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Generally, I’d say the answer is really ‘No’ for all factions. Largely because what makes a good story does not necessarily make a good game. Almost all 40K players are questing after the mythical ‘balanced’ matched play experience in their gaming, to make a nebulous ‘good and fair’ game where both sides have the same chance to win. Which has no connection to real war at all - there, if you’re seeking ‘fair and balanced’ engagements, you’re doing war wrong...

You seem to misunderstand the premise. The games we play are, generally speaking, a window into a larger conflict where that portion happens to have even odds. Yeah most battles are one sided, but not all of them. We are playing out those. So within the context of 'the odds within this window are approximately even' does a force play like it is supposed to? That is the question being asked.

You are free to interpret the question however you like. I am not ‘misunderstanding’ anything. The OP did not not state any specifics. My answer is still NO, as given in the fluff, a few Space Marines can defeat hundred of Orks. So no, the game rules do not match the fluff. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

CWE - Not in a billion years. Dying race on the brink of extinction sending its citizens to fight as line troops militia armed with 12" guns? Nothing about their "edtritch" technology is reflected in their rules. Their ancient super tech is outshined by any new thing for the IOM..

Phoenix lord - The undying suit of magical psychic armour that posses the bearer and turns them into a re-incarnation of some ancient mega warrior does not have an invulnerable save/ forcefield of any description and cant ever kill more then 4 things in combat because nothing in the codex is allowed more than 4 attacks on its saltine..

 totalfailure wrote:
You are free to interpret the question however you like. I am not ‘misunderstanding’ anything. The OP did not not state any specifics. My answer is still NO, as given in the fluff, a few Space Marines can defeat hundred of Orks. So no, the game rules do not match the fluff. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Oh. You missed it way more than I thought. I'm sorry.

mrFickle wrote:
CSM = not at all

In all the fluff I have read the CSM are portrayed as the veterans of the long war, many of the ones remaining alive for 10k years, some walked and fought along side the primarchs and maybe even the emperor. Each veteran of the long war is worth 100 loyalists (pre primaris but don’t see why it would be much different).

CSM should be hard as nails but they are more like over the bill loyalists.

However I haven’t read anything about the black legion really and the codex mostly reflects the black legion.

It’s hard to play a traitor legion with the available models and link it too the fluff in your mind. Why aren’t old terminator variants available for example.

I don't think one CSM should be able to take on 100 loyalists, but we should have some way to have our troops seem more like veterans. I think either bringing back Veteran Abilities that you can pay points for could do it, or simply allowing the Undivided Legions to take Chosen as troops. The God aligned Legions already have their cult marines to represent their veterans, so that would help out the Undivided Legions in that respect.

As for the codex being centered around the Black Legion, that's been a thing since 3.5, where they actually said that the codex was written around the Black Legion. It did however include good fluffy rules for the other Legions (though the internal balance of some of those rules were off), but we haven't really had anything like that in any codex since. The Traitor Legions supplement gave it back for a brief period, and Faith and Fury helped, but it could be better.

As for older terminator marks: nothing stops you from using Cataphractii and Tartaros terminators. As of the new loyalist codex they get no extra rules compared to standard Terminators, just different weapons options. Chaos Terminators already can take any terminator weapons they want, so just get some Cataphractii or Tartaros terminators and paint them as your favorite Legion. That's what I do.

My main army is Tau.

And no. Not at all.
Tau is supposed to have a high-mobile¹, combined arms² warfare style. However...

1. Many rules force the units to stay put to fire better. Cadre Fireblade, Ethereal, Mont'ka, Markerlights, Stormsurge. I can understand one or two, but five?! I'd like to keep moving during the entire game, baiting & switching the enemy army and giving terrain here to get more there (and rack up more points). Standing still and out-attritioning the enemy is the Astra Militarum business, not Tau's. Better yet - have a list concept that can do it, but not make it obligatory for all Tau players to put their infantry somewhere and never move them to avoid losing bonuses.

2. Tau codex's internal balance is all over the place. There are some superb units (Commanders, Riptides) and things man xenos was not meant to play with (Kroot Hounds, DS8 Turret). This forces players to spam what's good and ditch anything else. On a personal level, I love suits and wouldn't mind fielding a suit-only army in the same way people want to field a dread-only army; however, that cannot be the only viable list in an army! Or the current one (which isn't really good in the overall meta anyway). Good codexes allow for higher variance of effective lists.

