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 Insectum7 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
You'd have a point if "Bolter porn" wasn't the baseline for the last two decades. That's the standard and y'all need to get over it.

Oh I'm over the fact that BL novels kinda suck.

And up until Primaris the Marine statline was a nice T4W1. That was like just 5 years ago?

Two decades is 2002. That's Necron Warriors at 18 ppm to Marine 15, and Bloodletters at 26ppm iirc.

I don't know what you're on about.

Well the novels clearly aren't too bad if people keep buying them and they, for the most part, get praise. You're referring to rules, and one might say that, if the rules don't reflect the fluff, that needs to be fixed.

Also Necron Warriors sucked back in the day too so that's not really a benchmark or anything.
Source: I played Necrons in 3rd and know how absolutely hyped the Glance ability was vs the math on it. They could've absolutely been buffed too, but the new dynamic of Immortals being the baseline "elite" Necron troop is a lot more awesome.

 catbarf wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:But to be fair, I don't think most marine players want marines to be the baseline. Or at least, they don't want them to be statted like they're "average." They want marines to feel special, powerful, and few in number because that's the marine power fantasy/sales pitch. They (we) want marines to feel tough; we don't want to describe their durability as "average." Basically, we want marines to feel a lot like custodes. Which makes the existence of custodes as a faction kind of frustrating.

If Marines were T7 and had 4 wounds apiece and 2+ saves, they still wouldn't be elite. You'd just be setting a new baseline, and Marines would still feel mundane and average at that new point. Custodes, assuming they also got buffed to keep up, would still be the army that feels like 'elites' in comparison. And all the non-Marine, non-Custodes factions would just feel horde-ier than ever.

You literally cannot stat your way out of this. The average is 'whatever Marines are'. If you want that to change, they need to stop being, well, the norm.

Highlighted the red text to indicate that I'm aware that the existence of custodes makes it difficult for marines to feel "elite."

I think it's worth pointing out that there's a difference between marines feeling "elite" and marines armies being rare. Yes, marines being a common army irl means that people will always build to try and deal with them. But if you're killing my marines because you loaded up on D2, that still feels better than if you're killing them with bolters and shootas. You took out my marine with a might plasma gun shot? Very good. May the brother die knowing that he could only be felled by such a rare and powerful weapon. You killed a W1 marine with a lucky lasgun shot from 24" away? Oof. It's going to be awkward reporting that one to the chapter. Why are we even bothering with all these extra organs and expensive armor?

For me, W2 does a lot to tell the story that marines are extra-hard-to-kill types with a bit of plot armor slapped on for good measure. If my faction's win rate has to go down as you price them fairly for that extra wound, so be it. But alas, GW made the cost too low (especially when combined with the other buffs around the same time), and then decided to up the killing power of everyone to keep pace with the new wound instead of just setting a reasonable points cost.

Just buy 4 of the large McFarlane toys and use as knights, boom giant Space Marines.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Just buy 4 of the large McFarlane toys and use as knights, boom giant Space Marines.

Finally, the answer to my bolterporn fantasies. <3

SemperMortis wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:

I don't have a problem with T5 Boys, but I wouldn't agree to the second part. Lore and stats are closely related, even if a 1:1 transition is not possible. It is a bit of a "hen or egg?" topic, but creatures in the fluff do what they do because of their stats (and the plot) and creatures on the table have the stats they have because of the fluff. T10 Gretchins for example would feel very awkward, regardless wether or not you could point them perfectly.

As pointed out already...the Lore is meaningless because it doesn't follow any kind of logic trail, nor is it consistent. In one story you have a single space wolf blood claw slaughtering orkz in their hundreds, in another story you have a single mob of Kommandos gutting the majority of a Space Wolf Company. Basing the game off bolter porn is a stupid premise to be blunt.

Don't make it out to be like it is impossible from reading some fluff to determine the general capabilities of a given unit. Who said I am basing it on bolter porn? Did I mention any specific stories? Putting words into other people's mouth is a stupid thing to do in a discussion, to be blunt.

Are you telling me that you are not able to even get a rough feeling for what the general power level of a Space Wolves Bloodclaw should be and instead go "could be anything between a Grot (1) and an Emperor titan (10), I don't know everything in my bolter porn is so inconsistent"? Please, give me break.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:But to be fair, I don't think most marine players want marines to be the baseline. Or at least, they don't want them to be statted like they're "average." They want marines to feel special, powerful, and few in number because that's the marine power fantasy/sales pitch. They (we) want marines to feel tough; we don't want to describe their durability as "average." Basically, we want marines to feel a lot like custodes. Which makes the existence of custodes as a faction kind of frustrating.

If Marines were T7 and had 4 wounds apiece and 2+ saves, they still wouldn't be elite. You'd just be setting a new baseline, and Marines would still feel mundane and average at that new point. Custodes, assuming they also got buffed to keep up, would still be the army that feels like 'elites' in comparison. And all the non-Marine, non-Custodes factions would just feel horde-ier than ever.

You literally cannot stat your way out of this. The average is 'whatever Marines are'. If you want that to change, they need to stop being, well, the norm.

Highlighted the red text to indicate that I'm aware that the existence of custodes makes it difficult for marines to feel "elite."

I think it's worth pointing out that there's a difference between marines feeling "elite" and marines armies being rare. Yes, marines being a common army irl means that people will always build to try and deal with them. But if you're killing my marines because you loaded up on D2, that still feels better than if you're killing them with bolters and shootas. You took out my marine with a might plasma gun shot? Very good. May the brother die knowing that he could only be felled by such a rare and powerful weapon. You killed a W1 marine with a lucky lasgun shot from 24" away? Oof. It's going to be awkward reporting that one to the chapter. Why are we even bothering with all these extra organs and expensive armor?

