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 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
[snip]

Sure it works.

First, you spend your movement phase getting marines in to range (walking, driving, flying, drop podding, whatever means you can).
Second, you spend your shooting phase shooting the enemy-- this is the easy part that you clearly already understand. Third, you spend the charge phase declaring and rolling for a charge (which is why you moved so much!). Fourth, you spend your Fight phase having your marines shank the enemy with their big knives.

Congratulations, you just utilized the entire marine statline in a single turn. And yes, I made it sound simple. That's because it pretty much is-- this isn't some hidden secret tricky strategy that takes decades to master, nor is it an automatic win button (which is what a lot of the more whiny players on Dakka appear to want).

Rather, it's the nature of the game that, when you're relying on random dice and working against the strategies of another player, your strategies won't always work. This is true whether or not you're going to be attempting to hide and turtle and pretend you're playing a pure shooty army, or playing utilizing the whole statline. However, the latter will result in you getting your points worth out of the army, and the former just makes it look like you wish you were playing Tau or Eldar and resenting the fact that marines are, in fact, neither Tau nor Eldar.

Congratulations on such a condescending post!

But lets put it bluntly.. You just utilized the statline yes! But did you actually do anything meaningful with it? Sure you could rush artillery at the enemy units to utilize their ability to "grind the enemy" beneath their treads, but that's not going to be very effective use for them is it? Since we aren't going to be adding new units in we'll just use the standard Tac marine. You have left cover to start walking towards the enemy shooting line, thus reverting to your standard MEQ armor save, you are shooting with your rapid fire weapons out of rapid fire distance, unless you desperately want to reach their lines faster and are advancing, thus losing access to your standard guns (with Special and Heavy as well). Now having survived the fire, you have chosen to charge the enemy! And successfully made it through overwatch and terrain, and now you and your S4, AP0, 1 attack combat knives are plinking away at the enemy in some vain hope that your standard attack will actually do some damage and make back some points before the enemy falls back.

This is pretty accurate. The MEQ statline is not that great anymore, especially since all the changes in 8th. You can see this in most lists when they are loading up on either Primaris, or special weapons (A la Dark Angels), or various imperial soup to fill in the gaps that the current statline presents.

Primaris having a second attack does help in close combat, the additional wound is not worth their points given how much plasma spam is still in the meta.

Little bit of anecdotal evidence, I had 3 reivers with knives (so 10 attacks) struggle to kill 2 fire warriors. So sure they hit on 3s, wound on 3s but there was no "risk, reward" that comes with getting into CC.

Reivers should be ashamed not being able to kill some filthy xenos. So this"fight" put a very bad taste in my mouth for marines in CC.

Well since I'm here, how are aggressors doing?
How is massed S4 shots working?

#MakeTheBolterGreatAgain

I expect this big FAQ to just be a collection of all the previous FAQs plus amendments with the possible addition of FAQs for the Tau and Necron Codexes.

Dionysodorus wrote:
Why do you think those benefits are worth 4 points?

So the comparison in question-- +1T is a 16.7% increase in survivability against basic weapons and most units' basic fight phase attacks as well as an increase in survivability against everything but S5 and S8+ attacks-- a very strong effect, and easily worth two points at least. Plague Marines are 3 points more expensive than Tactical Marines, but that's a difficult comparison to make because they trade in an inch of movement too, and gain more than just toughness in the process, so it's complicated.

16.7% increase in ability to hit, plus another 16.7% increase in ability to do damage when they hit-- which I'm counting as a single increase, because while they apply only to the fight phase, they build on each other and both S and WS drastically improve the effect of the other. The +1S and +1WS are both easily worth another point combined, possibly even two (hell, Celestians pay two points +1ws +1ld). But I'll take the lower estimate, because apparently people don't know how to get in to close combat these days. As an aside, if you never use it, it's worth nothing, but that's your fault for not using it-- might as well complain that boltguns suck because you never fire them, in which case the only response is, to borrow a phrase from video game culture, "git gud, scrub".

