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So, from this thread (which is a bit of a trainwreck), it was said that Marines, as they are now, have basically every playstyle available to them, and not just "technically"-they can do it well.

I'm curious as to what everyone here thinks is a playstyle Marines CANNOT do-or at least, cannot do well.

I guess they're just sort of mediocre at smite spam and mortal wound spam in general? Aside from that they're...

* About as good as (better than?) GSC at ambushing.

* Primaris vehicles are better at doing the fast mechanized force thing than drukhari, eldar, and tau.

* They gunline about as well as tau and guard. Do they have the edge here too?

* They melee about as hard as anyone. A single assault intercessor in the assault doctrine is about as lethal in melee as an autarch and not far from being as lethal as most phoenix lords.

* They maybe don't do the horde thing quite as well as hordes? Then again, spamming 18 point 2W tactical marines, you can get a decent number of bodies if you really lean into it, and you'll have a lot more bodies than a green tide after the first couple turns of shooting have done their work.

I'm not really bothered by marines being able to pull off pretty much any playstyle. I'm bothered when they seem to do it better than factions that are less versatile. An optimized marine gunline should not be markedly better at shooting than an optimized IG gunline.

You can do 94 bodies (90 Tacs, 4 HQs) in a 2k list. That's a horde to me.

MW Spam, true! Though who does that better?

Are we including GK in this as well? Because then I would say psychic ability spam, but otherwise they have that covered as well.

I’d say no, don’t include GK.

They’re a distinct codex, not a supplement. Similar-but were talking Codex Marines here.

 JNAProductions wrote:
You can do 94 bodies (90 Tacs, 4 HQs) in a 2k list. That's a horde to me.

MW Spam, true! Though who does that better?

sure you can run 90 tac marines and some HQs but that lists proably going to have some serious issues, Orks meanwhile can run more guys and have eneugh points left over to take heavy support, fast attack etc back up.

you can do Hoard with Marines, depending on how you define it, I suppose, but I'd argue you can't do it WELL.

SM are not jacks of all trades master of none. They are jacks of all trades and we can do it better than you.

 JNAProductions wrote:
You can do 94 bodies (90 Tacs, 4 HQs) in a 2k list. That's a horde to me.

MW Spam, true! Though who does that better?

Surely Thousand Sons do it better by virtue of having more more mortal wound powers and easier access to psykers (albeit with the default smite of most psykers being weaker than the norm). I feel like craftworlders probably do it better too. Executioner, smite, Mind War, and crushing orb give you a decent amount of MW generation. Granted, a couple of those are only able to target characters. If you really want to lean into MW generation with aeldari, you can do an executioner + smite farseer, a phantasm launcher drukhari unit, a witchfire shadowseer with phantasm launcher, and then throw in mandrakes (baleblast) for flavor. It's easy to run out of points quickly taking that approach, but you can put out a lot of mortals. Especially if you go for some of the more gimmicky Psychic Awakening custom traits.

Although weirdly, giving the firstborn an extra wound for only about 3 points each kind of lowers the value of mortal wounds. Especially in a marine-heavy meta. Smite is only killing 1 guy on average. Executioner is only averaging one guy on the first die roll, and you now have a 1 in 3 chance of not killing a firstborn with the first die roll meaning you don't get a second.

But yeah. I think it's safe to say that marines don't do psyker-heavy armies all that well even when they lean into it. Unless you count GK of course. The best "psyker marines" other than GK are probably BA, and that's more about buffing their own mobility and melee power.

BrianDavion wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
You can do 94 bodies (90 Tacs, 4 HQs) in a 2k list. That's a horde to me.

MW Spam, true! Though who does that better?

sure you can run 90 tac marines and some HQs but that lists proably going to have some serious issues, Orks meanwhile can run more guys and have eneugh points left over to take heavy support, fast attack etc back up.

you can do Hoard with Marines, depending on how you define it, I suppose, but I'd argue you can't do it WELL.

Well, 90 Tac Marines, Turn 1 kill 50ish Ork boyz without rerolls or buffs of any kind. ATM that is 400pts dead, or about a 25-30% return on investment. In CC right now those Tac Marines are punching above their weight class, being able to kill the equivalent of 50 Ork boyz in CC as well, again, no buffs. Ironically, a Space Marine Tac Horde would do really well Vs. Ork hordes.

I believe the Ork "horde" right now is only about 120ish Boyz or 960pts, once you add in the required buffs like a warboss, painboy, weirdboy etc you have about 700-800pts left over for other things, but this is usually made up of specialists, either Kommandos/stormboyz etc rather than fast attack buggies or even heavy support, mostly due to 9th editions tournament requirements as far as scoring is concerned.