I'm hoping our 9e codex will adress the terrible internal balance AND allow for more flexible rules.

The bigger issue I have with chaos space marines fluff is that they traded power for damnation right? That's why we have all the chaos spawn walking around. However, if you look at the actual army rules. Blood Angels for example, are a better melee army than world eaters. So, the world eaters swore loyalty to Khorne in order to end up as a worst melee army to Blood Angels? lol Why did they even bother?

The thing is, to swear themselves to chaos was a big thing. Its eternal damnation. But the tabletop rules makes CSM far weaker in stats and fighting ability than their marine counterparts... Makes you wonder what the traitor legions even sacrificed their soul for? If its power they wanted, they should have stayed loyalists because the loyalist space marines are literally more powerful than CSM.

All that fusion of the warp, forbidden tech and daemon with machine and superhumans and hundreds or even thousands of years in the warp seemed to have produced nothing that is any better than what loyalists have... which is mind boggling and utterly unfluffy.

A chaos space marine is so much worse than their loyalist counterparts its not even funny. And I would argue even with 2W, they are still going to be worse.

A space marine captain can get buffed to amazing levels of bad ass on the tabetop. And I reckon would wipe the floor of any generic CSM chaos lord most of the time. Only Abaddon can stand a chance, and when you need to bring out the Despoiler himself just to have a chance of fighting a Primaris captain or a buffed up generic captain... I think there is something again wrong with the fluff vis a vis the rules there.

Chaos Lords are supposed to be the strongest of the CSM forces, and they literally rule by strength alone. They defeat challengers in mortal combat routinely. So why are they worse than loyalist captains is beyond me.

CSM lists end up shoving Mortarion and Magnus into an army just to try and be competitive, and that... totally breaks the fluff too. Because hey, lets just use two daemon primarchs together in an army, when the chances of two such daemon primarchs co-operating together in a battlefield is literally 1 in a million. And what does that say about the effectiveness of the rest of CSM units when their best units on the tabletop are literally just their daemon primarchs.

Why is transhuman strategem only a loyalist thing? Aren't CSM superhuman as well? In fact, given the possibilities of daemon possession, warp powers and such. Shouldn't the CSM get much more fancy strategems like Transhuman than the loyalists? It should be far me fluffy to explain that a sudden blessing by the chaos gods rendered a CSM unit super powered for a moment as opposed to a loyalists unit.

Also, the whole idea of chaos soup being so important for supposed synergies is ridiculous too. The CSM legions are notoriously possessive of power and do NOT work well together. Even Abbadon's idea of marshalling all the CSM sworn to him is to just let them go do their own thing in general. So, why on the tabletop is there this search to combine the best of chaos soup together in order to squeeze out weird synergies or just general army effectiveness (like for example playing Magnus and Mortarion together).

It would be nice if the Chaos Marine rules could somehow represent their decaying equipment and poorly maintained armour being balanced out by much more experience, daemonic aid, and a vicious natural selection whittling them down to only the most talented warriors.

I'm not sure how you could do that effectively though, it does seem like a difficult design problem to solve.

*looks at R&H collection.


Well they did, until they didn't anymore.

I feel like that puts them between Primaras and Custodes.

CSM Iron Warriors - no. Ignoring light cover is... nice? But the trait doesnt work on my tanks, nor do I have access to any good artillery or actual siege weaponry (Rip my basilisks from older editions)

Tyranids - Trait wise - no Actually sadly. There is no real thing they do that feels like its a very 'nid' thing and its just bonuses to keep up with everyone else.

I play Custodes, and HELL NO. My units are supposed to be able to solo blood thirsters, and face down entire hordes of blood letters.

But instead of that, any semi competent squad of Astartes can take them within 24"

My hyper elite assassins are kinda gak at being assassins.

My sisters of Silence are no where near their fluff.

This is all with good reason. If we were going by fluff rules, the entire game would be broken.

Yes, the new Death Guard codex captures the feel of the fluff very well. Or, at least a lot better than the previous one.

There is still a big disconnect from the fluff and the table top (I'm still not a fan of seeing my 10,000 veterans of the long war die in droves to a bunch of fresh faced battle sisters for example) but that will always be there.