Back on topic, on top of that, Marines get access to ATSKNF and Chapter Tactics. Chapter tactics we'll say counts similar to acts/shield of faith (though for an army, chapter tactics are better, as they apply to all infantry, instead of applying only to a random number of infantry depending on how many points you put in to a imagifiers), which leaves ATSKNF-- something a lot of other armies either can't get or have to pay extra to get. Since we're using Sisters as the basis of comparison here, sisters have to pay 15 points for a non-combatant character (Dialogous has no ranged weapon, is WS4+, and has a crappy +1s AP- D1 close combat weapon) to give a 6" ATSKNF aura, which would take effecting 30 sisters in order to result in half a point (which, while possible, is highly unlikely)-- and unlike the marine's ATSKNF, the dialogous can be sniped away and takes up an additional elite slot (though, granted, it's not like Sisters are really using their elite slots for much else). So I'm counting this as a point, as well.

End result is around ~13 points assuming the starting point is the price of sisters, as sisters currently are. Of course, we all know Marines are the starting price given GW's own mentality, but a similar argument can be made in reverse, regardless. If Marines got cheaper, and Sisters got unchanged, Sisters would become objectively worse by comparison, and it's not like Sisters are out there winning tournaments non-stop right now. You could counter that this is because Sisters are still an Index army, and you know what, that's fair enough, but I still don't foresee Sisters getting that much of a buff if they ever get updated wtih a proper codex.

So basically what I'm saying is, stop trying to get out of justifying a change to the rules and statlines of marines. You're the one asking for a change, you fething justify it.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
But lets put it bluntly.. You just utilized the statline yes! But did you actually do anything meaningful with it?

Yes. I pushed on to an objective and contested it while doing damage to the enemy troop that was securing it, potentially even destroying the enemy troop if they failed their morale check hard enough.

You have played 40k, haven't you?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 fraser1191 wrote:
Little bit of anecdotal evidence, I had 3 reivers with knives (so 10 attacks) struggle to kill 2 fire warriors. So sure they hit on 3s, wound on 3s but there was no "risk, reward" that comes with getting into CC.

I once watched a single scout marine take on Abbadon and hold him off for four turns, clearly scouts need their CC ability nerfed.

Yes. I pushed on to an objective and contested it while doing damage to the enemy troop that was securing it, potentially even destroying the enemy troop if they failed their morale check hard enough.

You have played 40k, haven't you?

Are you contesting Grots? Short of something already destroyed what is Tactical Marines going to be causing massive morale problems for?

Have you I wonder?

I'm pretty sure Melissa is just making stuff up at this point.

Just ignore her, She'll get her self banned again before too long.

ATSKNF is worth nothing because Marines rarely run big enough units to ever fail a morale check.

 Melissia wrote:
So the comparison in question-- +1T is a 16.7% increase in survivability against basic weapons and most units' basic fight phase attacks as well as an increase in survivability against everything but S5 and S8+ attacks-- a very strong effect, and easily worth two points at least. Plague Marines are 3 points more expensive than Tactical Marines, but that's a difficult comparison to make because they trade in an inch of movement too, and gain more than just toughness in the process, so it's complicated.

16.7% increase in ability to hit, plus another 16.7% increase in ability to do damage when they hit-- which I'm counting as a single increase, because while they apply only to the fight phase, they build on each other and both S and WS drastically improve the effect of the other. The +1S and +1WS are both easily worth another point combined, possibly even two (hell, Celestians pay two points +1ws +1ld). But I'll take the lower estimate, because apparently people don't know how to get in to close combat these days. As an aside, if you never use it, it's worth nothing, but that's your fault for not using it-- might as well complain that boltguns suck because you never fire them, in which case the only response is, to borrow a phrase from video game culture, "git gud, scrub".

Back on topic, on top of that, Marines get access to ATSKNF and Chapter Tactics. Chapter tactics we'll say counts similar to acts/shield of faith (though for an army, chapter tactics are better, as they apply to all infantry, instead of applying only to a random number of infantry depending on how many points you put in to a imagifiers), which leaves ATSKNF-- something a lot of other armies either can't get or have to pay extra to get. Since we're using Sisters as the basis of comparison here, sisters have to pay 15 points for a non-combatant character (Dialogous has no ranged weapon, is WS4+, and has a crappy +1s AP- D1 close combat weapon) to give a 6" ATSKNF aura, which would take effecting 30 sisters in order to result in half a point (which, while possible, is highly unlikely)-- and unlike the marine's ATSKNF, the dialogous can be sniped away and takes up an additional elite slot (though, granted, it's not like Sisters are really using their elite slots for much else). So I'm counting this as a point, as well.

