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 fraser1191 wrote:
What about sisters of battle? The church wasn't aloud to have an army of men so he raised an army of women, like that's just foolish

Not to be picky (okay, totally to be picky), but reread your fluff; the church was denied "men at arms" in the Decree Passive due to the treachery of Goge Vandire, but already had an army of all-female warriors (the Daughters of the Emperor later becoming the Adepta Sororitas/Sisters of Battle). Sebastian Thor specifically abused the wording of the Decree Passive to retain the Sisters of Battle, but due to the tenuous political situation at the time (and the desire of the new High Lords of Terra for stability) they allowed it (it's even suggested the wording may have been intentional to keep Thor on side), since Thor made rooting out treachery within the Ecclesiarchy one of the Sororitas' responsibilities, so that if another Vandire-like figure arose they would stop them before they could pervert the Ecclesiarchy (assuming the Ordo Hereticus or Officio Assassinorum didn't stop them first).

The 2nd edition Sisters of Battle codex is a fantastic read for that period of Imperial history; GW have done a terrible job of boiling the fluff down for their weak-ass White Dwarf "codex" and the insulting digital codex (meanwhile the Index barely covers anything at all). I haven't had a good look at that section of the new rulebook but it's pretty short so probably just a current state of affairs rather than detailed history.

 hippyjr wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
I honestly don't see a power armor guy being stronger than a regular dude, primaris with S4 and T4 make sense, but regular SM should have the same profile as other humans just with a better save, which is the bonus power armours give. Ork boyz are S4 T4 and look like Hulk compared to SM, and yet they have the same T and S. Aesthetically speaking SM look as strong as eldar, tyranids but also guardsmen, which are all.

This is an issue with the scaling of GW space marines, and the whole reason for the primaris line. People wanted SM models that matched the fluff, AKA "true scale", and GW decided to give them that in a way which didn't render the entire SM line (and chaos marines) obsolete. Primaris models are what marines should have looked like to start with. The problem is that the new guys now take up the space that marines need to be in to play well (not surprising, in theory should help Gw sell their new baby).

So a buff is unlikely, as that would step on the toes of primaris marines. However IMO if you reduce marine stats to equal that of a GEQ then you are no longer playing space marines. Marines are not just a guardsman in power armour. If you were holding a pistol/chainsword and had to kill a naked, unarmed marine then my money would be on him. All of it. Every penny. Hell, have one of his hearts out of action at the start and my money would still be 100% on him.

I don't think marines had the scale issue. I think guardsmen had it. Just look at the cadians and and tell me they look right. True scale marines my ass. Marines with t4 and s4 makes sense, especially since power armour boosts them. Scouts however... But then again now even catachans are s4. For primaris marines, I don't like them, but as I see them they should be t5 s5, with the rest as is. This would make them more interesting gamewise. Points adjusted if needed.

S5 T5 primaris would be interesting.
But still gonna be wounded on a 3 and have to make either a 6+ or 5+ save thanks to plasma

Sadly, let's all remember...if marines were more properly built according to the fluff, marine armies would be smaller...smaller armies: selling less grey plastic.

GW (oddly) has a vested interest in Space Marines continuing to be shallow puddles of what they are in the fluff (and this extends to plenty of other lines of models as well).

However, from a house-rule standpoint? I'd love to do some narrative games with wildly exagerrated "Movie Marines" like the old days.

 Elbows wrote:
Sadly, let's all remember...if marines were more properly built according to the fluff, marine armies would be smaller...smaller armies: selling less grey plastic.

GW (oddly) has a vested interest in Space Marines continuing to be shallow puddles of what they are in the fluff (and this extends to plenty of other lines of models as well).

However, from a house-rule standpoint? I'd love to do some narrative games with wildly exagerrated "Movie Marines" like the old days.

Well I read the first book that follows Ventris and i think in the prologue there's only 30 ish marines in the fight against Night lords which was a great read.

I'd be fine with less models on the board if they could compete with an army that out numbers them 3-1.

Something I'd like to mention is i played with my DG from my dark imperium set plus some cultists and a couple stand-ins, but T5 plague marines felt way better. I was pretty much tabled in both games but still T5 marines felt a lot better than T4 (Should have 2W but still). But it was nice having only 10 plague marines made them feel more important (even if they didn't have a huge impact). Add in an AM infantry squad as a PDF force and I bet marines would feel better, probably because people would just take Infantry squads for troops and load up on Sternguard...

