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 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Marshal Loss wrote:
So far it's looking like the model waves are an incredible success and the codex is half-arsed at best.

Pretty much the same story we've had for Chaos since 4th Ed.

First they took our cannonfodder (lost and the damned), then they took our flavour!
And then they took our other cannonfodder.

It is no wonder we Chaos players turn into IW.

100% in agreement, drbored: the game is much healthier played in a casual setting, which is too bad, though my group has adapted to that and plays sub-optimal and fluffy lists hard once they hit the table.

Yes, I find this release to be a fairly weak showing despite some nice models. I'm somewhat dismayed that Terminators got such a minor update that didn't even really bring them in line with the new CSM core when Berserkers (I think the oldest kit out there, other than a couple Eldar vehicle kits that held up very well with the addition of some weapon options?) and Noise Marines (still relying on those upgrade kits) haven't gotten updates in this century IIRC.

I guess where I am is that I'd rather see the core line really put into shape (both rules and models) more than I'd like to see some cool but niche additions to variants on the basic CSM line, which I think is fairly similar to what you're saying, .

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
100% in agreement, drbored: the game is much healthier played in a casual setting, which is too bad, though my group has adapted to that and plays sub-optimal and fluffy lists hard once they hit the table.

Yes, I find this release to be a fairly weak showing despite some nice models. I'm somewhat dismayed that Terminators got such a minor update that didn't even really bring them in line with the new CSM core when Berserkers (I think the oldest kit out there, other than a couple Eldar vehicle kits that held up very well with the addition of some weapon options?) and Noise Marines (still relying on those upgrade kits) haven't gotten updates in this century IIRC.

I guess where I am is that I'd rather see the core line really put into shape (both rules and models) more than I'd like to see some cool but niche additions to variants on the basic CSM line, which I think is fairly similar to what you're saying, .

Yeah, I agree with that.

And there's no telling what they'll update in the future and bring into future Codexes. There's people that think that a Renegade Guard Codex might be coming, which would be a great boon to Chaos armies, since they, too, will be able to field the Loyal 32 (heretical 32?) and take basilisks and other things that are just better than the tanks that they have access to. They also may take the opportunity to update Possessed and Bikers, and continue to add more Daemon Engines in the Emperor's Children and World Eater releases that we all know are coming, but have to exercise a lot of patience to wait for while Space Marines gets yet another update.

We'll see what happens. I'm not a very fast builder or painter, so by the time all of that happens, I might be done with the Shadowspear box

I think the chaos marines suffer greatly from being stuck with the minimarine statline. I hope that once they squat the loyalist minimarines in the 9th edition, the chaos boys will just get the primaris statline.

Optimistic today? The gw rules Team took over the Fw rulewriting, and for what it's worth that didn't help the allready available heretical 32 even though they are cheaper then their Am counterpart.

If GW would completly take over it wouldn't also be too outlandish to see it identical with the bsf release which frankly whilest better then R&H atm still would be more meeeeh. Of course there's always the chance i am wrong there and they would get the most bonkers traits and units ever, but the track record looks rather grim chaps.

Honestly, now that they've done Brood Brothers, I don't see why they couldn't just knock out the CSM equivalent in about an hour of rules work (okay, maybe that's a bit hyperbolic): flesh out the renegade Guard, Chaos Beastmen, Negavolt wastes of points, and throw in whatever other BSF characters fit, in the core codex using the BSF assets and some dumb restrictions based on exact model gear, then add a "renegade" regimental doctrine to IG and match the new units to that rather than Servants of the Abyss.

But, honestly, I don't see non-Primaris Marine or CSM infantry getting to a good non-casual point in this edition, since there are just so many subpar variants across the various C/SM codecies that would need updating. I mean, they'd need to go a lot further than USR improved bolters to make them interesting in a competitive scene.

