Bridging the gap

[Interrogator Stobz]

GW lost their way quite a few years ago.

8th Ed is a great environment to increase the base stats of Astates, no longer need they be stuck 44441173+

They Can Be Gods of War!

[Captain Idaho]

I totally agree with the idea that Marines need to be more identifiable as an army playstyle.

 

And also to provide a reason to take basic bolter dudes I also came up with these rules:

 

1) Transhuman Physiology: The superhuman resilience of Space Marines is a marvel of technological engineering and only multiplied by the addition of power armour.

 

Any model with the Adeptus Astartes or Heretic Astartes Keywords ignores the first point of Armour Penetration.

In addition, these models also gain an additional attack in close combat when directing attacks solely at models with a single wound and without the Adeptus Astartes or Heretic Astartes Keywords.

 

2) Astartes class weapons: Space Marines often use weapons of the same type as other forces but on a larger scale and as such a Space Marine bolter is more powerful than a bolter utilised by a Commissar of the Astra Millitarum or even the Chambers Militant of the Eccesleiarcy themselves.

 

When any model with the Adeptus Astartes or Heretic Astartes Keywords fires a bolter those weapons receive an additional +1 Strength and point of Armour Penetration when firing at targets within half range. In addition, these models also receive an additional +1 Strength in close combat when using a Chainsword.

My idea here makes Marines more elite. It also encourages Marines to get in close as a strike force. It also helps Classic and Primaris Marines.

 

Something like that from GW wouldn't go amiss.

[Interrogator Stobz]

Primaris rules to a degree achieve that, and the minis are nice; just fluff upgrade all marines without any height growth so they can keep using other marks of armour and fit in vehicles and both old and new players will spend money.

[Xenith]

For me there isn't really a gap. Primaris are a lot less controversial than say, Centurians were, or the Stormhawk interceptor in a faction famously noted to be allowed zero air superiority capability on the ruling from Guilliman himself. 

 

The models are great. Gravis > Centurian armour.

 

What I really want is actual heavy weapon (+backpack) armed marines, someone with a chainsword.

 

A lot of ‘grognards’ have a lot of money. Whilst I’m sure GWs marketing team is sure they are making more monies from the new range, they’re not getting my $2-3k per year anymore.

 

The things is that probably for every grognard that refuses to buy Primaris, there are 10 - 20 that roll with it. 

 

For every person that burned their fantasy army after AoS was announced, several thousand that didn't. 

 

 

3) Progress the background that has the Primaris being the traditional Chapters and the Imperium producing Classic Marines as Legions who are more "massed produced".

 

This contradicts the current fluff that Primaris are easily mass produced, while the old style marines are hard to create, high failure rate, etc. 

[Interrogator Stobz]

Whilst neither of us have stats to back our views on that, the premise of mine is that those that won’t buy the new stuff might spend on more old stuff.

Loss of sales, the ones you mentioned will spend regardless.

I’m not saying get rid of the new, some like it, I’m saying make a positive advancement to the old stuff. You know, make more folks happy and spendy. Not a bad plan in business.

 

And for those of us that prefer the old guys, the gap is very real.

[Xenith]

The manager of GW Stockport stuck some reiver bolt pistols and chainsword arms onto some intercessors. They looked ace. I'd buy a box.

 

 

 

A lot of ‘grognards’ have a lot of money. Whilst I’m sure GWs marketing team is sure they are making more monies from the new range, they’re not getting my $2-3k per year anymore

 

Whilst neither of us have stats to back our views on that, the premise of mine is that those that won’t buy the new stuff might spend on more old stuff.
Loss of sales, the ones you mentioned will spend regardless.
I’m not saying get rid of the new, some like it, I’m saying make a positive advancement to the old stuff. You know, make more folks happy and spendy. Not a bad plan in business.

 

"might spent more" is probably not a risk GW want's to take, especially when you previously state outright you won't be spending any more.

 

GW already tried...and failed to reinvigorate marine lines. With the reception Centurians got, I'd be hesitant to "find another missing STC". The Wulfen models are an abomination. Logan's sleigh? The list goes on. 

 

A lot of this is counter-intuitive, anyway. The people with disposable income largely already had lots of marines, and more than they could paint, so were possibly drowning in models and slowing down on purchases. Just look at the pile of shame thread in the BA forum. At at the rate I paint I could never buy another model and still have enough models to keep me going the rest of my natural life.

