Why Power Armour troops are mediocre and what can be done?

[Schlitzaf]

Do your Marines forget they have something that can punch things?

[BitsHammer]

Do your Marines forget they have something that can punch things?

So you want to take a non-melee unit to punch a melee unit and expect to win?

 

What?

 

EDIT: Besides, 10 attacks (11 if your SGT has a Chainsword to go with their Stormbolter) isn't going to be enough to not get crushed by those Orks when the Orks swing back. Assuming the Orks didn't just charge you first since Orks like to advance whenever possible to get closer to charge range.

[Schlitzaf]

Why not? Your gonna be charged anyways. 12 attacks is still 12 attacks. And by forcing them to consolidate in your likely to seperate them and pulled them away from each other further reducing the chance they can leadership buff each other

[BitsHammer]

Why not? Your gonna be charged anyways. 12 attacks is still 12 attacks. And by forcing them to consolidate in your likely to seperate them and pulled them away from each other further reducing the chance they can leadership buff each other

If you have 12 attacks then the SGT isn't shooting because he has two chainswords meaning you're shooting even LESS against the Orks.

 

And the Ork morale bubble isn't that small, they can push forward in a wall and consolidating away from each other won't hurt them since they only need to keep a single model in range of another unit.

[The Unseen]

Not to mention if YOU charge into the ork mob, after they tear you apart after you get your 12 attacks, they then get to consolidate and the move+charge something else as well. Congrats, you just fed them a unit for free. Unless the squad you charged has like 3-4 orks left or something, its a terribly bad idea.

[Schlitzaf]

...10 attacks because 10 models base, Sgt has an extra one on profile and then another from Chainsword. 12 Attacks Total. At 20 Boy, 63 > 42 > 21 > 7 Dead Marines. If they Congo they are losing 3-4 men. 51 > 34 > 17 > 6. You likely pass Moral. The squad lacks pistols and as such cannot shoot. Making that squad functionally worthless

[BitsHammer]

Well it's my turn to make a mistake then.

 

Regardless, you're assuming Marines get the initiative to charge Orks instead of being charged. Orks re-roll failed charge rolls meaning they're more likely to make combat at longer ranges than Marines, and due to having more models, if they are charged, throwing lots of dice to shoot a charging unit is perfectly fine for them.

 

Basically you'd likely lose some guys on the way in and lose attacks assuming you got the charge.

[Schlitzaf]

40 > 7 > 3.5 > 1. 11 > 7 > 3.5 > 3. You need to roll a 5 or 6 to fail battle shock. And even at 5 or 6 your still left with a man. And yes we are doing theory hammering and Army comparison without the game. Unless someone has an ork list and a good marine list, and then Someone has a vassals program that works for windows 10. This tangent is pointless you asked how long. 2 Squads could do it reasonably in 2 maybe 3 turns.

 

I’d gladly take this tangent to PM, but we are hijacking thread

[BitsHammer]

2-3 turns is basically "getting punched by a horde of Orks first" range and doesn't make Marines capable of standing toe-to-toe with Orks (who can already beat Marines down despite not even having a codex yet).

[Schlitzaf]

....wow you are not listening. Two turns, one in Rapid one at range plus charge. You’ll need Aprox 40 more Shots (120 from two Bolter Squads). However considering that scenerio I outlined the Orks 40-120 Points (540-600 vs 480-500) more than the Marines that is entirely reasonable

[BitsHammer]

You're not factoring getting shot between turn 1 and 2 and the chances of making a charge vs getting charged in that as well.

[Deschenus Maximus]

More fantasy scenarios.

[Schlitzaf]

Either they are out of range (12” pistols) or the numbers are inconquenstial. (180 > 30 > 10 > 3 wounds on Rhino). If Marine player component or he loses 5 Marines. Which is only insignificant ‘because’ the Orks start 60 Points ahead already. If they have a Warboss and can advance and charge we are talking 15” turn 1 charge and now the difference becomes +100 in addition to anything else

[Mileposter]

... I'm sorry. What are we trying to prove again? I've lost track.