I play Harlequins and Space Wolves, I think the army books capture the armies lore on the table pretty well!

I think a big part of the problem is the fluff itself.

I've long advocated for fluff writers to write more accurately about what happens on the battlefield.

BL writers will keep writing about marines being faster than humans; they aren't Move 6 = Move 6. And when fluff writers do this, they give us the idea that marines are supposed to be faster than humans. Again though, they aren't. If they were, games designers would have made them that way.

If you say a Custodes is supposed to be able to solo a blood thirster, but it's not possible on the table, I'd like to introduce you to a fluff writer who isn't doing their job very well. That Marine that's supposed to be able to take out 100 orks? Yeah, that writer needs a talking to as well.

Now people tend not to see this the way I do; they think everyone wrote a story and then made a game based on it. That isn't really how it works; there was a game long before there was Black Library.

PenitentJake wrote:

BL writers will keep writing about marines being faster than humans; they aren't Move 6 = Move 6. And when fluff writers do this, they give us the idea that marines are supposed to be faster than humans. Again though, they aren't. If they were, games designers would have made them that way.

As an aside, the 'marines are faster than humans' has always been one of those things that felt 'off'' to me.

When I look at Marines, they certainly don't *look* like they've been built for speed.

I mean, I could certainly see them being slightly faster than humans because they have a longer stride, and gradually outpacing them because their endurance is much better. I just don't see them as all being Speedy Gonzales.

Thousand Sons/Daemons:

Well I haven't played a game with them yet but have read over the rules many times to get an idea of their playstyle:

- No real buffs to psychic powers besides the odd Relic or WT.

- Main strategy revolves around a couple of powers, in particular Weaver and Glamour. If they fail to go off or are denied then it can really go south quickly.

- Most of the relics are pretty naff, there are only a couple which are of any decent use.

- Horrors should be a lot better than they are at the moment. You're heavily reliant on a Changecaster and Flickering Flames to do any real damage, otherwise it's just an 18" Lasgun. In Matched Play there's no benefit to splitting them at all as a full unit would cost in excess of 900pts.

- Increasing damage of common weapons such as Heavy Bolters makes AiD less useful over time. They're also meant to be soulless automatons but suffer to morale as easy as anyone else.

- Given they're one of the original Legions, I'd expect a bit more variety in units. At the moment we only have Rubrics and Scarabs as our actual Thousand Sons troops, with the variety of ranged weapons severely limited. Decent anti-tank firepower is virtually non-existent for non-vehicle units.

T'au - no - the mobile shooty combined arms army that it's supposed to be is nowhere in sight in the rules.

You get buffs for standing still in a castle, but even those buffs are just super restrictive versions of stuff that LSM get as standard every battle round, pretty much.

And don't even talk to me about the 'bonus' that Stormsurges get for making themselves immobile. For the trouble it takes the bonus is crap, especially with the hit mod cap. Make it like the RW Jink bonus (is you have it unless you choose fallback/normal move/advance in your previous movement phase).

Daemons. Not the totally frightening, horrific, combat monsters of warp spawned terror. When random vet marine sgts have more attacks than GUO...well, it's not a good day. Daemon armies feel like NPC parts of a computer game. Something for the other player to shoot at, fight, etc. Daemons should be terrifying! Greater daemons should have rules that reflect their ancient evil and power. Automatic -3 to morale for greater deamons, a Blood Thirster should be in a combat class by itself. GUO should be T8 (T10) at the min and have real personality with rules that effect their spread disease mirth. KOS should have Psychic abilities that dwarf all other psykers and the ability to steal spells or at least -3 to casts. KOS should be great fighters, but their danger is that they can cause enemy units to attack themselves or friendlies through temptation.

They should have rules that effect the above the table top as well. A spell that removes enemy CP (Tzeentch), an ability that causes a unit to attack itself (Slannesh), a LD test to even fight a Blood Thirster at - LD penalty (Khorne), a GUO regens d3+1 wound a phase (Nurgle).

Plaguebearers should auto wound on 6s if they have 1 attack only. Heralds should have abilities that actual do more than just buff +1 strength or add a attack.

Spells that do more that just mortal wound or buff. The Lore represents temptation, misinformation, stunning violence, and horror and the armies don't feel that way.

