Do you think firstborn marines will be discontinued?

[Kallas]

12 minutes ago, Jorin Helm-splitter said:

Primaris stuff should be pushed in starters. They tend to have mono-loadouts and in general Primaris units have a high floor because they're easy to understand. Tacticals in starters have tended to suffer because they don't give them all the options, and even if they did a new player has to figure out what's good. Granted If Valrak's sources are right we'll have firstborn termies in a starter soon. 

There's also a point where treating your customers as idiots is a problem.

 

If they're literally children, the optimal loadout generally isn't important either way, and often the rules aren't followed particularly closely anyway: I'm sure those of us who have tried to introduce kids to the game have experienced this many times.

 

If they're adults and want to actually play the game properly, then they generally choose to either play relatively competitively (ie, they view the game as a game and compete with their opponents) or casual (ie, they play to unwind and just have a laugh, not worrying too much about the 'best'). In the first case, then they can reasonably be expected to put in some effort to learn the game and their army's capabilities, so the 'complexity' of a given unit is not much of a barrier (and a Tactical Squad's choice of Special/Heavy weapons is far from perplexing); and if they're more casual, then they again typically don't care too much about what's optimal and care more about what's fun (balance is obviously important here, but they're typically not building the competitively optimal builds, they're building what they want/think is cool).

 

18 minutes ago, Jorin Helm-splitter said:

If they didn't care enough to put effort into balancing Firstborn in the data slate, I don't think they would've given them anything.

I mean, removing all costs is incredibly simple and looks like they care, to an extent. It's a little bit paranoid/conspiratorial, but I just disagree with the notion of "any attention = it's fine". This was the simplest possible action, and it made things worse for internal balance because it made some options completely invalid from a competitive POV (despite the statements in Metawatch talking about how they want all options to be useful: making Grav Guns cost the same as Plasma Guns is the complete opposite, as an example).

 

Like I said before, it was a simple action that looked kind of good and presents as if they care, because they didn't want to put in any effort since they know that Marines are going to get an update soon enough to make it irrelevant. It's very much like the 8th->9th transition we saw where Marines got a bunch of buffs a few months before the new Codex. I personally, doubt that they specifically made these changes to benefit Firstborn predominantly, I feel that they made these changes (which did hit almost everything in the Marine book, Firstborn or not) so that they can make Marine players grumble less until Codex 9.5, or 10E drops.

 

20 minutes ago, Jorin Helm-splitter said:

I do agree that it was lazy, but in goonhammer's competitive innovation articles I'm seeing scouts, assault marines, and sternguard which honestly is more of a shakeup than marines have had in a while

People are jumping on these units because they're cheap enough to leverage their options. Sternguard are a particularly egregious example of how the MFM changes were awful: previously, Combi weapons were simply way too expensive for their output and the body that was wielding them, but now they're cheap enough for their output that they're fantastically efficient. Assault Marines are now cheap enough to actually be a cheap trading piece, giving them a couple of special weapons and throwing them into enemy chaff they can actually do something where before that price point was just too much for them to make any kind of reasonable impact. They're not actually strong units, they're just sufficiently cheap enough.

 

Look at Veteran Intercessors as an example: when was the last time you saw them in the competitive arena? I don't recall ever seeing them used, because they're basically Sternguard but without options, and you can just bring Intercessors who do the same thing but cheaper and with ObSec. The MFM dropped their points as well, but they dropped them to the same cost as Sternguard...who get free Combi weapons. It's an utterly stupid change that just has no semblance of understanding of how to balance things - part of that is their inane insistence on using multiples of 5pts for weapon options, which is just incredibly stupid.

 

Point being, the MFM changes were super lazy. They don't indicate that Firstborn are staying, simply because Firstborn got better - Primaris units got better too, but efficiency-wise Firstborn benefited more from the design team's laziness and lack of effort. IMO anyway.

[DesuVult]

Primaris have pretty consistently struggled outside of a handful of units because their units tend to suffer from regular marines issues plus a little more.  An intercessor is a tactical with +1A and AP -1.  In a competitive format both of those don't matter at the cost of a marine body.  They are paying for stats that don't matter, the classic marine issue.  4s across the board is a bit expensive and usually has been making the more specialized marine units usually the stronger units.  When primaris have been stronger it tended to be some jank like 3 repulsor executioners abusing terrain rules or Iron Hands handing off wounds from a redemptor character dreadnought.  When firstborn have been stronger it has tended to be cheaper more efficient datasheets, like Blood Angels spamming BA melee units.

 

 

I saw earlier people say firstborn aren't stocked on shelves but they are at the LGSes near me and on GW's webstore they aren't marked online only.  One even has scouts on the shelves still.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Black Templars have access to several excellent Primaris units including their characters. I still run vanguard vets and terminators but with the coming Primaris Terminators that means I’ll only run one firstborn unit. I’m sure this will be the case for others as more chapter specific Primaris units are released.

[Captain Idaho]

That's if they're Primaris 

 

Regardless of that, it won't change things for me - I'm keeping my Firstborn 30K era Ultramarines that pull double duty for 40K. I won't be investing in more than that because I'm not buying another Marine army... I'm not made of money you know!