SemperMortis wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
You can do 94 bodies (90 Tacs, 4 HQs) in a 2k list. That's a horde to me.

MW Spam, true! Though who does that better?

sure you can run 90 tac marines and some HQs but that lists proably going to have some serious issues, Orks meanwhile can run more guys and have eneugh points left over to take heavy support, fast attack etc back up.

you can do Hoard with Marines, depending on how you define it, I suppose, but I'd argue you can't do it WELL.

Well, 90 Tac Marines, Turn 1 kill 50ish Ork boyz without rerolls or buffs of any kind. ATM that is 400pts dead, or about a 25-30% return on investment. In CC right now those Tac Marines are punching above their weight class, being able to kill the equivalent of 50 Ork boyz in CC as well, again, no buffs. Ironically, a Space Marine Tac Horde would do really well Vs. Ork hordes.

I believe the Ork "horde" right now is only about 120ish Boyz or 960pts, once you add in the required buffs like a warboss, painboy, weirdboy etc you have about 700-800pts left over for other things, but this is usually made up of specialists, either Kommandos/stormboyz etc rather than fast attack buggies or even heavy support, mostly due to 9th editions tournament requirements as far as scoring is concerned.

so what you're saying is a list with nothing but anti-infantry weapons is highly effective against an infantry army?!

NO WAY!?!

JNAProductions wrote:What Can Marines Not Do?

Go a full day at Dakka without someone making a new thread to whine about them?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

JNAProductions wrote:What Can Marines Not Do?

Go a full day at Dakka without someone making a new thread to whine about them?

LOL.

Big MW output and cheap screens are the two things they don't have. Everything else, they've got covered, and often better than armies that specialize.

They do everything better than everything else.

9th edition is going to be a trainwreck.

BrianDavion wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
You can do 94 bodies (90 Tacs, 4 HQs) in a 2k list. That's a horde to me.

MW Spam, true! Though who does that better?

sure you can run 90 tac marines and some HQs but that lists proably going to have some serious issues, Orks meanwhile can run more guys and have eneugh points left over to take heavy support, fast attack etc back up.

you can do Hoard with Marines, depending on how you define it, I suppose, but I'd argue you can't do it WELL.

Well, 90 Tac Marines, Turn 1 kill 50ish Ork boyz without rerolls or buffs of any kind. ATM that is 400pts dead, or about a 25-30% return on investment. In CC right now those Tac Marines are punching above their weight class, being able to kill the equivalent of 50 Ork boyz in CC as well, again, no buffs. Ironically, a Space Marine Tac Horde would do really well Vs. Ork hordes.

I believe the Ork "horde" right now is only about 120ish Boyz or 960pts, once you add in the required buffs like a warboss, painboy, weirdboy etc you have about 700-800pts left over for other things, but this is usually made up of specialists, either Kommandos/stormboyz etc rather than fast attack buggies or even heavy support, mostly due to 9th editions tournament requirements as far as scoring is concerned.

so what you're saying is a list with nothing but anti-infantry weapons is highly effective against an infantry army?!

NO WAY!?!

And that ork horde is doing ok in tournaments thanks to being counter meta. A SM player should give it a shot see if it works as well as ork hordes do.

 JNAProductions wrote:
You can do 94 bodies (90 Tacs, 4 HQs) in a 2k list. That's a horde to me.

MW Spam, true! Though who does that better?

Depending on the targets and the exact placement orks can put out an absolutely disgusting amount of mortal wounds pretty quick.

cody.d. wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
You can do 94 bodies (90 Tacs, 4 HQs) in a 2k list. That's a horde to me.

MW Spam, true! Though who does that better?

Depending on the targets and the exact placement orks can put out an absolutely disgusting amount of mortal wounds pretty quick.

Well, with 2W they're now twice as resilient to MWs.

SemperMortis wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
You can do 94 bodies (90 Tacs, 4 HQs) in a 2k list. That's a horde to me.

MW Spam, true! Though who does that better?

sure you can run 90 tac marines and some HQs but that lists proably going to have some serious issues, Orks meanwhile can run more guys and have eneugh points left over to take heavy support, fast attack etc back up.

you can do Hoard with Marines, depending on how you define it, I suppose, but I'd argue you can't do it WELL.

Well, 90 Tac Marines, Turn 1 kill 50ish Ork boyz without rerolls or buffs of any kind. ATM that is 400pts dead, or about a 25-30% return on investment. In CC right now those Tac Marines are punching above their weight class, being able to kill the equivalent of 50 Ork boyz in CC as well, again, no buffs. Ironically, a Space Marine Tac Horde would do really well Vs. Ork hordes.

