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Regular old tacticals. Do chapters have them in similar numbers than the Primaris? Are scouts a thing anymore?

Are “new” tacticals being made or is it all Primaris now? And we’re just waiting for the first born to die out?

Each Chapter gets to make its own decisions. They had to take the Primaris tech but it doesn't mean they have to use it.

 Gert wrote:
Each Chapter gets to make its own decisions. They had to take the Primaris tech but it doesn't mean they have to use it.

That might be theoretically true, but every single Chapter we're given any information on appears to have embraced Primaris.

It's still left very vague though. Even campaign breakdowns are still just Company, Demi-Company, and the like, plus with the way the Codex Astartes is now Battleline and Close Support could mean a Tactical squad and a Hellblaster squad rather than previously when it was very specific.
The whole premise of the Space Wolves focussed Dawn of Fire book was that while some Lords accepted the Primaris, others didn't and even though Logan Grimnar allowed the Primaris into the Chapter, a Wolf Lord could very easily just not make any. Same goes for other traditionalist Chapters.

I imagine that many chapters see how a given aspirant is doing at the point in the process that they'd have to undergo primarisization and make their decision from there. If the aspirant has been struggling to accept his other implantations, you'd probably rather have a firstborn than rolling the dice and gambling on a primaris.

Plus, the benefits of being primaris seem really questionable given the implied extra risk. Being a bit taller and tougher arguably isn't worth being down the extra marines who died crossing the rubicon primaris. I imagine most chapters would be more interested in scaling down the primaris equipment to be compatible with firstborn than in killing off more aspirants to have more primaris.

EDIT: Also, isn't it canon that the process for crossing the rubicon primaris has been refined over time? I could see a split between chapters on the Terra-side and far sides of the great rift. Those on the Terra side might be more willing to produce more primaris as knowledge of the refined process is distributed to them. That same knowledge would be slower to spread across the far side of the rift, so chapters might prefer to stick to their tried and true methods rather than adding more volatile variables to their already shaky situation.

Specifically on the Scout point, I was under the impression that was still a stage in the process of becoming a Space Marine - have I misread something?

Initiates still have to serve as Scouts before becoming Battlebrothers. Codex compliant Chapters still have dedicated reserve Companies so it stands to reason that even a Primaris would still have to go through the Fire Support, Close Assault and then finally Batteline Companies.

 Dysartes wrote:
Specifically on the Scout point, I was under the impression that was still a stage in the process of becoming a Space Marine - have I misread something?

Yes. Primaris scouts aren't released yet, so the GW writers are vague about it.... Can't have well rounded fluff if there isn't a model. At this point the Zoids comic had better toy related writing...

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Specifically on the Scout point, I was under the impression that was still a stage in the process of becoming a Space Marine - have I misread something?

Yes. Primaris scouts aren't released yet, so the GW writers are vague about it.... Can't have well rounded fluff if there isn't a model. At this point the Zoids comic had better toy related writing...

they're not vague at all. they're quite clear that all marines serve as scouts.

Yeah there should be 0 confusion here if people literally just read the Marine Codex.

Black templar neophytes areas close as we have model wise. Note that they are armed sort-of-primaris fashion, implying primaris non-vanguard 'trainee' scouts and firstborn scouts are slightly different.

Also there is a slight difference in experience in some primaris: any surviving former greyshield will never have served on a scout company in the field.

Templar Initiates are armed with shotguns and combat knives which is the same as normal Scouts. They just get assigned to a Templar and might carry their weapons.

Primaris Neophytes can carry bolt carbines, a distinctive non-firstborn weapon. They also have a second wound like 'mature' astartes and unlike firstborn neophytes

So they get a Boltgun variant as a new option similar to how Scouts get a Boltgun.
Its all fairly irrelevant as I have already explained, the Marine Codex makes clear Scouts and Initiates are still a thing and are an important process in become an Astartes.

The_Real_Chris wrote:

Yes. Primaris scouts aren't released yet...

Aren't they though? Infiltrators and eliminators both feel very "scouts but primaris" to me. I think not having those units be "scouts" is just a result of the awkward primaris rollout. If GW had bitten the bullet and just released truescale marines with new tacticool wargear options, I imagine infiltrators and eliminators would have just been different loadouts for "scouts."

