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 Mr Morden wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Hopefully we will get some more info on the PA3 in due course.

It would be nice if it was not just Blood Angel Cooex Appendix 1 and Codex Space Marines Appendix 2 but sadly that seem unlikely.

If only there was time amongst the endless, relentless waves of Marine releases to give a single Sept, Regiment, Dynasty, Order, Craftworld, Hive Fleet, Kabal, Coven, or Cult a supplement but I guess not......

You want to pay them for more books than you do now? Honestly I think people should be more careful of what they wish for, do you want the supplement for more depth and fluff or because you think it'll make them OP?

I picked up several supplements to read as I am interested in the background - for instance I am not going to start an Iron Hands or White Scars army (I haev a few models for each and 4 other Chapter armies) at the moment, similar to the Iyanden Supplement I bought way back when.

A special character/Supplement for each of the factions/sub factions - Marines of course being a sub-faction would I think be welcomed by many

Except of course the hard core Marines First, Llast and only brigade.

I've never seen anyone say that marines should be the only people with supplements, just arguing that they're potentially a mistake/unnecessary for the most part. But to be honest I'd rather they just fixed the core codex first and foremost, I don't care about my red corsairs getting a supplement (even though they got glossed over for PA2), I'd rather they just made csm 2.0 worthy of the title instead. Likewise I've recently started a small suit heavy tau army, I don't care for supplements since I've gone with N'Dras who don't even have rules anyway and I don't mind if they never do, just fix the core books so they have more viable builds.

As much as I've not always agreed with An Actual Englishmans stance about the importance of a speed freaks book, I do feel the ork codex needs a tweak to get it to the right level.

Dudeface wrote:


I've never seen anyone say that marines should be the only people with supplements, just arguing that they're potentially a mistake/unnecessary for the most part. But to be honest I'd rather they just fixed the core codex first and foremost, I don't care about my red corsairs getting a supplement (even though they got glossed over for PA2), I'd rather they just made csm 2.0 worthy of the title instead. Likewise I've recently started a small suit heavy tau army, I don't care for supplements since I've gone with N'Dras who don't even have rules anyway and I don't mind if they never do, just fix the core books so they have more viable builds.

As much as I've not always agreed with An Actual Englishmans stance about the importance of a speed freaks book, I do feel the ork codex needs a tweak to get it to the right level.

Which is the problem though. The Tau book is fine. The Ork book is fine. The Chaos 2.0 Codex is fine. Most books outside perhaps Grey Knights and Ynnari are basically fine.

It's the Marines that probably need to be reset to the 2017 Codex by turning the recent books narrative only or something, until they figure out a way to make a basic Space Marine codex that doesn't overpower the other books and get's a roughly 50% win rate (given roughly equal player skill) against the basic (not super-optimised) Harlequins, Tyranids, Orks, GSC, whatever army (ideally using the "example armies" presented in the Codexes as blueprint).

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Which is the problem though. The Tau book is fine. The Ork book is fine. The Chaos 2.0 Codex is fine.

These books really aren't fine, as their internal balance is all over the place. They're 'fine' for tournament players for whom having one viable build in a codex is enough.

I'm not a fan of the enormous power creep Marines have experienced, but if there's one thing the new book has gotten right, it's making a variety of army builds viable. Tau have to take as many shield drones as they can, and Crisis Suits, transports, and auxiliaries are all wastes of points. Orks need big mobs of Boyz and Mek Gunz, and I can't remember the last time I saw Speed Freeks, Kans, or Dreads. Chaos does better the fewer Chaos Marines it has in a list.

Looking only at tournament win rates is not healthy for the game.

 catbarf wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Which is the problem though. The Tau book is fine. The Ork book is fine. The Chaos 2.0 Codex is fine.

These books really aren't fine, as their internal balance is all over the place. They're 'fine' for tournament players for whom having one viable build in a codex is enough.

I'm not a fan of the enormous power creep Marines have experienced, but if there's one thing the new book has gotten right, it's making a variety of army builds viable. Tau have to take as many shield drones as they can, and Crisis Suits, transports, and auxiliaries are all wastes of points. Orks need big mobs of Boyz and Mek Gunz, and I can't remember the last time I saw Speed Freeks, Kans, or Dreads. Chaos does better the fewer Chaos Marines it has in a list.