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
Honestly, now that they've done Brood Brothers, I don't see why they couldn't just knock out the CSM equivalent in about an hour of rules work (okay, maybe that's a bit hyperbolic): flesh out the renegade Guard, Chaos Beastmen, Negavolt wastes of points, and throw in whatever other BSF characters fit, in the core codex using the BSF assets and some dumb restrictions based on exact model gear, then add a "renegade" regimental doctrine to IG and match the new units to that rather than Servants of the Abyss.

But, honestly, I don't see non-Primaris Marine or CSM infantry getting to a good non-casual point in this edition, since there are just so many subpar variants across the various C/SM codecies that would need updating. I mean, they'd need to go a lot further than USR improved bolters to make them interesting in a competitive scene.

Just lower the points cost of Chaos Marines to a more acceptable level. Make it so that there is an interesting decision point between worthless but numerous Cultists or fewer but more powerful CSM. Right now, the metric is heavily skewed in favor of the Cultists

 Red_Five wrote:

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
Honestly, now that they've done Brood Brothers, I don't see why they couldn't just knock out the CSM equivalent in about an hour of rules work (okay, maybe that's a bit hyperbolic): flesh out the renegade Guard, Chaos Beastmen, Negavolt wastes of points, and throw in whatever other BSF characters fit, in the core codex using the BSF assets and some dumb restrictions based on exact model gear, then add a "renegade" regimental doctrine to IG and match the new units to that rather than Servants of the Abyss.

But, honestly, I don't see non-Primaris Marine or CSM infantry getting to a good non-casual point in this edition, since there are just so many subpar variants across the various C/SM codecies that would need updating. I mean, they'd need to go a lot further than USR improved bolters to make them interesting in a competitive scene.

Just lower the points cost of Chaos Marines to a more acceptable level. Make it so that there is an interesting decision point between worthless but numerous Cultists or fewer but more powerful CSM. Right now, the metric is heavily skewed in favor of the Cultists

The break even point is 10 pts atm. If you go and determine it by the cp Generation capability.

Either 10 cultists or 5 marines. Mostly because you would field them then as a tax choice, cultists still would probably be picked as one big blob for effectiveness due to stratagems.

Agree with the above that 10 points would make them useful.

I feel it's pretty hard to argue that 5 cultists are as valuable as 10 marines, on the table, though... Unfortunately, this edition seems skewed pretty hard towards CP generation, which creates some pretty awkward balance issues. Especially with this edition's cover, power armor is still okay against small arms fire.

I guess it approaches the problem of the troops tax, where CSM damage output just pretty much never justifies it outside of maybe small games where you're really stretching those points to fill multiple uses :/

10 point Marines. We're actually at the stage where people talk seriously about being able to buy a full company(sans gear obviously) for 1000 points.

40K is borked. Fully.

 Yodhrin wrote:
10 point Marines. We're actually at the stage where people talk seriously about being able to buy a full company(sans gear obviously) for 1000 points.

40K is borked. Fully.

You're not wrong. I blame the pricing of horde armies though. I think 13 pt Marines works okay if a Guardsman is 8 pts. A Space Marine company at 1500 pts seems about right though. That is just the bodies of Marines. You still need to supe them up with weapons and tanks.

IDK. I think competitive 40k is, but I don't think that's anything new. What's specifically messed up just bounces around from edition to edition.

 Yodhrin wrote:
10 point Marines. We're actually at the stage where people talk seriously about being able to buy a full company(sans gear obviously) for 1000 points.

40K is borked. Fully.

Care to explain your hyperbole?

Change the baseline CP to 5, and battalions back to 3 would help trim cp spam without having to change point costs quite so drastically.

Reducing points isnt the answer. We should be expecting the "rules writers" to make Marines worth their points. The lack of understanding of their own game is quite telling by the inability to make any Marine faction playable on its own. The key issue is this the mortal wound edition, so durability is irrelevant.

Ah, the old "This is overcosted, this is undercosted" vs. "No, it's the opposite" argument.

