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I think it is fair to count non-Grey Knights, loyalist space marines as 4.5 factions. Basically the historically non-compliant (BA, DA and SW) as each being a faction, the compliant as a one faction and Deathwatch as half a faction. As for Primaris space marines in terms of model releases, I consider them a brand new faction. Moreover, a brand new faction that is as much of a sure-thing as GW could possibly expect in terms of risk allowing them to put out a bigger showing initially with less concern of it going all Dreadfleet on them. It is just that these 4.5 faction share the same models.

With those assumptions in mind, I think only fairly recently has GW gone a little heavy-handed with too many new models for space marines. When it comes to Primaris Lieutenants There were basically like 6-7 with a bunch of limited editions, store exclusives for a good while. I am pretty sure we are in double digits with Primaris Lts now. I am a big fan of Primaris space marines, and I don't have any issue spending GW single character models -15% prices if I like the model. I only have 4 Primaris Lts (two sword/pistol Tactius, Shadowspear Lt and the Indomitus Lt) with a likely 5th being a kit bashed Tactius with Auto-Bolt Rifle.

Is that a crazy amount of LTs? Yes, yes it is. However, it looks a lot less crazy if one counts space marines as if they were 4.5 factions. I mean at that point, it is only slightly more crazy than the fact that Genestealer Cults have to Psyker models. And GSC players have to jump through detachment hoops to even put both in a single army.

I am pretty sure I get with the onslaught of Primaris space marines. I straight up had to take a break on working on my Primaris-only space marine army as it just became way too much with everything added in 9th. I think that this point Primaris are very well-supported even for 4.5 factions with only a few minor gaps that pale compared to far older factions. I believe that is where issues come up.

Like it or not, it appears so long as there IS a model for something GW is pretty content to leave it alone in favor of something new. I think this is more apparent in AoS where GW has been adding brand-new stuff over updating older stuff. Even the new Chaos Warriors and Knights have only been a Start Collecting leaving the old kits as still available. The only thing that really throws that hypothesis out is the new CSM/Havocs/Terminators/etc. and Necrons (which are more of an expansion than refresh). I suppose the new Sisters of Battle, but I think the exceptional age of the models and numbers of people asking for an update make it far more of an exception.

I some ways GW did themselves and the fans a disservice with the CSM refreshes. Games Workshop demonstrated that they were willing to directly update old units, but basically stopped with Chaos Space Marines. This has created a rightly or wrongly expectation that every faction would be seeing this. While I find it easy to dismiss those wanting refreshed Ork and Tyranid models (though they certainly should see more new releases themselves), I am shocked that Eldar infantry are in such a dire shape with so much Finecast for basic army builder stuff.

Now I don't place any blame on the Primaris releases. Those are cash-money for GW. I am little surprised that GW going as hard as they have on Specialist Games. Where I understand they should be trying to capture other markets instead of relying on two big tent pole games. Just the same, I don't get that maybe one less Chaos Warcry cult, Necromunda gang or Blood Bowl team is delayed a bit to get some new Eldar Guardians on the market or something.

a_typical_hero wrote:
I think GW is making it clear what they see as a faction and what not by having a separate category for them in their Onlineshop.

Seems straightforward, why deviate from it?

Edit:
And in their Metawatch article they outright tell us what factions there are
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/11/19/metawatch-warhammer-40000-episode-2-data-gods-of-war/

We know this. Thats why we complain.

GW needs to stop treating marines like a special army by either : deleting supplements OR giving supplements to every army.

 catbarf wrote:
And to a large degree, the differences in playstyle between Marine subfactions is driven by their special supplement rules, which in turn is reflective of their disproportionate attention. Strip them down to just subfaction traits- like everyone else gets- and Marine armies start to look pretty same-y.

Yea that's fair.

I could do with less Primaris releases. And I too, have an all-primaris army. After Indomitus, the only new thing I bought was one Gladius tank, and I'm here waiting for Heavy Intercessors so I can write a themed list around them(All Gravis-type armor including Inceptors). I've got my toys, and being the social heel faction is sort of growing tiring. I'd like to play my Marines without being the local bad guy for taking an oversupported and overpowered faction.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
9th launches and we get the Marine - Necrons -Marines - Marines - Marines codexes.

No, we see:

SM, Necron, [long COVID gap], Death Guard, [shorter COVID gap], Dark Eldar...

 Bosskelot wrote:
They still need to re-do all the supplements for 9th and do a Black Templar one too with that likely to happening sometime this year. So even then, the Marine train shows no signs of slowing down "soon."

