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Actually overall space marines are not as bad as people claim they are. You just need to embrace playing multiple factions of space marines.

For instance, you can stack -2 to hit with DA + SW librarians, which can be in one detachment, and you can get a cover save bonus with SW. Also Long Fangs can shoot down eldar flyers now, and deathwatch have always mulched anything that they can kill with poisoned 2+ ammo.

The only space marines that are not viable are Grey Knights.

 Marmatag wrote:
Actually overall space marines are not as bad as people claim they are. You just need to embrace playing multiple factions of space marines.

For instance, you can stack -2 to hit with DA + SW librarians, which can be in one detachment, and you can get a cover save bonus with SW. Also Long Fangs can shoot down eldar flyers now, and deathwatch have always mulched anything that they can kill with poisoned 2+ ammo.

The only space marines that are not viable are Grey Knights.

Well Grey Knights just suffer from codex creep at that point.

Tactical squads and other mainstays of space marine armies are not used at all.

Soup lists are just so contrary to how people have played for decades. I rather play monolist vs monolist as it is easier to play.

 Marmatag wrote:
Actually overall space marines are not as bad as people claim they are. You just need to embrace playing multiple factions of space marines.

For instance, you can stack -2 to hit with DA + SW librarians, which can be in one detachment, and you can get a cover save bonus with SW. Also Long Fangs can shoot down eldar flyers now, and deathwatch have always mulched anything that they can kill with poisoned 2+ ammo.

The only space marines that are not viable are Grey Knights.

This isn't playing space marines though, that's soup. If I need two to four books to make an army viable, something is wrong.

 Asherian Command wrote:

Tactical squads and other mainstays of space marine armies are not used at all.

Soup lists are just so contrary to how people have played for decades. I rather play monolist vs monolist as it is easier to play.

Disagree about Tactical Squads, they are pretty good if you're building/playing for them, imo.

Agree about soup, sort of. I stick to one book, but recognize that I can be at a disadvantage for doing so.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

Tactical squads and other mainstays of space marine armies are not used at all.

Soup lists are just so contrary to how people have played for decades. I rather play monolist vs monolist as it is easier to play.

Disagree about Tactical Squads, they are pretty good if you're building/playing for them, imo.

Agree about soup, sort of. I stick to one book, but recognize that I can be at a disadvantage for doing so.

Why take a tactical squad if scouts have the smoke screen?

Tacticals get tremendously expensive.

 Asherian Command wrote:

Why take a tactical squad if scouts have the smoke screen?

Tacticals get tremendously expensive.

Salamanders

Sterling191 wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

Why take a tactical squad if scouts have the smoke screen?

Tacticals get tremendously expensive.

Salamanders

Salamanders are a frickin joke outside maybe Devastators. Maybe.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Sterling191 wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

Why take a tactical squad if scouts have the smoke screen?

Tacticals get tremendously expensive.

Salamanders

Salamanders are a frickin joke outside maybe Devastators. Maybe.

Multi-meltas are very expensive but even then, salamanders are horrible.

Iron hands? Nope. Just give em raven guard special rules.

Even mixing different detachments marines are just better as something else (outside of the DA+SW+xxx supreme command for the negative to hit stacking, darkshroud and dark talons for negative to hit stacking is good too).

With the premium on buffs once you start mixing in different chapters you start paying a lot of HQ tax for units that can't be used for their intended purpose (and what you are paying a premium on).

SM have one of the lowest win percentages of any army this edition (think the last number I heard was 34ish percent) vs 60ish for yanarri, DE, Knights and eldar soup.

Marines have no options for shooting 3++ knights (outside of the MW spam lists which is why they are the only ones winning) and their only melee option was just nerfed.

They present too juicy of targets to the eldar meta lists and can't deal with the mobility of most armies to gain/hold objectives, they are forced to MSUs meaning they give up kill points easy and don't really have the destructive power to kill more so they bleed primary ITC points and have a hard time building to mitigate/capitalize on secondaries.

The deepstrike nerf hurts them the most because of their limited mobility (no turn 1 charge units or anything reasonably priced with any mobility). Combined with very few ways to mitigate the risk of a 9" charge they are very one dimensional.

Despite being one of the highest played factions at SoCal their representation was terrible with 5 armies in the top 40 (all with 2 losses) 2x DA, one DW one SW (barely, 850ish points of knights) and one "marine" (guilliman + assassins mostly) in the top 40. For reference there were that many eldar lists in the top 10...

HuskyWarhammer wrote:
SM are strictly middle of the road in power - which is where they should be, imo, as they’re the “centerpiece” model line that GW puts out.

