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 Future War Cultist wrote:
So do Marines need to be more killy, or more durable? Or both?

Honestly marines just need stratagems that make their units worth taking, and units that feel worthwhile to take that have options of defensive abilities

40k needs to shift from mega battles and armaggeddon battles. Super heavies should not be in 2k games.

Barring new units and vehicles getting Stat lines, have Stat lines for marines, guard, eldar etc stayed the same?

I understand maintaining Stat lines edition to edition but when changing how things are wounded more wiggle room is made.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
So do Marines need to be more killy, or more durable? Or both?

Honestly marines just need stratagems that make their units worth taking, and units that feel worthwhile to take that have options of defensive abilities

40k needs to shift from mega battles and armaggeddon battles. Super heavies should not be in 2k games.

Why shouldn't someone be able to use a knight or two in a standard game? Why am I putting a ban on what models my opponent can use?

Because some people want to play an SM company, Ork horde, Guardsman force, or Aspect Warrior warhost. And wants to play a game about infantry supported by things, including tanks. Which doesn't happen when they play against someone who wants to play Gundam Wars instead.

I expect Guardsmen will be bumped to 5ppm at some point (as I've mentioned before, I was surprised this didn't happen in CA2018), but 7ppm is just going to see them become exctinct, and isn't going to do anything for Space Marines.

If we want to keep the current Marine statline, a 10-25% price cut on most infantry units (so a Tac would be 10/11ppm, a jetpack Assault Marine 12/13) would solve a lot of major issues. I'm also fine with Marines being choppier in close combat and many other suggested changes.

There's lots of issues with the game and plenty of potential fixes, but making Guardsmen absurdly expensive isn't going to fix much. I think there's a particular over focus on the basic Guardsmen in and of itself, but I think toning down things like Catachan & Cadian doctrines (Catachans should not field the most powerful artillery detachments), CP Generation, Tank Commanders, tweaking a couple of orders, etc will deliver a whole lot more than anything done to the basic guardsman will as far as Guard are concerned.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Asherian Command wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
So do Marines need to be more killy, or more durable? Or both?

Honestly marines just need stratagems that make their units worth taking, and units that feel worthwhile to take that have options of defensive abilities

40k needs to shift from mega battles and armaggeddon battles. Super heavies should not be in 2k games.

Bharring wrote:Because some people want to play an SM company, Ork horde, Guardsman force, or Aspect Warrior warhost. And wants to play a game about infantry supported by things, including tanks. Which doesn't happen when they play against someone who wants to play Gundam Wars instead.

Increasingly I think playing 750-1000pts instead of 2000pts may yield an overall more playable game.

 fraser1191 wrote:
Barring new units and vehicles getting Stat lines, have Stat lines for marines, guard, eldar etc stayed the same?

I understand maintaining Stat lines edition to edition but when changing how things are wounded more wiggle room is made.

Exarchs were nerfed across the board for eldar, but they gained +1 wound, which might be more valuable for them. But we did lose bladestorm for dire avengers, and the +3 save for all exarchs.

Guardsmen stayed the same, marines stayed the same but lost a lot of abilities and some of their attacks in combat and their ap 5. (combat tactics, and their original and they shall know no fear were also lost hampering marines tactical advantage of choosing to retreat and reforming at the end of the turn).

Why shouldn't someone be able to use a knight or two in a standard game? Why am I putting a ban on what models my opponent can use?

Because Knight Titans break the game at their current cost. Making them more expensive or have them have a requirement barrier for entry would go a long way in balancing the game. Super heavies are overall bad for the game, and eldar will continue to run amock as long as their counters cannot deal with titans. I should not be facing someone in a 2k game who has 2 levithian dreadnoughts or 2 knight titans. Its unfair to some armies and it completely breaks the games focus. 40k is about small time tactics not mega battles.

Increasingly I think playing 750-1000pts instead of 2000pts may yield an overall more playable game.