Looking only at tournament win rates is not healthy for the game.

Grots, actually. Boyz are considered to be a waste of points when taken in excess, and that 30 boys + a bunch of grots is the optimal configuration.
The Ork codex has problems. You don't have that many optimal builds, and the traits don't even make sense.

What's the win rate like for Marines that aren't Iron Hands or Imperial Fists at the moment (on phone so more than a little annoying to find)? Are all the Chapters overperforming or just the two strongest? It'd be a mistake to slap the entire Codex with nerfs if it's just those two that overperform.

 catbarf wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
Which is the problem though. The Tau book is fine. The Ork book is fine. The Chaos 2.0 Codex is fine.

These books really aren't fine, as their internal balance is all over the place. They're 'fine' for tournament players for whom having one viable build in a codex is enough.

I'm not a fan of the enormous power creep Marines have experienced, but if there's one thing the new book has gotten right, it's making a variety of army builds viable. Tau have to take as many shield drones as they can, and Crisis Suits, transports, and auxiliaries are all wastes of points. Orks need big mobs of Boyz and Mek Gunz, and I can't remember the last time I saw Speed Freeks, Kans, or Dreads. Chaos does better the fewer Chaos Marines it has in a list.

Looking only at tournament win rates is not healthy for the game.

This hits it pretty well. The Tau codex suffers from the exact same problems the first marine codex suffered from. Everything was costed around access to ablative wounds and savior protocols just like marines were costed as if they had access to Gulliman. I don't play orks, but I imagine they've got a number of mechanics warping their internal balance in a similar way. Da Jump, Grot Shields, and the cheapest variant of KFF are my guess.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
What's the win rate like for Marines that aren't Iron Hands or Imperial Fists at the moment (on phone so more than a little annoying to find)? Are all the Chapters overperforming or just the two strongest? It'd be a mistake to slap the entire Codex with nerfs if it's just those two that overperform.

Get out with your logic and not strawmanning whole faction, all subfactions included, into a single build, filled with FW pay to win at that. Because every SM player has 5 recast leviathans and spams IH wombo combos to buff them, even if he/she plays White Scars or Black Templars fluffy footslogging oldmarine company, am I rite?

 Crazyterran wrote:
I remember 5 E when BA were the hot stuff and clobbered SM.

I'll take 'things that never happened' for 500. BA had 4-5 viable builds, but they were different builds than Codex: SM. SM had bike company, better terminators, chapter tactics, better shooting, more and better vehicles, techmarines/artillery, the works. It's almost as if author of both books was the most competent rule writer GW had ever had and could balance both books giving them very different strong points. Go figure

 Jidmah wrote:
Just before SW became the hot stuff and clobbered BA. And then GK became the hot stuff and clobbered SW. GW balance at its best

Except SW came out long before BA, and GK were balanced with all other 5th edition armies (again, having different strong points, and only a child who couldn't identify their weaknesses and play accordingly could say they were in any way OP). I like how even something that happened well within this decade will have pure nonsense tall tales told about it, never mind how easy these claims are to verify and how hard it should be to get something as basic as dates so wrong

I'll agree, though, that really was GW balance at its best. Sadly...

Voss wrote:
There was a nice cycle going where the snowflake chapters would get nice things, which would be promptly stolen by the codex marines.

Like what? It's the snowflakers who whined the Codex SM dared to have handful of exclusive units of their own until these units were taken away, only for none of the whiners then using them, as say Tartaros TDA or SM flyers were inferior to snowflake variants making the whine something out of pure spite, not real need...

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
What's the win rate like for Marines that aren't Iron Hands or Imperial Fists at the moment (on phone so more than a little annoying to find)? Are all the Chapters overperforming or just the two strongest? It'd be a mistake to slap the entire Codex with nerfs if it's just those two that overperform.

The entire faction is over-performing with the exception of (mono-)Blood Ravens (based on an incredibly small sample of a single list in the last couple of weeks).


Which is the problem. People agonise over Iron Hands this or Imperial Fists that, but that's not the core of the problem. The basic Marine dex is what probably needs a flat 15%-20% point increase on basically everything, a heavy scaling back of super-efficient re-rolls like Chapter Master (just compare it to the equally 2CP priced Great Harlequin, for example), free AP and attack bonuses, etc.., etc..