For me, W2 does a lot to tell the story that marines are extra-hard-to-kill types with a bit of plot armor slapped on for good measure. If my faction's win rate has to go down as you price them fairly for that extra wound, so be it. But alas, GW made the cost too low (especially when combined with the other buffs around the same time), and then decided to up the killing power of everyone to keep pace with the new wound instead of just setting a reasonable points cost.

The problem is that you don't want to reduce whole armies to just being NPCs with the majority of their troops basically being useless. Lasguns have to be able to trade fire with Space Marines because they will crush my poor little guardsmen in melee. And it also feels pretty bad to just have the lasguns, which is to say, the vast majority of the army, just standing around being cheerleaders and ablative wounds for the guy with the plasma gun. Time and effort goes into painting them as well after all. I personally really dislike facing for instance Custodes where an individual basic model brings more to the table than a whole squad of my guardsmen. Sure, it's a nice power fantasy for the players of these elite armies, but it would be nice for the rest to also have fun and not just be punching bags.

And with Marines being by far the most-played category of armies, that only gets worse because it's not just one game out of so many, it's almost every game where you face marines. I don't like the second wound because it basically halved the value of my guys in most situations and made the rolling of buckets of dice even more useless. To kill a single marine (on average, I know, bad stats), I have to fire 24 lasgun shots. That's more than a full squad's worth at close range (which means that the squad is dead next turn because even a few marines will beat them to a pulp). Against even more elite elites, it becomes far worse with needing huge piles of dice rolling just to have a minor effect.

Are Bolter Porn addicts that believe that every astartes can defeat single handed a whole ork Waagh or IG regiment crying about the tabletop stats of their plastic avatars??

I have lost the sense of this thread long ago, can someone give me a briefing, please?

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I think it's worth pointing out that there's a difference between marines feeling "elite" and marines armies being rare.

For practical reasons, there really isn't.

You've also got an additional problem in terms of both how wide 40k's scale is (because some genius thought including Imperial Knights and Baneblades in standard games would be a great idea), and in the sheer number of just Marine units. Even if you put Custodes to one side, you've got to find a niche for Scouts (Marines), Tactical Marines (Elite Marines), Sternguard (Elite Elite Mrines), Primaris Marines (Newer, Eliter Marines), Terminators (Elite Elite Elite Marines), Centurions (Elite Elite Elite Elite Marines), plus the 400 or so sergeants, captains and commanders, and their terminator and primaris versions. Then, on top of that, you have all the variations with their myriad of elites and specialists - like Grey Knights, who are Marines and Terminators but even more elite.

My point is, it's really hard to stat the standard Marines as elites without running out of design space for the dozens and dozens of other Marines units that need to be far more elite.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I think it's worth pointing out that there's a difference between marines feeling "elite" and marines armies being rare. Yes, marines being a common army irl means that people will always build to try and deal with them. But if you're killing my marines because you loaded up on D2, that still feels better than if you're killing them with bolters and shootas. You took out my marine with a might plasma gun shot? Very good. May the brother die knowing that he could only be felled by such a rare and powerful weapon. You killed a W1 marine with a lucky lasgun shot from 24" away? Oof. It's going to be awkward reporting that one to the chapter. Why are we even bothering with all these extra organs and expensive armor?

The problem is, while that might feel better for the Marine player, it's a tiresome experience for the player whose standard weapons might as well be water pistols.

Again, this is the problem with Marines being by far the most played faction (with the runners up being evil Marines). If you have a lot of bolters or splinter weapons or lasguns, then you can probably accept the risk that you might occasionally face Custodes or Knights and end up fishing for a lot of 6s to achieve anything. However, when your standard anti-infantry weapons are grossly inefficient even against the most common infantry in the game, there's no point even bothering.

Hence, an awful lot of units either have to get super-buffed to keep up or else just don't see play and instead people take more tanks or elite units or whatever else has sufficient firepower to actually be worth a damn in that role.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
But alas, GW made the cost too low (especially when combined with the other buffs around the same time), and then decided to up the killing power of everyone to keep pace with the new wound instead of just setting a reasonable points cost.

This I do agree with. GW seems to want to have its cake and eat it in terms of making Marines elite but also counterintuitively making them relatively cheap. I don't know if this goes back to the above point of there being so many Marine units that the lower ones need to be cheap, but it certainly creates a lot of difficulties.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Highlighted the red text to indicate that I'm aware that the existence of custodes makes it difficult for marines to feel "elite."

Just to be clear, I was responding to that. If I gave the impression that I was ignoring your point, I apologize.

What I was getting at is that it's not the existence or lack thereof of Custodes that's the issue, it's the ubiquity of Marines. Even in my Heresy group where there are no Custodes players, Marines never feel 'elite', because... why would they? They're the basic troops of the basic faction. The lore can tell you they're extraordinarily rare supermen but on the tabletop they are the baseline, vanilla, default. Why wouldn't you describe their durability as 'average' when they are the average?

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I think it's worth pointing out that there's a difference between marines feeling "elite" and marines armies being rare. Yes, marines being a common army irl means that people will always build to try and deal with them. But if you're killing my marines because you loaded up on D2, that still feels better than if you're killing them with bolters and shootas. You took out my marine with a might plasma gun shot? Very good. May the brother die knowing that he could only be felled by such a rare and powerful weapon. You killed a W1 marine with a lucky lasgun shot from 24" away? Oof. It's going to be awkward reporting that one to the chapter. Why are we even bothering with all these extra organs and expensive armor?

In practice, that 'tough against lasguns, weak against plasma' paradigm is not ideal for a couple of reasons:
1. Non-Marine players whose basic weapons are essentially worthless, or require tidal waves of dice to do anything, get frustrated that they have to buy, build, and paint models that might as well just be board-occupying tokens against 80% of armies.
2. Marine players staring down two dozen plasma guns watch their models get blown off the board, and because they're more expensive on account of the second wound, they're points pinatas for those specialized weapons. You might be okay with your Marines getting shot by plasma guns, but over the past couple of years I've read a lot of complaints from Marine players watching their army evaporate to massed plasma, autocannons, disintegrators, heavy bolters, and so on.

