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

[Deschenus Maximus]

Tactical Marines can kill lessor troops with their Bolters easy enough, whilst packing serious punch with combi weapons and specials, plus heavy weapons where appropriate.

 

The game isn't just a stand up and fight affair with no moving. You SHOULD have terrain that blocks line of sight, so armies with less numbers can navigate to that boring Astra Millitarum gunline.

 

If you expect a Space Marine army to outshoot an Astra Millitarum gun line or Tau then you will find our models inefficient.

 

I said it previously that you should move about the table and objectives and have a combined arms approach to play as a Space Marines player. We might not be able to outshoot an Astra Millitarum gun line or but we can still shoot well to hurt them in some areas and assault the others.

 

The problem is people literally can't pull away from building gun lines in this game for EVERY army. It's the easiest build they can do but really it's the most at risk to paper rock scissors match ups.

 

Bolters are actually pretty bad at killing lesser troops, point for point. The combi and special/heavy do all the heavy lifting.

 

This whole thing about manoeuvring into position to avoid the worst of a gunline's fire is fine, but why bother with Tacticals to do it?

[Schlitzaf]

 

 

Intercessors perform like I expect Marines to.

 

Primaris marines are much more in line with the lore on the tabletop.

Your opinion Mate. I have no problem running my Tacs they do quite well and against Primaris to boot. But giving Combat squads a special and Heavy is to my liking . And Blades also

Then be Black Templars and use their Crusader Squads. Black Templars gets ‘mediocre’ CT because we have Tactical+ Squads.

[Captain Idaho]

Point for point keeps getting said but you're not just using your Bolters with Tactical Marines.

 

Why use Tactical Marines? Because they're a troops choice that can put their Bolters on infantry whilst plasma overcharges into something juicy?

 

Genestealers are scary and all but they don't like being rapid fired then charged by Tactical Marines.

[Deschenus Maximus]

Point for point keeps getting said but you're not just using your Bolters with Tactical Marines.

 

Why use Tactical Marines? Because they're a troops choice that can put their Bolters on infantry whilst plasma overcharges into something juicy?

 

Genestealers are scary and all but they don't like being rapid fired then charged by Tactical Marines.

 

Get Scouts? They can all do the same and more.

[Schlitzaf]

Scouts don’t have 3+ saves last I checked and from experience with Crusaders; 3+ vs 4+ is not meaningless. Also only have 1 Heavy where Tacticals have 2 Special and 1 Heavy

[Deschenus Maximus]

Scouts are also cheaper and don't need a transport, meaning you can have more of them for the same price, mitigating their worse save. And Tacticals at 5 men (which is how you run them) get 1 combi and 1 special or heavy, where Scouts get 1 combi and 1 heavy.

[Schlitzaf]

Only in Razorspam styled list. Otherwise you should do 10 Man reduce drops (I did the math elsewhere. But 1 Heavy is about Equivalent to 2 Specials).

[Deschenus Maximus]

Do 2 5-men squads Inside a Rhino? Same number of drops, more specials/heavies.

[BitsHammer]

Stratagems were brought up and thinking on it I'd have to say that there definitely needs to be something done to reduce the CP spamming that armies like Guard can bring. The most straightforward approach is basically make them pay double for everything. No strategem under 2CP to use for them in their codex. Or maybe to use strategems on units with large numbers of models (like, say 20) you have to spend an extra point to use it.

 

I'm not sure how to solve it honestly, but when an army can build into insanely high CP levels compared to other armies at the same level despite being the same points level something definitely needs to be done to rebalance the game to correct it.

[Schlitzaf]

The answer is impact. In theory, horde armies need more CP because for example spending 2 CP to shoot twice for Noise Armies is more impactful than a Gaunts shooting twice. Now how they plays out is a different question but the question is impact. And regards to question 2 5 Man vs 1 10 Men. Once you get stuck in or charge, spending two points to interrupt with a 10 Man more impactful than with a 5 Man or avoiding being interrupted. Melee is where weakness of MSU starts to shine.

[Deschenus Maximus]

Unless you are fighting something incredibly vulnerable, I would never waste 2 CPs to interrupt with Tacticals, 10-man strong or not.