Sunny Side Up wrote:
It's the Marines that probably need to be reset to the 2017 Codex by turning the recent books narrative only or something, until they figure out a way to make a basic Space Marine codex that doesn't overpower the other books and get's a roughly 50% win rate (given roughly equal player skill) against the basic (not super-optimised) Harlequins, Tyranids, Orks, GSC, whatever army (ideally using the "example armies" presented in the Codexes as blueprint).

I think it might be harder than you would think to balance marines.

Here's my reasoning:
Loyalist marines are by far the most popular army. Everyone who isn't sure what they are facing is going to add stuff to their list to combat marines if they want to win. Worse, the second most important list to bring tools against (Imperial Knights) is vulnerable to most of the same stuff.
Almost every unit in the marine codex is vulnerable to similar things; their infantry need anti-tank weapons to kill and so do their tanks. So just spamming anti-tank is a pretty good strategy. Since a lot of other armies have key units which are also vulnerable to anti-tank weapons (basically all necrons, all chaos except daemons and cultists, tau battlesuits, everyone's vehicles) and eliminating those units (often the only mobile elements of their list) will allow victory in many games (by simply making it hard to get units onto objectives), anti-tank weapons are generally good against non-marine/knight lists too.
So most competitive lists are going to be marine killers. That means marines will always underperform in random games compared to how they 'should' in a balanced environment where either every army is tailored to their opponent or there is a more even distribution of lists you need to prepare for.
Everyone has a lot of experience playing against marines and even moderately skilled players will know how to deal with them.
I also suspect that a lot of marine players might be somewhat less skilled than average, since they are the stereotypical 'first army'. Having tried playing Deathwatch recently, never playing marines before, I very much felt that I was playing on 'easy mode'. I guess their playstyle might just suit me better than other armies, but if I'm right then it's yet another reason why marine lists would underperform in practice compared to how they 'should'.
So GW keeps cranking up the power-level for marines and giving them more tools. But that makes the problem worse, since the more powerful marines get, the more people play marines, more people optimize against marines and any army very different to marines gets relatively better results simply by surprising people with a new set of challenges. So there is a completely distorted 'balance' where marines can never actually have a reasonable power level, because if they do then they will get absolutely smashed in tournaments and pick-up games. But other armies are only viable so long as they have the luxury of fighting against opponents who are hyper-specialized to deal with marines. As soon as an ork list (for example) meets a decent anti-ork list, they are probably doomed.
Add the general culture of marine-favoritism at GW (honestly, do you expect people to not have good feelings about their primary source of profit?) and people's distorted perception that their favorite army is hard-done by (which means most customers are going to think marines have it tough simply because most customers collect marines) and you have a situation where marine rules are under massive pressure to keep getting better and better, but their actual performance (especially in tournaments and pick-up games, which are the most visible games to GW staff) is going to look pretty poor.

 Perfect Organism wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
It's the Marines that probably need to be reset to the 2017 Codex by turning the recent books narrative only or something, until they figure out a way to make a basic Space Marine codex that doesn't overpower the other books and get's a roughly 50% win rate (given roughly equal player skill) against the basic (not super-optimised) Harlequins, Tyranids, Orks, GSC, whatever army (ideally using the "example armies" presented in the Codexes as blueprint).

I think it might be harder than you would think to balance marines.