 

Nobody needed more tactical marines. When's the last time you bought a tactical squad box, the actual box, not as part of a bundled box deal with big discount? My last one was 2014 when they released the Blood Angels one. Before that was...1999?

 

GW has a duty to the shareholders to create product that people 'will' buy, not 'might buy'. I can see why they went all in on primaris considering:

 

The efforts to make a "positive advancement to the old stuff" is firstly, massively subjective, and secondly was massively derided by many on the forum (Centurians, Stormhawk, addition of flyers to the game in general) due to the aforementioned subjective nature of 'beauty'/aesthetic, but also the fluff modifications necessary to accommodate new things...which also upsets people.

 

Similarly, GW couldn't do a 'soft' reset and just say 'here's the new tactical box' in a new scale. You remember the furore from the more unhinged forumites when they reboxed marines on 32mm bases? The wailing and gnashing and cries of 'my army is invalidated' could be heard through the screen.

 

 

TL, DR: GW can't win. They can't make 'new' marine units without breaking both fluff and upsetting some players.

[Captain Idaho]

Don't take the topic off subject.

[Captain Idaho]

Primaris rules to a degree achieve that, and the minis are nice; just fluff upgrade all marines without any height growth so they can keep using other marks of armour and fit in vehicles and both old and new players will spend money.

I think my rule actually makes Primaris very effective. Imagine their Bolters going to S5 and AP-2 then a charge with an additional attack.

 

Now imagine if they produce a Chainsword Primaris...

[Interrogator Stobz]

I am, it’s great; now imagine they gave those rules to all marks of armour.... everyone could be happy instead of only part of their customers at zero risk.

[Sloeberjong]

I'd personally wouldn't mind GW just ripping the bandaid and fully go over to Primaris and make them a full army. It would've been better if the fluff fit this better, but that bridge has been burned. I wouldn't mind them making a legacy codex for the old marines. It works for Tomb Kings in AOS, so why not for marines. I get that this is a controversial move, but like I said, just to rip the bandaid in one go (we all know primaris are the new marines and the old ones will be phased out eventually). I do get that they would've needed time to fully develop new units for a whole army, so I get why they've gone this route. That said, I'd like Primaris with some more weapon options than they have now (Hellblasters with meltaguns or Aggressors with heavy weapons or whatnot, Close combat units with more options). 

 

Furthermore I'd like GW to differentiate stats more. They've opened up this possibility with the ability for anything to wound everything. There'd be no issue with marines being T5-6 standard and Gravis/Terminator types being 7 or something. Almost as tough as a tank, yes, like the fluff makes you believe. Although, vehicles could well go to T10-12+. And extra wounds. This won't happen this edition though (if ever). This also goes for more different weapon stats, so Astartes can get elite weapons compared to others in the imperium. Normal humans shouldn't be able to fire Bolters at all, so I don't know why other factions get the option at all. 

 

Gamewise I'd like GW to get rid of true line of sight and to put in some more modifiers. They're minor whishes though, but I do hope they learn from Kill Team and its popularity. Changing the IGOUGO to KT is probably asking too much, though it would make for a more dynamic game. But this is going off topic I think since it has nothing specifically to do with marines...

 

Those things would make me happier, even though I already quite like where 40k is right now. 

[Interrogator Stobz]

They can introduce the new units without destroying the old, one way is smart, the other way is very smart.

BTW I think the new minis are fantastic! They are just not for me.

 

And for clarification, none of my posts have been negative about Primaris, and have been on the topic of improving the game by bridging the gap in that I believe that old marines need a boost. If no one buys them anymore there is no loss, if they do, win. The rules are just numbers on a page, no extra cost regardless of investment in minis.

 

People don’t need to understand the emotive component, to everyone that is personal, but acceptance of difference in opinion is key.

[Captain Idaho]

I am, it’s great; now imagine they gave those rules to all marks of armour.... everyone could be happy instead of only part of their customers at zero risk.

Now imagine a MK9 set for Classic Marines using these rules, deployed as Breachers and Destroyers.