[Schlitzaf]

12 Attacks > 8 > 5.32 or 4 wounds > or 2.16/3.55 or 1.33/2.66/3.33 dead. At T3 with 3+/5+ and T4 with 3+/5+/6+. Context you just killed 30-40ish Points of Deamonettes/Banshees/Deathcult. Whom had they attacked would have lost a marine from the squad. In the case of T4 killed 1 Marine, 2 Genestealers and 3 Ork Boyz. The marine killed is mediocre unless It’s like a Vangaurd, then you save half a Marine, (30 Point exchange), the stealers you saved two Marines (50 Points exchange) and the Orks you saved a marine and a half (35 Point exchange).

 

While of course these situations are silly, but those two points (worth 20ish Points each) paid for themselves. Had they been 5 Man you reduce the return damaged by half. In which case they would pay for themselves. The larger case will be salient with strategems like the IF and Ultra one. Or in how you bubble your men. A 10 Man is humerously more mobile than 2 5 Man when it comes to bubbles sense only one not two models need to be in bubble range.

[Zodd1888]

Strictly worse in terms of special weapons, but far better point for point generally.

 

They have better range, better general weapons, better resilience and more attacks in close combat. 65 points for 5 Tacticals or 90 for 5 Intercessors.

 

A lot of the complaints with Tacticals are basically resolved by taking Primaris. Better value line troops with greater resilience and cc capability. The hellblasters are a much better way to deploy special weapons too.

 

And now the Inceptors are the best fast attack infantry choice. No transport requires, value units with fantastic anti horde or anti elite firepower.

Well put.

[Captain Idaho]

Not really. 90pts for 5 Intercessors vs 65pts for 5 Tactical Marines looks like a bargain but you wouldn't do that. Of course 5 basic Tactical squad Marines are weaker than 5 basic Intercessors!

 

You'd add a combi plasma and plasma gun. You're now paying about the same points but the Tactical Marines are more offensive by a long way.

 

****

 

As for only taking 5 man Tacticals: this is falling foul of the same min maxing, kill as much as you can philosophy that is why Marines look weaker and less points efficient.

 

I take a 5 man squad as a babysitter squad, with dual plasma that looks after my midfield and Devastators. It's usually the last target on my opponents hit list.

 

Otherwise I take 10 man squads. They each have a heavy weapon and each hold the ground I want and advance where necessary. Their firepower is effective and their numbers sufficient to survive.

 

Why are they sufficiently survivable? Because I've got 10 Vanguard, 8-10 Sternguard and 5-8 Cataphractii Terminators the opponent is dealing with. Plus some vehicles.

 

Having 10 men in a single squad is useful because it maximises Scions of Guilliman whilst also forcing an opponent to deal with them.

[BitsHammer]

One thing I woud argue is that Primaris are Horus Heresy style deployments of Marines. Everything is pretty inflexible on it's own compared to the flexibility of a Tactical Squad (not much, if any, mixing and matching of options really) which makes them closer to how the Legions built their forces than how the current Marines do. Perhaps it's Guilliman and Cawl's intention or something that just spun out of when the project was created (lore-wise I mean) but I felt it was worth noting.

 

Basically, like Legions, treat your tactics approach to more like Eldar where every unit has a focused job and less like Marines (ironically) who use most of their units like a Swiss army knife (a tool for every job).

 

That said, I don't like the idea of just making regular Marines into Primaris and then buffing Primaris to something above that. I would rather see a nerf bat taken to the things that make Marines seem weak as the standard than inject them with steroids and start an arms race of buffing things endlessly. I mean we could make an arguement that if a Tactical Marine costs as much as three Guardsmen he should have thrice the wounds, attacks and shooting too, and since we're giving out all these bonuses to him, why not other models? I mean a Terminator is basically 8 Guardsmen before wargear, so shouldn't they be 8 wounds instead with 8 attacks and the ability to fire 8 times? I know I'm taking it to an extreme, but if we're going to say that because models are equal to a certain number of other models that they should be equivalent to that many models in terms of resilience and damage output then we need to consider these things applied to more extreme cases.