Possibly true. Those games would be incredibly small, and people can still fit a few knights into those armies, I've seen someone run a Levi Dread at 1k. I think increasing the costs of knights would go a long way. (especially to 400pts +, limiting their warlord traits, and preventing players from taking super heavy detachments entirely by themselves in lists or having CP only per faction (so you can only generate it towards your current faction of that detachment) )

I even suggested giving Libarians their utlity skills back such as their force dome ability which gave all units they were attached to a +5 invulnerable save for the turn...

Giving All these abilities back to marines would increase their utility.

In the same way that Marines "lost" AP 5:
-Guardsmen lost AP6
-Poison lost AP5
-Shuriken lost AP5
-LasBlasters lost AP5
-Scorpion swords lost AP6
-Scatter Lasers lost AP6
-Pulse lost AP5
-Kroot Rifles lost AP5
-Didn't Shootas lose AP5?

Very, very few weapons went from AP5 to AP-1 or better - for basic weapons, just Necrons that I can think of. And that was more a change than a translation.

"Increasingly I think playing 750-1000pts instead of 2000pts may yield an overall more playable game."
I try to aim for 1500pt games, but most people want to play 2k.

Bharring wrote:
In the same way that Marines "lost" AP 5:
-Guardsmen lost AP6
-Poison lost AP5
-Shuriken lost AP5
-LasBlasters lost AP5
-Scorpion swords lost AP6
-Scatter Lasers lost AP6
-Pulse lost AP5
-Kroot Rifles lost AP5
-Didn't Shootas lose AP5?

Very, very few weapons went from AP5 to AP-1 or better - for basic weapons, just Necrons that I can think of. And that was more a change than a translation.

"Increasingly I think playing 750-1000pts instead of 2000pts may yield an overall more playable game."
I try to aim for 1500pt games, but most people want to play 2k.

Ap5 is very minor, but them losing ATSNKF and combat tactics was a big blow to marines viability.

Marines losing their +1 attack another. Vanguard losing their charge immediately the turn they arrive another blow. Dreadnoughts suffering from moving and shooting... Terminators losing the same ability... Terminators getting increases in cost to their assault cannon and losing rending on their assault cannon... Many great abilities that made marines have some special abilities are out the window. Lost to 7th edition. Flamers became inefficent and expensive... Meltas are somehow more expensive than plasma !?

Then we have the most powerful weapons marines had Grav Weaponry nerfed into the ground by costs increases.

Rhinos losing open topped / fire points. Its such an expanding list that I wonder if i even read the space marine codex, cause i keep getting caught playing like as if they still have those abilities.

Yeah, the Morale changes are fairly big.

Combat Tactics were basically Chapter Tactics, though, with the default (may choose to fail Morale) being UltraMarine's.

I agree with most of what you share here, but "Losing rending on their Assault Cannon" didn't really happen. It went from 4 shots with 6s ignoring Armor to 6 shots with AP-1 - so still about a 1/6 chance to ignore armor, but with half again the number of shots.

Bharring wrote:
Yeah, the Morale changes are fairly big.

Combat Tactics were basically Chapter Tactics, though, with the default (may choose to fail Morale) being UltraMarine's.

I agree with most of what you share here, but "Losing rending on their Assault Cannon" didn't really happen. It went from 4 shots with 6s ignoring Armor to 6 shots with AP-1 - so still about a 1/6 chance to ignore armor, but with half again the number of shots.

I mean rending just usually flat out ignored saves in most cases, it was great for horde clearing or glancing shots against vehicles. Fantastic and fluffy ability now it is just a better heavy bolter. I like the more shots but I don't think it a valuable weapon in its current state of 22pts (10 pts more expensive than a reaper auto cannon!?). Missile launchers for termies are expensive as all hell too. I am surprised at how little dakka and effective termies and vanguard are now. Though that might be because they don't generate enough attacks to be useful. Genestealers mop and exterminate termies and vanguard even more so, and gaunts lock down termies in close combat forever.

Just had a thought on the subject of Stratagems: why not give Marines a bunch of decent Stratagems that cost 0 CP? That way you wouldn't be penalized for not playing a Horde army, as you'd not have to pay Command Points to use them, but you'd also not be able to spam them on every unit. You could even give the Stratagems some sort of Keyword system so that if you popped our hypothetical +1 to hit stratagem on a unit of Hellblasters and the Stratagem had a "Firepower" keyword, that'd prevent you from using the hypothetical Advance and shoot weapons at full BS stratagem with the "Firepower" keyword (examples only, disregard any balance or lack thereof between the two).

