"Fixing" the Space Marine Codex

[Xisor]

It's a consideration from role-playing games, and worth factoring in.

 

Simply: generally/widely use able rules trump specific/situational rules.

 

So whilst specific rules can be fun (chaplain denies), they're very limited (chaplains), whilst something more widely available - even at a cost - is attractive (CP to deny, any unit).

 

More, if you have a consideration for players who don't have the time/energy/wherewithal to memorise and bear in mind every special rule, cutting down to a handful of sensible special rules makes things much easier to work with, for the player and their opponent.

 

I think it's what mathematics-y folk mean when they talk about "elegance".

 

Fifteen pages of strategems (that work only when you've seven land speeders, two chaplains and it's a full moon!) won't help where something simple like 'Rising Crescendo' (advance & charge, fall back and still shoot/charge) adds most of the flavour you need in one rule.

 

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One of the trends I've seen, however, that worries me is the desire for "effective rules" (good, generally!) leading to bizarre consequences.

 

E.g. Ishagu's rule suggestion are generally worth two big thumbs up, but the Raven Guard one has the strange consequence of making their vehicles want to not travel anywhere. Which is a strange thing for Raven Guard to want to do!

 

But that's hardly a unique phenomenon, and give that the RG doctrine is slightly curious in itself, who really knows.

 

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What would be lovely, I suppose, is the ability to deal CP damage. But that's absent across most of 40k, so maybe not worth speculating on.

[Ishagu]

Exactly. The biggest issue we have is unit specific rules and strats that are a massive limiting factor.

 

The rules need to be streamlined, usable across the board and easy to memorise.

 

 

As for the RG strat, I only suggested the movement restriction to vehicles because the rules will probably be too strong otherwise. Look what happened to Eldar with most lists being drawn from a single craftworld.

[BitsHammer]

Quite honestly, I don't get people's constant nagging at me about how this will never have an impact and never work. You know what never has an impact? Not trying. At least by trying, even if it doesn't see direct and immediate impact, it can still help the game devs see a different side of the coin from what the studio knows. They'd see how we look at units, how we evaluate them, and generally what we hope for from an army. The studio has been an ivory tower cut off from the community for a long time now and while I'm sure the playtesters are going a good job at knocking down broken combos and the studio has been eliminating broken combos from tournaments the best they can, at the end of the day they haven't been looking at fixing the stuff that's broken in a bad way. And I have no problem being the idiot who wastes my free time to point that stuff out, even if they don't do a single thing with it.

 

It's my free time I'm possibly wasting, so why keep trying to save it for me? I mean I'd spend all my time thinking about this stuff anyways, so the least I can do is take all of that and roll it up into something that has a chance of making the game better instead of sitting on my thumbs and complaining that my army doesn't work the way the fluff says it should. So yeah, I know you're trying to "help" me by telling me I'm wasting my time, but honestly you're not going to change my mind. Instead of trying to yank my chain it'd be better to either contribute to the topic by pointing out stuff not yet covered, or painting some models or something.

[Ishagu]

You can certainly try, I just don't like the suggestions at all.

 

It's rule bloat that doesn't translate into better performance.

[BitsHammer]

You can certainly try, I just don't like the suggestions at all.

 

It's rule bloat that doesn't translate into better performance.

Neither does making Assault Marines 6 points. 

 

Most changes I've got sitting in front of me aren't in the vein of special rules but rather stat changes to weapons (-1 AP on Bolters, S5 on Bolt Rifles to keep them different from bolters, Meltas getting double strength instead of rolling two damage dice at half range, ect) with the only actual rules being aimed at fixing the way Marines take damage and even then I've gone from two rules to just one to roll up both effects into a single rule. Stuff like altering existing strats or warlord traits, or even relics doesn't add rules, it aims at pointing out where something is failing and tries to address that in a way that is as constructive as possible. 

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Most changes I've got sitting in front of me aren't in the vein of special rules but rather stat changes to weapons

Fair enough. I do the same when writing my own Codex Supplements.

-1 AP on Bolters, S5 on Bolt Rifles to keep them different from bolters

You think bolt rifles should fire heavy bolter ammunition?

Meltas getting double strength instead of rolling two damage dice at half range

That seems excessive. How about giving the melta weapon Strength 9 when the weapon is at half-range, and Strength 10 when at quarter-range (as opposed to the vanilla Strength 8)?

[BitsHammer]

The bolt rifle change would likely mean that Heavy Bolters would need to be -2 instead to stay different, but it's a better change than making the bolt rifle -2 AP and the heavy bolt rifle -3 AP to compensate for giving AP 0 bolt weapons a -1 to make them actually worth using. And arguably considering how much smaller a Primaris unit is compared to an all old-startes one, the extra quality in shooting would at least give them some teeth to balance out being so heavily outnumbered.