The Daemons should 'feel' more unsettling and ancient. Enemy units having to rely on LD should matter more. Failing LD tests should mean that enemy unit can either only fall back or fight last at penalty.

The Daemons need more personality and abilities /rules that reflect the Lore as the unimaginable warp that it is.

 vipoid wrote:

As an aside, the 'marines are faster than humans' has always been one of those things that felt 'off'' to me.

When I look at Marines, they certainly don't *look* like they've been built for speed.

I mean, I could certainly see them being slightly faster than humans because they have a longer stride, and gradually outpacing them because their endurance is much better. I just don't see them as all being Speedy Gonzales.

Thank you for the image of an Ultramarine wheeling its legs around in a circular blur like it's Sonic the Friggin' Hedgehog, complete with revving whine sound effect.

Iron Warriors: Yes actually. I wish they were more competitive, but I can field demon engines and vehicles to my heart’s content, and I feel like the rules in Faith and Fury give them a solid feel.

My Space Marines: Well yes but no. I converted my Blood Angels into Red Hunters in 7th so .... kind of hoping they get a 9th Ed update soon ... lol/jk

Necrons: There are minor bits to pick but overall, yes. I feel like 9th ‘crons do play like their fluff generally describes. Especially the Nightbringer.

Tsons: Not really. Ahriman on disc plays about like what I would expect, but the army as a whole? Not so much. Tzangors, from what I’ve seen in the fluff are often used as chaff, and they typically end up being some of the better units in the codex. The sorcerers don’t feel right either. You have a variety of spells, but because of how they locked down the new cabals, and because of the fact that there’s currently no way around the rule of only being able to use a power once in a phase, you end up being surprisingly limited. They feel less like an army of unstoppable automatons backed by towering infernos of sorcerous badassery, and more like what would happen if someone’s well meaning grandmother had read part of a Tsons novel, not really understood it very well, and then tried to describe it later. They’re just a bland imitation of what they should be.

Death Guard: I don’t personally like the new codex quite as much as the old, but yeah, absolutely, the for sure feel like they should!

Mechanicus: yeah, I feel like they did a good job with these guys.

Agents of Bile: Another yes. Like my IW, I wish they were a little more powerful, but they do work “like they should” IMO.

My Orks: Eh? Kind of? Depending on the build? But not quite?

IG: See orks
Inquisition: No. Not even close. Hoping to get something akin to the old witch hunters codex for them, or at least something better than the WD we’re using now ...

My Tau haven’t seen the table in a few editions so I’m honestly not sure there ....

 Da Boss wrote:
It would be nice if the Chaos Marine rules could somehow represent their decaying equipment and poorly maintained armour being balanced out by much more experience, daemonic aid, and a vicious natural selection whittling them down to only the most talented warriors.

I'm not sure how you could do that effectively though, it does seem like a difficult design problem to solve.

They need to separate the veterans from the new recruits, so to speak.

IMO Chaos needs to look a bit like a more extreme space wolf army - ONLY wolf guard/long fangs OR blood claws, but no much in between.

So you have Chaos Space Marines, and chaos space marines.

You have Veterans of the Long War and eager new brutal warriors.

You have:

Chaos veterans
M6 WS2+ BS3+ S4 T4 W3 A2 Ld8 sv3+

and

Recruits
M6 WS3+ Bs3+ S4 T4 W2 A1 Ld6 Sv3+

And give the veterans skills reflecting their long war expertise. Effectively, the veterans should have already gone through crusade experience...

 Hellebore wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
It would be nice if the Chaos Marine rules could somehow represent their decaying equipment and poorly maintained armour being balanced out by much more experience, daemonic aid, and a vicious natural selection whittling them down to only the most talented warriors.

I'm not sure how you could do that effectively though, it does seem like a difficult design problem to solve.

They need to separate the veterans from the new recruits, so to speak.

IMO Chaos needs to look a bit like a more extreme space wolf army - ONLY wolf guard/long fangs OR blood claws, but no much in between.

So you have Chaos Space Marines, and chaos space marines.

You have Veterans of the Long War and eager new brutal warriors.

