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My my, how things have changed. There were so many topics declaring that GW don't understand their own game and could never improve the Space Marine faction. It's comical really.

The sheer amount of exaggerated over-statements, some of it bordering on comical hysteria has now completely reversed in it's subject matter. Marines are now broken, overpowered, GW must fix things or the game will be doomed forever.
I have seen this repeat in the past and it's clear many of you are relatively new to the hobby. When I see posters declaring that the game is in a terrible state, the worse it can be - you literally don't know what you're talking about. It has been so much worse before that comparatively today it is a golden age of rules and fun.

Let this be a lesson. Factions rise, they fall. The meta changes and any army can have it's moment at the top (but maybe not every edition, it must be said). Stop worrying about "good balancing" so much. Even chess isn't balanced as white wins more.

Let's tone things down.

Remove the Super Doctrines and these complaints really wouldn't happen. It's literally the easiest fix.

Super Doctrines are a fantastic idea. They make units that are the same on paper play very differently from sub faction to sub faction.

There is nothing wrong with them at all. The only "problem" that remains is the IH flyer spam that will probably be fixed in a future FAQ addressing flyers in general. Not worth the panic.

I still do not think GW understand there own game, Making a bunch of Overpowered things is not realy any better than constantly under powering things.
So i do not get what you are even trying to dismiss others Complaints and worrys about the game.

New to the hobby, you know you sound really new to the hobby in the way you talk quite often here. And well, i do not see the hobby as Just GW. But i know some people do. So there may be a lot of disconnect here.
But again this just comes off as dismissal rather than response. Creating qualifications so you can dismiss others of there points.

 Ishagu wrote:
Super Doctrines are a fantastic idea. They make units that are the same on paper play very differently.

There is nothing wrong with them at all. The only "problem" that remains is the IH flyer spam that will probably be fixed in a future FAQ addressing flyers in general. Not even worth the complaint.

They're a terrible idea and what breaks the armies. As of now, by T2 Raven Guard hit and wound Knights with their Bolters on a 2+ and 5+ respectively while Ultramarines get double tap all the time and old style Relentless. Iron Hands basically eliminate the need for Captains at all and Imperial Fists are a big feth You to anyone with vehicles.

The only inconsequential ones are Salamanders (without the successors using the 3" bonus and for mostly bad weapons) and White Scars (the game is decided by T1-T2 at this point). They need to be gone from the game, period.

And I will argue GW didn't know how to fix them either, and still doesn't.

They threw an entire bucket of special rules at Space Marines instead of trying to balance the army in the existing framework.

Blanket +1 attack, semi blanket -1 ap. On top of the Super Doctrine bonus and some hilariously broken stratagems.

I have made the point that 3-6 months from now there is a chance none of this will matter. The sky isn't falling, the panic and hysteria is not necessary.

The most powerful combos aren't worth worrying about as you will very rarely face them on the tabletop, unless your only play takes place in highly competitive tournaments.

I have been in the hobby for 22 years, and this is why I don't lose my hair every time GW shakes up the meta. Use the example given in this topic as a learning exercise.

 Ordana wrote:
And I will argue GW didn't know how to fix them either, and still doesn't.

They threw an entire bucket of special rules at Space Marines instead of trying to balance the army in the existing framework.

Blanket +1 attack, semi blanket -1 ap. On top of the Super Doctrine bonus and some hilariously broken stratagems.

The community/this site spent a long time saying that "point reductions aren't enough, they need more rules", so which is it?

I'm also getting sick of the term "marine apologist" that keeps cropping up like there's some heinous crime being committed, just because someone isn't on board with the 'evil GW, lets go club marine players since they're scum of the earth' mentality.

3-6 months, or 3-6 years. Or potential forgotten about. I have been playing about the same time as you it seems.
My hair does not fall out, i actuly laugh about how GW can suck so much and still keep players paying.

If you cansider this a shake up to the meta, then i would say you really need to get out more. SInce often they dont shake, they smash open the meta and hope it rebuilds. This is not good, and a team more on the tone of the game would be far better at shaping, shaking up and guiding the meta.
GW have got far worse at this, and in there attempt to get better have shown they still have little idea.