 

That said, it's just an idea and while it's not perfect, it is among the better ones I've seen to keep from basically just making the difference being a matter of range (which would further nerf the already weak Primaris options).

 

And considering that Melta used to be S8+2D6 against vehicles at half range, no it's not excessive. Being S16 would be around the same effect in terms of how easy it'd punch through armour at short range (thus giving a real reward for getting close at the risk of you being closer to the enemy and likely to end up dead). It should be the scary weapon for getting in at close range and basically shotgunning you into slag (or failing to do more than 1 damage and dying horribly). If it needs a points bump to match that's fine, but at least then it'd work as it was intended to instead of failing to wound vehicles so often.

[Ishagu]

For the record, it wasn't me that suggested Assault Marines should be six points.

 

I think the point adjustments are coming and GW has already decided.

[BitsHammer]

For the record, it wasn't me that suggested Assault Marines should be six points.

 

I think the point adjustments are coming and GW has already decided.

I know you weren't suggesting it, but you did say that was what they're worth which was the point this was trying whole thing was started to push against. If an Astartes is barely worth more than a Guardsman on the table something has gone pretty wrong.

 

And I mispoke earlier, there were two more rules I was looking at suggesting adding in total: the "don't more or if you're within 3" of an objective you can shoot twice" for Tacticals, Intercessors, Strike Squads and Chaos Space Marines, and the "if you're within 3" of an objective or if you're in combat with a unit that is within 3" of an objective fight twice" for Crusader, ASM and Raptors (though I could almost see Chaos Space Marines getting both). Not exactly a deluge of extra rules and they're more conditional versions of something we already have in the game for Berserkers. 

 

Basically the idea is to give a reasonable buff to existing troop choices so there is a reason to take them without just going "okay, double all the shots of bolt weapons to compensate for being elite models".

[Captain Idaho]

I have no problems with a melta going to S16. Folk often have a knee jerk reaction to high strength but in practical terms it just means you wound everything in a 2+ instead of a 3+.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

Surely, instead of increasing the AP of a Heavy Bolter round, you should just increase the Damage? They go just as fast, if not slower than bolt rounds, but would hit harder.

[Panzer]

I have no problems with a melta going to S16. Folk often have a knee jerk reaction to high strength but in practical terms it just means you wound everything in a 2+ instead of a 3+.

 

Aye, especially with the super short range of regular melta it would be more than fine.

Multi-melta and other melta equivalents would need a separate evaluation tho I guess. I kinda don't want to see the T'au fluff getting devalued even more tho (used to have superior plasma as in non-overheating but with slightly less strength, now it's just strictly worse with less strength and no overheat option for more strength and more damage; their Fusion Blaster are superior Melta at 18" while still being Assault weapons). Not because I'm a T'au fanboy or whatever but because it's just part of their fluff to have some weapons being a little bit better than the degraded technology of the Imperium.

They could make it double strength at half range for every Melta weapon in the game to give everyone the same push but it's really just the regular imperial Melta that needs it I'd say (and Inferno pistols I guess).

 

 

 

Surely, instead of increasing the AP of a Heavy Bolter round, you should just increase the Damage? They go just as fast, if not slower than bolt rounds, but would hit harder.

 

Increasing the damage does pretty much nothing against most targets you want to shoot Bolter at. Especially not against Guardsmen and equivalent targets which they should be especially effective against.

[Xisor]

There's an idea.

 

Stop differentiating the bolt guns. Jesus, it's bloody annoying.

 

Is that an auto bolt rifle or an assault bolt rifle? A combi-bolter not a heavy bolt pistol. Abolver? I barely knew 'er!

 

Boltgun: S4, 24",-1AP,rapid fire.

Boltcarbine: Assault 18"

Boltrifle: Heavy 2 30"

Bolt pistol: pistol 1, 12"

Heavy bolter: S5 48" -1 Heavy 3

 

Done. Adjust prices accordingly. Ditch the rest, or shift them to strategems/data sheet notes ('Any bolt weapon wielded by this unit is master crafted for +1D', or some such.)

 

Characters & sternguard can get the note on the dataset.

 

Everybody else doesn't have a billion bolt weapon pattern profiles to pour over and clutter up reference tables, extending them across fifty pages.

 

Seriously, there's over thirty different types of boltgun on the loose with its own profile.

 

Boltgun on a Sunday.

Boltgun on a full moon.