I'd like to see a BT one, but I'm not so sure it's a given - if anything, they should really have been included in the IF book along with the CF. I don't think we're going to see the 8.5 wave of supplements redone in a hurry, though - certainly not this year.

I am hoping Saturday's preview sheds a little light on which book we'll see after Dark Eldar, though. I don't think we'll get a roadmap like Underworlds just had updated, but I think we'll find out what the April book is. DA is Feb and DE is March, last we heard, right?

Maybe someday we will get a non Marine supplement.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Maybe someday we will get a non Marine supplement.

Like all the ones from 6th/7th? Iyanden? Farsight Enclaves? Cadia? Haemonculus Covens?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Dandelion wrote:
Imo it’s a mistake to count white scars as a different faction to iron hands simply based on the use of supplements. You can say they play differently but so do catachans and tallarn.

I don't totally agree on the degree of difference there. AM lists often share very similar elements. But you'll almost never find Iron Hands sporting Bikes and Lightning Claw VV and no Eradicators. The way I react to when I play IH differs from WS. When I play guard it doesn't matter to me if they're Catachan, Cadian, or Mordian. Tallarn only throws a wrench if they drag in a super heavy, but no really one does that.

But how much of that is the result of Space Marines getting so many different supplements? Death Korps and Elysians (RIP) effectively had supplements in their FW rules, and while they may have been rather rare, I don't know that you could honestly say that they are "just reskinned Guardsmen", at least with regards to their lists and playstyles. Imagine if the regiments you mentioned got their own full spinoff codices with unique units and mechanics the way certain Chapters do, would you react the same to Tallarn and Catachan armies in that case?

Many posters have mentioned the unequal allocation of time and care when it comes to Space Marines vs. the rest of the factions, and this is a direct result of that inequality. You can react differently to IH vs WS because Space Marines get so much extra effort. You don't react differently to Mordian vs Valhallan because GW has not made them as different as they made IH and WS.

Which Daedalus acknowledged

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
And to a large degree, the differences in playstyle between Marine subfactions is driven by their special supplement rules, which in turn is reflective of their disproportionate attention. Strip them down to just subfaction traits- like everyone else gets- and Marine armies start to look pretty same-y.

Yea that's fair.

Disproportionate? If they get half the releases and half of the hate isn't that proportional? Disproportionate is what happened to Grey Knights for most of 8th and now Tau in 9th. Although the personal attacks over things like "I like how primaris look more" is toxic.

 Bosskelot wrote:
They still need to re-do all the supplements for 9th and do a Black Templar one too with that likely to happening sometime this year. So even then, the Marine train shows no signs of slowing down "soon."

this is assuming they bother to re-do the other supplements.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Maybe someday we will get a non Marine supplement.

I hope not. Supplements means having to buy two books just to play the basic stuff. 90% of my SW collection is in the supplement, only the transports and a couple of characters are from the generic book.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Maybe someday we will get a non Marine supplement.

Like all the ones from 6th/7th? Iyanden? Farsight Enclaves? Cadia? Haemonculus Covens?

and the Psykic awakening stuff which is still valid for non marine armies.

BrianDavion wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Maybe someday we will get a non Marine supplement.

Like all the ones from 6th/7th? Iyanden? Farsight Enclaves? Cadia? Haemonculus Covens?

and the Psykic awakening stuff which is still valid for non marine armies.

You mean like Faith and Fury which was primarily Marine focused.

Not to mention saying it's okay your faction got 6 pages while my subfaction gets it's own approximatly 10 pages of rules each thats fair is one of the biggest causes of marine hate.

Stop defending the favouritism and other factions might see something more than 2 and a bit faction releases in an entire edition.

Then people might feel less hate.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Darsath wrote:

This 100%. The release schedule makes it feel like Marines are cannibalising other factions at this point. Even the Necrons, that got released alongside the Marines feel like they're already forgotten for more Space Marine goodness. Death Guard will be no different.

What does DG need? A couple models to cover HQs.
What Necron kits need a redo? C'Tan models, Tesseract, and Obelisk. All of these are huge kits and pushing out that many high price kits would be a terrible idea.

What do SM need? They already have by far the largest range of models of any GW army. I'd argue SM don't need any new models for the duration of 9th edition. The fact GW comes up with a whole host of new models for the new Codex doesn't mean SM needed them but apparently it's enough to make people think they did. Would we really have been complaining if GW hadn't decided that SM needed Heavy Intercessors as a whole new Troops choice? Or a Techmarine-crewed turret? Or yet another Captain variant?