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Just had a thought on the subject of Stratagems: why not give Marines a bunch of decent Stratagems that cost 0 CP? That way you wouldn't be penalized for not playing a Horde army, as you'd not have to pay Command Points to use them, but you'd also not be able to spam them on every unit. You could even give the Stratagems some sort of Keyword system so that if you popped our hypothetical +1 to hit stratagem on a unit of Hellblasters and the Stratagem had a "Firepower" keyword, that'd prevent you from using the hypothetical Advance and shoot weapons at full BS stratagem with the "Firepower" keyword (examples only, disregard any balance or lack thereof between the two).

At that point why not make it a special rule with that specific unit?

What if marines could dish out mortal wounds, to represent them being untouchable superhuman killing machines. Roll a 6 to wound with shooting or melee and you inflict a mortal wound on top of all other damage.

I’m only half joking.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
What if marines could dish out mortal wounds, to represent them being untouchable superhuman killing machines. Roll a 6 to wound with shooting or melee and you inflict a mortal wound on top of all other damage.

I’m only half joking.

Please no hahaha.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
What if marines could dish out mortal wounds, to represent them being untouchable superhuman killing machines. Roll a 6 to wound with shooting or melee and you inflict a mortal wound on top of all other damage.

I’m only half joking.

Please no hahaha.

Yeah I’m just being silly. Thing is though, I think that if you really want to fix them, it requires a rethink of the whole game, because the problems
go way deeper than marines. It’s a problem of scale. The game still can’t decide what scale it’s playing at (platoon, company, army?)

 Future War Cultist wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
What if marines could dish out mortal wounds, to represent them being untouchable superhuman killing machines. Roll a 6 to wound with shooting or melee and you inflict a mortal wound on top of all other damage.

I’m only half joking.

Please no hahaha.

Yeah I’m just being silly. Thing is though, I think that if you really want to fix marines, it requires a rethink of the whole game, because the problems
go way deeper than them.

Over-rewarding CP batteries, not enough punishment for bad positioning...

Mono-armies being punished for wanting to be mono armies. There is a lot of potential with this edition it just lacks the fluidity of previous editions depth. Its large as an ocean but as shallow as a puddle as it were.

There could be a great many abilities they could add, but i think personally space marines are lacking their famous utility they have a great number of character profiles but they don't mean anything if they aren't used.

cmspano wrote:
Honestly almost everything in 40k could use a points increase and bump the default game size to 2500 points or something.

Points have become way too compressed toward the bottom and mid-high priced stuff comparably too cheap.

How can we balance units like guardsmen or ork boyz when the points are so damn close to each other?

Guardsman/Conscript 4
Cultist 5
Kabalite Warrior 6
Fire Warrior/Ork Boy 7
Wych/Guardian 8

With all of these 1 point away from each other you can't adjust any points values without having to debate "Is a guardsman as good as a cultist who can be a 30 man mob with VotLT and ToT?". "A Kabalite Warrior might be too cheap at 6 points, but it's not as good as an Ork Boy or a FW so you can't increase them to 7". You also run into Conscripts being worthless at the same price as a guardsman, but 3ppm would be way too good.

You also can't just increase the price of the cheap units because a lot of vehicles would feel even cheaper by comparison. Increase the cost of everything in the game, spread out the points of the basic infantry so that an increase of 1-2 ppm isn't a massive difference like it is now. Then you make the default game size 2500 or 3k points instead of 2k and you have about the same size game but with the ability to adjust points much more subtly.

My local club plays 1000 point games all the time, with the odd 2000 pt game for flavor. You could triple the point costs of everything without changing the basic game size from 2000 and it would be fine. GW would have a ton more room to make point adjustments if they did that.