The combination of Marines making up a majority of armies and simultaneously having a specialized defensive profile that is very strong against certain weapons but very weak against others creates an obvious incentive to gravitate towards the hard-counter weapons. For Marines to not feel like glass by virtue of being hard-countered by any TAC list, they need to either be a minority on the tabletop (so that loading up on anti-MEQ is a bad idea to begin with), or they need to have a defensive profile so middle-of-the-road that there are no ideal anti-MEQ counters to spam.

GW giving more weapons anti-MEQ capability was throwing a bone to armies that historically have had limited anti-MEQ choices in a MEQ-dominated game; more AP and more D2 was an inevitability, and the alternative is going back to large swathes of each codex staying on the shelf because they don't have a place in Marinehammer 40K.

Vatsetis wrote:
Are Bolter Porn addicts that believe that every astartes can defeat single handed a whole ork Waagh or IG regiment crying about the tabletop stats of their plastic avatars??

I have lost the sense of this thread long ago, can someone give me a briefing, please?

Propaganda works sadly.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
Marines going to 2 wounds never made sense and it still doesn't because here is the news flash we have been trying to tell Marine players FOREVER! YOU ARE THE BASE LINE!!!!!

But to be fair, I don't think most marine players want marines to be the baseline. Or at least, they don't want them to be statted like they're "average." They want marines to feel special, powerful, and few in number because that's the marine power fantasy/sales pitch. They (we) want marines to feel tough; we don't want to describe their durability as "average." Basically, we want marines to feel a lot like custodes. Which makes the existence of custodes as a faction kind of frustrating.

It is irrelevant what Marine players "Want". The fact remains they are the baseline. And it isn't because GW just randomly chose them to be the baseline to judge stats off of, it is because they are without question the MOST POPULAR army in the game. So if you increase their durability or dmg output then the rest of the game adjusts to meet this new trend. There is literally no baseline stat or rule you can give to Marines to make them feel elite, ever. Let me say that again to be clear, Marines WILL NEVER FEEL ELITE. You could literally give every Marine the Statline of a Dreadnought with 2+ armor and -1dmg and they would still feel flimsy because the entire game would adjust to bring buttloads of Anti-Tank weapons with 3+dmg.

The reason Custodes kind of got away (for a bit) with being "elite" was because they were such a small fraction of the game, but even then look what happened at the tournament level. Custodes became so popular that everyone adjusted fire to target their statline...which also overlapped pretty nicely with most Marine statlines. I mean christ, I went to a GT and 2 of my 5 games were against Custodes players. Out of 40 something odd people, 9-10 were playing custodes.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

You'd have a point if "Bolter porn" wasn't the baseline for the last two decades. That's the standard and y'all need to get over it.

It really depends on how you want your bolter porn fantasy to play out. Do you want to auto-win because you are the bestest of best boys with your super special shiny armor Marines? If that is the case...grow up or quit playing because this is a competitive game even when played in a friendly environment and nobody wants to be the NPC army you get to beat up on with ease. Or, do you want as Wyld wants to have your Marines feel special/elite? Do you really want a single Marine to beat 20-30 Ork boyz with ease? If that is the case then as I mentioned, you will have to pay the points cost for it, every Marine should have a dreadnoughts statline and be priced as such. Your army is now 10-20 Models total...Also, i'm no longer bringing 60-120 Ork boyz to fight you, i'm bringing Mek Gunz and Tankbustas to kill you with impunity from cover because i'm not into playing an NPC race for you to have your power trip on.

a_typical_hero wrote:

Don't make it out to be like it is impossible from reading some fluff to determine the general capabilities of a given unit. Who said I am basing it on bolter porn? Did I mention any specific stories? Putting words into other people's mouth is a stupid thing to do in a discussion, to be blunt.

Are you telling me that you are not able to even get a rough feeling for what the general power level of a Space Wolves Bloodclaw should be and instead go "could be anything between a Grot (1) and an Emperor titan (10), I don't know everything in my bolter porn is so inconsistent"? Please, give me break.

First off, that wasn't a hit specifically against you, but rather the concept of basing the game off fluff...its impossible.

As to your first point, yes its impossible to determine a units general capabilities from fluff because you have dozens if not hundreds of authors who have written fluff for GW for decades. Look at Brothers of the Snake, by Dan Abnett (One of the best 40k writers ever). He has a SINGLE Space Marine defeating an entire Dark Eldar raiding party of hundreds. Ragnar Blackmane series has Ragnar as a bloodclaw soloing hundreds of orkz with impunity. Now go read Star of Damocles or any other faction book that doesn't play into the bolter porn mindset, A single Tau battlesuit defeats a squad of Marines with relative ease. I can site example after example, there is literally no way to judge anything's power level by the fluff, hell the writers can't even get numbers right let alone stats The 3rd War of Armageddon was supposed to have been the biggest battle/deployment of Marines and guardsmen since the Horus Heresy....had fewer troops than the allies deployed during WW1 on the Western Front. Also, i'm glad you brought up Emperor Titans, and Titans in general. How many points is the smallest Titans? (Warhound titans) I think they are like 2k, I don't play them ever so i'm guessing at this point but I remember someone saying they were basically a single model army. Now, how many points is Girlyman...or Primarchs in general? 500-700 roughly? good. OK, now how many points is a Warlord Titan supposed to be? Ridiculously expensive like 5,500 right? Ok. Now...in the fluff, Sanguinius, a 400-700pt model Solo'd a Warlord Titan. So are we then supposed to price Sangy at 5,600pts? I mean, he killed a Warlord Titan by himself so therefore his power level is higher right?

All of that is to just really emphasize the point that you can't base the game on fluff because none of it is written with any kind of continuity in mind.

 catbarf wrote:

GW giving more weapons anti-MEQ capability was throwing a bone to armies that historically have had limited anti-MEQ choices in a MEQ-dominated game; more AP and more D2 was an inevitability, and the alternative is going back to large swathes of each codex staying on the shelf because they don't have a place in Marinehammer 40K.