This is wrong in so many ways. Jezz you are a marine hater extraordinary.
#1 No armies should have tier's - they should all be equal in the hands of good players and
#2 They are clearly and by every metric - bottom tier.

I didn't bother. I knew Xeno would do it for me.

But now that he has:

To be "middle tier", approx a third of the codices must be WORSE than yours to form the "lower tier". So which CODICES are worse than marines? I'll wait.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

Tactical squads and other mainstays of space marine armies are not used at all.

Soup lists are just so contrary to how people have played for decades. I rather play monolist vs monolist as it is easier to play.

Disagree about Tactical Squads, they are pretty good if you're building/playing for them, imo.

Agree about soup, sort of. I stick to one book, but recognize that I can be at a disadvantage for doing so.

Why take a tactical squad if scouts have the smoke screen?

Tacticals get tremendously expensive.

The argument in favor of Tacticals is one of damage output. They are the troops choice in the marine book capable of doing the most damage to medium-high-value targets, because they have good access to heavy/special weapons.

Imo Tacticals can be used in two ways. Either you can commit them to backfield objective holding and fire support (good for Salamanders with their native re-rolls). Or you can attack with them using transports and higher density of Specials and Heavies. I think I recall the math being done elsewhere, but a full Tactical Squad with double Plasma and Grav Cannon and non-Guilliman Rerolls can have a higher damage output than the common Riptide (Heavy Burst Cannon?) build. Basically, if you can get them into rapid-fire range they can really put the hurt on. For lots of troops this is a dangerous thing because if you get charged you can't shoot, but the UM Chapter Tactics takes care of that, and you can shoot charge, fall back etc and keep damage output pretty high. I've been charged by multiple Shield Captains, taken the hits and then backed away and shot them dead in several games now, for example.

Also, I've found Rhinos to be super useful recently. I can block LOS, charge enemy units to interfere with their actions, etc. in addition to just transporting my guys. So the Tacticals wind up synergizing pretty well with the Rhinos, and that's very satisfying from a background perspective. It's also really interesting from a gaming perspective, as there's some technical tricks you can pull to try and angle advantages. I'm always shocked at how far you can move out of a Transport, (which helps for that Rapid-fire advantage), or you can move twenty models up 12"(ish) with one transport. It's fun.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

bananathug wrote:

SM have one of the lowest win percentages of any army this edition (think the last number I heard was 34ish percent) vs 60ish for yanarri, DE, Knights and eldar soup.

A lot of not-very-good players play marines, and it's easy to get wrecked with them if you don't know what you're doing.

A lot of not god players play every army.

It's easy to get wrecked if your army is bad and only competes in damage when you ball up around Gman. It's easy to get wrecked when you have to ball your units up to deal damage.

I really can't believe someone just used the argument "it was mostly bad Marine players".

Like, seriously? Are we really going to pull a L2P here?

What the final statlines don't show you is (a) how close they were to taking the event and (b) the matchups. For instance, there was an Ork player that was competing to land in the top 10.

Finishing in the top 25 is a big accomplishment. That means you were at one of the top tables, you just lost. It's a dice game after all.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I really can't believe someone just used the argument "it was mostly bad Marine players".

Like, seriously? Are we really going to pull a L2P here?

Lots of kids play marines. Anecdotally kids with their armies show up to tournaments as an event with their dads, and they lose. I think "nub-bias" skews heavily towards marines, and that can show up in the final statistics.

I honestly have trouble with marines as orks and thousand boyz, especially primaris.

For one, they seem to have tons of stacking rerolling everything auras.

For another, they get stupid amounts of shots (things that were twinlinked now get double shots AND reroll misses due to aforementioned auras).

Cover is actually helpful for marines, whereas it's useless for orks.

Hellblasters are great, and aggressors seem borderline broken as an ork player, especially with their relic banner. I once lost a like quarter of MY army in MY shooting phase because of the banner and aggressors.

I mean, good saves, good gunz, and seemingly rerolling everything all the time has meant I really struggle v. marines this edition.

That and falling back, so they just run away from melee and shoot me to pieces anyways.

Maybe I just need to L2P, but I've found marines to generally be pretty solid overall. They seem to do well in shooty editions, and 8th is the shootiest in a long line of shooty editions.

Though I will say that their vehicles need chapter tactics - them and CSM both. Seems only fair.

None of the marine armies ended up in the top 25. None ended up with less than 2 losses. Meanwhile index orcs > 5 codexes of marines...

Mostly because of Eldar soup (cough Marmatag, cough) and knights (you know, the meta) which marines just don't have the tools to deal with efficiently outside of one off builds (MW spam/neg to hit stacking) now that BA slam captains are dead and regular captains can't fly over screens.

