The Power Armor Dilemmia
From a previous thread I asked Dakknauts what do they think is wrong with space marines? How would we go about solving that? And many other questions. Seeing as that thread is come to a close. I have decided to bring it over to proposed rules (thanks for the suggestion guys)!
So how do we improve the power armored foes? Taking all of the suggestions to heart this is what I came up with...
It really matters at this point as space marines need point cost reductions and increases of efficiency for equipment such as heavy weapons and special weapons. The cost decreases to these should hopefully make marines more viable. Remember all these changes apply to ALL Space Marine Factions, including grey knights and chaos space marines... Custodes are excluded except in one specific case.
GLORIOUS Combat
Space Marines desperately need more damage in combat their top tier melee units are completely lacking. To help with this I have some ideas...
A ) +1 Attack at all times... All Marines are experts in close combat and have superhuman abilities...
B) +1 Attack on Charge. Marines gain +1 attack on charge or counter charge. (call back to other editions)
C) +1 Attack with Condition
Weapons and the Bolter Problem...
After being convinced that Marines should not have
Ap-1. The Bolters should be a bit more of an interesting profile
This is the suggestion
A) Conditional Toughness
AP. Have a toughness less than 4?
Ap-2.
Range 24" Rapid Fire 1 S 4
AP * 1 Damage.
*If a targets toughness less than the strength of this weapon set the
AP of this weapon to
AP - 2
B) Exploding Variant! This is meant to deal with any horde armies, bolters in and off the field are supposed to be explosive shells. This would punish guard armies severely... And that's okay!
Range 24 " Rapid Fire 1 Strength 4
AP 0
* Damage
* if a target has a toughness less than the strength of this weapon deal 2 damage. Any leftover damage is allocated to the rest of the unit if their toughness is less than the total strength of this weapon. Explodes!
Making Tactical Squads Great Again!
Since the beginning of 8th the hardest hit unit in the entire roster was Tactical marines. The Tactical Squad has been used until recently for your core troop choice. You could get bodies on the field and fill out troop selection. Because of this Tactical Marines are the face of all marines in general. Tacticals serve a dual purpose having tank hunting and heavy infantry killing weapons.
To get back to this I have a suggestion...
A) Special Weapons are half costed for Tactical Squads. Wait that's it? Yep!....
Reasoning: Tactical squads have a niche role that is the support and defending unit, you want them to be moving around and not suffering from the heavy weapons ability because of this I think tactical squads should have cheaper special weapons. it would remain that Tactical squads could take a heavy weapon, but their task is to take and hold objectives. They can be given other tasks which is the beauty of the tactical squad it is a flexible unit.
B) Special Rule: Bolter Drill... Now, this is an interesting ability but essentially all bolt weapons can fire an additional time. But they cannot use this ability again for the rest of the game.
This would give bolters a sorta pseudo increase in damage for tactical squads. I see tacticals as more as an offensive unit than a defensive one like an intercessor squad. Because of this, I think giving them the ability to fire an additional time might help in their damage output while hopefully keeping it balanced. Situational ... yes. But it can only be used once like a squad decides to empty out their entire clip in a single round of shooting.
Terminators oh Terminators
I sadly enjoy the big monsters known as terminators and I have a few suggestions...
A) Increase wound count for the squad by 1
Simple easy, not too hard to implement
B) Can move and fire the same turn they deepstrike
C) Do not suffer any minuses to hit and always hit on +3
D) All Cataprachts and Tartars can take grenade harness for 2pts each (unlimited max of 1 per a model).
E) Hard as Nails! On a roll of a 6+ ignore a wound!
F) Strong as Adamantium.
Ignore 1 wound inflicted upon this model, to a minimum of 1.
Simply for every damage inflicted upon the model/squad ignore 1 wound per attack. (individual basis so if someone shot you with an overcharged plasma and dealt three wounds, you would reduce it by 1, so it would deal 2 damage in total)
Now I am not too sure about balancing termies but this would be affecting all terminators across the board... Yes... Even deathguard and Allarus Custodes.
Tanks tanks !
And some dreadnoughts.
If you have been living under a rock you should know. Space Marine Vehicles suck. They are overpriced and you can get cheaper vehicles from any other imperial faction. Because of this, I have come up with some ideas...
A) Land Raiders and other God Machines, like Fellblades and other relic vehicles, have the God Machine Ability. As they are all ancient wargear that has been preserved over the ages they have been developed with the greatest technology man has ever created. Because of this, reduce half of all incoming damage. (Increase points by 15 for all God Machines, except relic vehicles)
B) All Predators gain the Tank Hunter ability if it takes the annihilator role, on rolls of 6 deal a mortal wound against a vehicle, monsters, dreadnoughts, walkers, or titans. (only applies to lascannon)
If a predator takes destructor variant, gains a slayer ability, on rolls of 6 to wound gain an additional shot. (only applies to autocannon)
C) Dreadnoughts... The wisdom of the Ancients. If a dreadnought is within 6" of space marine infantry squad they gain +1 to hit (to a max +2 to hit).
-need suggestions for this
D) Primaris what? A Primaris counts as 2 Space Marines and may be carried in land raiders, storm ravens, and thunder hawks. (Honestly, if a land raider can carry a primarch it should be able to hold a primaris)
E) All space marine vehicles are highly resistant to weapons fire, because of this all space marine vehicles have a +6 invulnerable save. with the exception of Rhinos, Razorbacks, and whirlwinds.
Chapter Tactics how'd they work?
A) Chapter Tactics Effect all units in the space marine codex that are SPACE MARINES or CHAOS SPACE MARINES. If they are not a space marine, they don't get the benefit. All vehicles driven by space marines gain this benefit as well.
Chapter Tactics
To be added
Special Rules Vanillia Edition
So I have some ideas but some were not discussed at length the first one is the Vanillia Marines old favorite:
And They Shall Know No Fear.
Combat Squads
I have no idea if they should even be improved or left as is. I'll leave that up to you guys!
Now the ABCDE are choices, not all of them should apply at once, from each section you would pick one or not all applied at the same time, otherwise marines would be broken.
If someone wants to add an addendum to how to improve Chaos Space Marines or Grey Knights please do
Thoughts? Comments? Criticism? Exhibiting Hate? Calls for Blood?