Love how threads like this go 38 pages when the answer is so simple.
Power armor costs too much on 1 wound models. It's not as bad on 2 wound models like interecessors but they mainly suffer from every other weapons in the game having multi damage. Interecessors are pretty darn durable vs 1 damage weapons - so are rubrics. The reality is though. If you are paying for situational protection you should be paying significantly less for all these units.

Gaurdsmen are great because they never was points on protection - your damage to a gaurd unit is limited mostly by your number of shots. Your damage against a marine unit with something like a lasgun is statistically low but technically the potential damage is the same between a lasgun and a bolter and an infernal bolt gun - this creates an inherenet risk with paying for this protection. This risk is not reward with points savings - it should be - it really is that simple.

Then it gets to the point where if you are facing a army that has nothing but quality shots - your risk can't even possibly come out to your benifit. This should create even more points savings...but it doesn't.

A marine really isn't worth more than 9-10 points and anyone with half a brain or experience knows this.

The options are simple - make a marine worth 13 points or drop them to 9-10. How do you make a marine worth 13 points? IDK exactly the best way - dropping their points makes the most sense IMO. OFC this means a lot of other units need to drop in points too so don't think I'm just a marine fan boy over here - cause I am not. One thing I can say with absolute certainty is the risk/reward point value has never been there for a marine without giving them F tones of uber cheap upgrades like we currently have with DW or 5th ed strike marines/grey hunters ECT. Those units were still taking risks in paying for their protection though - they just had the potential to come out on top because their were able to do more damage consistently enough to make up for their losses. It really is sad for such iconic 40k units too be so bad for so long.

cmspano wrote:Points have become way too compressed toward the bottom and mid-high priced stuff comparably too cheap.

This has long been a GW problem, which previous designers have admitted is essentially to encourage people to buy more stuff.

Vaktathi wrote:They were 10ppm in 2E (when Marines were 27),

Marines were 30ppm in 2nd. 32 for the Assault squad.

Bharring wrote:
Because some people want to play an SM company, Ork horde, Guardsman force, or Aspect Warrior warhost. And wants to play a game about infantry supported by things, including tanks. Which doesn't happen when they play against someone who wants to play Gundam Wars instead.

Yeah and now those models can actually harm Knights. Look at that. Maybe not well for the cost, but it's there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bharring wrote:
In the same way that Marines "lost" AP 5:
-Guardsmen lost AP6
-Poison lost AP5
-Shuriken lost AP5
-LasBlasters lost AP5
-Scorpion swords lost AP6
-Scatter Lasers lost AP6
-Pulse lost AP5
-Kroot Rifles lost AP5
-Didn't Shootas lose AP5?

Very, very few weapons went from AP5 to AP-1 or better - for basic weapons, just Necrons that I can think of. And that was more a change than a translation.

"Increasingly I think playing 750-1000pts instead of 2000pts may yield an overall more playable game."
I try to aim for 1500pt games, but most people want to play 2k.

Lasguns were always AP-, and Shootas/Kroot Rifles were AP6 (which actually didn't matter for Kroot, because they wanted to charge. Couldn't do that with Rapid Fire standard).

The rest of the weapon didn't lose Special Rules though is the difference. Bolters gave strictly AP5, and that was it compared to everyone else, which is why you saw the Bolter complaints as is.

Now they have literally nothing. You could even switch standard Marines to Lasguns and maybe not notice because of the wounding system basically treating Bolters the same.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also the trick for AP6 is that it didn't do anything basically as that only affected Gaunts and Orks.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
Barring new units and vehicles getting Stat lines, have Stat lines for marines, guard, eldar etc stayed the same?

I understand maintaining Stat lines edition to edition but when changing how things are wounded more wiggle room is made.

Exarchs were nerfed across the board for eldar, but they gained +1 wound, which might be more valuable for them. But we did lose bladestorm for dire avengers, and the +3 save for all exarchs.

Guardsmen stayed the same, marines stayed the same but lost a lot of abilities and some of their attacks in combat and their ap 5. (combat tactics, and their original and they shall know no fear were also lost hampering marines tactical advantage of choosing to retreat and reforming at the end of the turn).