Hopefully CA changes something. If not 2-1/4-2 is not so bad of a goal...

bananathug wrote:
None of the marine armies ended up in the top 25. None ended up with less than 2 losses. Meanwhile index orcs > 5 codexes of marines...

Mostly because of Eldar soup (cough Marmatag, cough) and knights (you know, the meta) which marines just don't have the tools to deal with efficiently outside of one off builds (MW spam/neg to hit stacking) now that BA slam captains are dead and regular captains can't fly over screens.

Hopefully CA changes something. If not 2-1/4-2 is not so bad of a goal...

as noted earlier in this thread mono marines pulled off 15th at NOVA

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2018/09/20/reccius-nova-open-tournament-report-part-1-the-list-and-how-it-works/

as for orks that is because if one wants to play any orks they can only bring orks. whereas space marines are parts of tournament lists sometimes, but tournament lists are rarely if ever mono marines, by that same toke note you also rarely see imperial knights, imperial guard, custodes, or ad mech solo either. I am not saying marines are the best or even middle of the road, clearly they need some help, but even if they were a top tier book (liek dark eldar) there will always be something other armies they can soup with that will bring in something that will help. honestly the orks, tau, and necrons should have the best mono codex tool kits because they have no options to reach elsewhere for allies to fix weaknesses (though obviously none of them are)

Martel732 wrote:
I didn't bother. I knew Xeno would do it for me.

But now that he has:

To be "middle tier", approx a third of the codices must be WORSE than yours to form the "lower tier". So which CODICES are worse than marines? I'll wait.

Grey Knights, Chaos Daemons, Necrons. AdMech used to be worse but they've got some adjustments up that makes them about even or a little better.

Also that isn't actually how tiers work

 Insectum7 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I really can't believe someone just used the argument "it was mostly bad Marine players".

Like, seriously? Are we really going to pull a L2P here?

Lots of kids play marines. Anecdotally kids with their armies show up to tournaments as an event with their dads, and they lose. I think "nub-bias" skews heavily towards marines, and that can show up in the final statistics.

Yup. I used to play another game based on star trek (Federation Commander) where the top competitive players would often note how the Feds were the one of the top factions; and they were in the standard tourney format. However, they had either the worst or second worst win rate in tourneys (out of about 16 factions). Lots of different people play in tourneys, and not all of them are competing for top spots (either by intent or hard reality) and if they have a tendency to play specific factions then that faction's win rate will look worse than it might be expected based on what the better competitive players think. When it comes to Star Trek based games the Feds are a faction that attracts a lot of newer players and in that game they were not a tourney friendly faction unless you knew what you were doing, in which case they were very good.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I really can't believe someone just used the argument "it was mostly bad Marine players".

Like, seriously? Are we really going to pull a L2P here?

Lots of kids play marines. Anecdotally kids with their armies show up to tournaments as an event with their dads, and they lose. I think "nub-bias" skews heavily towards marines, and that can show up in the final statistics.

I'm sorry but kids aren't just gonna show up at a tournament without having gotten in some practice and finalizing lists and everything, especially with BIG tournaments like these. That's just wishful thinking to make the codex seem better than it is, considering that certain other parts get used (like Blood Angel Scouts and such, though the new CP nerf might change that eventually).
Now a single one-off tournament in a small store? Sure. When I played Yugioh I ran into kids with just a couple of starter decks that mashed them together the best they could. I still totally murdered them but that's besides the point


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I didn't bother. I knew Xeno would do it for me.

But now that he has:

To be "middle tier", approx a third of the codices must be WORSE than yours to form the "lower tier". So which CODICES are worse than marines? I'll wait.

Grey Knights, Chaos Daemons, Necrons. AdMech used to be worse but they've got some adjustments up that makes them about even or a little better.

Also that isn't actually how tiers work

Eh I dunno about Daemons being that bad. I'd also say that with the CP nerf, Blood Angels are back to being as useful as Codex Marines if you're not propelling a Slamguinus at the enemy.

@ GOOF. That list was specifically the MW spam list I referenced in the one off build.

Also, you are looking at the results of one very skilled player (the other to do well with the list was Nick Navatavii). I'd posit that the success of the list has more to do with a really good player using it and not the strength of the list itself. I'd go as far to say he'd perform better with a "better" list. It's probably a middling list at best (and that's the best marines are offering now in their most extreme build) in the hands of a very good general leads to good but not tournament winning results.

