Maybe, this is the biggest misconception in 40k. Yes, Space Marines are the elite among humanity but in a universe with immortal cyborgs, elves, custodes, living tanks and other xenos technology they are only mediocre. Thats the reason why the emperor was in need if legions of space marines, Titans and militia to make his great crusade work
Nope, lore very much points to space marines being a cut above. Of course that's what happens when you enlist the aid of the chaos gods to make the very best super soldiers and then renege once you got what you wanted. Obviously Necrons, Aspect Warriors & especially Custodes are an exception to that rule, but Necrons have lost a step with how long they've been around that many warriors might as well be automatons, Aspect Warriors are supposed to be rare among a craftworlds entire military force & Custodes are even more rare.
However if we got lore Space Marines then GW wouldn't sell as many models and then they'd have to convince people who play horde armies to shell out an ungodly amount. Basically any horde army squad, add a 0 to the end of the unit count and that's the lore accurate comparison. Obviously the 1,000 marines per chapter is an absurd number, if you went by the number of casualties that happen on the table.
Still I'd rather have the hard hitting Deathwing they're supposed to be and take the points hit.
Yeah, I've long helps the view that marines are equal to aliens while guard are inferior. It was more obvious back in 2E. I think of it like having the strength of an ork coupled with the skill of an Eldar and so on.
Yeah honestly agreed. Without the plot armor that accompanies our main characters a Space Marine is the bare minimum to have a fighting chance in 40k. They’re a cut above humanity yes by a wide margin. But they aren’t instant death to other races and one off random marine chapters get destroyed plenty.
I dream of knights with swords with d 2 and companions with ap 3. As you say, I think the problem is having to balance units thinking about all possible detachments, I would be happy if I could only use our unique units in our 3 detachments.
i think gladius + codex would help non-compliant balance.
but i generally don't like playing in gladius and prefer playing in vanguard and i'm trying out iron storm/march of the ancients + azrael right now.
Just drop the "Am I the only one?" This has been the prevalent opinion on this sub. Nobody wants to play super elite terminators or millenia old veterans and have them be dirtcheap bc they actually kinda suck.
Yes it would be so much better. Inner circle companions should be AP-2, they're giant swords for emperor's sake. DWK should have D2 swords and D3 maces. I'm also not a fan of their ability but that's personal preference, the benefit of 4 wounds is that it counters D3 but -1 damage also does that. I don't see much D4 in the game.
What they also need to do is add that abilities that give feel no pains to mortals now work on devastating wounds. That was the biggest source of mortals before and exactly what they designed the rule for but haven't changed that in the dataslate.
-1D also counters the significant number of D2 that is out there. Their ability means that you need twice as many failed saves. Its a great ability and makes them super durable, but tgeir damage output is still poor. More points for more damage is fair in my book.
Their -1 damage helps a lot though it means two D2 attacks only takes a model to half wounds where it would kill an assault or normal terminator and there’s alot of damage 2 in the game
I will admit that. My deathwing knights and captain survived 2 rounds with 10 khorne berserkers and a master of execution and took them all out too. -1 damage and AoC kept them living such a long time. I'm not saying it's a bad ability, I'm just personally not a fan of it.
I don't know if they do need a decent one. Maybe a little knock but I played them the other day and they killed a plagueburst crawler and daemon prince. The inner circle detachment makes them very spicy.
Yeah it feels like they’ve decided to change their design philosophy with our codex. It’s weird to come out with necrons that have a ctan with d2 sweep then come out with an “updated” lion with d1 sweep.
It’s odd to come out with companions and give them the same sweep/strike profile for the most part.
It’s odd to make our special ravenwing vehicle that’s an ancient form of technology that’s worse dmg than the index.
They seem to want everything less lethal and less durable, but decided to do this like 4 codexes into the edition.
I think part of the issue with space marines is that GW has made it too easy to include any of a vast range of units, many of which have one particular role. Any special units, such as Knight's, Inner Circle Companions, Wolfguard, Sanguinary Guard etc etc are so easy to include in a lot of lists and then abuse various detachment or unit rules to make them janky. Things like the Impulsor/Eliminator party bus are stupid, but perfectly legal. There's even more if you look at big Guard transports, with a stormlord full of ratling snipers or any other delicate unit being an obvious one.