If the needs of the army are your yardstick I don't think you've got a leg to stand on when it comes to SM.

SM haven't needed anything since 4th edition. The last unit that really had a place was the Drop Pod.

 Insectum7 wrote:
SM haven't needed anything since 4th edition. The last unit that really had a place was the Drop Pod.

Eh, I'd include the Land Speeder Storm (to give a suitable transport for Scouts) and, when aircraft were added to the game, porting the Hunter from Epic: Armageddon (and even adding the Stalker variant) made sense too.

For a big chunk of time Orks didn't even have a main tank model.

BrianDavion wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Maybe someday we will get a non Marine supplement.

Like all the ones from 6th/7th? Iyanden? Farsight Enclaves? Cadia? Haemonculus Covens?

and the Psykic awakening stuff which is still valid for non marine armies.

Psychic Awakening is not a supplement is it? Its a Campaign book - or are you including ALL the campaigns that Marines dominated (so all of them) as Marine supplements.

I have all those older books which are closer to actual supllments but still how many non marine suplements for the current 8/9th ed vs how many Marine ones?

 Bosskelot wrote:
They still need to re-do all the supplements for 9th and do a Black Templar one too with that likely to happening sometime this year. So even then, the Marine train shows no signs of slowing down "soon."

If they actually do take the pedal off and give other factions chances to breathe a little then you would absolutely see a lot of the hate and frustration die down, but this is yet to happen. As is we're due 2017-2021 to be practically non-stop Marine releases of some kind, with the only significant break being 2018. There is nothing comparable to that in previous 40k Editions and it's not like when Primaris first came out the Marine range was long overdue for new models; hadn't a lot of their kits recently been updated and refreshed in like 2015 or something?

And on that day Dakka shall return to its true passion: Complaining that space marines aren't strong enough and we need to return to the days where a tactical marine could fistfight other factions' melee specialist units and out-shoot other factions' gun specialist units.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
For a big chunk of time Orks didn't even have a main tank model.

Do they have one now? They've got a transport and a heavy transport. Unless you're counting the stuff from FW?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dysartes wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
9th launches and we get the Marine - Necrons -Marines - Marines - Marines codexes.

No, we see:

SM, Necron, [long COVID gap], Death Guard, [shorter COVID gap], Dark Eldar...

Space Wolves, Blood Angels, and Deathwatch didn't happen then? They didn't take up a release slot? Dark Angels aren't going to take up a whole month after GW announced they were slowing down?

That's weird, it wasn't all that long ago, memory must be playing tricks on me.

I believe I've said this before, but I think people would be a lot less hostile towards Marines if their releases weren't at the expense of other armies.

Bear in mind that every SM release is done at the expense of releasing a model for another army instead.

Dark Eldar have only lost models and options since 5th, but if GW had made DE HQs instead of Primaris Lieutenants, they could have basically have given DE their entire HQ section back and would still have had some Primaris Lieutenants left over.

Then you've got Eldar and Imperial Guard, both of which have been stuck with drinking-age models since time immemorial, yet there has been no significant attempt to update either line beyond the most token of offerings.

I honestly think that if GW had just taken the time to give some love to the neglected factions *first*, no one would have cared if they then spent the next 2-3 years vomiting Marines from every orifice.

And it's not even just model releases. Look at how the Psychic Awakening books were handled - the Marine factions got new warlord traits, new artefacts, new stratagems, new custom traits that work differently (i.e. better) than those of any other army etc. Okay, now what did DE get? Some uninspired custom traits (90% of which were garbage from the get-go, and the ones that weren't were swiftly nerfed to that level) and absolutely nothing else.

But I tell you what, I, as a Dark Eldar player, will be as reasonable as I think I possibly can be. So how about this - I won't ask GW for a single new model. Not one. GW can give every last one of them to Marines (I mean, they were probably planning to do that anyway, but hey). All I ask in return is that Dark Eldar get back their deleted HQs, units and wargear. Then leave me (and other DE players) to convert them ourselves.

Is it ideal? No. But I'd take it in a heartbeat over the current situation.

After 5 pages of argument and evidence, it would be nice to see the OP weigh in and let us know if their view has been changed or their understanding of the complaints deepened. I count one one line post in this thread not really addressing any of the counter arguments put to them.

Is the reason for this thread just to start a fight and walk away?

Ice_can wrote:

You mean like Faith and Fury which was primarily Marine focused.

And all of that stuff is in the codex now.

But hey, if you want to complain about that?
Remember that Engine War put out just as much content for Mechanicus and The Greater Good did for the Tau, Guard, and Genestealer Cults--in one book.