End result is around ~13 points assuming the starting point is the price of sisters, as sisters currently are. Of course, we all know Marines are the starting price given GW's own mentality, but a similar argument can be made in reverse, regardless. If Marines got cheaper, and Sisters got unchanged, Sisters would become objectively worse by comparison, and it's not like Sisters are out there winning tournaments non-stop right now. You could counter that this is because Sisters are still an Index army, and you know what, that's fair enough, but I still don't foresee Sisters getting that much of a buff if they ever get updated wtih a proper codex.

So basically what I'm saying is, stop trying to get out of justifying a change to the rules and statlines of marines. You're the one asking for a change, you fething justify it.

This is innumerate. I'm also not really sure what to say about it, because the rest of my post basically pre-addressed what you're saying here and explained why it's so wrongheaded. I note that you don't seem to have a response to that. But, briefly, you're just pulling numbers out of your butt. You have no basis for saying that the things you're saying are worth 1 or 2 or 3 points are worth that many points.

So I guess for this one I'll just point out where you're being clearly disingenuous or, let's say, thoughtless:
1. Plague Marines get a lot more than 1 point of toughness for 3 points. Notably, they get a 5+ FNP. That's a whopping 50% improvement in durability against everything other than multi-damage weapons, even including mortal wounds. Give tacticals a 5+ FNP and you'll see a lot fewer calls to make them 11 points per model. No reasonable person can think that T4 over T3 is worth 2 points on a 9 point model. You're also calling it a 16.7% increase in survivability, which is not true for any reasonable definition of "survivability". Though actually here you're using a worse value than you ought to -- see my previous post for real numbers.

2. You make a ridiculous comparison to Celestians. Who uses Celestians? It is very hard to interpret this as anything other than bad faith. You're a Sisters player. You know that Celestians aren't worth the premium. What this example actually shows is that you're wrong -- CC capability isn't worth that many points on models like this. Actually, don't Celestians even get an extra attack, literally doubling their CC output all by itself? Still not worth 2 points.

3. You make a similarly dishonest comparison between ATSKNF and a Dialogus. Also you even admit here that Sisters aren't using their Elite slots for Celestians despite having just used them to try to argue about how many points CC ability is worth. But, again, how often do you see a Dialogus unless it's just to fill a slot? The reason for this is that morale re-rolls on 5-man Ld 8 units are just not very valuable. We can use real math here instead of made-up numbers to see why this is so. Absent Ld modifiers, you're in no danger of losing anyone until the 3rd model dies in a turn, in which case you average 1/6 of another lost model, and then losing the 4th model only adds another 1/6 of a lost model to the average. Even if an opponent is intentionally trying to maximize your losses to morale, and never accidentally wipes a squad, the difference between Ld 8 and morale immune is about 7% more losses. It's 4.8% for Ld 8 vs Ld 8 with a re-roll. Or maybe you want to do this for Ld 7 because you have a lascannon on a normal squaddie that you always leave for last. Then it's a 5.6% difference. Of course, in practice not many people are going to want to risk the lone Ld 7 model with a lascannon passing his 50/50 morale check and shooting next turn, so they'll just kill him anyway and then the morale difference is meaningless. So this is worth more like a quarter of a point on a ~10 point model that's typically taken in 5 man squads, at best.

4. You say that cheaper Marines means Sisters would need to be buffed because Sisters aren't "out there winning tournaments non-stop right now". But this is obviously silly. Tactical Marines also aren't central to many tournament-winning lists. All you're saying here is that anything that isn't as good as Dark Reapers should be buffed, or something. I don't know what you mean by: "Sisters would become objectively worse by comparison". If you mean that they'd become relatively worse if Marines get a buff, then, sure -- that's what it means to buff a unit. If you're saying that they'd become an absolutely worse unit overall, then you haven't even attempted to show that.