Infiltrators and Eliminators are full Astartes, not Initiates. They fill the roles of infiltration and assassination units on missions where Scouts could not necessarily be trusted to accomplish the task.

Very much depends on the chapter. Some are all primaris, some have none, many are a mix.

 Gert wrote:
Infiltrators and Eliminators are full Astartes, not Initiates. They fill the roles of infiltration and assassination units on missions where Scouts could not necessarily be trusted to accomplish the task.

Right, but do you predict we'll be getting "primaris scouts" other than infiltrators/eliminators? Between the aesthetic and rules similarities and infiltrators bumping scouts out of the troop slot, it seems to me that the intent is to replace scouts with infiltrators/eliminators. Eliminators are the new sniper+camocloak squad, and infiltrators are the new infiltrating bolter squad. If GW does what I hope they will and consolidates primaris and firstborn units together, then I suspect scouts will be using the same datasheet as at least one of those two units.

Giving infiltrators and eliminators fluff indicating they're not scouts is all well and good, but it also seems like a decision that could have gone either way. It would have made just as much sense to say, "Here are primaris scouts. They use "phobos" armor which totally isn't power armor because they haven't earned the right to wear that yet."

I was under the mis understanding that all Primaris have been "Trained and tested" well beyond the average "initiate" and most were given to their respective chapters almost fully "battle tested". I.E. There are already Primaris Captains, Librarians, and Chaplains. It would be hard to give those titles to raw initiates.

Ruleswise I have no clue but the progression through the Companies is an important (and I mean actually important) piece of Marine background and as we're discussing background, that's what I'm focusing on.


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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I was under the mis understanding that all Primaris have been "Trained and tested" well beyond the average "initiate" and most were given to their respective chapters almost fully "battle tested". I.E. There are already Primaris Captains, Librarians, and Chaplains. It would be hard to give those titles to raw initiates.

Yes and no. The first wave of Primaris was tested in simulated combat either through hypno-indoctrination or against Combat Servitors and possibly captured enemies. They were acceptable soldiers but lacked the tactical flexibility and knowledge an Astartes trained through the various Companies would have.
For example, a Mars-born Primaris assigned to a Battleline Company at the start of the Indomitus Crusade might have a wealth of simulated experience whereas one raised up through the Companies would likely have 30 to 40 years of practical combat experience.

 Gert wrote:
Ruleswise I have no clue but the progression through the Companies is an important (and I mean actually important) piece of Marine background and as we're discussing background, that's what I'm focusing on.

Sure. Fair. I guess I'm just pointing out that this seems like an awkward choice that seems likely to get updated or retconned at some point. I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years from now, eliminators are fluffed as being scouts or else there's fluff stating that Roboute created the new "spectrus squad" that might consist of either newbies or hardened vets but who use the same statlines regardless.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I was under the mis understanding that all Primaris have been "Trained and tested" well beyond the average "initiate" and most were given to their respective chapters almost fully "battle tested". I.E. There are already Primaris Captains, Librarians, and Chaplains. It would be hard to give those titles to raw initiates.

Yes and no. The first wave of Primaris was tested in simulated combat either through hypno-indoctrination or against Combat Servitors and possibly captured enemies. They were acceptable soldiers but lacked the tactical flexibility and knowledge an Astartes trained through the various Companies would have.
For example, a Mars-born Primaris assigned to a Battleline Company at the start of the Indomitus Crusade might have a wealth of simulated experience whereas one raised up through the Companies would likely have 30 to 40 years of practical combat experience.

And to add to that, that's the Mars-born primaris. Primaris created by their chapters after RG gave those chapters the recipe are probably subject to the same training as other aspirants plus some extra blood tests to see if the primaris organs are likely to agree with them.