You have:

Chaos veterans
M6 WS2+ BS3+ S4 T4 W3 A2 Ld8 sv3+

and

Recruits
M6 WS3+ Bs3+ S4 T4 W2 A1 Ld6 Sv3+

And give the veterans skills reflecting their long war expertise. Effectively, the veterans should have already gone through crusade experience...

Eh. I don’t really agree that is needs to be like that. I think you could have a CSM statline, a veteran statline and a renegade statline, with the renegades either representing roving war bands of marines that are no longer loyal to the imperium, but who haven’t really become “chaosified”, or the guys who are fresh off the EoT boat. Each would have it’s own unique advantages and disadvantages that would ideally help you start to theme your force appropriately to whatever YOUR vision of Chaos is. I do sincerely feel good w/my IW (not so much in power level, but I am satisfied that they play like Iron Warriors now), but I can agree CSM as a whole need a rethink.

You have way too many people who say “ Well the thing is, THIS is exactly what chaos is >insert oddly shoehorned and unique idea of the ONE THING chaos is here <;.” The problem with that is that chaos is a million things. For every person that argues that CSM shouldn’t have new things and how would they even have ammo left and you’re in the eye of terror and you don’t even have supply lines”, there’s half a million examples of Iron Warrior forge worlds both stable and in the eye, where they make things that exceed the Mechanicum’s wildest imagination, there’s a ton of examples of Red Corsairs out of the eye and the capabilities they have, there’s the Black Legion who at this point are the Bizaro to the UM’s Superman, and then there really are those little war bands who are almost out of ammo, with no way to restock except to take it from someone else, who’s armor is failing, and who don’t stand much of a chance in a straight up fight. There is also every possible in-between.

So I feel like they probably either need to treat the main CSM like a sandbox where you can build your own Legion (similar to 3.5 but I’d rather we balance some of the crazier combos so there aren’t as many OP builds), or they need to make smaller supplements. I don’t really think they can make most folks happy with the bog standard VSM codex approach.

Tycho wrote:


Inquisition: No. Not even close. Hoping to get something akin to the old witch hunters codex for them, or at least something better than the WD we’re using now ...

The list in PA: Pariah isn't much different than the WD, but it is a slight improvement. Like you though, I'm hoping for a full blown Agents of the Inquisition dex... And I am hopeful. Some of the advent photos did look Inquisitorial- and while many have been revealed to be Cursed City models, I do not believe all of them have.

Keep the Faith; the Emperor Protects.

PenitentJake wrote:

Tycho wrote:


Inquisition: No. Not even close. Hoping to get something akin to the old witch hunters codex for them, or at least something better than the WD we’re using now ...

The list in PA: Pariah isn't much different than the WD, but it is a slight improvement. Like you though, I'm hoping for a full blown Agents of the Inquisition dex... And I am hopeful. Some of the advent photos did look Inquisitorial- and while many have been revealed to be Cursed City models, I do not believe all of them have.

Keep the Faith; the Emperor Protects.

Oh wow. I didn’t pick that up. Didn’t even realize Inquisition was in there!

I think it is cool if a loyalist marine can be buffed up to better than its chaos counterparts. But that is the key there; buffed. Inspiring leadership, discipline during the heat of battle, cohesion between different parts of the army, these are what should make loyalist marines shine compared to chaos counterparts. Synergy.

But for just showing up, one on one? The chaos marines should win. They should have less aura buffs, less synergy, but better stats. I would go further and say loyalists should have a variety of different stratagems to deal with various situations but very few stratagems that are '[specific unit] does a thing'. That should be more for CSM, where each of them is out for themselves and trying to hoard the glory.

Salamanders: too much so, eradicators and flamestorm Gravis are powerful, so much so I'm not playing my Salamanders until they're toned down.
Metallica(Admech Knights & Skitarii): seems like they're gonna be equal with the new book.
Bloody Rose: can't wait for the new stuff and am looking forward to the final codex of 9th ed.....
Ynarri: want more stuff for CW to round out my pointy ears
Flawless Host: kinda...maybe...sorta...not

I have to say though, that although CSM do not play like their fluff, Deathguard are a totally different kettle of fish altogether. They have managed to make Deathguard fun to play and extremely fluffy. Deathguard play very much like their fluff, slow, not very shooty yet extremely resilient army with contagions and disease flowing around everywhere, and scary in Melee. I really hope CSM gets the same loving treatment as DG.