A mixed army of plague marines or sternguard plus lots of cultists or guard has a is a very different army from one where the plague marines are troops. When marines are troops sometimes people will ignore them because they don't have the offensive heft.

Well to be fair the way they get shot of the board now if they had any more damage output they'd be a glass cannon army lol

 Infantryman wrote:
Some of the talk lately has been about the low potency of Marine-type armies on the table. There are a lot of things wrong with them, as I'm sure you've seen the threads.

This one is another discussion on increasing Marine durability, which is reduced in the current edition rather substantially due to the way AP now works. Here it is:

==
Powered Armor:
Units with this ability roll 2d6 when making their save, and discard the lowest result.
==

This would apply to Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, and whomever else ends up wearing those types of suits - including Terminators.

I don't know if it would apply to Sisters of Battle, however - they *do* wear power armor, but I'm told it is not quite like the one the Marine types wear, because they don't have a Black Carapace.

This improves durability but still leaves them vulnerable to AP type weapons. One of the issues of a d6 system is that you don't have much die-space to work with. With Space Marines being at 3+, making them one better at 2+ just stepped on the toes of Terminator Armor.

It also opens the potential for 3+ saves for non-Marines, as this reroll wouldn't apply to them.

Let me know how badly this would break the game and ruin 40k for ever!

M.

You know how this would work, it would basically work like a reroll same probablity except better.

Terminators would basically never die from small arms fire.

It would take 480 points of guradsman using 1RF to kill 1 40 point model.

Does that sound reasonable to you?

Edit actually SM have a 2+ armor save in cover so you would need 240 points to kill 1 13 point model.

2W 2A stats is interesting but would have to come with a points increase back to 15 or more. It's a huge change though... for balance every existing SM/CSM codex would have to be redone at the same time. Probably best to wait for all other codices first and let the dust settle

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Infantryman wrote:
Some of the talk lately has been about the low potency of Marine-type armies on the table. There are a lot of things wrong with them, as I'm sure you've seen the threads.

This one is another discussion on increasing Marine durability, which is reduced in the current edition rather substantially due to the way AP now works. Here it is:

==
Powered Armor:
Units with this ability roll 2d6 when making their save, and discard the lowest result.
==

This would apply to Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, and whomever else ends up wearing those types of suits - including Terminators.

I don't know if it would apply to Sisters of Battle, however - they *do* wear power armor, but I'm told it is not quite like the one the Marine types wear, because they don't have a Black Carapace.

This improves durability but still leaves them vulnerable to AP type weapons. One of the issues of a d6 system is that you don't have much die-space to work with. With Space Marines being at 3+, making them one better at 2+ just stepped on the toes of Terminator Armor.

It also opens the potential for 3+ saves for non-Marines, as this reroll wouldn't apply to them.

Let me know how badly this would break the game and ruin 40k for ever!

M.

You know how this would work, it would basically work like a reroll same probablity except better.

Terminators would basically never die from small arms fire.

It would take 480 points of guradsman using 1RF to kill 1 40 point model.

Does that sound reasonable to you?

Edit actually SM have a 2+ armor save in cover so you would need 240 points to kill 1 13 point model.

Math hammet tends to not agree this, Str3 AP0 weapon have 63% chances to kill a T4 Sv2+ (Sv3+ stat but standing in cover) 1W model when there are 36 shots fired. If one Guardsmen is 4ppm, then 72pts can kill one at RF range.

 Elbows wrote:
However, from a house-rule standpoint? I'd love to do some narrative games with wildly exagerrated "Movie Marines" like the old days.

A friend of mine went to a mini event at our local GW, where they had people fighting primaris characters. At the store they were handing out datasheets for "movie primaris marines" (everyone got the basic sheets, only the winner got the movie captain stats". Played a game vs my deathguard with mortarion and it was the most one sided game I have ever played. Almost 3k worth of movie primaris gets you a little over 10 guys (all characters), all 3 wounds, S/T 6, 2+/3++/4+++, regen every turn, crazy guns, etc. the sergeant had bubble buffs for the regen (1 becomes d3) IIRC, so you had to focus one marine at a time or they insta-heal. hide the heavy plasma weapons (which had a decent chance of one shotting tanks) behind a wall of riflemen and they become immune to attacks. Even morty on the charge only killed one (with mortal wound spam, not scythe attacks).