I believe the Ork "horde" right now is only about 120ish Boyz or 960pts, once you add in the required buffs like a warboss, painboy, weirdboy etc you have about 700-800pts left over for other things, but this is usually made up of specialists, either Kommandos/stormboyz etc rather than fast attack buggies or even heavy support, mostly due to 9th editions tournament requirements as far as scoring is concerned.

so what you're saying is a list with nothing but anti-infantry weapons is highly effective against an infantry army?!

NO WAY!?!

And that ork horde is doing ok in tournaments thanks to being counter meta. A SM player should give it a shot see if it works as well as ork hordes do.

I doubt it would. part of the curse of playing space marines is you ARE the meta, so counter meta builds from you are hard to do. By that I mean take a look at your average tactics conversation, people tend to build their lists to be capable of handling armies that are, largely, MEQ.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
They do everything better than everything else.

9th edition is going to be a trainwreck.

It left the station with a few wheels missing, IMO.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
They do everything better than everything else.

9th edition is going to be a trainwreck.

It left the station with a few wheels missing, IMO.

May be right. But we won't know until we get more non-marine dexes. Marines vs Necrons is the only thing we have to go on so far.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
They do everything better than everything else.

9th edition is going to be a trainwreck.

when's the last time an army that was strong at the START of an edition was ruling the edition by it's end?

 JNAProductions wrote:
So, from this thread (which is a bit of a trainwreck), it was said that Marines, as they are now, have basically every playstyle available to them, and not just "technically"-they can do it well.

I'm curious as to what everyone here thinks is a playstyle Marines CANNOT do-or at least, cannot do well.

Well there's the obvious two -

They can't do horde, and they can't do the Super Heavy Detachment as well as bugs/orks or Knights. Pretty sure they can't do the super elite everything invulnerable Harli/Custodes thing. So given how easy it was to come up with both extremes, I'd say they also can't cash a check written by hyperbole.

BrianDavion wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
They do everything better than everything else.

9th edition is going to be a trainwreck.

when's the last time an army that was strong at the START of an edition was ruling the edition by it's end?

Let's assume the new codexes are equivalent or better in power as a best case scenario. The requisite power levels for the game to wind up appreciably balanced will be so utterly ludicrous that if you aren't one of the ones to get a codex right off, the game is going to be increasingly awful until you do. We've already sat through 15 months of recently escalating garbage that isn't even completely over, apparently and I'm not looking forward to sitting through another 12 hoping for a game that doesn't make me feel like a second-class citizen for finding the game's poster children increasingly obnoxious as GW tries to lodge them in my trachea.

They can't summon daemons.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
They can't summon daemons.

sure they can, chaos SPACE MARINES, I mean, why diffrentiate between differant armies right? alll those power armored guys are the same!

BrianDavion wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
They do everything better than everything else.

9th edition is going to be a trainwreck.

when's the last time an army that was strong at the START of an edition was ruling the edition by it's end?

The trainwreck could easily be produced by GW's usual approach of breaking everyone else to compensate instead of fixing the things they screwed up in one book. If they apply the kind of buffs they're handing out to Marines more broadly the game is going to turn into the rocket tag edition.

BrianDavion wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
They do everything better than everything else.

9th edition is going to be a trainwreck.

when's the last time an army that was strong at the START of an edition was ruling the edition by it's end?

8th edition ring any bells.

But seriously how do they increase the lethality of every other faction by the required amount to compete without the game decending into go first table opponent GG after half a battle round.

Ice_can wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
They do everything better than everything else.

9th edition is going to be a trainwreck.

when's the last time an army that was strong at the START of an edition was ruling the edition by it's end?

8th edition ring any bells.

But seriously how do they increase the lethality of every other faction by the required amount to compete without the game decending into go first table opponent GG after half a battle round.

we allready have a massive First turn problem with the new missions... further expanding lethality to such a degree would be absolutely devastating.

Strike that Battlescribe hasn't been updated for the codex.

Old schooling it pen and paper style you can still get over 100 marines and over 210 wounds on the table.

Ice_can wrote:
Also at 2k you can get 122 marines on the board with 5 points to spare.

60 Tacs
30 Devistators
30 Assualt Marines (foot)
Indomitous CM & LT

251 wounds seems fairly horde wound count to me.

60 Tacs, 30 Devs, and 30 Assault Marines with ZERO Upgrades, and ZERO Caps or Lt's are 2160 points. Oh wait. You're that guy who has a problem with honesty.