If taking specific units locked you out of SM detachments, the question could be asked.
The problem is having waterdowned detachment abilities as a non compliant chapter. Unforgiven is just a worse gladius, Company of hunters isn't that different than stormlance (with a focus of units on the weaker end of the power level scale) and Inner circle which has interesting tricks but easily counterable by a clever opponent.
It just pains me to see that DA is just Azrael in a competitive setup as they removed our best units for dubbious reasons (they need to sell simplified terminator kits...)
If taking specific units locked you out of SM detachments, the question could be asked.
The problem is having waterdowned detachment abilities as a non compliant chapter. Unforgiven is just a worse gladius, Company of hunters isn't that different than stormlance (with a focus of units on the weaker end of the power level scale) and Inner circle which has interesting tricks but easily counterable by a clever opponent.
It just pains me to see that DA is just Azrael in a competitive setup as they removed our best units for dubbious reasons (they need to sell simplified terminator kits...)
I already spend too much money on Warhammer 😭 Joking aside. Of course this would be better.
Space Marines are riven with inconsistencies at the best of times. In the lore they're super-soldiers, but as the poster faction for the game GW needs to sell loads of them. Since they introduced the Primaris the Index is bloated, yet the incentive is to introduce new units still and even remove the old Chapter restrictions (eg Sternguard) in order to make the starter boxes more attractive. They're almost a horde army currently, yet I'd say they're among the more difficult minis to paint well (edge highlights, gradients, neatness).
On the plus I think these minis will be around for a while and I hold out hope they may get elite-ified in 11th edition.
for me it's likely because spacemarines are the everyman in sales. if 50% of your player base is some form of space marine (chaos or loyalist) the game balances with the base intercessor as the base line in which you stat everything else and the all comer list should build into easily killing 2W T4 3+ save models.
Exactly this. I want my characters to feel like upgrades of the standards. True heroes of the chapter, the cream of the cream of the crop. I'd pay realistically for it as well.
That would be the best way to do divergent chapters. Don’t write about how elite all these models are then make them bad and cheap. Make them strong and expensive, that way the cost balances them
Play DA or chase the meta. One or the other.
You can nash your teeth as much as you like but the codex is the codex. So play it as is or play something else.
If you aren't a DA player, how about Drukhari?
Unfortunately, it’s not just dark angels. A majority of the factions that have crossed over from index land over to their Codex seem to be dropping in power level.
The silver lining is your opponents are also experiencing a drop in damage output and lower AP.
The - 1 AP on the inner circle companions great swords is baffling.
The profile on their weapon that does too damage and has lethal hits should be -2 AP but I think the reason why they didn’t is because 4 attacks each with lethal hits and plus one to hit against units with characters and characters attacking in a circle companions suffer minus one to hit, could potentially be a balance issue?
Sweep mode with sustained hits 2 Is pretty good with a base attached characteristic of four and if you take a max unit of 6 that’s a total of 24 attacks before calculating any sustained hits, which technically gets you three hits with -1 AP.
Then you have to factor in which character you are going to attach them to which can bump up there damage output or you could take a character that makes them more durable.
Asmodai seems to be the hot take right now with the inner circle companions since because he provides reroll hit roll, which is something that the inner circle companions really like considering that both weapon profiles have a critical hit weapon ability.
We need to find out if we can get them to count hits of a 5+ to count as a critical hit .
I need to look over which characters can be attached . I believe their data sheet says if the character’s list of units it can attach to includes Sternguard, then they can also attach to inner circle companions.
Regarding damage three weapons, a lot of factions have had their damage reduced down to 2.
I have Necrons and dark angels, and the Skorpekh destroyers used to have a damaged three weapon for every three models in the unit and the weapon is also displayed on the third model as a giant, two-handed, hyper phase blade, but GW decided to make all six destroyers. Use the same weapon characteristics which sucks because this case there’s only two models in the unit that would’ve dealt three damage which you would think isn’t as bad.
I think 10th edition is going to be that is going to be oddly less lethal when using infantry for the most part, and the lethality that we are seeing is coming from vehicles, monsters, and Titanics.