[Schlitzaf]

That math is hard. Two Tactical Squads can kill 45 Boyz. Also I don’t know about them, but we cannot prove anything beside raw data unless someone here is NoVA-Tournamant Top Bracket Player. (Whom can look at two army lists and tell you how the game will play out while accounting for the various ‘what if’ scenarios. It’s utterly terrifying.)

[Deschenus Maximus]

I think "blast" weapons really need to be better against large units, something like a Demolisher cannon doing D3 shots base, but D6 shots against 5+ models and 2D6 shots against 10+ models. That will go a long way towards balancing things between elite armies and hordes.

 

Tangential thought, but maybe flamers could do 2D6 hits when at half range? Logical and would help make them better.

 

Also also, Plasma cannons: roll once to see if they overheat - makes no sense that catching more guys in the explosion at the other end makes it more likely to explode.

[Schlitzaf]

Number of attacks on Blast Weapons if anything should be done by Units wound count if anything.

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

On the topic of stratagems and CP. I've suggested setting point thresholds in order to gain the CP from each FOC, to balance out how easy it is for some armies to fill a brigade compared to others, but it never really seemed to gain any traction.

 

What would you think of a rule that would grant you 3 extra CP if you had a battalion composed of one chapter that included a Chapter master/Captain, a librarian, and a Chaplain/Tech marine that could only be used on Adeptus Astartes of that chapter. You could only gain the bonus once per army, and It would be wrote so the other marine books would have a path to get it but again it could only be gained once. So if you had your chapter allied to space wolves you wouldn't gain the bonus CP twice, even if they both included three different HQ types in two separate battalions.

 

 

[Schlitzaf]

Replace Librarian with Liutanent. Also as an aside, as an army Marines are nice because we have a lot of utility HQ’s to fill speciality detachment.

 

If we were going to go that route I’d rather see the speciality detachments in general get +1 to CP beside Supreme Command, Air Wing, while Battlelion gets +1 and perhaps Patrol gets +1 (and increase to two Troops).

 

If we were gonna to do anything Marine specific, 10 Man Squads of Tacticals should give their army +1 CP (and combat Squad change to start of any Phase)

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

Replace Librarian with Liutanent. Also as an aside, as an army Marines are nice because we have a lot of utility HQ’s to fill speciality detachment.

 

If we were going to go that route I’d rather see the speciality detachments in general get +1 to CP beside Supreme Command, Air Wing, while Battlelion gets +1 and perhaps Patrol gets +1 (and increase to two Troops).

 

If we were gonna to do anything Marine specific, 10 Man Squads of Tacticals should give their army +1 CP (and combat Squad change to start of any Phase)

 

1) Do you see the lieutenant as tax then or is more a thematic suggestion? I mainly went with librarians because I'd want all chapters to have something similar and some don't have lieutenant options (GK).

 

 2) For the extra CP do you mean if there is a point threshold? If so I agree that FOC CP values would need to be looked at. I just don't see a better way to smooth CPs out, and putting point thresholds on them puts effective limits on how many CP fractions can have.  

 

3) I was mainly looking at doing things that helped power armor in general which is why I didn't think about the tactical buff, but it could have a lot of potential. I do think if that was the route that 10 man Intercessor squads should also gain the bonus.

[Schlitzaf]

I mean Marines are not that bad off. Not everything can be Teir 1, while some adjustments are necessary, Marines beside stratagems are overall fine spot. Most stratagems aren’t that good across every codex.

 

Even AM only has couple stratagems folks will actually use. If we are instead arguing that AM and such has too many CP compared to other forces. Then the best what to ameliorate that is to fix the issue with speciality detachment. Most armies can reasonably take 1 Battlelion and 1 Speciality, the Brigade for most lists is one or nothing deal. Having Battlelion + Speciality equate to 9 Command Command (vs just 7 CP) vs a Brigade 12 CP is the far less of a difference.

 

And I say Liutanent because well Black Templars but more important. Speciality Chapters (GK and Deathwatch) have issues that ought to be settled independently from the Main Line Chapters.

 

Intercessors could get it. But the fact is Crusader and Grey Hunter Squads don’t need it. The math is there, you can gander at my analysis thread to just see the raw math element. The point of the free CP for 10 Man (and changing combat squads to start of any phase), would be to try and balance Tacticals with Crusaders and Grey Hunters (when said comparison isn’t just 5-6 Man MSU).