I was more or less getting at if most Stat lines have evolved over time or remained consistent


Another thing I'm wondering about is how many marines do people think should be brought to a 2000 point game. A full demi company, a full battle company? How much room should there be for upgrades/transports and such?

I know marines can have many different builds, but I'm talking a "basic" list that would eventually have units removed for other units and such(like removing a dev squad for a predator)

 fraser1191 wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:
Barring new units and vehicles getting Stat lines, have Stat lines for marines, guard, eldar etc stayed the same?

I understand maintaining Stat lines edition to edition but when changing how things are wounded more wiggle room is made.

Exarchs were nerfed across the board for eldar, but they gained +1 wound, which might be more valuable for them. But we did lose bladestorm for dire avengers, and the +3 save for all exarchs.

Guardsmen stayed the same, marines stayed the same but lost a lot of abilities and some of their attacks in combat and their ap 5. (combat tactics, and their original and they shall know no fear were also lost hampering marines tactical advantage of choosing to retreat and reforming at the end of the turn).

I was more or less getting at if most Stat lines have evolved over time or remained consistent


Another thing I'm wondering about is how many marines do people think should be brought to a 2000 point game. A full demi company, a full battle company? How much room should there be for upgrades/transports and such?

I know marines can have many different builds, but I'm talking a "basic" list that would eventually have units removed for other units and such(like removing a dev squad for a predator)

Well I am going to pop open my 5th edition codex. I ran several tactical squads way back and even now I would probably run around 60 space marines.

3 Full Tactical Squads / Intercessors 30

2 Half Devastator Squads 10

2 Veteran Units 10

2 Biker Units (5 mans) 10

1 Inceptor Squad

1 Captain

2 LTS

1 Libarian

1 Chaplain

2 - 4 Vehicles....

I'm more in argument of more special rules to justify their cost.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
And nothing rides in the Razorback, as those will be Scouts or camping Lascannons or Heavy Bolters. If you want strictly a transport though, Rhinos do it as they don't sacrifice any shooting to do so.

That's the key difference. Dark Eldar don't have to worry about this anyway though because anyone can shoot out of the Raider/Venom.

I play SW so scouts are not troops and my tacs can't have heavy bolters or lascannons. Razorbacks are mostly gunboats but their transport capacity is definitely useful. Drukhari vehicles are open topped, which is a huge difference, but unless you embark wyches or incubi they're not really transports, just protections for the shooty units that fire safely from the vehicles. They're also gunboats mostly, just like razorbacks.

I'd love rhinos with 2 firing ports but it still wouldn't affect the size of the embarked squad. 2x5 dudes with a special weapon would be the way to go.

Maybe that's why you don't understand any of the core Marine issues.

Space Wolves have always been Marines +1. Remember how stupid Grey Hunters were with the 5th edition codex?

I only played orks before 7th edition so I can't really say about older editions SW.

But at the moment Ultramarines are definitely more competitive than SW. They're not marines +1, in fact that basically only applies in combat: about many things they're just marines -1. Also blood angels are probably better.

The Rhino idea is good. Rhino getting back fire points would be one good step, but is not going to fix marines by itself.

Chapter/Legion traits will never be extended to Vehicles because of the Raven Guard/Alpha Legion trait being -1 to hit. -2 to hit Fire Raptors would be bonkers against some armies, and CSM could stack -3 to hit on their Fire Raptor with psychic powers. So enjoy, we cant have nice things because Raven Guard/Alpha Legion traits exist.

I still think giving every marine unit ability to ignore 1 non-mortal wound per phase would give them more durability.

Give every marine +1 A.

Create 1 CP stratagem 'Overwhelming Firepower' which allows Tactical Squad or Chaos Space Marine unit to fire twice in the shooting phase. Yeah it's powerful, but the scaling is controlled really well by limited weapon options on normal squads.

Consolidate -1 to hit to all the marine infantry and give Raven Guard/Alpha Legion some other trait.
This could be 'Sneaky Marines' trait: Every Infantry Biker Dreadnought can make 6" move before first game round and add +1" to Movement value and +1" to every advance roll result.

