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Hello! Bit of a off-shoot from a reply I made to the spacemarine power level thread.

I was thinking about how misrepresented point costs are to "in universe power" for many units. An example: 1 tac marine being worth 14 points while a guardsman is worth 6.5 means that a tac marine, point wise, is really only worth a little more than 2 cadians.

I think we can agree that in the game, this makes sense, and trying to legitimately emulate battle power with points would be very silly.... but...

If you had too, how would you do it! Would you reduce the cost of chaff to make elites seem more powerful? Or massively increase the cost of elites? And what would armies look like if they WERE balanced this way?

Try Googling "Movie Marines".

I've always taken the game to represent the proper power level and the black library novels and so on to be the more suspect source, generally amping up whoever is the protagonist in the story.

1 Marine to roughly 3 guardsmen seems pretty reasonable to me, what ratio do you think would be better?

Take an Armiger Warglaive Datasheet and replace the model with a Space Marine with a Meltagun, Bolt Pistol, and Close Combat Weapon.... there you go.

I would make it so that a single Tau Fire Warrior can kill an entire company of marines by himself, like in that canon video game.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
I would make it so that a single Tau Fire Warrior can kill an entire company of marines by himself, like in that canon video game.

He still couldn't kill anything with his melee attack.

 firechcken23 wrote:
Hello! Bit of a off-shoot from a reply I made to the spacemarine power level thread.

I was thinking about how misrepresented point costs are to "in universe power" for many units. An example: 1 tac marine being worth 14 points while a guardsman is worth 6.5 means that a tac marine, point wise, is really only worth a little more than 2 cadians.

I think we can agree that in the game, this makes sense, and trying to legitimately emulate battle power with points would be very silly.... but...

If you had too, how would you do it! Would you reduce the cost of chaff to make elites seem more powerful? Or massively increase the cost of elites? And what would armies look like if they WERE balanced this way?

Part of the discrepancy is out of battle.

When an Infantry Squad is wiped out by a hail of bolter fire, most all of them are dead or crippled beyond fighting.
When a Tactical Squad is wiped out by skads of lasgun fire, they're out of the battle, but they'll be back sooner rather than later.

Likewise, Space Marines have much more strategic mobility than any given Guard Regiment.

 Da Boss wrote:
I've always taken the game to represent the proper power level and the black library novels and so on to be the more suspect source, generally amping up whoever is the protagonist in the story.

Exactly this.

I think GW should say to all BL authors: "Play a game with the armies you write about, and try to keep what happens in your books at least somewhat on par with what happens on the table. Obviously, you'll embellish (a bit) here and there, and you can make some use of the "unreliable narrator" when you're using first person... But none of this "The GSC has both the Sisters and the Guard on the ropes... Then five marines show up and 15 minutes later, the battle is over and Imperials win."

You were polite when you said it.

I'll be less polite: BL, while occasionally entertaining, is bs and anyone regarding it as lore is.... Well, I guess I don't want to be that impolite.

I mean thats basically how they're written about in a lot of the fluff, 5 or so show up change the tide of battle completely.

Personally I really like the idea of "just strong infantry" marines, but I've gotten a lot of backlash for it in the past from others in the hobby haha.

So hey, fair, I think regarding a marine as being worth 3 men is pretty good, though call me crazy I wouldnt mind them being worth 5 or 6 to make them a more "elite" army,(and by proxy making the custodes even MORE "elite) on the tabletop.

There was a thread a while back where people were arguing one Marine could take on ten thousand guardsmen.
That was hilarious to read.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Part of the discrepancy is out of battle.

When an Infantry Squad is wiped out by a hail of bolter fire, most all of them are dead or crippled beyond fighting.
When a Tactical Squad is wiped out by skads of lasgun fire, they're out of the battle, but they'll be back sooner rather than later.

I always find this idea a strange one.

Necron weapons atomise their victims.
DE take wounded enemies as slaves
Tyranids devour/dissolve their victims.
etc.

Space Marine or not, I doubt many casualties are recoverable.

 vipoid wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Part of the discrepancy is out of battle.