I'm pretty sure this fist became an argument back in the olden days when someone at GW said, "We could balance the armies by giving them a points value, like so..."

Though I will be the first to admit that some of the things in Shadowspear are a bit points-pricey on both sides of the box. I think GW tends to see some very situational or 'pretty decent' unit abilities as more valuable in points than their actual feasibility warrants.

I mean, Reivers are... useful in some situations, otherwise they're a relatively mild inconvenience for some to deal with. There's little ways they could improve and be worth their points- maybe add a point of strength or some AP to the knives, or make those bolt carbines both Rapid fire AND assault, or maybe a single-shot grenade launcher pistol with a 12" range for the shock grenades, stacking penalties to morale the longer they stay in melee with a unit, something... otherwise, 100 points for 5 guys that can get to objectives and take them if they're up against some weenie horde and have a Chaplain up their butts... a bit steep in my opinion, worthy of just a little something extra.

Problem is marines are a Jack of all trades in an edition that favours and rewards specialisation and synergy of specialisations.

Gw should play on their joat nature to try and fix them because anyother mod does not balance with other units. Tac and csm squads should probably get special and heavy weapons for free pickable before the game..along these lines of tac flexibility would be fluffy and help em... maybe not this but along these lines

 casvalremdeikun wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
10 point Marines. We're actually at the stage where people talk seriously about being able to buy a full company(sans gear obviously) for 1000 points.

40K is borked. Fully.

You're not wrong. I blame the pricing of horde armies though. I think 13 pt Marines works okay if a Guardsman is 8 pts. A Space Marine company at 1500 pts seems about right though. That is just the bodies of Marines. You still need to supe them up with weapons and tanks.

The issue isn't the bottom end, it's the top. When you have stuff like Knights and superheavy tanks, your choices are A; make those rubbish, meaning they won't sell very well, B; give them an appropriate points cost, meaning people will rarely take them(and thus, they won't sell very well), or C; make everything else cheaper to account for the huge power disparities at play, which makes the big stuff seem appealing and in the short term will drive extra sales of the small stuff as people scale up their armies to match.

They've obviously gone with C, and they didn't really have a choice in the matter once they decided to make all the big stuff and flying stuff part of the core system rather than optional expansions to it, but the ballooning size of armies - even ostensibly "elite" ones - is beginning to get properly wonko these days. I mean, I sat down the other day and worked out how many Orks I'd need to buy and paint to run the modern version of my 3rd Ed footslogger army, and it was only marginally fewer miniatures than I'd need to run Orcs & Gobbos in the bad old days of 8th Ed WHFB - you'll recall that situation didn't end well for WHFB :/

 Latro_ wrote:
Gw should play on their joat nature to try and fix them because anyother mod does not balance with other units. Tac and csm squads should probably get special and heavy weapons for free pickable before the game..along these lines of tac flexibility would be fluffy and help em... maybe not this but along these lines

Odd Question to think about- what if Devastators would be taken as "Troops" options? I mean, maybe with a points increase.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 Latro_ wrote:
Gw should play on their joat nature to try and fix them because anyother mod does not balance with other units. Tac and csm squads should probably get special and heavy weapons for free pickable before the game..along these lines of tac flexibility would be fluffy and help em... maybe not this but along these lines

Odd Question to think about- what if Devastators would be taken as "Troops" options? I mean, maybe with a points increase.

Then people might take Devastators, because they can sit back on an objective and hold it with their troops priority, but it really wouldn't change a whole lot and wouldn't fix the power armor problem.

drbored wrote:
Then people might take Devastators, because they can sit back on an objective and hold it with their troops priority, but it really wouldn't change a whole lot and wouldn't fix the power armor problem.

So, you think the problem is that they're too 'master of naught and jack of all trades', am I understanding? While they're 'pretty decent' at a given skill, when it comes time to fight certain armies- those armies are much better at that given skill and mop the floor with them... am I wrong?