Here's my reasoning:
Loyalist marines are by far the most popular army. Everyone who isn't sure what they are facing is going to add stuff to their list to combat marines if they want to win. Worse, the second most important list to bring tools against (Imperial Knights) is vulnerable to most of the same stuff.
Almost every unit in the marine codex is vulnerable to similar things; their infantry need anti-tank weapons to kill and so do their tanks. So just spamming anti-tank is a pretty good strategy. Since a lot of other armies have key units which are also vulnerable to anti-tank weapons (basically all necrons, all chaos except daemons and cultists, tau battlesuits, everyone's vehicles) and eliminating those units (often the only mobile elements of their list) will allow victory in many games (by simply making it hard to get units onto objectives), anti-tank weapons are generally good against non-marine/knight lists too.
So most competitive lists are going to be marine killers. That means marines will always underperform in random games compared to how they 'should' in a balanced environment where either every army is tailored to their opponent or there is a more even distribution of lists you need to prepare for.
Everyone has a lot of experience playing against marines and even moderately skilled players will know how to deal with them.
I also suspect that a lot of marine players might be somewhat less skilled than average, since they are the stereotypical 'first army'. Having tried playing Deathwatch recently, never playing marines before, I very much felt that I was playing on 'easy mode'. I guess their playstyle might just suit me better than other armies, but if I'm right then it's yet another reason why marine lists would underperform in practice compared to how they 'should'.
So GW keeps cranking up the power-level for marines and giving them more tools. But that makes the problem worse, since the more powerful marines get, the more people play marines, more people optimize against marines and any army very different to marines gets relatively better results simply by surprising people with a new set of challenges. So there is a completely distorted 'balance' where marines can never actually have a reasonable power level, because if they do then they will get absolutely smashed in tournaments and pick-up games. But other armies are only viable so long as they have the luxury of fighting against opponents who are hyper-specialized to deal with marines. As soon as an ork list (for example) meets a decent anti-ork list, they are probably doomed.
Add the general culture of marine-favoritism at GW (honestly, do you expect people to not have good feelings about their primary source of profit?) and people's distorted perception that their favorite army is hard-done by (which means most customers are going to think marines have it tough simply because most customers collect marines) and you have a situation where marine rules are under massive pressure to keep getting better and better, but their actual performance (especially in tournaments and pick-up games, which are the most visible games to GW staff) is going to look pretty poor.

Which is fine. People already bring the "marine-killer" weapons and, as was pointed out, Marines internal diversity in armies across the supplements is pretty well done.

Which is why Marines IMO are one of the few cases where old-fashioned point increases would work (as opposed to, say, the Castellan/CP issue, where the flaw was in the allies system, or the Ynnari, which created game-mechanic discrepancies between Ynnari and non-Ynnari version of the same unit that were hard/impossible to point).

As said, just give Marines a flat point increase across all units, so that they simply bring a couple 100 point-equivalents less of their super-efficient units in a given army. It preserves the internal balance of the various Marine supplements, brings their win-rates and first-loss rates and all that down to be more in line with other armies and makes Marines more elite on top, which is perfectly on brand too.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
What's the win rate like for Marines that aren't Iron Hands or Imperial Fists at the moment (on phone so more than a little annoying to find)? Are all the Chapters overperforming or just the two strongest? It'd be a mistake to slap the entire Codex with nerfs if it's just those two that overperform.

The entire faction is over-performing with the exception of (mono-)Blood Ravens (based on an incredibly small sample of a single list in the last couple of weeks).


Which is the problem. People agonise over Iron Hands this or Imperial Fists that, but that's not the core of the problem. The basic Marine dex is what probably needs a flat 15%-20% point increase on basically everything, a heavy scaling back of super-efficient re-rolls like Chapter Master (just compare it to the equally 2CP priced Great Harlequin, for example), free AP and attack bonuses, etc.., etc..

Am back home now, from what I can see at 40kstats over the last month Iron Hands are grossly ahead at 65%, followed by Raven Guard, White Scars, and Imperial Fists around 55% (Crimson Fists at 60% but only two lists). Then it drops off to Ultramarines at 52.48% and the rest of the Chapters are sub-50% win rate. Of these only the Iron Hands (and the two Crimson Fists) stand out as grossly overpowered; Custom Craftworlds managed 58% win rate during the same period, Vostroyan (somehow) managed a 59.44% win rate (although, again, a small sample size), mixed Chaos Daemons managed 55.4%, and mixed CSM managed 60% (again, small sample size though). AdMech Graia managed 58% (sample size of 20 though) and Kabal of the Black Heart managed over 55.5% as well. Evil Sunz Orks at 54.89% win rate and Tau at almost 53% win rate. I'm not seeing this monstrous overpoweredness in these numbers, so I'm going to assume that there's a methodological difference between our sources. Coudl you post yours so we can compare?

Mephistonnn



https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/11/20/mephiston-rereborn/

Ohh now thats a cool model

Alternate arm to match the art too.

Would be nice if he still had his own pistol instead of a cawltech replacement, but that’s a small complaint.

Honestly looks like he’d still fit in with a non-primaris force barring that and his backpack. He’d be taller sure, but he’s a scary guy.

That is a very nice model.