When an Infantry Squad is wiped out by a hail of bolter fire, most all of them are dead or crippled beyond fighting.
When a Tactical Squad is wiped out by skads of lasgun fire, they're out of the battle, but they'll be back sooner rather than later.

I always find this idea a strange one.

Necron weapons atomise their victims.
DE take wounded enemies as slaves
Tyranids devour/dissolve their victims.
etc.

Space Marine or not, I doubt many casualties are recoverable.

It's gonna depend a lot on who wins.

A Marine who loses a knee and an arm to Tyranid weapons is out of the fight. If the Imperium wins, they can recover the Marine and patch 'em up.
If the Nids win... Everything gets eaten.

Also stuff like Melta Guns and Lascannons don't tend to leave anything infantry-sized alive when it takes them down too.

So yeah, it's definitely not a perfect explanation. But it's SOMETHING.

 BorderCountess wrote:
Try Googling "Movie Marines".

Exactly. Two different types of Marines. The special ones, and the Star Trek Red Shirts.

I think the casualties issue is even more variable than a matter of can they be recovered if you win the fight. Every time a model is removed from the battlefield, it can mean a number of different things if you consider the 40K battlefield to be realistic.

They could have taken any number of deadly weapons to their center of mass and be very dead.

They could have taken hits to limbs rendering them unable to continue to fight.

They could have taken non-deadly (due to armor and placement) wounds that render them unconscious for the remainder of the battle.

They could have suffered the effects of a near miss, like knocking their own head while diving for cover, that also renders them unconscious.

They could have seen the horror of the carnage around them and decided now would be a good time to leave or lie down and feign death.

Or the could be that guy who grabbed on of the many not yet dead people above and dragged them from the battlefield, taking both of them out of action.

Depending on the era of warfare you use as a reference, the percentage of casualties to death can be a low as 10% to 50% or higher. However, the higher death percentages have been due to non-combat deaths (disease, malnutrition, post-combat killings).

In that way, the pre-8th edition morale rules were better in that they reflected that sometimes combatants decide they are going to leave the battlefield before they get killed or seriously wounded.

I find Marines have gotten a bit too strong on an individual level with 9th edition or their 8th edition super Supplements. A normal marine, Primaris or not, should be on par with an ork nob, a Necron immortal, an aspect warrior and so on. Depending on specializations he'll get his ass kicked by CC experts when he's a bolter marine(so Orks, banshees, genestealers) and he'll be up for a fight in CC as an assault Marine. In the greater scheme of the 40k universe a Marine is just not that important or outlandish. The Tau probably have more Crisis suits than the whole Imperium has marines and every Crisis suit is at least on par with a Marine...

Personally the faction I always found badly represented in game were imperial assassins. They're just some stupid humans that shouldn't even be a match to a death jester, and even BL novels state them to be about on par with a marine. But they're made into incredible character profiles that put everything similar in other factions to shame. Assassins got movie marine stats as their normal profiles.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Part of the discrepancy is out of battle.

When an Infantry Squad is wiped out by a hail of bolter fire, most all of them are dead or crippled beyond fighting.
When a Tactical Squad is wiped out by skads of lasgun fire, they're out of the battle, but they'll be back sooner rather than later.

I always find this idea a strange one.

Necron weapons atomise their victims.
DE take wounded enemies as slaves
Tyranids devour/dissolve their victims.
etc.

Space Marine or not, I doubt many casualties are recoverable.

It's gonna depend a lot on who wins.

A Marine who loses a knee and an arm to Tyranid weapons is out of the fight. If the Imperium wins, they can recover the Marine and patch 'em up.
If the Nids win... Everything gets eaten.

Also stuff like Melta Guns and Lascannons don't tend to leave anything infantry-sized alive when it takes them down too.

So yeah, it's definitely not a perfect explanation. But it's SOMETHING.

This sort of stuff is huge in campaign gaming. I like JNA's suggestion of winner's casualties can recover, but loser's casualties can't- it's really simple.