So, yes, if you just invent arbitrary point values for different things and if you pretend to justify these by comparison to units that you know are themselves overpriced, it's easy to argue that 13 point Marines are reasonable, despite all of the empirical evidence that we have that they're not in a good place. Meanwhile lots of people have explained to you why 13 points is not reasonable -- I even walked through some simple math in my last post showing why 4 points over Sisters is pretty crazy.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
There's difficult and then there's, as a practicle matter, impossible. For GK it's impossible to get where almost anyone else can get.

Saying you're better off with this rather than where you were isn't necessarily true. Yes, I have 3 more CPs but how many more CPs do SMs gain? I've never faced an army with 12 CPs in my meta so everyone benefits the same and I'm no better off than before.

If you have never met an army with a brigade, why are you complaining about armies with brigades in them in a different system. I'm kind of confused about your point here.

And why should Space Marines have more CP than you do?

If you just want a system that straight up benefits GK, you are looking in the wrong place. No amount of tailoring CP generation around the GK army is going to fix it.

If they got rid of the Special Needs codexes and made any actual special rules and units part of the main codex alot of problems would reduce.

Because of all the varied Marine dexes we have to have various different versions of the tactical, Assault, terminator Squad etc just so those special codexes can self justify.

If those units were part of the Marines dex then all would have access to them.

 Melissia wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
Little bit of anecdotal evidence, I had 3 reivers with knives (so 10 attacks) struggle to kill 2 fire warriors. So sure they hit on 3s, wound on 3s but there was no "risk, reward" that comes with getting into CC.

I once watched a single scout marine take on Abbadon and hold him off for four turns, clearly scouts need their CC ability nerfed.

Frankly I don't Believe you and I assume you are mocking my personal experience and reasons for not wanting to march my marines into a position to charge for very little pay off.

On average, 10 attacks from Reivers Vs Fire Warriors should do about 2 wounds. So entirely possible to take 2 turns if you roll a little below average. That's pretty pathetic for a dedicated melee unit.

Imo, baseline melee weapons such as Chainswords and Combat Knives really should have -1 AP. Assault squads and similar units are a joke right now.

Also thats failbadon, not exactlly a tournament winning list contender either.
If you'd said morti or magnus that would have been funny. Tac marines with the +1Attack for charging where effective against basic troops in previous editions.
In 8th with the halfing of their damage output they just don't work in close combat, hecknmost of the actually good in close combat units have a bucket load of special rules to make them effective, bezerkers bloodletters etc are all rocking ao many special rules its laughable that anyone thinga charging is much more than a distraction move in 8th.

If your expectations is to be able to out punch AND out shoot everything and still be more cost effective than specialist then yes you are setting your expectations too high.

Stux wrote:
On average, 10 attacks from Reivers Vs Fire Warriors should do about 2 wounds. So entirely possible to take 2 turns if you roll a little below average. That's pretty pathetic for a dedicated melee unit.

Imo, baseline melee weapons such as Chainswords and Combat Knives really should have -1 AP. Assault squads and similar units are a joke right now.

Sorry the Reivers didn't actually kill them, a knight did lol

And yeah I 100% agree, marine "melee" units barring Vanguard are pretty meh. The jobs that come to mind for an assault squad can for the most part be replaced by Reivers.

deep strike harassment: Assault with packs, 80. Reviers with chutes, 100. 5 more wounds 5 more attacks and a pistol with ap for 20pts. Granted you can give Assault marines 3 plasma pistols for another 21pts but that gets pricey for a unit that is gonna draw a decent amount of attention (hopefully or hopefully not lol)and doesn't have great staying power

Deep strike Obj grabbers: Same thing, but Reivers can swap their blades for Carbines so now they have the same Attacks more wounds and can provide some aid in shooting.

I dream of using either of these units to tie up tanks and such, but I play in a heavy Tau/Eldar group
That's all that comes to mind for tasks I'd like them to do, but lets be serious I run 2 squads of Hellblasters I'm just a little sour that I bought a box of Reivers first

ATSKNF is really, useless.