Oh look, more Revisionism. Anti-MEQ was never a problem ever since 5th edition LOL

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

GW giving more weapons anti-MEQ capability was throwing a bone to armies that historically have had limited anti-MEQ choices in a MEQ-dominated game; more AP and more D2 was an inevitability, and the alternative is going back to large swathes of each codex staying on the shelf because they don't have a place in Marinehammer 40K.

Oh look, more Revisionism. Anti-MEQ was never a problem ever since 5th edition LOL

Also not true.

Orks relied upon Power Klaws hidden in blobs of 30 boyz to kill MEQ, they also spammed Rokkits wherever possible. SO yes, up until 8th, for Orkz Anti-Meq was a problem.

For those wondering how bad Ork boyz used to be against MEQs. Ork boyz got 2 attacks base, and a 3rd for having 2 CC weapons. 30 Boyz was 180pts, PK was 25pts (I think) and the BP which was required basically, was 5pts, so a normal mob of boyz was 210pts. 10 MEQs without upgrades was 150pts. Marines swing first, 12 attacks, 6 hits, 3 wounds and basically 3 dead Ork boyz. 26 Boyz swing back with 78 attacks, 39 hits, 13 wounds and 4.3 dead Boyz. The Nob then got to swing last with his PK with 3 attacks, 1.5 hits and 1.25 dead Marines. So 210pts of Orkz in CC killed.... 83pts of Marines.

SemperMortis wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

GW giving more weapons anti-MEQ capability was throwing a bone to armies that historically have had limited anti-MEQ choices in a MEQ-dominated game; more AP and more D2 was an inevitability, and the alternative is going back to large swathes of each codex staying on the shelf because they don't have a place in Marinehammer 40K.

Oh look, more Revisionism. Anti-MEQ was never a problem ever since 5th edition LOL

Also not true.

Orks relied upon Power Klaws hidden in blobs of 30 boyz to kill MEQ, they also spammed Rokkits wherever possible. SO yes, up until 8th, for Orkz Anti-Meq was a problem.

For those wondering how bad Ork boyz used to be against MEQs. Ork boyz got 2 attacks base, and a 3rd for having 2 CC weapons. 30 Boyz was 180pts, PK was 25pts (I think) and the BP which was required basically, was 5pts, so a normal mob of boyz was 210pts. 10 MEQs without upgrades was 150pts. Marines swing first, 12 attacks, 6 hits, 3 wounds and basically 3 dead Ork boyz. 26 Boyz swing back with 78 attacks, 39 hits, 13 wounds and 4.3 dead Boyz. The Nob then got to swing last with his PK with 3 attacks, 1.5 hits and 1.25 dead Marines. So 210pts of Orkz in CC killed.... 83pts of Marines.

That's not too bad a trade.
Orks lost 1/10th of their unit and killed 1/2 a marine unit.
What's the comparison like now?

 Blndmage wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

GW giving more weapons anti-MEQ capability was throwing a bone to armies that historically have had limited anti-MEQ choices in a MEQ-dominated game; more AP and more D2 was an inevitability, and the alternative is going back to large swathes of each codex staying on the shelf because they don't have a place in Marinehammer 40K.

Oh look, more Revisionism. Anti-MEQ was never a problem ever since 5th edition LOL

Also not true.

Orks relied upon Power Klaws hidden in blobs of 30 boyz to kill MEQ, they also spammed Rokkits wherever possible. SO yes, up until 8th, for Orkz Anti-Meq was a problem.

For those wondering how bad Ork boyz used to be against MEQs. Ork boyz got 2 attacks base, and a 3rd for having 2 CC weapons. 30 Boyz was 180pts, PK was 25pts (I think) and the BP which was required basically, was 5pts, so a normal mob of boyz was 210pts. 10 MEQs without upgrades was 150pts. Marines swing first, 12 attacks, 6 hits, 3 wounds and basically 3 dead Ork boyz. 26 Boyz swing back with 78 attacks, 39 hits, 13 wounds and 4.3 dead Boyz. The Nob then got to swing last with his PK with 3 attacks, 1.5 hits and 1.25 dead Marines. So 210pts of Orkz in CC killed.... 83pts of Marines.

That's not too bad a trade.
Orks lost 1/10th of their unit and killed 1/2 a marine unit.
What's the comparison like now?

Note that that assumes you just... Appear in Close Combat.

Realistically, the Marines are gonna be shooting you well before you make it there.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

GW giving more weapons anti-MEQ capability was throwing a bone to armies that historically have had limited anti-MEQ choices in a MEQ-dominated game; more AP and more D2 was an inevitability, and the alternative is going back to large swathes of each codex staying on the shelf because they don't have a place in Marinehammer 40K.

Oh look, more Revisionism. Anti-MEQ was never a problem ever since 5th edition LOL

Also not true.

Orks relied upon Power Klaws hidden in blobs of 30 boyz to kill MEQ, they also spammed Rokkits wherever possible. SO yes, up until 8th, for Orkz Anti-Meq was a problem.

For those wondering how bad Ork boyz used to be against MEQs. Ork boyz got 2 attacks base, and a 3rd for having 2 CC weapons. 30 Boyz was 180pts, PK was 25pts (I think) and the BP which was required basically, was 5pts, so a normal mob of boyz was 210pts. 10 MEQs without upgrades was 150pts. Marines swing first, 12 attacks, 6 hits, 3 wounds and basically 3 dead Ork boyz. 26 Boyz swing back with 78 attacks, 39 hits, 13 wounds and 4.3 dead Boyz. The Nob then got to swing last with his PK with 3 attacks, 1.5 hits and 1.25 dead Marines. So 210pts of Orkz in CC killed.... 83pts of Marines.

That's not too bad a trade.
Orks lost 1/10th of their unit and killed 1/2 a marine unit.
What's the comparison like now?