Battlescars for Crusade in 10th more substantial; the penalties are both more severe and more costly/ difficult to mitigate... But genuine casualties are still lower than most people feel is appropriate. Taking a compromise that incoporates some of what JNA is striving for maybe that you get a penalty to the casualty roll if you lose- that way there's still a decent chance you walk away with a scar, but odds are somewhat higher that a casualty is unrecoverable.

Neither 40k or the novels are particularly "accurate" or "realistic" representations of the capabilities of particular armies, they're both constrained by the limitations of their media

Novels are slaves to the narrative, the protagonists have to show off how powerful and competent they are, and even if they suffer setbacks they still come out on top performing feats of insane superhuman speed and skill

40K battles are limited by their scope, each 40K battle is supposed to represent a tiny snapshot of a much bigger battle happening at the time, with orbital and off-board assets affecting the ebb and flow of battle that just can't be adequately represented in 40k. there's also the constraint of "balance" - real battles are not balanced, each side does not make sure to only engage a portion of an enemy force of roughly equivalent worth, there will almost always be a side with a clear advantage, even if that does not translate into them actually winning

I'd say the most accurate representations of factions happen on two vastly different scales - Epic, and the RPGs

Epic (I'm specifically thinking of Epic:Armageddon here) represents battle on a much wider scale, a single combat round between detachments represents an entire 40K battle, while the larger force engages over a wider area
You can whittle down enemy detachments long, long before they engage yours, or outflank them with vastly superior numbers, or leave an entire enemy detachment waiting in the middle of nowhere as you refuse to engage them. Hell, you can just blast them from orbit without ever engaging them on the ground

Epic also represented each army's unique characteristics better - Space Marines were able to engage forces many, many times their size, but every loss was a blow. Imperial Guard could absolutely flood the battlefield with numbers, while bringing to bear vast swathes of artillery or huge tank battalions. Eldar were as insanely fast as they're supposed to be, able to cover the entire battlefield in moments, while being quite hard to pin down and hitting hard, while being fragile if you do manage to land a blow. Every army's canonical strengths were well represented without having to rely on micromanaging the points or statlines for individual models and comparing them 1:1

The RPGs did that. Completely divorced from the need for balance, they're able to represent things as closer to what they really are. Space Marines are absolute powerhouses that can shrug off small arms fire almost infinitely while hitting like a truck. Genestealers come at you at mach two while dodging your attempts to shoot them, an Eldar Ranger will snipe you from a mile away while you struggle to see them even if they're ten feet away from you. RPGs can do this because they aren't slaved to the concept of balance OR narrative - the GM needs to make sure a narrative plays out, but there's no presumption that the PCs will necessarily win any conflict they get into, and freed from those constraints it can give a much more realistic depiction of what each individual unit is capable of. It's not a simulation so it won't be 100%, some abstraction is necessary, but it's vastly closer than any other method.

So, if you want to know how many Guardsmen it takes to beat a Space Marine, play it out in one of the RPGs
If you want to know how quickly Eldar Jetbikes can traverse a city, or what effect a Lance Strike has on an unshielded Reaver Titan, play Epic

Charax wrote:
Neither 40k or the novels are particularly "accurate" or "realistic" representations of the capabilities of particular armies, they're both constrained by the limitations of their media.

I get your point here, but I think it matters less whether either objectively hits the mark, and more which of the two consistently comes closest. For me, that's the game(s) more often than the books.... But then I've also sampled more of the games than I have the books.

Charax wrote:

Novels are slaves to the narrative, the protagonists have to show off how powerful and competent they are, and even if they suffer setbacks they still come out on top performing feats of insane superhuman speed and skill

I think that you can tell a compelling story without resorting to bolter porn, and to be fair, some BL authors manage to do that fairly consistently. But some are just... Over the top. Marines in the game are pretty damn tough basic infantry, and writing stories that are consistent with the way the game actually plays can still be interesting.

Charax wrote:

40K battles are limited by their scope, each 40K battle is supposed to represent a tiny snapshot of a much bigger battle happening at the time, with orbital and off-board assets affecting the ebb and flow of battle that just can't be adequately represented in 40k.