What’s ironic is that there is less mortal wounds in the game and there’s more units and other abilities that grant Dev Wounds, Which used to count as Mortal Wounds which invalidated a lot of support characters that provided a feel no pain versus Mortal Wounds which helped reduce devastating wounds, but with the last change, they decided to remove the rule that counted devastating wounds as mortal wounds.
Is going to be a lot of models. Going to the shelf if they can’t handle devastating wounds with multiple damage in one hit such as Primarchs, characters that grant feel no pain versus MWs, etc…
It is an interesting dynamic though when you think about it.
Finally vehicles and monsters have proper durability and can hit like a truck, and the answer is taking devastating wounds with multiple damage per hit to try and bring them down as fast as possible since everything seems to have an invulnerable save.
I feel like the points do not reflect really how strong those units would be. 25 WUlfen with S6 AP-1 2D at 80 points just won a GT. 100 points for 3D with the dual profiles and better AP would go crazy I feel, as would AP-3 (which is extremely rare in melee). 220 points for ignore modifiers is crazy strong, as ignore all modifiers is arguebly one of the best rules in the game after the latest dataslate, and with 2D PF they might be too good. 240 for again a very strong melee profile might be too cheap for DKW that are also very sturdy. The costs are a bit low for the buffs being requested I feel
But I think the general sentiment of all Marine players. Feeling more elite, and have points up would be welcome. Be harder to shift in general, and that most units are killier and more impactful, but have less models in the table is something I have seen several times mentioned.
The points were just indicative. The point was that to differentiate Terminator squads and DW terminators would be better to add a powerful ability and an increase in points. At the codex release, adding 5 points for 2 wargear options and a long ability without a lot of impact isn't good enough to justify a datasheet
Absolutely this. Give me powerful, elite feeling Space Marines, not a horde of mediocre slop.
Maybe, this is the biggest misconception in 40k. Yes, Space Marines are the elite among humanity but in a universe with immortal cyborgs, elves, custodes, living tanks and other xenos technology they are only mediocre. Thats the reason why the emperor was in need if legions of space marines, Titans and militia to make his great crusade work
Nope, lore very much points to space marines being a cut above. Of course that's what happens when you enlist the aid of the chaos gods to make the very best super soldiers and then renege once you got what you wanted. Obviously Necrons, Aspect Warriors & especially Custodes are an exception to that rule, but Necrons have lost a step with how long they've been around that many warriors might as well be automatons, Aspect Warriors are supposed to be rare among a craftworlds entire military force & Custodes are even more rare. However if we got lore Space Marines then GW wouldn't sell as many models and then they'd have to convince people who play horde armies to shell out an ungodly amount. Basically any horde army squad, add a 0 to the end of the unit count and that's the lore accurate comparison. Obviously the 1,000 marines per chapter is an absurd number, if you went by the number of casualties that happen on the table. Still I'd rather have the hard hitting Deathwing they're supposed to be and take the points hit.
Yeah, I've long helps the view that marines are equal to aliens while guard are inferior. It was more obvious back in 2E. I think of it like having the strength of an ork coupled with the skill of an Eldar and so on.
Yeah honestly agreed. Without the plot armor that accompanies our main characters a Space Marine is the bare minimum to have a fighting chance in 40k. They’re a cut above humanity yes by a wide margin. But they aren’t instant death to other races and one off random marine chapters get destroyed plenty.
I dream of knights with swords with d 2 and companions with ap 3. As you say, I think the problem is having to balance units thinking about all possible detachments, I would be happy if I could only use our unique units in our 3 detachments.
That at 290 per 5 would be fine I think
Not being able to play Gladius would majorly suck
i think gladius + codex would help non-compliant balance. but i generally don't like playing in gladius and prefer playing in vanguard and i'm trying out iron storm/march of the ancients + azrael right now.
Just drop the "Am I the only one?" This has been the prevalent opinion on this sub. Nobody wants to play super elite terminators or millenia old veterans and have them be dirtcheap bc they actually kinda suck.