 Ordana wrote:
And I will argue GW didn't know how to fix them either, and still doesn't.

They threw an entire bucket of special rules at Space Marines instead of trying to balance the army in the existing framework.

Blanket +1 attack, semi blanket -1 ap. On top of the Super Doctrine bonus and some hilariously broken stratagems.

The irony is that GW threw all that broken at marines and Ultramarines and Ravenguard appear to have come out almost balanced ironhands have been nerfed, imperial fists will be nerfed, whitescars are maybe a bit good but nothing worse than Drukari or Eldar or Soup has been for most of 8th. Salamanders just looks like GW ran out of time to actually proof read the book before it went to print and post initial faq nothing screams broken as heck yet.

The evidence is they actually seem to have a better understanding of the position the marine codex was in than 90% of dakka.

In any other Industry yeah a 50% success rate would be bad but this is GW who have been way worse in the past.

I wouldn't call dumping a shed load of rules that have to be immediately FAQ'd an improvement on the Space Marine faction.

Ice_can wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
And I will argue GW didn't know how to fix them either, and still doesn't.

They threw an entire bucket of special rules at Space Marines instead of trying to balance the army in the existing framework.

Blanket +1 attack, semi blanket -1 ap. On top of the Super Doctrine bonus and some hilariously broken stratagems.

The irony is that GW threw all that broken at marines and Ultramarines and Ravenguard appear to have come out almost balanced ironhands have been nerfed, imperial fists will be nerfed, whitescars are maybe a bit good but nothing worse than Drukari or Eldar or Soup has been for most of 8th. Salamanders just looks like GW ran out of time to actually proof read the book before it went to print and post initial faq nothing screams broken as heck yet.

The evidence is they actually seem to have a better understanding of the position the marine codex was in than 90% of dakka.

In any other Industry yeah a 50% success rate would be bad but this is GW who have been way worse in the past.

This is never understand, GW where so bad that hitting better than that is good enough. Even then its just adding more bloat onto systems that may just be breaking under the game they have pile on top of it. Its not good, and certenly is not a healthy meta game.

I had this thought myself.

Every single day there was a post on here "how to fix marines" "idea for broken marines" "marine fix" "how to fix...." you get the idea.

Now people can't hate them more.

Remember when people hated TAU, literally I remember going into local hobby shop. Oh you have a TAU army, oh you have a riptide (forgive me if that wasn't the name of the release in 2007.) oh okay, nah I'm good.

Or i remember a grey knight troop, a single troop one shotting a HQ like Azrael or another grand captain etc. like wtf?

It happens, it changes, I for one am glad of these supplements. It means people who play vanilla marines get flavour and character to their army, the same as I as a DA player have been able to enjoy since starting the hobby.

@Apple Fox

Lol who are you to claim the meta isn't healthy? There has been a large varierty of lists and builds, and now that Astartes can actually compete it makes sense that we'll see lots of them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. You can't point at the last two weeks and dismiss years.

New books will come out in future and people will play those more.

Sure we've seen things like Mat Ward Grey Knights, TauDar Riptide Wings, Screamer-Stars and stuff like that in the past.

And yes, new Marines fit perfectly into that tradition.

But people aren't upset because this never happened before. It obviously did.


People are upset because many thought we'd left the bad old 7th Ed. days behind, and Marines proved that we didn't.


The game being back to broken as it was 3 years ago, and yes, in 6 months or so the new flavour of broken probably isn't going to be Marines but Tyranids or whatever isn't the issue.

The issue is that in the brief summer of 2019, we actually had a taste of what a reasonably balanced, diverse 40K with armies like Tau, GSC, Orks, Eldar, Chaos in 20 varieties, Knights, even Necrons, etc.. all winning tournaments and doing well looked like.

Yes, Marines and a few other books like Grey Knights, mono-Nids, etc.. should've been improved to join the best 40K there ever was. But they didn't do that. Instead they just defaulted to 7th Ed. idiocy.

As somebody who's been in the hobby for a very long time, I am not upset that GW is just 2015-ing the game. I am disappointed because for the first time in 25 years, we briefly saw that it could've been different.