[Closet Skeleton]

I shouldn't be posting in this thread because as far as I'm concerned if you already have 200+ old marines you should be glad that your collection won't need expanding. I'd love updated plastic scouts and bikes but do I need more scouts and bikes? Not really, I rarely use the ones I do own. The inescapable fact of having a large collection is that you were either using it all in Apocalypse or some of it was invalidating some other part of it.

 

If Primaris marines were competitive and old marines weren't then we'd have something to be annoyed about but currently all marines suck except for those aforementioned horrible plastic scouts. Marines need to be reworked to be competitive and that's going to mean dropping the points and letting you take more of them because the range is just designed as a combined arms range, there are no marine harlequins that do one thing very well so you can specialist the whole army to do that one thing and get away with being very elite.

 

Honestly, this would do a lot for me too. Just give me rules for my Marines that aren't deliberately trash so they can sell Primaris, then I can choose to ignore or engage with the new models at my own pace.

 

 

Spoken like someone who has never bought a Toxicrene.

 

GW don't make rules deliberately trash, that makes no sense and never has.

 

I think I see the gap differently than the majority of people. I don’t see a gap between Primaris and Classic marines. I see a gap between scouts, and the rest of the troops. I see troops as a tax and then a big divide that segregates the troops and then the rest of the points are carefully min maxed in potent units from Forgeworld or Knights or Shield Captains, etc.

That is the big gap to me. I desire a Codex Astartes that makes me want to take Tacticals and Intercessors in equal measure. I want my specialist Tacticals and my survivable, anti infantry Intercessors to be ‘automatic’ choices.

 

Sounds like your real problem is that you enjoy both competitive list building and the aesthetics of deploying an army that looks like an army and those are always going to be in conflict.

 

 

I also think it's crazy they don't make a multipart HQ kit for every faction like the old SM Commander. Slap bits in there to make it multiple options (i.e. Narthecium, psychic hood, iron halo, crozius for marines, plus weapons and some aesthetic choices; for Necrons have it able to be lord/overlord/cryptek). No one wants 3 of the same model on the table. It's jarring. Even with head swaps or what have you.

I've never seen a decent looking marine army that actually used that multi-part SM commander. The old range of pewter characters gave you enough choice that a theoretically non-unique one always ended up looking better and you rarely saw his 'clone' anyway while the people who were really good at converting and kitbashing didn't need that kit.

 

3 of the same model is a problem caused by plastic molds being too expensive so the options the pewter range gave us are no longer possible (outside of limited run lieutenants apparently).

[Kallas]

@Closet Skeleton: I actually don't own 200+ Space Marines, I bought back in to the hobby after 8th dropped. I have about 50 infantry models plus half a dozen tanks, 99% of which are all OldMarines.

 

Maybe GW doesn't make units deliberately bad, but they definitely make other units better by comparison.

[Captain Idaho]

So is there a call for more Classic Marines to be released? I believe so. I believe that many of the Primaris players who bought into the hobby and don't have existing Marines so a new MK9 release would encourage those players to expand their collections in much the same way as Primaris was to existing customers.

 

Wonder if a petition would be worthwhile?

[Canadian_F_H]

I only want to see any new marine models if they are at least scaled up. They are supposed to be bigger than the IG. and while I've truscaled 1 CSM and 1 BT vs tests for the process, they are still shorter than primaris.

 

IDK. The whole thing is a mess. I'm just proceeding on my own way. "for the Crusade is Eternal"

[Captain Idaho]

I don't particularly care about the scale thing and I think most people don't care. Looking at how many Wraith Guard can fit inside a Wave Serpent or Primaris inside a Repulsor the scale is a practical thing.

 

However I do think a new MK9 release could be larger like the recent new Chaos Marines releases and go down very well.

[Bryan Blaire]

I doubt we will ever see a Mk9 kit - it doesn’t sound like GW ever had a plan to develop something like that. At best you might get a resized current Tactical squad and follow on unit kits. Even if they green-lighted a Mk9 kit tomorrow, you wouldn’t see them for probably a year and a half to two years. The Mk10 probably doesn’t even mean anything, it might as well be Mk1.0 or Mk42. You could just get Mk3-8 with a couple of additional plates or something, similar to how Mk5 was the makeshift concept, with an enlarged size - it still wouldn’t mean that Marines Classico aren’t going away at some point in the future.

 

And Breachers or Destroyers? That really would make this HH2, All We Do is Redo...