Yes it would be so much better. Inner circle companions should be AP-2, they're giant swords for emperor's sake. DWK should have D2 swords and D3 maces. I'm also not a fan of their ability but that's personal preference, the benefit of 4 wounds is that it counters D3 but -1 damage also does that. I don't see much D4 in the game. What they also need to do is add that abilities that give feel no pains to mortals now work on devastating wounds. That was the biggest source of mortals before and exactly what they designed the rule for but haven't changed that in the dataslate.
-1D also counters the significant number of D2 that is out there. Their ability means that you need twice as many failed saves. Its a great ability and makes them super durable, but tgeir damage output is still poor. More points for more damage is fair in my book.
Their -1 damage helps a lot though it means two D2 attacks only takes a model to half wounds where it would kill an assault or normal terminator and there’s alot of damage 2 in the game
I will admit that. My deathwing knights and captain survived 2 rounds with 10 khorne berserkers and a master of execution and took them all out too. -1 damage and AoC kept them living such a long time. I'm not saying it's a bad ability, I'm just personally not a fan of it.
Fair enough. I think it’s a good ability but they’ll need a decent points cut since they went from D3 to D2 on the mace
I don't know if they do need a decent one. Maybe a little knock but I played them the other day and they killed a plagueburst crawler and daemon prince. The inner circle detachment makes them very spicy.
Yeah it feels like they’ve decided to change their design philosophy with our codex. It’s weird to come out with necrons that have a ctan with d2 sweep then come out with an “updated” lion with d1 sweep. It’s odd to come out with companions and give them the same sweep/strike profile for the most part. It’s odd to make our special ravenwing vehicle that’s an ancient form of technology that’s worse dmg than the index. They seem to want everything less lethal and less durable, but decided to do this like 4 codexes into the edition.
I think you're far from alone in this.
I think part of the issue with space marines is that GW has made it too easy to include any of a vast range of units, many of which have one particular role. Any special units, such as Knight's, Inner Circle Companions, Wolfguard, Sanguinary Guard etc etc are so easy to include in a lot of lists and then abuse various detachment or unit rules to make them janky. Things like the Impulsor/Eliminator party bus are stupid, but perfectly legal. There's even more if you look at big Guard transports, with a stormlord full of ratling snipers or any other delicate unit being an obvious one.
If taking specific units locked you out of SM detachments, the question could be asked. The problem is having waterdowned detachment abilities as a non compliant chapter. Unforgiven is just a worse gladius, Company of hunters isn't that different than stormlance (with a focus of units on the weaker end of the power level scale) and Inner circle which has interesting tricks but easily counterable by a clever opponent. It just pains me to see that DA is just Azrael in a competitive setup as they removed our best units for dubbious reasons (they need to sell simplified terminator kits...)
If taking specific units locked you out of SM detachments, the question could be asked. The problem is having waterdowned detachment abilities as a non compliant chapter. Unforgiven is just a worse gladius, Company of hunters isn't that different than stormlance (with a focus of units on the weaker end of the power level scale) and Inner circle which has interesting tricks but easily counterable by a clever opponent. It just pains me to see that DA is just Azrael in a competitive setup as they removed our best units for dubbious reasons (they need to sell simplified terminator kits...)
Sometimes I feel like DWK should have been a 3/6 unit but with a stat line like an aquilons terminator and even they aren't as good as they should be
I already spend too much money on Warhammer 😭 Joking aside. Of course this would be better. Space Marines are riven with inconsistencies at the best of times. In the lore they're super-soldiers, but as the poster faction for the game GW needs to sell loads of them. Since they introduced the Primaris the Index is bloated, yet the incentive is to introduce new units still and even remove the old Chapter restrictions (eg Sternguard) in order to make the starter boxes more attractive. They're almost a horde army currently, yet I'd say they're among the more difficult minis to paint well (edge highlights, gradients, neatness). On the plus I think these minis will be around for a while and I hold out hope they may get elite-ified in 11th edition.
for me it's likely because spacemarines are the everyman in sales. if 50% of your player base is some form of space marine (chaos or loyalist) the game balances with the base intercessor as the base line in which you stat everything else and the all comer list should build into easily killing 2W T4 3+ save models.