 

That isn't to say I don't feel like Marines couldn't use some sort of a boost to make them feel more "elite" compared to normal squishy humans, but part of what has been part of that "elite" nature is that compared to a normal human they have better stats. They have an easier time hitting things, are more difficult to wound and have better armour saves. This definitely sets them apart, but with how little varibility a D6 system gives it's never really going to feel like they're really THAT much better when the difference comes down to a difference of plus or minus one on the die roll. As such perhaps Marines could be moved to always rerolling ones to hit to represent their training with the auras being bumped to total rerolls.

 

Additionally bolt weapons do need some kind of buff (and this affects a few other armies outside of the various flavors of Marines like Sisters, Inquisitorial Henchmen and a few options in the Guard book) as the weapon has never completely matched the lore. I mean it fires a round that basically hurts you twice. I'm not saying we need to make it a huge buff, but again, rerolling ones (and pushing that to a reroll all wounds with an aura) would match the weapon better and push that elite feeling a touch further.

 

Naturally such changes could unleash a whole bunch of problems but if we're going to buff Marines I'd rather we see them become slightly more reliable (which represents their lengthy training as well) versus armies made of squishier humans. The differences would help seperate Marines and Sisters from being Marines and Diet-Marines in terms of play style as well since Marines would be seeing more hits going through while Sisters would only benefit from the bolter buff for the hits they get through but not the reroll buff (assuming no auras, strategems or Acts of Faith to push things through).

 

That said, while I have just rambled on about ways to buff Marines without overhauling their stat lines but instead making them feel more elite by making them more reliable on the table, but flipping it around how can we decrease things like Guard from crapping out MSUs to fill up FOCs really quickly and gain extra command points?

 

Of course points increases are the most straight forward answer, and I definitely agree that some things need to come up in points now that former chaffe units are more survivable and will suffer less from shooting due to the loss of templates. 6-8 points is probably a good butter zone for the standard Guardsman and would cut list sizes down by 1/4-1/2 without heavily punishing anyone for playing the army.

 

 

Actually increase the points on former chaffe units all around is likely just a good plan. With models that were formerly almost never given a save now getting one far more often they should have seen a points increase from that alone. After all, why should MEQ be the only one apparently paying for durability?

[Bryan Blaire]

Lots of good discussion

Hear, Hear Fulkes.

 

Now you’re talking more like what I was thinking.

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

Stratagems were brought up and thinking on it I'd have to say that there definitely needs to be something done to reduce the CP spamming that armies like Guard can bring. The most straightforward approach is basically make them pay double for everything. No strategem under 2CP to use for them in their codex. Or maybe to use strategems on units with large numbers of models (like, say 20) you have to spend an extra point to use it.

 

I'm not sure how to solve it honestly, but when an army can build into insanely high CP levels compared to other armies at the same level despite being the same points level something definitely needs to be done to rebalance the game to correct it.

 

Personally I think adding a minimum point threshold on detachments in order to gain "max" CP is a more elegant solution. 

 

Something like:

 

Brigade 3 CP for making one, full CP if its 1501 pts. or larger.

 

You could start the others at zero, and then have them have smaller thresholds and the CP will be a lot more even between fractions. 

[Zodd1888]

I'm dtatting to feel more and more like Primaris will become the standard marine stat line.

[Deschenus Maximus]

@Fulkes: Well if we agree that Marines pale in comparison to everything else, doesn't it make more sense to just buff Marines rather than redoing the points for basically everything else in the game? Seems just woefully inefficient way to go about this...

[ERJAK]

 

 

 

Note: a realisation from typing a response occured about a certain way of running marines that can be done hasn't been mentioned or thought about.