Again, re-read the Dawn of War books, or even Devestation of Baal. How do you account for positions of extreme authority and power when they have never been through initiate training? The answer is they have. Gman sees what he feels are millions of Primaris. That is AFTER Cawl did intersquad fighting and live fire drills. It wasn't all hypno-training. The demonstration where a single squad of intercessors takes down and destroys 3 fully loaded and primed Combat Servitors with just knives, that type of skill comes from training. Cawls likely killed millions, perhaps billions, in live fire training exercises like that one. Efficiency testing I think Primus called it. Watching his brothers be slaughtered day in and day out, just to eek out the 1% best skill.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Again, re-read the Dawn of War books, or even Devestation of Baal. How do you account for positions of extreme authority and power when they have never been through initiate training? The answer is they have. Gman sees what he feels are millions of Primaris. That is AFTER Cawl did intersquad fighting and live fire drills. It wasn't all hypno-training. The demonstration where a single squad of intercessors takes down and destroys 3 fully loaded and primed Combat Servitors with just knives, that type of skill comes from training. Cawls likely killed millions, perhaps billions, in live fire training exercises like that one. Efficiency testing I think Primus called it. Watching his brothers be slaughtered day in and day out, just to eek out the 1% best skill.

I think you might be misunderstanding what Gert is saying. No one is saying the primaris never had live fire training; they're saying that there's a difference between running Danger Room training drills cooked up by a tech priest and being exposed to the chaos of an active battlefield. Sure, they're really good at stabbing servitors, but do they know what it feels like to be in the presence of daemons? Have they had orks pull some completely absurd maneuver that only makes sense to an ork brain? Have they resisted the urge to perform a reckless charge because a drukhari is torturing a captain to death in front of them?

I don't doubt that their training is excellent, but I also doubt they're getting the full suite of knowledge provided by practical experience.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't primaris captains from the initial batch basically just promoted to their positions based on psych profiles and performance evaluations during training? And "initiate training" isn't necessarily the same as learning to shoot a bolter and walk in formation. A primaris who never underwent training on Nocturne doesn't have the same worldview shaping experience of training out in the ash wastes. A non-fenrisian primaris might not know what it was like to survive a troll attack alongside your pack while you're still unaugmented, and they might not know what it's like to go hunting in the Fenrisian snow.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Again, re-read the Dawn of War books, or even Devestation of Baal. How do you account for positions of extreme authority and power when they have never been through initiate training? The answer is they have. Gman sees what he feels are millions of Primaris. That is AFTER Cawl did intersquad fighting and live fire drills. It wasn't all hypno-training. The demonstration where a single squad of intercessors takes down and destroys 3 fully loaded and primed Combat Servitors with just knives, that type of skill comes from training. Cawls likely killed millions, perhaps billions, in live fire training exercises like that one. Efficiency testing I think Primus called it. Watching his brothers be slaughtered day in and day out, just to eek out the 1% best skill.

I think you might be misunderstanding what Gert is saying. No one is saying the primaris never had live fire training; they're saying that there's a difference between running Danger Room training drills cooked up by a tech priest and being exposed to the chaos of an active battlefield. Sure, they're really good at stabbing servitors, but do they know what it feels like to be in the presence of daemons? Have they had orks pull some completely absurd maneuver that only makes sense to an ork brain? Have they resisted the urge to perform a reckless charge because a drukhari is torturing a captain to death in front of them?

I don't doubt that their training is excellent, but I also doubt they're getting the full suite of knowledge provided by practical experience.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't primaris captains from the initial batch basically just promoted to their positions based on psych profiles and performance evaluations during training? And "initiate training" isn't necessarily the same as learning to shoot a bolter and walk in formation. A primaris who never underwent training on Nocturne doesn't have the same worldview shaping experience of training out in the ash wastes. A non-fenrisian primaris might not know what it was like to survive a troll attack alongside your pack while you're still unaugmented, and they might not know what it's like to go hunting in the Fenrisian snow.

You are dismissing a lot of things here.

Cawl isn't "Some tech priest". He's literally the guy who wrote THE BOOK. He was there during the Horus Heresy. He singularly created a race of astartes better than the ones created by the Emperor. I don't think you should underestimate that. His "danger room" drills were for all intents and purposes 10k years of sustained live fire drills of them killing eachother and running combat drills against max settings Combat Servators. That's not nothing. Yeah, it's not howling at the moon or whatever dumb shiz the Furries do for training, but to be fair, they likely would fail Cawl's training tests far more than the Primaris ended up doing.

