grenade launcher and stalker rilfles can provide a solid anti-infantry firebase while camping a building or objective in your deployment zone.

The big difference is going to be in mobility and extra firepower - Tactical Marines and bring a Plasma and Combi-Plasma gun in a 5 man squad, or tote along a missile launcher or heavy bolter for cheap heavy fire support, and more importantly they can hope in a Rhino, Razorback, or Storm Raven to move up on an objective and try to push the enemy back. Or just drop podding them onto the objective and fighting heroically to keep the enemy off of it. Transporting Primaris marines? You've got the Repulsor and that's it, and a dirt cheap Repulsor is going to run you a crapton of points as it is.

On the other hand the Repulsor is a LOT of shots. 24 heavy bolter equivalent shots at 24" with a fairly cheap loadout, and then adding in 4d6 hits worth of frag grenades and a krag grenade from the launchers at 18" is even more hilarious, and it's a fairly cheap loadout.. You can run all long range weapons (with 4 lascannon equivilents) but that really ratchets the point cost up.

 daedalus wrote:
Huh. I have not bought the codex yet. That is good to know.

Well, maybe I'll just have fun painting those guys however feels good then.

Paint them as their own chapter and eventually start a small force of primaris you can ally in to your other armies as a brigade detachment for Dat Sweet Cee Pee.

Nvm 10char

More shooty, but also less punchy. To use tactical terminators, you need them to shoot and charge. Which, admittedly, sucks with random charge ranges, but if you're BT or willing to spend command points...

I don't think I will be getting any of them. They seem slow, easy to kill, and fairly boring.

I much prefer full mech lists of normal marines to footslogging big marines, and im confident that a good mech list with preds, dreads, tacs, etc, can kill whole units of primaris marines before they even get into effective range. They are also terrible at killing vehicles.

The biggest concern I have for Intercessors is that their transport is stupid expensive, and they're not that much good if they're footslogging all the time. RG intercessors are a different story tho.

 Yuber wrote:
The biggest concern I have for Intercessors is that their transport is stupid expensive, and they're not that much good if they're footslogging all the time. RG intercessors are a different story tho.

yeah Primaris Marines really need a "rhino analogue"

What amuses me, is there's a Rhino Primaris in the game, but it can't transport Primaris Marines.

 Melissia wrote:
What amuses me, is there's a Rhino Primaris in the game, but it can't transport Primaris Marines.

heh yeah, that caused a LOT of confusion, especially considering how that rhino wasn't partiuclarly well known

BrianDavion wrote:

 Yuber wrote:
The biggest concern I have for Intercessors is that their transport is stupid expensive, and they're not that much good if they're footslogging all the time. RG intercessors are a different story tho.

yeah Primaris Marines really need a "rhino analogue"

I really think this is Geedubs Oversight since I think Primaris marines would sell more if they had that.

BTW, what wrong with making Primaris models count as 2 models when transporting?

 Yuber wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Yuber wrote:
The biggest concern I have for Intercessors is that their transport is stupid expensive, and they're not that much good if they're footslogging all the time. RG intercessors are a different story tho.

yeah Primaris Marines really need a "rhino analogue"

I really think this is Geedubs Oversight since I think Primaris marines would sell more if they had that.

BTW, what wrong with making Primaris models count as 2 models when transporting?

The leading theory is they wanted to sell more repulsor tank kits. However I've also seen one theory advanced this is being done because the long term plan is to make Primaris Marines their own seperate faction, and thus want to ensure when it happens the diusruption is minimal

BrianDavion wrote:

 Yuber wrote:
The biggest concern I have for Intercessors is that their transport is stupid expensive, and they're not that much good if they're footslogging all the time. RG intercessors are a different story tho.

yeah Primaris Marines really need a "rhino analogue"

I mean...do they though? What do you really gain putting intercessors in a transport? It's not really worth it to protect them, the 30-42" range banding means they don't really need the extra movement, and they're 2 wounds with a 2+ save in cover. Give'em stalkers and pretend they're HB devs.

Reivers deepstrike, giving up a turn of shooting with hellblasters isn't an awesome option and starting them off the board to protect them isn't super necessary if you have LOS blocking terrain. Inceptors deepstrike. Redemptor is a dreadnought, Characters should be moving with the units they buff.

Outside of the Aggressors there isn't really anything to be gained METAL BAWXES and Aggressors benefit more from the ravenguard drop than any unit in the game.

In fact the only times you ever really use transports are for fragile units, which primaris are not, slow close/mid range unit which only the aggressors are, melee units that can't deepstrike which primaris don't have, and transports that are also ridiculously efficient gunboats like the razorback or immolator.

The problem with primaris is that they're A) overcosted B) don't have 30 years of multiple new kits per year behind them and C) Concentrate their dakka way too heavily into single models. Transports are largely irrelevant.

You can bet that one part of it is to sell more. However, that's not likely to be the only reason.

For as much as it might help sales in some aspects, it can curtail sales in others.

If you look at the major changes happening to a lot of miniature games today, they're all starting to have a lot of smaller factions. This increases sales, but also allows designers to create better, more interesting and balanced units within that faction, without a release upsetting the overall balance.

I'm no GW apologist, but way too many factors add up so that creating these artificial separations becomes a good idea.