EDIT: Both loyalist and traitor marines need better Ld or other better ways to protect themselves from Morale phase, 10+ man units are incredibly risky. Currently there are so many downsides to playing large 10+ man units (well Black Legion can do that with Abaddon) because they get wiped so easily and the downsides hardly justify the possibility for 2nd special/heavy weapon. Also few large units make opponent's weapon shot allocation far simpler. Running large units of marines offers literally no positives, there are no stratagems that provide good multipliers because their firepower is really bad and short range to begin with.

Well said Ghorgul. Your suggestions actually reminded me of an idea I had ages ago, a new version of combat doctrines wereby when a marine unit is activated, you roll 2D6, and if the score is equal to or less than the number of models in the unit, you could move or shoot before doing something else, or got specific rerolls. I’ve always wondered if it could be adapted to the modern game. Like, pass the test, gain a CP? Could be open to so much abuse though...

Also, remind me, a ten man squad costs the same as two 5 man squads yes? If so, it’ll never be competitive. Two smaller squads is almost always better (more flexible, fills out detachment better, less vulnerable to morale). My suggestion, slight discount on the cost of the extra 5 option, somehow. On Power level? Whatever makes a ten man squad cheaper.

Ghorgul wrote:
The Rhino idea is good. Rhino getting back fire points would be one good step, but is not going to fix marines by itself.

Chapter/Legion traits will never be extended to Vehicles because of the Raven Guard/Alpha Legion trait being -1 to hit. -2 to hit Fire Raptors would be bonkers against some armies, and CSM could stack -3 to hit on their Fire Raptor with psychic powers. So enjoy, we cant have nice things because Raven Guard/Alpha Legion traits exist.

I still think giving every marine unit ability to ignore 1 non-mortal wound per phase would give them more durability.

Give every marine +1 A.

Create 1 CP stratagem 'Overwhelming Firepower' which allows Tactical Squad or Chaos Space Marine unit to fire twice in the shooting phase. Yeah it's powerful, but the scaling is controlled really well by limited weapon options on normal squads.

Consolidate -1 to hit to all the marine infantry and give Raven Guard/Alpha Legion some other trait.
This could be 'Sneaky Marines' trait: Every Infantry Biker Dreadnought can make 6" move before first game round and add +1" to Movement value and +1" to every advance roll result.

EDIT: Both loyalist and traitor marines need better Ld or other better ways to protect themselves from Morale phase, 10+ man units are incredibly risky. Currently there are so many downsides to playing large 10+ man units (well Black Legion can do that with Abaddon) because they get wiped so easily and the downsides hardly justify the possibility for 2nd special/heavy weapon. Also few large units make opponent's weapon shot allocation far simpler. Running large units of marines offers literally no positives, there are no stratagems that provide good multipliers because their firepower is really bad and short range to begin with.

I simply don't get why marine flyers having -2 to hit is apparently OP but Alitoc stacking -2 on many units and -3 if they want is ok?

Marines need chapter tactics on vehicals as otherwise their vehicles are always going to be overcosted as everyone else gets them for 0 points cost. That or the vehicals need a survivability boost.

I'm sorry but double shooting choosen of combi spam terminators for 1 CP is broken also it makes at most 1 maybe 2 units of tacs worth taking.
If anything-1 amy wide needs to be banished from the game not added toi.

Ice_can wrote:
but Alitoc stacking -2 on many units and -3 if they want is ok?

It's not OK! It's totally fethed up!

Ice_can wrote:

I simply don't get why marine flyers having -2 to hit is apparently OP but Alitoc stacking -2 on many units and -3 if they want is ok?

Marines need chapter tactics on vehicals as otherwise their vehicles are always going to be overcosted as everyone else gets them for 0 points cost. That or the vehicals need a survivability boost.

I'm sorry but double shooting choosen of combi spam terminators for 1 CP is broken also it makes at most 1 maybe 2 units of tacs worth taking.
If anything-1 amy wide needs to be banished from the game not added toi.

I agree about everything. Other factions's vehicles get the chapter bonus so also SM should get it.

Shooting twice is usually a 2CP stratagem, double shooting for free or just 1 CP is always a broken combo unless it's on a very poor shooting unit like the ork gunwagon.