Note that that assumes you just... Appear in Close Combat.

Realistically, the Marines are gonna be shooting you well before you make it there.

The Orks will also be shooting the SMs....
And in those days each unsaved wounds on the SMs end equaled a dead Marine.

ccs wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

GW giving more weapons anti-MEQ capability was throwing a bone to armies that historically have had limited anti-MEQ choices in a MEQ-dominated game; more AP and more D2 was an inevitability, and the alternative is going back to large swathes of each codex staying on the shelf because they don't have a place in Marinehammer 40K.

Oh look, more Revisionism. Anti-MEQ was never a problem ever since 5th edition LOL

Also not true.

Orks relied upon Power Klaws hidden in blobs of 30 boyz to kill MEQ, they also spammed Rokkits wherever possible. SO yes, up until 8th, for Orkz Anti-Meq was a problem.

For those wondering how bad Ork boyz used to be against MEQs. Ork boyz got 2 attacks base, and a 3rd for having 2 CC weapons. 30 Boyz was 180pts, PK was 25pts (I think) and the BP which was required basically, was 5pts, so a normal mob of boyz was 210pts. 10 MEQs without upgrades was 150pts. Marines swing first, 12 attacks, 6 hits, 3 wounds and basically 3 dead Ork boyz. 26 Boyz swing back with 78 attacks, 39 hits, 13 wounds and 4.3 dead Boyz. The Nob then got to swing last with his PK with 3 attacks, 1.5 hits and 1.25 dead Marines. So 210pts of Orkz in CC killed.... 83pts of Marines.

That's not too bad a trade.
Orks lost 1/10th of their unit and killed 1/2 a marine unit.
What's the comparison like now?

Note that that assumes you just... Appear in Close Combat.

Realistically, the Marines are gonna be shooting you well before you make it there.

The Orks will also be shooting the SMs....
And in those days each unsaved wounds on the SMs end equaled a dead Marine.

12" Pistol with S4 AP6 or AP- (I forget which, but it's irrelevant) and BS2.
If all 30 are in range, that's 10 hits, 5 wounds, and 1-2 dead Marines.

Whereas the Marines shoot from 24" away with Rapid Fire S4 AP5 and BS4.
That's 10 shots, 20/3 hits, 10/3 wounds, and 3-4 dead Boys at max range. Double that to 6-7 in half range.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
You'd have a point if "Bolter porn" wasn't the baseline for the last two decades. That's the standard and y'all need to get over it.

Oh I'm over the fact that BL novels kinda suck.

And up until Primaris the Marine statline was a nice T4W1. That was like just 5 years ago?

Two decades is 2002. That's Necron Warriors at 18 ppm to Marine 15, and Bloodletters at 26ppm iirc.

I don't know what you're on about.

Well the novels clearly aren't too bad if people keep buying them and they, for the most part, get praise.

Riiiiight. . . . Well let's just say they won't be winning any Nebulas anytime soon. People can be entertained and find value even though the writing is not great, and the storytelling is tropey and full of holes.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Also Necron Warriors sucked back in the day too so that's not really a benchmark or anything.
Source: I played Necrons in 3rd and know how absolutely hyped the Glance ability was vs the math on it. They could've absolutely been buffed too, but the new dynamic of Immortals being the baseline "elite" Necron troop is a lot more awesome.

Necron Warriors didn't suck. More importantly, they didn't suck compared to Marines. Source: I played both Necrons and Marines in 3rd/4th.

SemperMortis wrote:
Also not true.

Orks relied upon Power Klaws hidden in blobs of 30 boyz to kill MEQ, they also spammed Rokkits wherever possible. SO yes, up until 8th, for Orkz Anti-Meq was a problem.

EviscerationPlague either has poor memory or seems to think that a codex having maybe 2-3 decent ways to kill MEQs is fine and dandy, but either way I already showed that his last claim of 'revisionism' was bs and I can't be bothered to do it again when he never addressed it.

What I will say is good riddance to the days of every Tyranid list starting with a unit of Hive Guard, basic troops like Guardians being little more than cannon fodder, and ostensibly anti-Marine specialists like Howling Banshees and Incubi getting yeeted by Intercessors. Fact is the game is often a Marine-fest and units/weapons that are awful against Marines don't see nearly as much play as units/weapons that counter them.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:But to be fair, I don't think most marine players want marines to be the baseline. Or at least, they don't want them to be statted like they're "average." They want marines to feel special, powerful, and few in number because that's the marine power fantasy/sales pitch. They (we) want marines to feel tough; we don't want to describe their durability as "average." Basically, we want marines to feel a lot like custodes. Which makes the existence of custodes as a faction kind of frustrating.

If Marines were T7 and had 4 wounds apiece and 2+ saves, they still wouldn't be elite. You'd just be setting a new baseline, and Marines would still feel mundane and average at that new point. Custodes, assuming they also got buffed to keep up, would still be the army that feels like 'elites' in comparison. And all the non-Marine, non-Custodes factions would just feel horde-ier than ever.

You literally cannot stat your way out of this. The average is 'whatever Marines are'. If you want that to change, they need to stop being, well, the norm.

Highlighted the red text to indicate that I'm aware that the existence of custodes makes it difficult for marines to feel "elite."

I think it's worth pointing out that there's a difference between marines feeling "elite" and marines armies being rare. Yes, marines being a common army irl means that people will always build to try and deal with them. But if you're killing my marines because you loaded up on D2, that still feels better than if you're killing them with bolters and shootas. You took out my marine with a might plasma gun shot? Very good. May the brother die knowing that he could only be felled by such a rare and powerful weapon. You killed a W1 marine with a lucky lasgun shot from 24" away? Oof. It's going to be awkward reporting that one to the chapter. Why are we even bothering with all these extra organs and expensive armor?