Anyone that claims it do anything just does not play marines or only plays agaisnt Night Lord's Nurgle Raptors.

 fraser1191 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
Little bit of anecdotal evidence, I had 3 reivers with knives (so 10 attacks) struggle to kill 2 fire warriors. So sure they hit on 3s, wound on 3s but there was no "risk, reward" that comes with getting into CC.

I once watched a single scout marine take on Abbadon and hold him off for four turns, clearly scouts need their CC ability nerfed.

Frankly I don't Believe you and I assume you are mocking my personal experience and reasons for not wanting to march my marines into a position to charge for very little pay off.

weather or not you belive Melissa or not her point is one ancidote doesn't exactly mean anything, I can welll belive there's been a story like that out there where a chaos player just rolled THAT badly.

 Galas wrote:
ATSKNF is really, useless.

Anyone that claims it do anything just does not play marines or only plays agaisnt Night Lord's Nurgle Raptors.

It's pretty useless! And not just because I play Dark Angels, so can only lose 1 model to morale anyway :p

LD 8 means you have to lose 3 models in one turn to have a CHANCE of losing anyone to morale. With Primaris, most of my squads are 5 or less models anyway. If they're getting targeted enough to kill 3 models, they're probably getting wiped.

I have yet to even need to re-roll a morale test this edition.

BrianDavion wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
Little bit of anecdotal evidence, I had 3 reivers with knives (so 10 attacks) struggle to kill 2 fire warriors. So sure they hit on 3s, wound on 3s but there was no "risk, reward" that comes with getting into CC.

I once watched a single scout marine take on Abbadon and hold him off for four turns, clearly scouts need their CC ability nerfed.

Frankly I don't Believe you and I assume you are mocking my personal experience and reasons for not wanting to march my marines into a position to charge for very little pay off.

weather or not you belive Melissa or not her point is one ancidote doesn't exactly mean anything, I can welll belive there's been a story like that out there where a chaos player just rolled THAT badly.

"There is a 1 in 1000 chance X happens" is not a counter argument to "on average X is not very effective in melee even against 'good' targets".

Galas wrote:ATSKNF is really, useless.

Anyone that claims it do anything just does not play marines or only plays agaisnt Night Lord's Nurgle Raptors.

Stux wrote:

 Galas wrote:
ATSKNF is really, useless.

Anyone that claims it do anything just does not play marines or only plays agaisnt Night Lord's Nurgle Raptors.

It's pretty useless! And not just because I play Dark Angels, so can only lose 1 model to morale anyway :p

LD 8 means you have to lose 3 models in one turn to have a CHANCE of losing anyone to morale. With Primaris, most of my squads are 5 or less models anyway. If they're getting targeted enough to kill 3 models, they're probably getting wiped.

I have yet to even need to re-roll a morale test this edition.

The problem isn't ATSKNF being useless, it's leadership as a mechanic being useless. It needs some serious redesign, especially because 40k is home to the intergalactic horrors that should be able to do some fun stuff with it.

Actually I'll arguee that Morale in 40k does not make any kind of sense.

It should only affect Imperial Guard (Not Tempestus), Eldar Guardians, Dark Eldar Kabalite Warriors, Chaos Cultistas and equivalents, Tau and Orks.

All other armies or units are basically, by fluff, inmune to fear or morale.

I posted this originally in the thread about the viability of the MEQ statline, but it's relevant here too:

On the point of the viability of the MEQ statline, I'd like to call to mind the previous edition. In 7th edition, basic Tac, Assault, and Dev squads were all 70pts before upgrades. Armies consisting in large parts of those units only became prominent at tournaments when the Gladius-style super-detachment made it possible for those units to take free transports. Even then, while such armies were competitive, they weren't preeminent. That suggests they were reasonably balanced, enough so to be competitive at big events, but not so much so to be an auto-win button.

People's compositions varied, but per demi-company it was fairly common to take 3 Razorbacks for the Tac Squads, a Rhino for the Dev squad and a drop pod for the Assault Squad. The prices of the transports averaged out to 47pts. Subtract that from the 70pt cost of a basic squad, and we arrive at a value of 23pts. Assuming the transports were appropriately priced (I personally think that, at least, the Rhino and Razorbacks were overpriced), that suggests that a basic Tac, Dev, or Assault squad was only worth 23pts.

