noise marine squads

[makesomenoise]

So a 10 man noise marine squad with 8 sonic blaster a blast master and a champion w/ doom siren and power fist costs 335 points adding a rhino with either a havoc launcher or extra armor places them at 385 points a squad. (370 in a naked rhino)

 

Now i know most ppl don't field them like this (myself included) for point/ effectiveness reasons but in reality the set up seems to be flexilbe if hyper expensive giving the squad 16 shots +2 s 5 shots w/ a s5 template on assault and 24 shots + s8 blast on heavy weapons duty.

 

So my question is how over priced is this in reality? Vs other codex set ups what would a similar set up cost? (1 heavy 1 flamer 8 rapid fire style assault shots?) Taking into account higher init and fearless how bad are we coming out in the cost department?

 

Is it a minor cosr difference or a :D is gw thinking cost difference?

 

Thanks in advance.

[the jeske]

10 GK thunder hammer on justicar blessed ammo 2 psycannons 270pts . it has twice the hvy weapons [8str 7 rending shots if not moving 4 if moving] st5 storms [not awesome per se , but str5 means that av11 is no longer totaly immune to your shoting].warp quake , an unstunable rhino , force weapons on all dudes . IF the GK player wants to go wild and be high I he can also take 9 halabards[he would never do that if he wanted those he would either play puris or take 4-6] he then has a 320 pts unit [so still 50 pts cheaper then the NM] but with an I of 6 not 5[faster and not equal to most HQs , what kind of is important considering Force weapons ID ability] . So they are overcosted at least by around 80 pts counting all the special rules [psychic powers, unshakable rhinos , double the hvy weapons , force weapons on all dudes etc] . NM should cost like they do right now and have sonic blasters as a base weapon [and even then they would be less optimal then PMs or zerkers].

[Stormbrow II]

The jeske has it. Most of the stuff in the Chaos dex is woefully overcosted.

 

My gaming group was involved in playtesting it a few years ago and we had a whole pile of recommendations to change things and points costs were one of them but Gav Thorpe (as the main writer he takes responsibility) wasn't interested. He obviously had instructions to make things less complicated than the previous 'dex but he wielded the knife and cut too deeply and took all the flavour out of the book, as well as making things more expensive than they were worth. Apart from Plague Marines.

 

Newer books have really shown up how poor the current choices are for the army when they are compared to GK, SW and BA who get plenty of buffs but don't have a prohibitive points cost in comparison.

[makesomenoise]

So basicly sonics need to be included in the base cost of the nm, the mark of slaanesh needs to be 2 initiative and doom sirens/ blast masters need to be cheaper w/ option for more per unit? So if we made it let's say 20 points for a i6 nm w/ sonic weapon an cheapened the special weapons by 10 points (or 5) and gave a 2nd bm option at 10 man size then they would be closer to the ward dex's so like 275 pts for a 10 man squad with 2 bm's a champ w/ power fist and doom siren.

 

Just getting a feel for how far off the codex is

[the jeske]

nah i5 is ok . but a sonic blaster nm should cost 20pts . the unit should have the double "special" option so either 2 blast masters or 2 syrens or mix of those [remove the option for syren from the asp champion . leave it on lucius]. they should get the choir back [cumulative -1Ld to psykers casting at them/ in range X of them].

that would make them playable . they would still have big problems .no melta , only anti infantry weapons , i5 is all nice and good but number of A is important too and those would be on csm level and csm units would be both cheaper and with melta .

[makesomenoise]

Could allways tweek the siren the bm and add a new sonic weapon ( i like sirens on champs/lords) make em melta style weapons. Same str /ap but 2d6 vehicle penetration 1/2 range for sonic blasters/ bm? Maybe just bm.

 

I like the choir thing and i liked warp scream

 

So yeah following this line of thought keep sirens on champs, allow dbl bms change bm assault profile to include melta maybe remove pinning to compensate (assault= melta, heavy = pinning) reduce point cost and add warp scream as some form of -ld or -init cumulative ability based on range. Keep em fearless and i5 then we be competative again lol.

 

I've written gw asking for 5 chaos codexs instead on 1 (black legion = as is w/ fixed point costs and tweeked options+ vehicles, thousand sons w/ propper independant codex, emperor's children codex, world eaters codex and deathgaurd codex.) I mean they did if for the space marines. When I first started playing blood angels where just red space marines now they have a complete codex w/ their very own dreadnoughts and all and ppl play the junk out of em.

 

On a stranger note i've thought about "sonic resonance" saying "each successful hit after the first against an av targer with a sonic weapon adds +1 to the str value of armor penetration rolls. Ie 2 sonic blaster hits would add +1 to the str of both, 10 successful hits would add +9 to the str and so on."

 

It would maybe need to be toned down (for every 2 successufl hits) but would very accurately represent the sonic vibration caused against real objects and provide the nm with an anti vehicle option that doesn't suck. Assuming a squad of 10 nm fires a doom siren (1 hit) 16 sonic blaster shots (assume 8 hit) and 2 bm shots (assume 1 hits) they would be at +5 str vs vehicles (2 str10 and 8 str9 attacks)

 

With later calculation of +1 str per 2 hits (round down)

 

It would certainly give them the edge of a melta gun, be more chaotic and avoid having to introduce new weaponry.

 

Idk if you've ever studied the applications of real life sonic weapons but in short at about 180db ppl start popping organs and if a "fault" frequency is hit an object will collapse. You can also avoid fault frequecies but cause signifigant molecular vibration with consistant low frequency sounds that will crack/ destroy an object. (Basicly forcing it to vibrate to pieces.)

 

While one noise marine shouldn't be able to do that reliably a squad of guys should have no problem destroying any standing or mobile structure that resonates sound.

 

Meh just my two cents lol. Anyway i hope they put out a codex for each of the big four and give some lovin to the iron guard and night lords etc in the new codex/s

[the jeske]

I have seen the WWII german ones they were humen tested and all but required a small powerplant [or 4 trains] to deliver the power for it to work .

 

the resonance thing should be a one per unit thing . if ever and probably only for "havock" class units or just blast masters [no str 10 sonic blasters because people would run 6x5 units] .

 

as for melta . Well it is the bad side of NM right now and I dont think it should be removed a unit should not be good at everything and well priced because then no one else would play other units .

 

the scream could be build in to the syren or generaly in to NM rules . A sort of a revers banshee mask [maybe like nid lash whips] if NM doesnt use their sonic blasters/syrens/Blast master you get a -1I and it cumulative , so a unit with NM that doesnt shot pre charge at all would give a -3I debuff. Now you could build Lucius around this . he has this whole swordsman thing . why not give him some sort of virtouso rule . his stats and rules stay the same , but if he doubles his opponents I then his power weapon attacks do ID [he moves so fast and is so precise that slow opponents just dont know what hit them].

[makesomenoise]

Yeah i like it. Oh at this point i'm hoping they'll stop trying to cram 4 legions who are diverse and independant into the book of a 5th legion that is made up of a grab bag of the others not to mention iron guard (i think) night lords etc.

 

They really should just make a codex for each of the big four legions and a 5th codex for the black legion and friends. Effectively a vanilla chaos book.

 

It's like in the fluff you read all this stuff about how ec had land speeders and arial support and flag ships and 13 + chapters who each specialized in what ever task they are set to do. And on the table top you get one squad who is good at anti troop and expensive lol.

 

I feel the same of the thousand sons death gaurd and even world eaters.... yeah the world eaters, while it may be a codex of varied transports walkers and different berserker types i think even they could field an entire army unto themselves (i'd give em soul grinders to help out =) )