 

So...the tactic is to take a core of tacticals and do something crazy: Give them just bolters. Maybe strap a combi-melta to the sarge but bolters for all. You get 3 ten mans with 3 rhinos. Grab yourself a captain and lieutenant with a jump pack backpack package with their own choice of ranged weapons (I suggest Combi-meltas personally) and if you really want to go ham take a second lieutenant if you want with the same loadout. Your rhinos take double storm plus HK. That set-up (one lieu and one captain) is 896 points and each squad with transport dumps 28 rounds, if you take IF chapter then you ignore cover for your troopers however if you want to bulk up for the crackback then just run Iron Hands. If you however have an issue spreading your captains aura, you can up you points a little and take a second lieutenant of the same loadout and take the ultramarine chapter tactic to allow use of the scions of gulliman stratagem. Can even if you want burn 3 CP from battalion to have the captain a chapter master. You can run this set-up for 993 points in a 1k point game and could possibly be quite a list. the meltas would give you good anti-tank, the bolters would shred most infantry. Just depends on what you face.

 

Might theory this list up, maybe even get some models for this and test it out. Though it may struggle against heavy infantry lists.

Sorry for double post, but you could do the same list with SoB for cheaper and get Stormbolters instead of bolters, be able to afford a full brigade including Dominions with 5 SB and scout (10 domis with SBs in a rhino is only 195ish pts and dumps out 48 shots instead of 28. You'd lose out on full rerolls but you'd be saving huge amounts of points on characters (canonesses are only 45pts for reroll 1s). Basically the idea is good but SoB do it better, at the low low cost of 800ish dollars.

The contrast is the SoB aren't as durable. The loss of T4 for T3 is a big deal for the crack back, we can't assume our army willl wipe them turn one and must account for return fire and being T3 for return fire hurts, even for 3+ armour save. On top of that while we can't get storm bolters everywhere, however the higher toughness does reduce damage heavily as in the case of charging against guardsman the crackback of lasguns do more (wounding on 4 instead of 5). In the case the two lists face off, the tougher marines can bolter blitz down SoB far better and going into melee the sisters really start to struggle.

 

While back in 5th edition, I do remember one of my tacticals getting bolter blitzed by SoB down to half strength however the return fire from just bolt pistols and charging them had them crushed as being able to wound on 3s was huge. It is only one instance but it sticks for me because I thought my squad was doomed but were suddenly on top of the scene.

 

You may be cheaper but I would think the marine toughness overall would be a massive factor.

It's really not. Not when we do drastically more damage and have far better army-wide special rules and have become almost as immune to morale as SM in 5 man squads.

 

Without guillybro SM just don't have the tools to win a short range bolter based firefight against SoB. You win the ensuing slapfight sure but 8th being 8th means we don't have to stay stuck in anymore.

[Claws and Effect]

The main thing that concerns me is the inevitable power creep that will happen if Marines get buffed.

 

Marine buff---->people start whining that they're too good---->other factions get buffed to compensate and we're right back where we started.

 

Something else needs to be done other than just flat making them better.

[Ishagu]

To be fair Marines were even more rubbish in 7th. They only worked because half the army was free due to formations and you could run them in the same numbers as Guardsmen.

 

Like I said, there isn't a great deal for GW to change to address them.

[Trevak Dal]

So I have a question, is taking (chaos perspective here) 5 World Eater/MoK chaos marines and 5 Berserkers in a single rhino good? They are two separate units so would not get benefits from a singular command, or is that the answer?

[BitsHammer]

The main thing that concerns me is the inevitable power creep that will happen if Marines get buffed.

 

Marine buff---->people start whining that they're too good---->other factions get buffed to compensate and we're right back where we started.

 

Something else needs to be done other than just flat making them better.

Exactly this. I've even mentioned it a few times myself: just buffing Marines (especially buffing their stats) will inevitably lead to an arms race of army buffs that gets us into a bigger mess then issuing a points change on various armies (which can be done in CA like this just did last month).

[Bryan Blaire]

However, points changes aren't necessarily the only thing that need to be done. There should probably be adjustments to the "universal formations", and maybe even adjustments to stats or rules at this point, up or down. For instance, now that they've removed the Wargear sections, we have no explanation as to exactly why there is a difference between a bolter/bolt gun and a bolt carbine.

 

Now, GW has said that it is going to do a FAQ/Errata period during the year, maybe they will address some of this stuff then, but simply adjusting points values likely won't eliminate all the balance issues between different types of armies.