Fast forward to the current edition. A basic Tac Squad is now 65pts, but has lost considerable utility in the transition. Leaving aside the loss of the Gladius, they lost the ability to ignore the armor saves of light infantry, are now subject to having their saves reduced by weapons against which they used to get full saves, and they even lost the ability to get bonus attacks when charging, which was about the only thing that gave them any claim to occasional credibility in an assault. Pretty much all they got in return was their sergeants' combi-bolters now getting to shoot the special weapon component every turn instead of once per game.

About the only MEQ-based units that see much use are those that give special weapon saturation - Dev Squads, and I'll use DA Company Vets because they can all take special weapons. Assault Squads lost most of their value when they lost the ability to deep strike within range to use flamers, and Tac Squads are just points-sinks.requiring additional points be spent on them to let them have an inadequate chance of doing anything worthwhile that Scouts couldn't do for cheaper, and base cost Scout Squads have a value in a list that they provide even if an opponent goes first and blows them off the board first turn.

The idea that Space Marine Tactical Squads still have a role as a jack-of-all-trades unit is a myth, legacy of editions past that power creep has completely obliterated. They are inconsequential in both shooting and in assault, they're not fast and have no special deployment abilities, so they're not very good at board control, and at 13pts a pop/65pts for a squad they're too expensive to be the basis of a mass army.. They'd really need to have the hell upgraded out of them (or have some really good stratagems designed for them) for them to reclaim that jack-of-all-trades role they supposedly had in editions past.

 Grand.Master.Raziel wrote:
I posted this originally in the thread about the viability of the MEQ statline, but it's relevant here too:

On the point of the viability of the MEQ statline, I'd like to call to mind the previous edition. In 7th edition, basic Tac, Assault, and Dev squads were all 70pts before upgrades. Armies consisting in large parts of those units only became prominent at tournaments when the Gladius-style super-detachment made it possible for those units to take free transports. Even then, while such armies were competitive, they weren't preeminent. That suggests they were reasonably balanced, enough so to be competitive at big events, but not so much so to be an auto-win button.

People's compositions varied, but per demi-company it was fairly common to take 3 Razorbacks for the Tac Squads, a Rhino for the Dev squad and a drop pod for the Assault Squad. The prices of the transports averaged out to 47pts. Subtract that from the 70pt cost of a basic squad, and we arrive at a value of 23pts. Assuming the transports were appropriately priced (I personally think that, at least, the Rhino and Razorbacks were overpriced), that suggests that a basic Tac, Dev, or Assault squad was only worth 23pts.

Fast forward to the current edition. A basic Tac Squad is now 65pts, but has lost considerable utility in the transition. Leaving aside the loss of the Gladius, they lost the ability to ignore the armor saves of light infantry, are now subject to having their saves reduced by weapons against which they used to get full saves, and they even lost the ability to get bonus attacks when charging, which was about the only thing that gave them any claim to occasional credibility in an assault. Pretty much all they got in return was their sergeants' combi-bolters now getting to shoot the special weapon component every turn instead of once per game.

About the only MEQ-based units that see much use are those that give special weapon saturation - Dev Squads, and I'll use DA Company Vets because they can all take special weapons. Assault Squads lost most of their value when they lost the ability to deep strike within range to use flamers, and Tac Squads are just points-sinks.requiring additional points be spent on them to let them have an inadequate chance of doing anything worthwhile that Scouts couldn't do for cheaper, and base cost Scout Squads have a value in a list that they provide even if an opponent goes first and blows them off the board first turn.

The idea that Space Marine Tactical Squads still have a role as a jack-of-all-trades unit is a myth, legacy of editions past that power creep has completely obliterated. They are inconsequential in both shooting and in assault, they're not fast and have no special deployment abilities, so they're not very good at board control, and at 13pts a pop/65pts for a squad they're too expensive to be the basis of a mass army.. They'd really need to have the hell upgraded out of them (or have some really good stratagems designed for them) for them to reclaim that jack-of-all-trades role they supposedly had in editions past.