 

The mechanical purpose of the free CP is to allow the player to ‘freely’ pay for combat squading. While making Tacticals feel more tactical by enabling you more Tacticals options and abilities.

[Claws and Effect]

Wow.

 

Did everyone forget that Marines have more tools to work with than just dudes with bolters?

 

I don't worry about whether my Tactical squad can kill a Guard squad.

 

My Tactical squad is going to chill on an objective while my Fire Raptor deletes 2 or 3 squads plus a vehicle. And my Stormraven does somewhat less.

 

Guys. I don't know how you play, but I can kill Guard squads without my Tactical squads even firing a shot.

[totgeboren]

Guys. I don't know how you play, but I can kill Guard squads without my Tactical squads even firing a shot.

And this is exactly why this discussion has gone on for so long! Your experience is shared by most, since their Tacticals with boltguns do almost nothing during games! Guards with lasguns do their part for guard armies, Ork boys do theirs for Orks, Gaunts theirs for Nids.

 

They are supposed to represent the backbone of the astartes, but your army becomes better the less of them you take. (Standard advice I see is "Take 5 with 1 special weapon and 1 combi on the Sgt".) This is especially true for CSM, who have Cultists to take their place. It is also worth noting here that Cultists are basically bad guardsmen without any proper special/heavy weapon options or orders/special rules/morale mitigation, but they are still much better than basic CSM.

 

I think it's rather nice to see that the frustration this causes has been channeled into this rather friendly and constructive thread. I'm more used to years of CSM frustration which lead to thread after thread being locked because of extreme negativity.

[Claws and Effect]

From where I'm sitting, a lot of the expectations of what Marines should be able to do just aren't very realistic.

 

Someone mentioned that they should be able to kill an equivalent worth of points every turn?

 

Really? A squad that gets 20 shots in rapid fire range is inefficient if it can't kill 30 Guardsmen with those 20 shots?

 

Like I said, I use my Fire Raptor to kill hordes. A 350 point model. If I delete 3 Guard squads with it, I've killed approximately a third of my unit's value in Guardsmen. Interestingly enough, that is the exact same ratio a Tactical squad is capable of. And Guardsmen can kill about the same ratio of Marines (in other words, about 1 dude after saves).

 

My theory is that a third of the unit's cost per turn is about what something should be taking out, since it seems to be pretty consistent across multiple units.

 

Obviously a Devastator squad taking out a Land Raider is punching above its weight class. But that's what heavy weapons are for.

 

I don't believe Tactical squads are meant to be the front line of a Marine army in the first place.

 

You called them the "backbone" of a Marine army. And they are. The catch to that is anyone who goes into a fight leading with their backbone is going to get shot in the back.

[totgeboren]

Taking out their points in shooting per turn would be pretty mental, and horrible game design!

If they had that firepower, the outcome of two similar armies facing each other would literally be decided by the roll for first turn!

(2000 pts that can take out 2000 pts in one turn means the enemy should have about 0 points left on the table come their turn).

 

And this is the problem. Even in a optimal scenario for the unit, attacking light infantry in the open (lets say guardsmen in rapid fire range), a tactical is only looking at killing 18% of his cost.

A Guardsman in the same optimal scenario is looking at killing about 33% his cost, or 67% with orders.

 

Of course, the marine can take 3 times as many hits from anti-infantry weapons as the guardsman.

Even without orders, the guardsman is almost twice as more offensively powerful than the marine (3.6 times with orders!), but only has 33% of the resilience of the marine.

 

So we have one unit that is ~3x as offensively powerful, and the other who is ~3x as defensively powerful. Sounds like they should be somewhere in the same region when it comes to points right?

But as we know, they are not, and this is an issue.

 

Looking at the numbers, I think it's an unfortunate combination to compare.

Guardmen are obviously too powerful, especially with orders (FRFSRF should probably just be reroll to hit). But marines are also probably a bit weak too. Increasing their firepower by ~50% would bring them up to killing 27% of their points per turn in an optimal situation, and with their (rather weak but better than nothing) close combat ability, might make them a bit more reasonable on the table.