For me, W2 does a lot to tell the story that marines are extra-hard-to-kill types with a bit of plot armor slapped on for good measure. If my faction's win rate has to go down as you price them fairly for that extra wound, so be it. But alas, GW made the cost too low (especially when combined with the other buffs around the same time), and then decided to up the killing power of everyone to keep pace with the new wound instead of just setting a reasonable points cost.

Here's a better way to look at it, imo. HOW are the Marines supposed to be getting their elite value? By just being able to stand in the open and tank incoming AT fire? The Astartes animation is widely praised for making the Marines feel nice and elite, but even those guys take cover from heavy firepower.

Here's a good question. How many Marines should it take to kill a Marine? Like, just a squad of Marines firing bolters at another squad of Marines? Right now it takes 10 Marines, Rapid Firing, to kill a single Marine in the open. Does that feel appropriate? If Marines were 3W each and a 2+ save, that goes to 50 Marines without changing the Bolter. Does that feel right?

Now, you could change the Bolter to compensate. . . but then naturally you have to change the Heavy Bolter. So what does the new Heavy Bolter look like? But then realize that the Heavy Bolter is ubiquitous among the Imperial Armies. If every Guard squad is getting a Heavy Bolter, and a Heavy Bolter is better than your standard Bolter, what does that really mean for the survivability for Marines in a world where dozens of Heavy Bolters (and much stronger weapons) can be fielded?

Your relative stats just continue to spiral.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SemperMortis wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

GW giving more weapons anti-MEQ capability was throwing a bone to armies that historically have had limited anti-MEQ choices in a MEQ-dominated game; more AP and more D2 was an inevitability, and the alternative is going back to large swathes of each codex staying on the shelf because they don't have a place in Marinehammer 40K.

Oh look, more Revisionism. Anti-MEQ was never a problem ever since 5th edition LOL

Also not true.

Orks relied upon Power Klaws hidden in blobs of 30 boyz to kill MEQ, they also spammed Rokkits wherever possible. SO yes, up until 8th, for Orkz Anti-Meq was a problem.

That "after 5th" thing seems weird to me since Orks had Choppas which reduced Marines saves to 4+ in 3rd and most of 4th, and they were pretty capable of laying the hurt on. Plus they were piloting looted Leman Russes with AP3 Battle Cannons (or Basilisks).

One has to realize that basic loyalist Marines in the context of 40K just aren't that special. They're on par with Aspect Warriors, Necron immortals, Ork nobz, Incubi, maybe Genestealers.
They're inferior to Crisis Suits, Custodes, Cult Marines and Tyranid Warriors.
What can give them the edge is their armor combined with strong leadership and training and a solid yet not extremely deadly weaponry.

The start of 9th saw actual Elite Marines, but what happened was that things that were supposed to be just as awesome became cannon fodder.
We still have that problem with Gravis armor. Marines shouldn't be the faction that can go full on T5 and 3 wounds everywhere when Necrons, Death Guard and Custodes exist with partly worse stats. (note, this is not really a question of gaming strength in my view but more about immersion).

How to make marines feel elite: all models must be fully painted to a battle-ready standard and 100% WYSIWYG, and you may not play the game if marine models make up more than 10% of your fully painted and WYSIWYG collection by point cost. If you have not played at least ten games since the last game in which you used marines you may not include marines in your army.

 JNAProductions wrote:

ccs wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

GW giving more weapons anti-MEQ capability was throwing a bone to armies that historically have had limited anti-MEQ choices in a MEQ-dominated game; more AP and more D2 was an inevitability, and the alternative is going back to large swathes of each codex staying on the shelf because they don't have a place in Marinehammer 40K.

Oh look, more Revisionism. Anti-MEQ was never a problem ever since 5th edition LOL

Also not true.

Orks relied upon Power Klaws hidden in blobs of 30 boyz to kill MEQ, they also spammed Rokkits wherever possible. SO yes, up until 8th, for Orkz Anti-Meq was a problem.

For those wondering how bad Ork boyz used to be against MEQs. Ork boyz got 2 attacks base, and a 3rd for having 2 CC weapons. 30 Boyz was 180pts, PK was 25pts (I think) and the BP which was required basically, was 5pts, so a normal mob of boyz was 210pts. 10 MEQs without upgrades was 150pts. Marines swing first, 12 attacks, 6 hits, 3 wounds and basically 3 dead Ork boyz. 26 Boyz swing back with 78 attacks, 39 hits, 13 wounds and 4.3 dead Boyz. The Nob then got to swing last with his PK with 3 attacks, 1.5 hits and 1.25 dead Marines. So 210pts of Orkz in CC killed.... 83pts of Marines.

That's not too bad a trade.
Orks lost 1/10th of their unit and killed 1/2 a marine unit.
What's the comparison like now?

Note that that assumes you just... Appear in Close Combat.

Realistically, the Marines are gonna be shooting you well before you make it there.

The Orks will also be shooting the SMs....
And in those days each unsaved wounds on the SMs end equaled a dead Marine.

12" Pistol with S4 AP6 or AP- (I forget which, but it's irrelevant) and BS2.
If all 30 are in range, that's 10 hits, 5 wounds, and 1-2 dead Marines.

Whereas the Marines shoot from 24" away with Rapid Fire S4 AP5 and BS4.
That's 10 shots, 20/3 hits, 10/3 wounds, and 3-4 dead Boys at max range. Double that to 6-7 in half range.

1-2 dead marines is not irrelevant. That's 1-2 marines who don't get to swing back 1st.
You've also apparently never seen anyone supporting their would-be chargers with fire from other units to soften up a target.

Oh wow. Lots of responses to my posts over the last day or so. I'll try to hit as many points as I can without making this response too long. (I will fail, but I'll try all the same.)