 SeanDavid1991 wrote:
I had this thought myself.

Every single day there was a post on here "how to fix marines" "idea for broken marines" "marine fix" "how to fix...." you get the idea.

Now people can't hate them more.

Remember when people hated TAU, literally I remember going into local hobby shop. Oh you have a TAU army, oh you have a riptide (forgive me if that wasn't the name of the release in 2007.) oh okay, nah I'm good.

Or i remember a grey knight troop, a single troop one shotting a HQ like Azrael or another grand captain etc. like wtf?

It happens, it changes, I for one am glad of these supplements. It means people who play vanilla marines get flavour and character to their army, the same as I as a DA player have been able to enjoy since starting the hobby.

The truth. And I'm glad more people see it. Most just aren't as vocal as the "Sky is falling" complainers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sunny Side Up wrote:


People are upset because many thought we'd left the bad old 7th Ed. days behind, and Marines proved that we didn't.

This is nothing like 7th, at all. And the fast FAQs are fixing abusive rules, which again is nothing like 7th. There were rules infinitely worse than anything in the new supplements, and they weren't fixed for years. Don't get caught up in the exaggerated hysteria.

 Ishagu wrote:

I have been in the hobby for 22 years, and this is why I don't lose my hair every time GW shakes up the meta. Use the example given in this topic as a learning exercise.

okey, but it is a learning exercise in what? Am seriously asking, because what is there to learn from this. That GW sometimes, gives some armies good rules? I think that one everyone has more or less figured out after they see 2-3 codex come out.

The problem isn't the fact that people were saying 3 months ago, that marines were bad. I think they were saying they were bad a year ago too. This means a lot of people that started marines, never got to see the good rules, because they quit before the rules changed happend. And the same will go for any other army. I mean if someone feels bad that his, lets say necron army does bad right now and is un fun to play with, the idea that maybe in a year or two GW is going to fix them, doesn't really help much. Specially as there isn't a garente that the new rules are going to be good. What if someone waits for 12-18 months, get an update and it is a bad one? Back to another few years of waiting for them? how is that good, or how does it fix any problems with not having fun with the army you have.

I mean I guess it is good if you either have 100000pts in 5 different armies in split among W40k, AoS and other GW games so you can just hop around, if your current army is unfun to play right now. But that really doesn't help the people that have one army of around 2000pts.

This is nothing like 7th, at all. And the fast FAQs are fixing abusive rules, which again is nothing like 7th. There were rules infinitely worse than anything in the new supplements, and they weren't fixed for years

Well my codex is almost 2 years old right now. over the 2 years, all but one FAQ, made the codex worse. I don't see how "fast" the fixs seem to be. Unless fast for us is suppose to be. less then 22 years. then yeah 2 years is faster, but am not sure if it can be considered fast with how long an avarge new player plays the game.

 Ishagu wrote:
My my, how things have changed. There were so many topics declaring that GW don't understand their own game and could never improve the Space Marine faction. It's comical really.

The sheer amount of exaggerated over-statements, some of it bordering on comical hysteria has now completely reversed in it's subject matter. Marines are now broken, overpowered, GW must fix things or the game will be doomed forever.
I have seen this repeat in the past and it's clear many of you are relatively new to the hobby. When I see posters declaring that the game is in a terrible state, the worse it can be - you literally don't know what you're talking about. It has been so much worse before that comparatively today it is a golden age of rules and fun.

Let this be a lesson. Factions rise, they fall. The meta changes and any army can have it's moment at the top (but maybe not every edition, it must be said). Stop worrying about "good balancing" so much. Even chess isn't balanced as white wins more.

Let's tone things down.

On a board the size of Dakka you'll find opinions to back up pretty much any point of view about the state of the game, so it's hardly suprirsing some people were saying SM would never be good. You'll probably find a lot of topics from the past saying SM could be good with some rules changes.
The same is true of the reactions. You'll find hysterical reactions alongisde thoughtful analysis. Maybe you're relatively new to the internet but that's just how it works.