Being good at engineering does not automatically translate into being good at creating realistic combat drills for a variety of foes incl. aliens with their own tech bases.

I'm pretty good at stabbing needles into veins to take blood or insert cannulas. I'm pretty certain I will be thoroughly rubbish at stabbing knives into people to end their lives, because I've got no relevant training or experience beyond putting a sharp thing through skin. I could design a pretty good training course for the former, but would not be able to for the latter.

Those internal drills are also, ultimately, a game trying to mimic reality, which can lead to issues of the participants becoming really good at defeating the game, but struggling to adapt when some of those parameters are stripped away in actual war. Actual experience counts for a lot, because the reality is unrealistic trope is a thing and only experience can really prepare someone for rare events.

Is Cawl's training good? Yes, and in some regards probably better than the training regimens of many Chapters. Will it negate experience? No. The Cawl Primaris who survived long enough to gain experience are probably utterly vicious though (had good rules too at one point).

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
You are dismissing a lot of things here.

Cawl isn't "Some tech priest". He's literally the guy who wrote THE BOOK. He was there during the Horus Heresy. He singularly created a race of astartes better than the ones created by the Emperor. I don't think you should underestimate that. His "danger room" drills were for all intents and purposes 10k years of sustained live fire drills of them killing eachother and running combat drills against max settings Combat Servators. That's not nothing. Yeah, it's not howling at the moon or whatever dumb shiz the Furries do for training, but to be fair, they likely would fail Cawl's training tests far more than the Primaris ended up doing.

Cawl was a minor Adept during the Heresy and was only chosen by Guilliman after he absorbed the mind of one of the original members of the Astartes Project. He also didn't "singularly" create the Primaris, he had huge amounts of resources including the Sangprimus Portum, a pure repository of the genetic material of every single Primarch. His stocks of geneseed never degraded or suffered mutation because he had access to the pure source for almost 10k years. He also absorbed the minds of many different Magi and scientists over the years to the point where Cawl started to lose who he was.
As for the Primaris training, at no point did anyone say it was "nothing" but simulations can only do so much. Its not us saying that the Primaris initially performed worse than Firstborn due to lack of experience, it was GW Fezz. Multiple times GW has stated that casualties among the initial Primaris batch were higher than anticipated because they lacked the tactical and practical knowledge of Astartes trained in the traditional way. The whole point of the Primaris and Firstborn POVs in Wolftime is that the Mars-born Primaris are capable warriors worthy of Russ's lineage but they aren't Fenrisians and will never be. They don't have the same instincts and skills that the Fenris-born Wolves do. Cawl's training is purely fighting, whereas the trials of Astartes Chapters are about survival and building bonds of brotherhood while also beginning the indoctrination process. On worlds like Baal or Fenris the trials are a death sentence for even seasoned initates which again is shown in Wolftime where a fully realised Primaris almost dies about 10 times because he doesn't know how to survive on Fenris.

Personally I wish they would split them into separate organisations. Say there are enough primaris to result in a founding where chapters hive off the tiny marines and they form related chapters. Plenty of fun ways to take that fluff (a few traitors/civil wars babdab style would be good). And Codex wise the books get rationalised.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:
For example, a Mars-born Primaris assigned to a Battleline Company at the start of the Indomitus Crusade might have a wealth of simulated experience whereas one raised up through the Companies would likely have 30 to 40 years of practical combat experience.

How many drops Lieutenant...

The_Real_Chris wrote:
How many drops Lieutenant...

Almost that exact exchange happens in the Indomitus tie-in novel.

Well there are a bunch of pop culture references we are all primed to react to.
Another common one is loving the smell of drop pods/bolters/whatever in the morning

(On that note one of my favourite BL lines is the Night Lords novels with the dreadnaught waking up after so long. 'I heard bolter fire')

I'm pretty sure there's a Sentinel pilot who does the whole "I love the smell of promethium in the morning" line in one of the Ciaphas Cain novels.