So again, certainly I can see where you are coming from; certainly any battle that uses a high level named character should be the type of battle that you're talking about, but I resist the notion that every 40k is supposed to conform to any arbitrary pattern: after all, 40k includes Boarding Actions, Combat Patrols, Incursions, Strikeforces and Onslaught. And for the record, when I write about 40k, I'm including Kill Team... And while I personally don't play Epic, I agree with you that its scale should not be overlooked nor should fleet scale. It's why I wish LI and Titanicus hadn't been locked in the Heresy and I wish I had supported Aeronautica more than I did to send a message to Gw that alternate scale games should ideally be set in the 40k era.

Charax wrote:

there's also the constraint of "balance" - real battles are not balanced, each side does not make sure to only engage a portion of an enemy force of roughly equivalent worth, there will almost always be a side with a clear advantage, even if that does not translate into them actually winning

I'd say the most accurate representations of factions happen on two vastly different scales - Epic, and the RPGs

Again, both of those scales are important, but no more or less important than any other scale in which games from the 40k franchise can be played. But just a little bit about what I personally perceive to be the best representation of factions: escalating Crusade campaigns from Boarding Patrol to Onslaught. A good group of 4 or 5 roleplayers under the auspices of a solid GM, start with a boarding patrol and play until everyone hits onslaught level. If done well, this quite a roleplaying experience, and the scale and scope of a campaign is limited only by the imaginations of the players. For example, the GSC and Tau Crusade content tells the story of territorial expansion with the GSC working a planet at a time while the Tau work at the system level... But you could scale either of those systems to any size you wanted, conquering territories within settlements, or settlements within continents.

Narrative campaigns get even better when they incorporate multiple systems. Running a Spec Ops game in Kill Team where the Kill Teams also have profiles for participation in the 40k Crusade. If a fleet battle launches a strike against a planet on turn two in a BFG game, when those players next meet for Crusade, the player whose army corresponds to the fleet that made the strike gets a free Orbital Bombardment Strat that must be used in turn 2. One that I really want to try is running two tables simultaneously with aircraft that can transport units between tables and long range artillery that can hit targets on the other table.

Start with Batman. Then give him Super Soldier Serum and Vitarays. Nobody blinks twice at this suspension of disbelief. Until their tribe has to play an army of that tribe. Even though their tribe outnumbers Captain Batman by 5:1 or so.

Breton wrote:
Start with Batman. Then give him Super Soldier Serum and Vitarays. Nobody blinks twice at this suspension of disbelief. Until their tribe has to play an army of that tribe. Even though their tribe outnumbers Captain Batman by 5:1 or so.

Reminds me of the WizKids HeroClix game, where I always enjoyed watching Commissioner Gordon and the GCPD beat Batman to death.

 Da Boss wrote:
I've always taken the game to represent the proper power level and the black library novels and so on to be the more suspect source, generally amping up whoever is the protagonist in the story.

1 Marine to roughly 3 guardsmen seems pretty reasonable to me, what ratio do you think would be better?

I agree with this, although my estimation in terms of a vs. match is that three is too few Guardsmen. Maybe 5 or something similar? *shrug*. But with that framing it needs to also be pointed out that the environment a 40K battle is in isn't merely on the scale of infantry, but has tanks and Superheavies and crazy monsters in the same battlespace. To units like those, a Marine is often just about as squishy as a Guardsman, and thus the points value of a Marine to a Guardsman isn't 5:1 (or whatever), because of the expected larger context.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JNAProductions wrote:
There was a thread a while back where people were arguing one Marine could take on ten thousand guardsmen.
That was hilarious to read.

That thread hurt my brain.

 Da Boss wrote:
I've always taken the game to represent the proper power level and the black library novels and so on to be the more suspect source, generally amping up whoever is the protagonist in the story.

1 Marine to roughly 3 guardsmen seems pretty reasonable to me, what ratio do you think would be better?

Intresting I’ve always looked at it the other way round the fluff is the accurate bit, but GW don’t want a 2k point army being a squad of 5 marines or a single custodes because then they can’t make money selling you models so instead they make them weaker

 firechcken23 wrote:
If you had too, how would you do it! Would you reduce the cost of chaff to make elites seem more powerful? Or massively increase the cost of elites? And what would armies look like if they WERE balanced this way?