-1 to hit simply shouldn't stack with other -1 to hit bonuses and reduced to some single units with that ability in their profile or a bonus that units get under some auras. -2 or -3 to hit should be illegal. .

Ghorgul wrote:
The Rhino idea is good. Rhino getting back fire points would be one good step, but is not going to fix marines by itself.

Chapter/Legion traits will never be extended to Vehicles because of the Raven Guard/Alpha Legion trait being -1 to hit. -2 to hit Fire Raptors would be bonkers against some armies, and CSM could stack -3 to hit on their Fire Raptor with psychic powers. So enjoy, we cant have nice things because Raven Guard/Alpha Legion traits exist.

I still think giving every marine unit ability to ignore 1 non-mortal wound per phase would give them more durability.

Give every marine +1 A.

Create 1 CP stratagem 'Overwhelming Firepower' which allows [b]Tactical Squad or Chaos Space Marine unit to fire twice in the shooting phase. Yeah it's powerful, but the scaling is controlled really well by limited weapon options on normal squads.
[/b]
Consolidate -1 to hit to all the marine infantry and give Raven Guard/Alpha Legion some other trait.
This could be 'Sneaky Marines' trait: Every Infantry Biker Dreadnought can make 6" move before first game round and add +1" to Movement value and +1" to every advance roll result.

EDIT: Both loyalist and traitor marines need better Ld or other better ways to protect themselves from Morale phase, 10+ man units are incredibly risky. Currently there are so many downsides to playing large 10+ man units (well Black Legion can do that with Abaddon) because they get wiped so easily and the downsides hardly justify the possibility for 2nd special/heavy weapon. Also few large units make opponent's weapon shot allocation far simpler. Running large units of marines offers literally no positives, there are no stratagems that provide good multipliers because their firepower is really bad and short range to begin with.

The highlighted statements are bad in terms of balancing.

1) Giving every single marine +1 attack would make certain units more useless than ever: Scout would be even more used than Tacticals for the mere fact thay they would take advantage of it going for double tap + close combat quarter and being one of the best anti infantry in the entire codex.

2) Not bad per se but would need to be 2 CPs and still won't make people use Tacticals (1 unit at most for the stratagem)

Ice_can wrote:
I simply don't get why marine flyers having -2 to hit is apparently OP but Alitoc stacking -2 on many units and -3 if they want is ok?

I don't think anyone should be able to stack -2 or -3 on anything. I'm trying to keep suggestions sensible.

I'm sorry but double shooting choosen of combi spam terminators for 1 CP is broken also it makes at most 1 maybe 2 units of tacs worth taking.
If anything-1 amy wide needs to be banished from the game not added toi.

The stratagem suggestion was worded in a way that it can be only used on Troop Choice Tactical Squad or Chaos Space Marines units. Troop choices Space Marine 'Tactical Squad' unit has Tactical Squad keyword, and CSM 'Chaos Space Marines' unit Chaos Space Marines keyword. Like I said in the my post, the limited weapon options for the troop choice marines already limit this stratagem greatly. This would be simply to allow basic troop marine choices, especially larger 10+ man units more firepower. Yeah, it's semi powerful, 10 man unit with 2 lascannons however costs 180 points, so it's not that cheap really and with the current amount of firepower in the game shooting 10 marines off the board is academic discussion at best.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Blackie wrote:
Shooting twice is usually a 2CP stratagem, double shooting for free or just 1 CP is always a broken combo unless it's on a very poor shooting unit like the ork gunwagon.

Did any of you really read the stratagem suggestion? It was specifically worded so that it only works for Troop Choice Space Marine 'Tactical Squad' unit or CSM 'Chaos Space Marines' unit (well I admit I wrote 'Chaos Space Marine' originally without the -s for plural). Neither of those units are good at shooting, except if you let them come within 12" of you, but whose fault would that be really? Maybe someone would actually get drop pods if this stratagem existed.

I'll admit for Black Legion CSM running 20 man Chaos Space Marines troop choice unit(s) with Abaddon this suggested stratagem could be too powerful.