 

Let’s face it, Marines Classico aren’t very likely to ever be the new hotness for the game again. Yes, something new might make people happy, but let’s be realistic about what’s going on.

[Doghouse]

Don't forget there is always ten thousand years of lore to explore before all this started. You can treat this period as historical wargaming in the same way FW treat the Heresy and just ignore the stuff you don't like.

 

I'm currently building a modular crusade army made up of various detachments that I can plug and play, so I have a Primaris detachment for post Fall of Cadia and regular marines for Pre-Fall of Cadia which I am going for around end of M35.

[Bryan Blaire]

I’m not dumping on the idea that something new for Marines Classic wouldn’t be great and give some hope to folks, especially those that don’t like the only Primaris focus (and that is what’s happening, most of the “Classic” unit’s are depicted to the side) that 8th Edition has for Marines - I just don’t want to be beyond realism for what I want to see. I really wanted them to redo basic Ravenwing bikes with the new style fairings and things of that nature, but I don’t think they will, at least not any time soon.

 

Doghouse, you bring up a really good point - it would actually be awesome for GW to do a “historical setting” book for play, something outside the Heresy, Scouring era, maybe M37-38, so that you basically have all the modern “Classic” units available.

[Cyrox]

I want to go back to the days where a squad of 5 terminators was a unit to be feared on the tabletop. If they got near you, you were in bother.

 

For Primaris, I want more options in wargear and loadout. Less monopose and more kit

 

For classic marines, i’m not sure but the BSF chaos marines and DG marines have show that you can release new minis and sneak up the scale.

 

I honestly think we won’t see any more MK7 releases, in the current scale at least

[Captain Idaho]

I would like a Scouring expansion on that topic. It would expand the HH to include Xenos which is very interesting. It would also allow for all MKs of armour etc.

 

@ BB; whilst I agree GW is unlikely to be THAT "New Games Workshop" there is always a chance. If enough people clamour for a particular product they just might listen.

 

We should exercise consumer power through constructive feedback and communication.

[Toxichobbit]

Normal humans shouldn't be able to fire Bolters at all, so I don't know why other factions get the option at all. 

 

 

Head cannon or urban myth, take your pick. Either way it's demonstrably wrong. Humans have been using bolters in every edition of 40k, including Rogue Trader. Humans were using bolters in both editions of Necromunda and it's predecessor, Confrontation, as well as in Inquisitor. Bolters have never been Astartes exclusive and there's no lore saying that they are unusable by humans. There is lore saying that Astartes bolters are unusable by humans, because they are too powerful and a have tendency to dislocate/break shoulders. Bolters in general though, those have been used by many human factions since the dawn of 40k.

 

What would make more sense than suddenly scrapping 30 years of background in an attempt to make Marines more unique would be to differentiate between bolters and Astartes bolters, as some other people in this topic have suggested. Whether that's by making Astartes bolters a different weapon to "human" bolters (that would be my preferred solution) or giving Astartes a bonus to their bolters through special rules on the models themselves ultimately doesn't matter, as long as it achieves a gradient between human and Astartes bolt weapons.

[slitth]

First we have to accept that there will always be someone that will dislike anything new.

And someone that will prefer the new direction over the old.

So we can never make everyone happy.

 

That being said, the way I would "Bridge the gap" would be to make the different work the the concept of experience vs the new strength more.

If the old marines represent the experience, they could be the elite units that hit harder that the Primaris.

This would be the end of the old "tactical squad"

Instead old marines would be represented by Vanguard and Sternguard squads.

Maybe we can have a rule that Vanguard and Sternguard squads can be taken as a troop choice in some way.

This way the old marine can become save some face, being the old veterans that is showing the Primaris how wars are fought.

 

The next thing I would do is to remove the transport restrictions on Primaris.

But I would also make the Repulsor pattern equal to the Rhino pattern tank in some way.

So a army that use Repulsors only will have one set of strength and weakness and a army that only uses the Rhino pattern will have another set.

And if you mix Repulsors and Rhinos you might lose the benefits of a pure force.

 

As for the Primaris lore, I would just work in some more weakness to make them more "natural".

Why? Because I have a saying. "I respect a person for their strength, but I love them because their imperfections"

[Captain Idaho]

Not sure removing all Classic Marines bar elites bridges the gap :d