Couldnt agree more, I mentioned in a previous post that a good designer looks at at unit both in a vacuum and in the wider context, Tac marines suffer from legacy issues which are

1: points cost
2: durability
3: weapons loadout

1: Marines have always cost around 13-17pts (with grenades), so they still do, with little to no thought on IF they should cost that much.

2: the 3+ save have always been overvalued, this edition especially, a 3+ save in the current meta is actually a 6+ save and marines should be costed as such, 10pts would be a good spot for them, problem is that then affects other units. Personally I would have power armour ignore 1 AP, so AP-3 would be AP -2.

3: bolters have always been "meh" in both game and fluff to game terms, they really really need a buff, back when Eldar got the bladestorm rules and guard got FRFSRF and all the other armies got some rule for their main weapon, marines got nothing and still have nothing, thankfully now the heavy and special can choose different targets to suit them but it still leaves the basic bolter in a bad place, personally I would have the bolter as a short range high output weapon that shreds enemy infantry, something like these.

Range 18" Str4 Ap 0 Rapid fire 2
OR
Range 18" str4 Ap 0 Rapid fire 1 "mass Reactive" for every roll to wound of 6+ bolters deals an additional automatic hit using its profile, these hits do not generate more hits.

Neither of those are perfect but it really needs something.

what if tactical squads stayed the same points themselves, but received a rule that allowed certain upgrade costs to be cut in half.

Anything they carry themselves, bam cut in half. Any pure dedicated transports, half price (so that people couldn't load up on cheap gunships, assbacks etc)

 davou wrote:
what if tactical squads stayed the same points themselves, but received a rule that allowed certain upgrade costs to be cut in half.

Anything they carry themselves, bam cut in half. Any pure dedicated transports, half price (so that people couldn't load up on cheap gunships, assbacks etc)

I remember reading something pre 8th on the community site stating that there would never be free or reduced point cost items again. I'm gonna do some digging and see if i can find it though

 fraser1191 wrote:

 davou wrote:
what if tactical squads stayed the same points themselves, but received a rule that allowed certain upgrade costs to be cut in half.

Anything they carry themselves, bam cut in half. Any pure dedicated transports, half price (so that people couldn't load up on cheap gunships, assbacks etc)

I remember reading something pre 8th on the community site stating that there would never be free or reduced point cost items again. I'm gonna do some digging and see if i can find it though

well that's obviously not held true at all. Basically every relic so far has been free unless you want a ton of them

 davou wrote:
what if tactical squads stayed the same points themselves, but received a rule that allowed certain upgrade costs to be cut in half.

Anything they carry themselves, bam cut in half. Any pure dedicated transports, half price (so that people couldn't load up on cheap gunships, assbacks etc)

Why would you want to do this?

Like, is it actually a problem that, given a tactical squad, nobody thinks it's worth upgrading them? That seems like the opposite of what we see. You only see tactical squads with upgrades -- it's the regular bolter Marines that people are reluctant to take. The heavy and special weapons are if anything underpriced given how rarely people choose not to take one. And then I'm not sure what "pure dedicated transports" means. Also there's no provision for transports being tied to specific units in the 8th edition rules, so it seems like an unlikely way to go.

Dionysodorus wrote:

 davou wrote:
what if tactical squads stayed the same points themselves, but received a rule that allowed certain upgrade costs to be cut in half.

Anything they carry themselves, bam cut in half. Any pure dedicated transports, half price (so that people couldn't load up on cheap gunships, assbacks etc)

Why would you want to do this?

Like, is it actually a problem that, given a tactical squad, nobody thinks it's worth upgrading them? That seems like the opposite of what we see. You only see tactical squads with upgrades -- it's the regular bolter Marines that people are reluctant to take. The heavy and special weapons are if anything underpriced given how rarely people choose not to take one. And then I'm not sure what "pure dedicated transports" means. Also there's no provision for transports being tied to specific units in the 8th edition rules, so it seems like an unlikely way to go.

An incredible case of Correlation does not imply causation. Given that the better answer is "This is a way to make them slightly more palatable to take" when they have a heavy and special.