Check out the army lists and unit profiles from my signature. A Guardsman is worth 8 points, a Tactical Space Marine 35, so the ratio increased from ~1:2 to ~1:4.

In a normal game size for that system (2500 points), SM armies have around ~20-30 creature models and ~1-4 vehicles. Horde armies usually have around 90 chaff bodies and some heavy hitters on top.

Example 1 - Grey Knights
1x Grand Master in Nemesis-Dreadknight armor
1x Inquisitor
1x GK Strike Squad (5 models)
2x Inquisitorial Stormtrooper squads (5 models each)
1x Ordo Malleus Warband (8 models)
1x Ghost Terminator Squad (5 models)
1x Purgator Squad (5 models)
2x Armigers
1x Rhino

Example 2 - Eldar
1x Autarch
1x Spiritseer
1x Storm Guardians (5 models)
2x Wind riders (12 models)
1x Warlock
1x Wraithguard (5 models)
1x Swooping Hawks (5 models)
1x Falcon
1x Fire Prism
1x Wave Serpent

goundry wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
I've always taken the game to represent the proper power level and the black library novels and so on to be the more suspect source, generally amping up whoever is the protagonist in the story.

1 Marine to roughly 3 guardsmen seems pretty reasonable to me, what ratio do you think would be better?

Intresting I’ve always looked at it the other way round the fluff is the accurate bit, but GW don’t want a 2k point army being a squad of 5 marines or a single custodes because then they can’t make money selling you models so instead they make them weaker

In the fluff, it depends on which Marine. If they gave him a name, he's got "plot armor" if he doesn't get a name, he's going to catch a lascanon to the face. Or a lasgun to a weakspot in the power pack.

 Da Boss wrote:
I've always taken the game to represent the proper power level and the black library novels and so on to be the more suspect source, generally amping up whoever is the protagonist in the story.

1 Marine to roughly 3 guardsmen seems pretty reasonable to me, what ratio do you think would be better?

I will note that the Assault of Black Reach ruleset notes on pg2.

"each Space Marine model is the equal of two or three enemies, whether in a furious firefight or a bloody close assault "

Ironically however, in-universe, the quote that most resounded with me is Rogal Dorn's quote of "give me a hundred space marines, or failing that, a thousand other troops"

I don't mind if the ratio is a little higher than 1:3. When the game was more complex there were other factors like morale that made that 1:3 killing power ratio effectively larger due to morale rules and the like - the faster rate of attrition tended to lead to Guard squads breaking and running whereas Marine squads had rules to mitigate that.

Of course, they gradually excised meaningful morale from the game by giving more and more units fearless or other ways around it, and now morale is just additional damage, right?

When I was younger I made a lot of custom narrative campaigns / stories with friends with mountains of custom rules for them.

In those, I would stat and cost space marines similar to where Custodies are at right now. Super elite walking tanks that were more-less immune to small arms fire and other weak attacks, but were by no means invincible either. When you had 5 of them in a mission backing an army of guardsman, you really felt their impact on the board state and each loss was painful. (The amounts of marines you could deploy over the course of the campaign was limited too, you had a company for support, but every death was permanent for the marines.)

However, since they are the poster children for 40k, they'd never have rules that would lead to people needing so few to play the game since that would hurt sales really badly.

Attrition campaigns are cool. I can see why GW chose to go a different direction with Crusade and their campaign books, but all of my homebrew campaigns from 2nd-5th were attrition-based.

I miss mixed army forces from 9th.Torchbearers (Admech, Custodes, Marines) and Armies of Faith (Guard, Sisters, Marines)... And of course those armies could add a Freeblade Knight or Imperial Agents like any other army. You could get a real "Warband" feel with a force like that.

But even without specialized army rules, the base detachment system in 9th allowed allied armies. Certain purity rules existed for most armies so that playing an allied detachment came with a cost, but it was possible.