Not to mention saying it's okay your faction got 6 pages while my subfaction gets it's own approximatly 10 pages of rules each thats fair is one of the biggest causes of marine hate.

Stop defending the favouritism and other factions might see something more than 2 and a bit faction releases in an entire edition.

Then people might feel less hate.

No, they won't. They'll continue to be petty vindictive children when they don't get what they want. When Genestealer Cultists got a massive range update, people whined that it contained "so many characters" and that they didn't get things they made up as wild speculation.

Additionally, the nonstop complaining about "needing so many other books!" virtually guarantees that no other faction will see supplemental material, whether or not actual players of the faction would like to see them(Xenarites book for Mechanicus? Yes please!). Marines getting supplements is not a huge deal as much as people like to make it out to be given that most of them are a single character, an alternate armory page, some stratagems, and some extra warlord traits.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Maybe someday we will get a non Marine supplement.

Like all the ones from 6th/7th? Iyanden? Farsight Enclaves? Cadia? Haemonculus Covens?

To be fair, Farsight Enclaves and Cadia (just to name two) have had a bigger importance in 40K fluff than some of the SM chapters with supplements.
Them receiving their own supplement shouldn't surprise anyone.

 Aenar wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Maybe someday we will get a non Marine supplement.

Like all the ones from 6th/7th? Iyanden? Farsight Enclaves? Cadia? Haemonculus Covens?

To be fair, Farsight Enclaves and Cadia (just to name two) have had a bigger importance in 40K fluff than some of the SM chapters with supplements.
Them receiving their own supplement shouldn't surprise anyone.

Raven Guard, Dark Angels, Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Imperial Fists/Crimson Fists, Ultramarines, Deathwatch, White Scars, Iron Hands, and Salamanders. Those are the Chapters which have supplements. I'd argue that of them? Scars, Iron Hands, Salamanders, and Raven Guard are the least "important"...but even being the least important, they still have an important historical component to them.

Cadia has a bigger importance to the lore than some of those and didn't get hardly anything. The "Cadian Supplement" wasn't. It was just the rules from the Mont'ka book available without needing to buy the Mont'ka book.
Farsight's importance to the lore of 40k at large is questionable. It's important to the Tau lore, not so much 40k at large.

I'll agree that Farsight is a good choice to a supplement but them not getting one is not necessarily the end of the world. I don't know how we're going to do Cadia moving forward...but I'm hoping there will be something.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
9th launches and we get the Marine - Necrons -Marines - Marines - Marines codexes.

No, we see:

SM, Necron, [long COVID gap], Death Guard, [shorter COVID gap], Dark Eldar...

Space Wolves, Blood Angels, and Deathwatch didn't happen then? They didn't take up a release slot? Dark Angels aren't going to take up a whole month after GW announced they were slowing down?

That's weird, it wasn't all that long ago, memory must be playing tricks on me.

If your memory is telling you that, since the start of 9th edition, we have seen the release of Codex: Space Wolves, Codex: Blood Angels and Codex: Deathwatch, and that Codex: Dark Angels is on your mental list as coming soon - bearing in mind the original statement I addressed - then yes, your memory is playing tricks on you.

They said nothing about them being Codecs-only that they're taking up release space.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Spoiler:

 Dysartes wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
9th launches and we get the Marine - Necrons -Marines - Marines - Marines codexes.

No, we see:

SM, Necron, [long COVID gap], Death Guard, [shorter COVID gap], Dark Eldar...

Space Wolves, Blood Angels, and Deathwatch didn't happen then? They didn't take up a release slot? Dark Angels aren't going to take up a whole month after GW announced they were slowing down?

That's weird, it wasn't all that long ago, memory must be playing tricks on me.

If your memory is telling you that, since the start of 9th edition, we have seen the release of Codex: Space Wolves, Codex: Blood Angels and Codex: Deathwatch, and that Codex: Dark Angels is on your mental list as coming soon - bearing in mind the original statement I addressed - then yes, your memory is playing tricks on you.

They said nothing about them being Codecs-only that they're taking up release space.

Again, look at the quote I responded to initially. The one at the root of that little quote pyramid.

See that last word?

I think we can all agree that Space Marines didn't need any new models from the end of 7th edition. Yes?

Darsath wrote:
I think we can all agree that Space Marines didn't need any new models from the end of 7th edition. Yes?

No faction needs models because 40k isn't needed at all, so this argument is bunk. People need to recall that however much time, money, blood, etc. they've invested into 40k doesn't mean a damned thing because 40k isn't their game, it's GW's game.