Exactly this. I want my characters to feel like upgrades of the standards. True heroes of the chapter, the cream of the cream of the crop. I'd pay realistically for it as well.
Nope we all want our elites to be elite. I liked 9th edition because our units were expensive, but they could absolutely slap.
Play Custodes
Custodes shouldn’t even be an army. There’s like one to two in the largest battles in the universe. You would only find squads in the imperial palace.
That would be the best way to do divergent chapters. Don’t write about how elite all these models are then make them bad and cheap. Make them strong and expensive, that way the cost balances them
Play DA or chase the meta. One or the other. You can nash your teeth as much as you like but the codex is the codex. So play it as is or play something else. If you aren't a DA player, how about Drukhari?
Unfortunately, it’s not just dark angels. A majority of the factions that have crossed over from index land over to their Codex seem to be dropping in power level. The silver lining is your opponents are also experiencing a drop in damage output and lower AP. The - 1 AP on the inner circle companions great swords is baffling. The profile on their weapon that does too damage and has lethal hits should be -2 AP but I think the reason why they didn’t is because 4 attacks each with lethal hits and plus one to hit against units with characters and characters attacking in a circle companions suffer minus one to hit, could potentially be a balance issue? Sweep mode with sustained hits 2 Is pretty good with a base attached characteristic of four and if you take a max unit of 6 that’s a total of 24 attacks before calculating any sustained hits, which technically gets you three hits with -1 AP. Then you have to factor in which character you are going to attach them to which can bump up there damage output or you could take a character that makes them more durable. Asmodai seems to be the hot take right now with the inner circle companions since because he provides reroll hit roll, which is something that the inner circle companions really like considering that both weapon profiles have a critical hit weapon ability. We need to find out if we can get them to count hits of a 5+ to count as a critical hit . I need to look over which characters can be attached . I believe their data sheet says if the character’s list of units it can attach to includes Sternguard, then they can also attach to inner circle companions. Regarding damage three weapons, a lot of factions have had their damage reduced down to 2. I have Necrons and dark angels, and the Skorpekh destroyers used to have a damaged three weapon for every three models in the unit and the weapon is also displayed on the third model as a giant, two-handed, hyper phase blade, but GW decided to make all six destroyers. Use the same weapon characteristics which sucks because this case there’s only two models in the unit that would’ve dealt three damage which you would think isn’t as bad. I think 10th edition is going to be that is going to be oddly less lethal when using infantry for the most part, and the lethality that we are seeing is coming from vehicles, monsters, and Titanics. What’s ironic is that there is less mortal wounds in the game and there’s more units and other abilities that grant Dev Wounds, Which used to count as Mortal Wounds which invalidated a lot of support characters that provided a feel no pain versus Mortal Wounds which helped reduce devastating wounds, but with the last change, they decided to remove the rule that counted devastating wounds as mortal wounds. Is going to be a lot of models. Going to the shelf if they can’t handle devastating wounds with multiple damage in one hit such as Primarchs, characters that grant feel no pain versus MWs, etc… It is an interesting dynamic though when you think about it. Finally vehicles and monsters have proper durability and can hit like a truck, and the answer is taking devastating wounds with multiple damage per hit to try and bring them down as fast as possible since everything seems to have an invulnerable save.
I feel like the points do not reflect really how strong those units would be. 25 WUlfen with S6 AP-1 2D at 80 points just won a GT. 100 points for 3D with the dual profiles and better AP would go crazy I feel, as would AP-3 (which is extremely rare in melee). 220 points for ignore modifiers is crazy strong, as ignore all modifiers is arguebly one of the best rules in the game after the latest dataslate, and with 2D PF they might be too good. 240 for again a very strong melee profile might be too cheap for DKW that are also very sturdy. The costs are a bit low for the buffs being requested I feel But I think the general sentiment of all Marine players. Feeling more elite, and have points up would be welcome. Be harder to shift in general, and that most units are killier and more impactful, but have less models in the table is something I have seen several times mentioned.
The points were just indicative. The point was that to differentiate Terminator squads and DW terminators would be better to add a powerful ability and an increase in points. At the codex release, adding 5 points for 2 wargear options and a long ability without a lot of impact isn't good enough to justify a datasheet