What's interesting is that the power of the new Space Marines has been backed up by tournament data and player analysis and also forced GW into a fairly unprecedented nerfing of the IH less than two weeks after they came out. That tells you how badly designed and balanced they are. The new super doctrines look to be a major part ofthe problem and this was indetified early by a lot of people prior to those results coming in. so it's not so much hysterical or hyperbolic, it's a fairly accurate prediction.

Speaking of being new to the hobby, I'm not, and what we're seeing now is the exact same mistakes GW has made in the past. The new approach to the SM Codex is analgous to the introduction of Formations in 7th where army construction or design went through a huge paradigm shift with balance being thrown out the window because GW are incapable of sticking to a proper vision and plan for the duration of an edition. So now we have new super-powered SMs. Sure, we may then get the next Xenos Codex and they're also powerd up in similar fashion, but that's terrible games design because you also have all the armies without a Codex update who feel like they're playing a different game to those with an updated book. I played against new Space Marines with Necrons recently and it genuinely felt like I was playing a different edition of the game than my opponent, so overpwered were his units compared to mine. Every single unit just had more rules than I got, more bonuses and for fewer points than I was paying.

You seem very concerned with policing others' opinions on this board, BTW. If there's a particular leaning in one direction or another of popular opinion on a given board it may be it's not the best fit for you personally or possibly that the prevailing opinion is more accurate than you give it credit for.

 Ishagu wrote:


This is nothing like 7th, at all. And the fast FAQs are fixing abusive rules, which again is nothing like 7th. There were rules infinitely worse than anything in the new supplements, and they weren't fixed for years. Don't get caught up in the exaggerated hysteria.

The rules were worse, perhaps, but the monotony in gaming was comparable.

You go to an event and play Marines in 3-4 games out of 5, perhaps more often, it's just like 7th Ed.

There's no hysteria. It's simple observation.


There is no exaggeration there (which is quite different to your disingenuous argument that calls to improve Marines to the balance of other armies was somehow a justification for this breaking of the balance and should forbid people from voicing concerns about this new, even worse imbalance just because Marines now sit at the opposite side of the problem).

I think you make a decent point. I play Blood Angels and I don't think they're broken at all.

@Sunny Side Up

Observation of what? The last two weeks?

Irrelevant in the grand scheme of the last few years since 8th edition. Astartes are the most popular faction, so you'll see more if they play well not just due to their strength.

I just have to shake my head. People claiming the super doctrine is fine. I can easily promise this, if all factions got such over the top treatment with similar strength given the salty sea of Marine tears would be legendary.

I could just imagine the ranting rage fits if Guard had super doctrines. They aren't just fine. If you think so its just really because you benefit from them and so many other factions do not.

For what it's worth, I really hope GW likewise buff up all other forces like so, just so we see how awful of an idea it is.

Dudeface wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
And I will argue GW didn't know how to fix them either, and still doesn't.

They threw an entire bucket of special rules at Space Marines instead of trying to balance the army in the existing framework.

Blanket +1 attack, semi blanket -1 ap. On top of the Super Doctrine bonus and some hilariously broken stratagems.

The community/this site spent a long time saying that "point reductions aren't enough, they need more rules", so which is it?

I'm also getting sick of the term "marine apologist" that keeps cropping up like there's some heinous crime being committed, just because someone isn't on board with the 'evil GW, lets go club marine players since they're scum of the earth' mentality.

I agree, it's a term that is being used to effectively shut down debate of anyone who tries to argue anything beyond marines ruining the game.

I am not sure how people cannot grasp the difference between people wanting Space Marines to be balanced (when they were weak) and people also not wanting Space Marines to be OP?

They are two very different things!

If 40K were a bicycle race, most Codexes were modern, high-end bicycles, but Marines had an old, rusty one.

Of course people were asking for Marines to get a bicycle that can compete with the others.

But instead Marines got a Kawasaki Ninja 400 in different flavours/colours. That didn't balance the bicycle race. It made racing for most non-Marines pointless.

AngryAngel80 wrote:
I just have to shake my head. People claiming the super doctrine is fine. I can easily promise this, if all factions got such over the top treatment with similar strength given the salty sea of Marine tears would be legendary.