You can also tell that the opponent's skill matters as he lost first round in the invite vs the open and his results at the top tables were middling (2-2 if I remember correctly) vs 4-0 at the beginning tables. It's a weird list that most people didn't know what it did or how to deal with it. Not exactly a powerful list in any traditional sense and not one that should be paraded around as the answer to all of marines competitive problems.

bananathug wrote:
@ GOOF. That list was specifically the MW spam list I referenced in the one off build.

Also, you are looking at the results of one very skilled player (the other to do well with the list was Nick Navatavii). I'd posit that the success of the list has more to do with a really good player using it and not the strength of the list itself. I'd go as far to say he'd perform better with a "better" list. It's probably a middling list at best (and that's the best marines are offering now in their most extreme build) in the hands of a very good general leads to good but not tournament winning results.

You can also tell that the opponent's skill matters as he lost first round in the invite vs the open and his results at the top tables were middling (2-2 if I remember correctly) vs 4-0 at the beginning tables. It's a weird list that most people didn't know what it did or how to deal with it. Not exactly a powerful list in any traditional sense and not one that should be paraded around as the answer to all of marines competitive problems.

"Viable but not optimal" is pretty much the definition of mid-tier. Compare with Necrons, an army that even fielded by the absolute best Necron player in the region can't even sniff the top tables and one that Nick Nanavati has stated he couldn't win a major with.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I really can't believe someone just used the argument "it was mostly bad Marine players".

Like, seriously? Are we really going to pull a L2P here?

Lots of kids play marines. Anecdotally kids with their armies show up to tournaments as an event with their dads, and they lose. I think "nub-bias" skews heavily towards marines, and that can show up in the final statistics.

I'm sorry but kids aren't just gonna show up at a tournament without having gotten in some practice and finalizing lists and everything, especially with BIG tournaments like these.

"Getting in some practice" and "finalizing lists" does not a skilled player make.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

bananathug wrote:
@ GOOF. That list was specifically the MW spam list I referenced in the one off build.

Also, you are looking at the results of one very skilled player (the other to do well with the list was Nick Navatavii). I'd posit that the success of the list has more to do with a really good player using it and not the strength of the list itself. I'd go as far to say he'd perform better with a "better" list. It's probably a middling list at best (and that's the best marines are offering now in their most extreme build) in the hands of a very good general leads to good but not tournament winning results.

You can also tell that the opponent's skill matters as he lost first round in the invite vs the open and his results at the top tables were middling (2-2 if I remember correctly) vs 4-0 at the beginning tables. It's a weird list that most people didn't know what it did or how to deal with it. Not exactly a powerful list in any traditional sense and not one that should be paraded around as the answer to all of marines competitive problems.

"Viable but not optimal" is pretty much the definition of mid-tier. Compare with Necrons, an army that even fielded by the absolute best Necron player in the region can't even sniff the top tables and one that Nick Nanavati has stated he couldn't win a major with.

feth that - every army has a viable but not optimal build even the lowest teir ones. The definition of low teir is WR compared to other armies as a whole. Because we assume all armies are trying to win. SM and GK are the flat bottom here - and it's not because newb players - it's because the army is terrible.

Every unit is overcosted.
No stratagems worth using. Crons have okay stratagems.
No mobility - crons have plenty with destroyers/wraiths/veil/ctan deploy.
Psychic phase so weak it might as well not exist. Crons got no psychic but have ctan powers with are undeniable and awesome and can deny psychic with gloom prism.
No viable CC units other than Gman. Crons have wraiths.

Not saying Crons don't need changes but marines are decidedly worse than them.

You're so invested in believing that Space Marines are the worst army that you'll happily ignore the results of actual play and insist a faction that you don't even play has superior tools.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
You're so invested in believing that Space Marines are the worst army that you'll happily ignore the results of actual play and insist a faction that you don't even play has superior tools.

I play against crons all the time. I see their tools in action. They have way more tools than space marines. Observe the disparity in win rate.
https://www.40kstats.com/faction-breakdown-report

Martel732 wrote:
I didn't bother. I knew Xeno would do it for me.

But now that he has:

To be "middle tier", approx a third of the codices must be WORSE than yours to form the "lower tier". So which CODICES are worse than marines? I'll wait.

Grey Knights. Ha

I made myself sad....

My main issue is that taking actual space marines in a list in any form is hurting my list and has been for a long time. Even when the army was strong back in 7th, it was largely due to formations, HQs and our FA slots. MEQ are bad and don't play in a way that reflects their background in the slightest. I put a lot of that on the scale of 40k has been so warped that S4, T4 and a 3+ save don't mean anything and arn't worth the points I'm paying for them.