I like the alternate arm, just for the hilarious Mephy: Emo Extreme! look.

The yellow tubing is a bit... off, though. I get the color choice, but its a very different retro-look that doesn't mesh with the rest of the model.

Not really my cup of tea, but that's a damn good sculpt shown off with a breathtaking paintjob. Perfect blend of old-school elements and actually good proportions.

I kinda like it but that Plasma pistol is kinda unnatural. It just unfitting for models pose.

But by looking the video there is alternative arm for it which makes it look much better!

I am shocked that PA3 is already up for pre-order in 10 days when PA2 isn't out yet. Talk about a fast pace of releases! I love it. I hope this means PA4 in January, whatever factions it is.

Wonder what factions will be in PA4 and PA5??

Ooh. Looks like I'll be picking up my first Primaris Marine in early December then

 ImAGeek wrote:
Alternate arm to match the art too.

And he will be getting that arm rather than the Pistol. Because with him leaning back and putting the gun out he looks like someone that no one told how to hold a gun before shooting for the first time.

 Virules wrote:
I am shocked that PA3 is already up for pre-order in 10 days when PA2 isn't out yet. Talk about a fast pace of releases! I love it. I hope this means PA4 in January, whatever factions it is.

Wonder what factions will be in PA4 and PA5??

4 is apparently Orks and Space Wolves (according to reliable rumours).

Wow. Not a BA player, but I may need to pick up that model for just the sculpt. Especially with the alternate hand...looks very impressive.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
Alternate arm to match the art too.

And he will be getting that arm rather than the Pistol. Because with him leaning back and putting the gun out he looks like someone that no one told how to hold a gun before shooting for the first time.

Yeah the plasma pistol pose is quite awkward.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Virules wrote:
I am shocked that PA3 is already up for pre-order in 10 days when PA2 isn't out yet. Talk about a fast pace of releases! I love it. I hope this means PA4 in January, whatever factions it is.

Wonder what factions will be in PA4 and PA5??

4 is apparently Orks and Space Wolves (according to reliable rumours).

That would be cool. Personally I can't wait for Death Guard. Most outdated codex of 8th edition at this point. I hope they get a book choke-full of new stratagems and relics.

 Virules wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Virules wrote:
I am shocked that PA3 is already up for pre-order in 10 days when PA2 isn't out yet. Talk about a fast pace of releases! I love it. I hope this means PA4 in January, whatever factions it is.

Wonder what factions will be in PA4 and PA5??

4 is apparently Orks and Space Wolves (according to reliable rumours).

That would be cool. Personally I can't wait for Death Guard. Most outdated codex of 8th edition at this point. I hope they get a book choke-full of new stratagems and relics.

Off all chaos factions DG need the least help.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Virules wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Virules wrote:
I am shocked that PA3 is already up for pre-order in 10 days when PA2 isn't out yet. Talk about a fast pace of releases! I love it. I hope this means PA4 in January, whatever factions it is.

Wonder what factions will be in PA4 and PA5??

4 is apparently Orks and Space Wolves (according to reliable rumours).

That would be cool. Personally I can't wait for Death Guard. Most outdated codex of 8th edition at this point. I hope they get a book choke-full of new stratagems and relics.

Off all chaos factions DG need the least help.

As someone who plays all Chaos factions competitively, and who closely watches the weekly reports of what Chaos lists are doing well, I think it's obvious you are dead wrong. The vast majority of units don't see serious use despite heavy points reductions a year ago. They have far less stratagems than CSM, Daemons, or TS. They don't have specialist detachments like CSM. They don't have anything as auto-include as a TS supreme command. All you ever see from them are sometimes PBCs and sometimes the pricey Blightlords.

Not the thread to debate which color of skittles tastes the worst ATM guys...

I like mephiston but damn he looks massive. I also am torn on the hand to mouth pose. The art is telling my brain what he is supposed to be doing there, but if I am honest, it looks more like he smelled one of Dante's farts

add a cigarette to his alternate pose and hes perfect

Without the plasma pistol, you can't even tell he is a Primaris Marine. He just looks like plastic Mephiston. Drastically increases the model's overall appeal. I like Primaris, so he will definitely be going with my Blood Angels and use the Primaris rules, but I could see someone using him just as regular Mephiston without any issue.