If that's the case, what do you think a solution would be that wouldn't rework Astartes from the ground up?

Cheaper models? Cheaper gear? More fancy tricks/rules?

I'm not being facetious, I'm genuinely interested and would probably be willing to test things out with friends.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

drbored wrote:
Then people might take Devastators, because they can sit back on an objective and hold it with their troops priority, but it really wouldn't change a whole lot and wouldn't fix the power armor problem.

So, you think the problem is that they're too 'master of naught and jack of all trades', am I understanding? While they're 'pretty decent' at a given skill, when it comes time to fight certain armies- those armies are much better at that given skill and mop the floor with them... am I wrong?

If that's the case, what do you think a solution would be that wouldn't rework Astartes from the ground up?

Cheaper models? Cheaper gear? More fancy tricks/rules?

I'm not being facetious, I'm genuinely interested and would probably be willing to test things out with friends.

Marines NEED to be reworked from the ground up, because the entire edition changed around them and they didn't change. They need a totally different statline.

Take a look here to get some idea of just how much the general rules changes shafted marines, and generally had much less of an effect on everyone else, or benefited them: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/751394.page

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
Marines NEED to be reworked from the ground up, because the entire edition changed around them and they didn't change. They need a totally different statline.

Take a look here to get some idea of just how much the general rules changes shafted marines, and generally had much less of an effect on everyone else, or benefited them: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/751394.page

I can get behind the bolter idea.

Alternatively, what if Space Marine power armor offset the AP of a weapon by 1 for a single successful wound from a weapon? So basically if your opponent got 2 successful wounds with an AP-1 weapon- you'd get one of them with normal 3+ armor, and one at AP-1. It would make sense like their armor being able to disperse a degree of heat from energy weapons and withstand the kinetic force of solid projectiles or heavy blows.

Tac-Marines hit in overwatch on a 5+? It would make them worth investing in to hold objectives. Or perhaps 'exploding dice'? I'd like to think they'd be good to dig in and hold their ground at a group charging at them, rather than being just as accurate as a conscript when gunning into a charging mob of enemies.

Personally, I think we need to make all Space Marines Primaris Marines- adjust for points obviously, but give every Space Marine 2 wounds and 2 attacks base, do the same with Chaos Marines. Then just drop the word 'Primaris' from them altogether, and now it's "All Marines have 2 attacks and 2 wounds at a minimum".

Also, perhaps a cool idea would be giving some kind of distinct advantage to playing entirely one flavor of Space Marines. I'm not sure even where to begin with this, but perhaps some kind of bonus stratagems, or discounted wargear or upgrades. Maybe requiring you to field a certain 'rank' of Space Marine HQ in order to get those bonuses- so, like a Company Captain out there with a massive force would have the advantage of fielding most of his Company in a decisive battle, it forges the whole narrative of the glorious Space Marine commander surrounded by battle-brothers that have lived for this very moment, fighting with everything they've got...

I don't know, I think my weakness is I think a bit on 'how does this work with the fluff or how could it be justified?'

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

drbored wrote:
Then people might take Devastators, because they can sit back on an objective and hold it with their troops priority, but it really wouldn't change a whole lot and wouldn't fix the power armor problem.

So, you think the problem is that they're too 'master of naught and jack of all trades', am I understanding? While they're 'pretty decent' at a given skill, when it comes time to fight certain armies- those armies are much better at that given skill and mop the floor with them... am I wrong?

If that's the case, what do you think a solution would be that wouldn't rework Astartes from the ground up?

Cheaper models? Cheaper gear? More fancy tricks/rules?

I'm not being facetious, I'm genuinely interested and would probably be willing to test things out with friends.

Marines NEED to be reworked from the ground up, because the entire edition changed around them and they didn't change. They need a totally different statline.