I could just imagine the ranting rage fits if Guard had super doctrines. They aren't just fine. If you think so its just really because you benefit from them and so many other factions do not.

For what it's worth, I really hope GW likewise buff up all other forces like so, just so we see how awful of an idea it is.

The Super Doctrine isn't a singular rule, and you categorically cannot state that it's a problem. How many games have you played using each chapter against every faction?



@Sunny Side Up

If a faction is the most powerful, but only wins a few extra % of games is it still OP? If you are expecting perfect balance you will NEVER find it. If your problem lies with Astartes being the best then you have a toxic attitude. You can't declare something as blanket OP until the community has adjusted to it after some time. There are certain examples of rules which are poorly written or obviously too strong, and GW has shown time and again that they will adjust them with FAQs.

 Ishagu wrote:

AngryAngel80 wrote:
I just have to shake my head. People claiming the super doctrine is fine. I can easily promise this, if all factions got such over the top treatment with similar strength given the salty sea of Marine tears would be legendary.

I could just imagine the ranting rage fits if Guard had super doctrines. They aren't just fine. If you think so its just really because you benefit from them and so many other factions do not.

For what it's worth, I really hope GW likewise buff up all other forces like so, just so we see how awful of an idea it is.

The Super Doctrine isn't a singular rule, and you categorically cannot state that it's a problem. How many games have you played using each chapter against every faction?

I'm fairly sure that however many games they played your response would be "that's not enough" or "your meta isn't representative of the game as a whole". Depending on the rule you don't have to play any games to know it's broken. Probably not the case with SM, but the extra power they get for free with no real downsides is indicative of a bad rule that's going to be very difficult to balance.

 Ishagu wrote:

@Sunny Side Up

If a faction is the most powerful, but only wins a few extra % of games is it still OP? If you are expecting perfect balance you will NEVER find it. If your problem lies with Astartes being the best then you have a toxic attitude. You can't declare something as blanket OP until the community has adjusted to it after some time. There are certain examples of rules which are poorly written or obviously too strong, and GW has shown time and again that they will adjust them with FAQs.

Seems you really, really want to be some sort of Dakka police, declaring how other people can and can't express themselves. Nobody is expecting perfect balance - that's a strawman. If we were dealing with a small bump in an army's effectiveness you might have a point, but we're talking about faction domination we haven't seen in a long time. Pretty sure it was the guys at Goonhammer that did a very insightful breakdown of the stats on recent SM tournament results. They also made some great points about why the Doctrine system is a bad idea, and specifically super Doctrines that apply in Devastator Doctrine. I'll say again, you can declare some things to be OP if it's obvious they are, regardless of any claims about letting the meta settle. Since you seem to like mentioning how long you've been playing the game I assume you remember the predictions about Eldar and Tau in 7th edition? They proved to be pretty spot-on, as did the predictions about how broken Ynnari were the moment they were released. The idea we can't make good predictions about the strength of armies before we have months of data to look at doesn't fit with the reality of past experiences.

7th is the example I used to point out how much better things are in 8th and why people should stop having panic attacks. Thank you for making my point for me.

If super doctrines are the curse, what do you think of playing without supplement or idk, banning supplement in tournaments?

 Ishagu wrote:
Super Doctrines are a fantastic idea. They make units that are the same on paper play very differently from sub faction to sub faction.

There is nothing wrong with them at all. The only "problem" that remains is the IH flyer spam that will probably be fixed in a future FAQ addressing flyers in general. Not worth the panic.

I'm not entirely informed about those super-doctrinies, but in another thread you state that USRs affect different units differently and hence are bad....but if this super doctrines do it, it let's you "play the same unit very differently"

 Ishagu wrote:
7th is the example I used to point out how much better things are in 8th and why people should stop having panic attacks. Thank you for making my point for me.

You seem to have completely missed the point I was making. You claimed we can't draw conclusions about the power of books without game data. I used 7th edition to point out why that assertion is wrong. The fact it was 7th edition is irrelevant to the point being made. I could have used 5th edition GK, or 7th edition WH Daemons, instead if you prefer.