Dolnikan wrote:
The problem is that you don't want to reduce whole armies to just being NPCs with the majority of their troops basically being useless. Lasguns have to be able to trade fire with Space Marines because they will crush my poor little guardsmen in melee. And it also feels pretty bad to just have the lasguns, which is to say, the vast majority of the army, just standing around being cheerleaders and ablative wounds for the guy with the plasma gun. Time and effort goes into painting them as well after all. I personally really dislike facing for instance Custodes where an individual basic model brings more to the table than a whole squad of my guardsmen. Sure, it's a nice power fantasy for the players of these elite armies, but it would be nice for the rest to also have fun and not just be punching bags...

I don't like the second wound because it basically halved the value of my guys in most situations and made the rolling of buckets of dice even more useless. To kill a single marine (on average, I know, bad stats), I have to fire 24 lasgun shots.

So a couple of things here:
A.) The extra wound on marines costs points. It didn't cost enough points when it came out (I won't hazard to speak to whether it costs enough now), but it's not free. So while your lasguns are indeed less efficient as a result of the second wound, each marine they do kill represents a bigger percentage of your opponent's army than before. I think we'd have been better off tweaking the cost of W2 marines rather than making everyone more lethal to compensate. That way, marines can enjoy tanking lots of shots, but they're also fielding fewer bodies and feeling the shots that do get through.

B.) I understand not wanting the lasgun guys to feel like cheerleaders, but I also kind of feel like that's how IG are intentionally designed at the moment? Needing lots of guardsmen to kill marines and being pretty bad at it except with special weapons seems (broadly) consistent with the lore. And I know, lore shouldn't dictate rules, but I don't think GW is crazy for landing on cheerleader guardsmen. I'm sure you could make a very solid case for shrinking the gap between guardsmen and marines, but I also think the current interpretation is a reasonable one. tldr; cheerleader lasguns are kind of working as intended I guess?

vipoid wrote:
You've also got an additional problem in terms of both how wide 40k's scale is (because some genius thought including Imperial Knights and Baneblades in standard games would be a great idea), and in the sheer number of just Marine units. Even if you put Custodes to one side, you've got to find a niche for Scouts (Marines), Tactical Marines (Elite Marines), Sternguard (Elite Elite Mrines), Primaris Marines (Newer, Eliter Marines), Terminators (Elite Elite Elite Marines), Centurions (Elite Elite Elite Elite Marines), plus the 400 or so sergeants, captains and commanders, and their terminator and primaris versions. Then, on top of that, you have all the variations with their myriad of elites and specialists - like Grey Knights, who are Marines and Terminators but even more elite.

Good points. My selfish and unreasonable preference would probably be for superheavies to not be in 40k at all and for the super-duper-elite factions (custodes, GK, DW) to get the imperial agents treatment. A lot of my stance is based on the idea that part of the marine identity is being the "main character" plot-armored faction who perform a bit above and beyond what they reasonably should because protagonist powers. And to clarify, I don't mean that marines should be OP or anything. I just mean that the aforementioned traits are part of what i perceive their "gimmick" to be. And if the game is going to include even more super special variations on the same basic concept, then it kind of leaves marines without a narrative or playstyle niche.

Basically, I feel like W2 tacticals/intercessors are in roughly the right place for the faction. I'm okay with termies/gravis units being even tougher because they're rare and more expensive. The faction as a whole could absolutely stand to merge a few datasheets. Tacticals and Intercessors can just be one datasheet, for instance.

Again, this is the problem with Marines being by far the most played faction (with the runners up being evil Marines). If you have a lot of bolters or splinter weapons or lasguns, then you can probably accept the risk that you might occasionally face Custodes or Knights and end up fishing for a lot of 6s to achieve anything. However, when your standard anti-infantry weapons are grossly inefficient even against the most common infantry in the game, there's no point even bothering.

I hear you. I feel like this falls into my point above about finding the right price for the improved marine statline. I believe there's a balanced marine statline to be had somewhere between the old W1 firstborn stats and the current custodes stats. A statline with enough durability and offense to be relevant but expensive enough to be balanced. That's where I'd like marines to be. Not sure if the current statline is that or not.

catbarf wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Highlighted the red text to indicate that I'm aware that the existence of custodes makes it difficult for marines to feel "elite."

Just to be clear, I was responding to that. If I gave the impression that I was ignoring your point, I apologize.

Fair. The internet, and all that.

What I was getting at is that it's not the existence or lack thereof of Custodes that's the issue, it's the ubiquity of Marines. Even in my Heresy group where there are no Custodes players, Marines never feel 'elite', because... why would they? They're the basic troops of the basic faction. The lore can tell you they're extraordinarily rare supermen but on the tabletop they are the baseline, vanilla, default. Why wouldn't you describe their durability as 'average' when they are the average?
...
In practice, that 'tough against lasguns, weak against plasma' paradigm is not ideal for a couple of reasons:
1. Non-Marine players whose basic weapons are essentially worthless, or require tidal waves of dice to do anything, get frustrated that they have to buy, build, and paint models that might as well just be board-occupying tokens against 80% of armies.
2. Marine players staring down two dozen plasma guns watch their models get blown off the board, and because they're more expensive on account of the second wound, they're points pinatas for those specialized weapons. You might be okay with your Marines getting shot by plasma guns, but over the past couple of years I've read a lot of complaints from Marine players watching their army evaporate to massed plasma, autocannons, disintegrators, heavy bolters, and so on.
...
The combination of Marines making up a majority of armies and simultaneously having a specialized defensive profile that is very strong against certain weapons but very weak against others creates an obvious incentive to gravitate towards the hard-counter weapons. For Marines to not feel like glass by virtue of being hard-countered by any TAC list, they need to either be a minority on the tabletop (so that loading up on anti-MEQ is a bad idea to begin with), or they need to have a defensive profile so middle-of-the-road that there are no ideal anti-MEQ counters to spam.