Boltgun after Sanguinala.

Late Indomitus Crawl Inferior Pattern Avenger Megabolter Pistol.

Hands across the Imperium of Dominion wrist bolter.

Psy-tipped neurobolter.

 

Jeez.

[Panzer]

Seriously, there's over thirty different types of boltgun on the loose with its own profile.

 

Exagerating much?

1. Boltgun
2. Boltpistol
3. Heavy bolter
4. Stormbolter/Combi-bolter (same thing just differently named across imperial and chaos marines)
5. Stalker pattern boltgun (Deathwatch only)
6. Hurricane Bolter (basically just 6 Bolter that have to shoot at the same target)
7. Special Issue boltgun
8. Bolt rifle (P)
9. Stalker bolt rifle (P)
10. Bolt carbine/Auto bolt rilfe (exact same thing) (P)
11. Assault bolter (P)
12. Absolver bolt pistol (P)

And then the few special cases like hybrid weapons which don't really count like Auto Boltstorm gauntlets and the Custodes Bolter spears.

[Ishagu]

You don't have to memorise them all if you find it confusing. Just memorise the ones your models are equipped with

[Wargamer]

I don't understand why we have bolt carbines and auto boltrifles myself.

[Panzer]

I don't understand why we have bolt carbines and auto boltrifles myself.

 

Aye, that's the only thing I'd argue is dumb (Stormbolter and Combi-bolter being the same but with different names is just a relic from past editions).

[CCE1981]

 

 

I don't understand why we have bolt carbines and auto boltrifles myself.

Aye, that's the only thing I'd argue is dumb (Stormbolter and Combi-bolter being the same but with different names is just a relic from past editions).

You forgot twin boltguns on bikes. To add to the confusion a combi- gun has two profiles and if you fire both profiles you hit with a -1. Why does a combi-bolter break from that?

[Panzer]

 

 

I don't understand why we have bolt carbines and auto boltrifles myself.

Aye, that's the only thing I'd argue is dumb (Stormbolter and Combi-bolter being the same but with different names is just a relic from past editions).

You forgot twin boltguns on bikes. To add to the confusion a combi- gun has two profiles and if you fire both profiles you hit with a -1. Why does a combi-bolter break from that?

 

 

Alright I didn't even know it's a twin boltgun and not a combi-bolter. And why the combi-bolter is such an exception? Well it never was a real combi weapon to begin with but then again it wouldn't make much sense to work like a regular combi-weapon unless GW just wants to nerf chaos marines by giving them worse stormbolter.

[CCE1981]

I was refering to the exception to the “combi-“ naming convention.

 

I get your point and totally agree with it. If anything pointing out that you forgot “twin-boltgun” just adds to your point that there are so many weapons with exactly the same profile. Look at guard lasguns and autoguns, they also fall into the same catagory. Or is that Chaos????

[CCE1981]

To add to the primary topic. Where are:

 

Master Crafted Bolt Rifles

Primaris Librarian/Chaplains/Lieutenants in Gravis Armour

Primaris Captain/Chaplain/Librarian/Lieutenant Inceptors?

 

The Blood Angels Codex has a picture of a Primaris Librariann in it so I know they are coming.

[autek mor]

i would have no issue with bolt weapons as long as the marine units that carry them are cheaper. GW know what happens to undercosted units already, they will be spammed but for some reason they are holding back on most of the marine units and in some cases made them more expensive yet they had no problem with dropping the cost of some primaris units. lets say we run with the conspiracy theory of phasing out old units to push primaris units? then in that case, new primaris units for certain battlefield roles are definitely needed at this point in time to deter players from getting cheaper support for their armies through allies if they want to see marine players run more fluffy armies.

[Ishagu]

Did you guys hear that Cruddace and the design team were at Nova?

 

They've already identified problems with the game and the cheaper infantry.

 

Expect the FAQ, and then Chapter Approved to impact the game significantly.

[SydonianDragoon404]

Templars should be getting +1 attack in addition at the very least to offset the fact that the SM codex doesnt have a melee specialist unit like the wolf and BA dex do. +1 strength is paltry in this edition where space marines have a single attack and vanguard vets and terminators only have 2.

[BitsHammer]

Did you guys hear that Cruddace and the design team were at Nova?

 

They've already identified problems with the game and the cheaper infantry.

 

Expect the FAQ, and then Chapter Approved to impact the game significantly.

I heard they were there, but again, I expect them to be hammering the things that stick out too far (like using the benefits from Fly to make 3" charges from 11" above an enemy unit) and looking at CP farms rather than trying to make Marines less bad.