Take a look here to get some idea of just how much the general rules changes shafted marines, and generally had much less of an effect on everyone else, or benefited them: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/751394.page

This ^

At the VERY LEAST, Marines need +1 attack across the board. Every single power armor, t4 unit needs this boost, from Tactical Marines to Vanguard Vets, and even to Rubric Marines. That is the bare minimum to help them produce the offensive power they need to be viable on the tabletop. Sure, some of those units will also get a points increase, but that would be ok with me because it's the simple stat that matters. A tactical marine or chaos marine getting 1 measly attack while an Ork Boy can get 4 attacks at the same strength and weapon skill is just atrocious.

Next, the big thing they need to do is to rework the entire AP system. In 7th edition, an AP of 5 meant that any enemy that has an armor value of 5 or less doesn't get an armor save against you. Now, an AP of -2 means that an enemy with an armor save of 5+ doesn't get it... but it also means that those with 3+ armor saves now have 5+ armor saves. I'd rather go back to the old system so that Power Armor means something again. The amount of high-AP weapons in the game is just ridiculous and makes it so that it's BETTER to have cheap troops with no armor save at all, rather than to have power armor, because it's likely those high AP weapons don't have a high number of shots to chew through your light infantry, at the very least.

Finally, mortal wounds need to just go away. They're the replacement for the old Instant Death rules. Mortal Wounds are far too numerous and too easy for many factions to get in abundance. What do mortal wounds do? They ignore armor, which means power armor is, once again, useless and gets people to pick cultists over chaos marines, because cultists don't care as much about mortal wounds because they have the bodies to soak them.

In other words, the two things that are in abundance in many 'good' lists (high AP weapons and mortal wound generating units) are the two main things that make power armor so worthless. The thing is, I don't want Chaos Marines and Tactical Marines to get any cheaper than they already are, because holy crap they're cheap! They're just not cheap enough to matter. I'd rather they become *better* on their basic stats and then become more expensive as a result, to bring power armor armies more in line with the elite forces that they're portrayed as.

Well, all the stuff for the new codex and Vigilus Ablaze are probably already all printed by now. They can't change anything at this stage. I think its probably more productive to see what changes they have made and work with that. See what kind of lists and tactics we can come up with.

AP weapons of -2 meant Marines had no saves in previous editions

 casvalremdeikun wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
10 point Marines. We're actually at the stage where people talk seriously about being able to buy a full company(sans gear obviously) for 1000 points.

40K is borked. Fully.

You're not wrong. I blame the pricing of horde armies though. I think 13 pt Marines works okay if a Guardsman is 8 pts. A Space Marine company at 1500 pts seems about right though. That is just the bodies of Marines. You still need to supe them up with weapons and tanks.

Wait what th- Okay, can we please have a conversation about this?
It seems like there's some kind of running gag where every few months or so the cost of what guardsmen "should" be keeps going up by a point, and I'd really like to know if I should be laughing or losing faith in the SM players of the board if by December people are trying to argue that Guardsmen should be 12 points.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:

 casvalremdeikun wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
10 point Marines. We're actually at the stage where people talk seriously about being able to buy a full company(sans gear obviously) for 1000 points.

40K is borked. Fully.

You're not wrong. I blame the pricing of horde armies though. I think 13 pt Marines works okay if a Guardsman is 8 pts. A Space Marine company at 1500 pts seems about right though. That is just the bodies of Marines. You still need to supe them up with weapons and tanks.

Wait what th- Okay, can we please have a conversation about this?
It seems like there's some kind of running gag where every few months or so the cost of what guardsmen "should" be keeps going up by a point, and I'd really like to know if I should be laughing or losing faith in the SM players of the board if by December people are trying to argue that Guardsmen should be 12 points.

pfft by december we'll be insisting guardsmen should be 14 points cause of orders

Okay the orders make them shoot 2x so it's really only 7 points and if you give them straken and a priest that is 3x the melee so really that's only like 3 points per guardsman which is a pretty good deal!!!