You make good points. (And so does SemperMortis in a much more off-putting internet voice.) This is probably my own unreasonable and unpopular opinion, but I'm kind of okay with marines dying in droves to anti-marine weapons. If the narrative we're telling is that my marines charged an enemy with plasmaguns coming out their ears, then it's reasonable that they'd lose a lot of guys as part of that attack. I think there are interesting discussions to be had on perhaps limiting how heavily we can skew our weapon/unit selections and on the unhealthiness of GW promoting one faction so much more heavily than others, but those seem like their own topics to me. For what 40k is, plasma guns being pricey and also good at killing marines seems like it's working as intended.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
B.) I understand not wanting the lasgun guys to feel like cheerleaders, but I also kind of feel like that's how IG are intentionally designed at the moment? Needing lots of guardsmen to kill marines and being pretty bad at it except with special weapons seems (broadly) consistent with the lore. And I know, lore shouldn't dictate rules, but I don't think GW is crazy for landing on cheerleader guardsmen. I'm sure you could make a very solid case for shrinking the gap between guardsmen and marines, but I also think the current interpretation is a reasonable one. tldr; cheerleader lasguns are kind of working as intended I guess?

If that's the case then lasguns need to stop being weapons. A squad of guardsmen should have a single plasma gun and a "fire lasguns" special rule that gives them a suppressing fire debuff or D3 mortal wounds or whatever instead of rolling attacks. It's really bad game design to have to roll buckets of dice for very little effect.

Good points. My selfish and unreasonable preference would probably be for superheavies to not be in 40k at all and for the super-duper-elite factions (custodes, GK, DW) to get the imperial agents treatment. A lot of my stance is based on the idea that part of the marine identity is being the "main character" plot-armored faction who perform a bit above and beyond what they reasonably should because protagonist powers. And to clarify, I don't mean that marines should be OP or anything. I just mean that the aforementioned traits are part of what i perceive their "gimmick" to be. And if the game is going to include even more super special variations on the same basic concept, then it kind of leaves marines without a narrative or playstyle niche.

The problem is this undermines the concept of marines being elite. If marines are the "main character" faction that gets most of the lore focus, power beyond what is reasonable, etc, then they're going to continue to be the most common faction. And when marines make up 75% of the game there is no possible stat line that will ever make them feel elite, they'll always be by definition average. You'll have marines as the average, a couple horde armies as cannon fodder trash, and maybe a couple special units of GK/custodes as elites. No matter how many buffs you pile onto marines that design goal guarantees that all you will ever do is power creep what is considered average.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
B.) I understand not wanting the lasgun guys to feel like cheerleaders, but I also kind of feel like that's how IG are intentionally designed at the moment? Needing lots of guardsmen to kill marines and being pretty bad at it except with special weapons seems (broadly) consistent with the lore. And I know, lore shouldn't dictate rules, but I don't think GW is crazy for landing on cheerleader guardsmen. I'm sure you could make a very solid case for shrinking the gap between guardsmen and marines, but I also think the current interpretation is a reasonable one. tldr; cheerleader lasguns are kind of working as intended I guess?

If that's the case then lasguns need to stop being weapons. A squad of guardsmen should have a single plasma gun and a "fire lasguns" special rule that gives them a suppressing fire debuff or D3 mortal wounds or whatever instead of rolling attacks. It's really bad game design to have to roll buckets of dice for very little effect.

I mean, I don't disagree. Honestly, I feel like 2k games are too big for 40k's system. Too many models. Too many dice. Too much killing power packed into too small a space. I think guard (and the game as a whole really) would benefit from the "intended" game size shrinking down to like, 750-1250ish, and then tuning the stats and rules around armies of that size. Lasguns and bolters both matter more when there aren't six artillery pieces evaporating the models carrying them or simply taking out their intended targets faster and more efficiently. Plus, you'd cut down on the number of dice rolls considerably.

Good points. My selfish and unreasonable preference would probably be for superheavies to not be in 40k at all and for the super-duper-elite factions (custodes, GK, DW) to get the imperial agents treatment. A lot of my stance is based on the idea that part of the marine identity is being the "main character" plot-armored faction who perform a bit above and beyond what they reasonably should because protagonist powers. And to clarify, I don't mean that marines should be OP or anything. I just mean that the aforementioned traits are part of what i perceive their "gimmick" to be. And if the game is going to include even more super special variations on the same basic concept, then it kind of leaves marines without a narrative or playstyle niche.

The problem is this undermines the concept of marines being elite. If marines are the "main character" faction that gets most of the lore focus, power beyond what is reasonable, etc, then they're going to continue to be the most common faction. And when marines make up 75% of the game there is no possible stat line that will ever make them feel elite, they'll always be by definition average. You'll have marines as the average, a couple horde armies as cannon fodder trash, and maybe a couple special units of GK/custodes as elites. No matter how many buffs you pile onto marines that design goal guarantees that all you will ever do is power creep what is considered average.

Obsesion with "eliteness" is a very juvenile approach to a wargame... And 40k is a Wargame not just the projection of your ******* fantasies.

40K galaxy is huge... A tactical marine (or an Intercessor) is not a particularly big fish in that pond.

Vatsetis wrote:
Obsesion with "eliteness" is a very juvenile approach to a wargame... And 40k is a Wargame not just the projection of your ******* fantasies.

40K galaxy is huge... A tactical marine (or an Intercessor) is not a particularly big fish in that pond.

As I've said above, lore shouldn't dictate rules. That said, part of the appeal of 40k is telling stories and representing the characteristics of the characters in those stories through the game rules. I like my eldar to feel fast, I like my necrons to feel high-tech and relentless, and I like my marines to feel "elite."

A marine isn't a big deal next to, say, a daemon prince, but he should probably be significantly more powerful than a scion or a sister. And to me, the 2nd wound goes a long way towards that.

I think part of the problem is how densely we pack models on the table. It hinders the manoeuvre part of the game and generates so much firepower. Points for models and especially weapons have greatly reduced over the editions. Compare a 3rd edition SM army with a current SM army. The smaller battlefield many insist on using doesn't help either.

But people want to use all their toys.

Which makes the charge harder.

And you’re now comparing a 210 point of Orks plus other army shooting against 150 points of Marines, unsupported.