Interesting game, but not particularly fun.

 Elbows wrote:
Sadly, let's all remember...if marines were more properly built according to the fluff, marine armies would be smaller...smaller armies: selling less grey plastic.

GW (oddly) has a vested interest in Space Marines continuing to be shallow puddles of what they are in the fluff (and this extends to plenty of other lines of models as well).

However, from a house-rule standpoint? I'd love to do some narrative games with wildly exagerrated "Movie Marines" like the old days.

Use Space Marine minis and use the custodes rules?

GW for whatever reason cannot get its quantity of small weapons vs. AP profile weapons correct. Fundamentally, I believe the developers don't believe players will min-max the best weapons and are adding weapons in a thematic way as an an accessory. People do spam special/heavy weapons and they are too easily spammable relative to the basic weapon. In every edition, a regular trooper with basic weapon is your tax for taking special weapon.

In addition, GW does seem to architect and design the Marine profile around suriviveabilty to small-weapon profile. They aka build marines to be tough against lasgun fire. Conversely, then they hand out plasma and high AP stuff like candy? Is that meant to be a "marine control" or a balance? Seems to be beyond that at this point. I think they just don't think people will spam these weapons is my only logic. GW just always sees this as a thematic narrative experience at the heart of it and not a spam fest as their player base does.

So in a way everyone is sort of saying the same thing. Either small weapons like Bolters have to be made more effective so that this increases the basic Marine's OFFENSIVE output relative to everything else. Or conversely, you can decrease AP firepower of opposing armies and not make those weapons as spammable. This would increase the DEFENSIVE output of Marines. Adding a wound to stock Marines is another option for increasing Defensive output of Marines. The argument can be made that this may not help in this edition because multi-wound weapons like plasma are everywhere. However, this extra wound would help against opposing lasgun equivalents.

So do we think Marines die more due to AP spam or lasgun spam? You could make arguments either way which is why we're seeing AM be such an offender. It's hard to tease out which one they do better at spamming plasma or lasguns since they actually do both and both are as deadly to your basic marine profile. In a way, this creates 2 very different survivability profiles for Marines when facing these 2 different threats and they just can't find the right balance. .

Changing the points cost of Marines is the least granular of approaches yet the most simplistic and likely to happen. I highly doubt GW will re-print the codexes so quickly or make wide-scale CA points changes. Changing points costs is putting a band-aid on the fundamental issue of GW simply never being able to balance weapons correctly.

Honestly, the most realistic solutions are probably complicated from a rules perspective and would not be popular fluff wise or table-top wise. In real-life, specialist anti-tank weaponry is very delicate and requires tons of setup time, long reload time usually, and hard to aim. You almost have to set a trap or prepared beforehand and setup for the situation. This would make the lascannon for example back to its original unable to move and fire and maybe fire every 2 turns. That just wouldn't fly and gamers would revolt. Similarly, GW would actually introduce even more -1 modifiers to multi-shot weapons. Most multi-shot weapons in real life have horrible recoil and the point is to create overwhelming suppressing fire. It's not actually designed to be accurate killers. An Assault Cannon would be like -3 to hit in real-life but probably put out at least 6 shots instead of 4.

Speaking of which do you guys remember when Assault Cannons would Rend on rolling a 6 TO HIT? Man that was the worst designed weapon of all time. You had assault cannons that were more effective against tanks than lascannons yet able to kill hordes as easily as heavy bolters. My Tyranids just cried and died every game as neither the big critters or the small ones could survive. Sure the assault cannon was only on Dreads and speeders, but you sure saw those units spammed. How that ever made it through testing...

 Snake Tortoise wrote:
2W 2A stats is interesting but would have to come with a points increase back to 15 or more. It's a huge change though... for balance every existing SM/CSM codex would have to be redone at the same time. Probably best to wait for all other codices first and let the dust settle

Marines with 2W and 2A? Well whaddayouknow, we already have that. They are called primaris marines. And yes, they are the new standard marines.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elbows wrote:
Sadly, let's all remember...if marines were more properly built according to the fluff, marine armies would be smaller...smaller armies: selling less grey plastic.

We already have that. Primaris Marines are essentially 2W, 2A marines with a beefier gun. They would work well if it wasn't for overcharged plasma ruining the day for all 2W models in the game.