[Evil Eye]

I think it's also worth noting there's a lot of Marine kits from the "before times" that are still quite recent, and honestly pretty solid kits, and replacing them would be a bit premature in my opinion. Sanguinary Guard, Death Company, Wolf Guard, Deathwing Terminators, both generic Veteran kits, Grey Knights (PA and TDA) etc; I feel like them being overtaken by scale creep is a bit of a weak excuse to retire them. Granted I'm a weirdo who thinks the scale creep should have been stopped in its tracks and would be happy if Marine kits stayed at the old size; leave the true-scaling efforts to convertors, say I!

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

A lot of the old kit works for HH so there is that.

[Evil Eye]

Well GK didn't exist in the Heresy (to the best of my recollection) but anyway, my point was I can't see them binning a large library of decent, fairly modern kits any time soon, Firstborn or not. The only plastic kits they've retired lately have been ones that have been directly replaced (Khorne Berzerkers for instance), and they seem to be going the route of making new units for Primaris rather than Primarising existing datasheets, so I think the kits are safe for a while yet.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Actually GK got its start during the Heresy… Malcador created them.

[Captain Idaho]

They're not quite the same though. Models are completely different. 

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

@Captain Idaho Not sure what you mean.

[Captain Idaho]

We're talking about the miniatures, Firstborn, to which Evil Eye pointed out Grey Knights didn't exist in the Heresy.

 

Which is correct in this context - there are no Grey Knight 40K models in the Heresy. Nor are there rules for them. What Malcador created in the Heresy has no bearing on the Grey Knights miniatures range.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Garro is technically what constitutes the beginning of the Grey Knights… same as an Ultramarines Librarian  Tylos Rubio. They are referred to as Knight-Errants. There could be some other models as well. Eight of the Knights-Errant who possessed psychic abilities would form the nucleus and first leadership cadre of what would eventually become the Grey Knights Chapter of Astartes who served the Inquisition's Ordo Malleus as its Chamber Militant in the years after the end of the Heresy. All cast off their original Space Marine Legion heraldry and wore in its stead the gunmetal grey of bare ceramite and the Sigillite's own icon as their badge.

 

 

Edited February 21, 2023 by BLACK BLΠFLY

[Lord_Ikka]

Not really germain to the topic, but while the basis of the Grey Knights were indeed created during the Heresy, the chapter was only revealed/returned from their warp-bubble after the Scouring. The lore stats that they returned after many years/decades after the end of the Heresy and after the Traitors fled to the Eye, so that would be after the Scouring (assumed). 

 

The eight founders of the Grey Knights were indeed Knights-Errant of Malcador, but the Knights-Errant had no standard arms or armament, just whatever weapons they wanted/used from their previous Legions and unadorned armor painted grey.

[Captain Idaho]

Yeah, like I said, nothing to do with the 40K miniatures Firstborn releases...

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I used Grey Knight kit to build a Knight-Errant, so…

 

Edited February 21, 2023 by BLACK BLΠFLY

[Captain Idaho]

That's just false. A Marine in Iron armour and a bolter can fit into a 40K army seamlessly.

 

****

 

Huh you edited your post so my reply no longer fits.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Captain Idaho

[Captain Idaho]

7 hours ago, BLACK BLΠFLY said:

I used Grey Knight kit to build a Knight-Errant, so…

 

 

This has nothing to do with 40K Grey Knights being a Heresy compatible force. 

[Evil Eye]

15 hours ago, Captain Idaho said:

We're talking about the miniatures, Firstborn, to which Evil Eye pointed out Grey Knights didn't exist in the Heresy.

 

Which is correct in this context - there are no Grey Knight 40K models in the Heresy. Nor are there rules for them. What Malcador created in the Heresy has no bearing on the Grey Knights miniatures range.

Right, that was my point; the modern Grey Knights, clad in Mk. VII Power Armour or Indomitus Pattern Terminator Armour were not a thing at the time of the Heresy. I am aware of their founding via Garro and Malcador, but their armaments and armour as represented in miniature form did not exist at the time.

 

The thing that gets me with this discussion (as a topic in general, not this thread in particular) is the people who seem to almost eagerly be anticipating the retirement and replacement of Firstborn with Primaris counterparts, as if removing longstanding iconic units from existence is somehow good. It just seems odd to me; even aside from the previously mentioned large amount of very good kits that shouldn't/won't be retired any time soon, I don't see why things like Scouts and Terminators need Primaris replacements. Technically, Aggressors are already filling in the heavy assault infantry niche of Terminators, so technically you've already got your "Terminators but bigger and slightly different". If you want new Terminators, well, you want new Terminators, there's no reason to try and make them into something they aren't.

 

If we're getting new Space Marine kits, I want actual updates to those kits, not ersatz units that fill a roughly similar role to their predecessors.

[Kallas]

1 hour ago, Evil Eye said:

I don't see why things like Scouts and Terminators need Primaris replacements.

That's the thing, they don't, and none of the Primaris units that exist needed to be Primaris specifically. None of the Primaris hullabaloo needed to happen, it could have all fallen under a Guilliman Resurrection reform without the baggage of making new Super-Space Marines that are totally compatible with Firstborn*
* Except in all the ways that they're not.

 

That ship has sailed, and there's no going back, so GW will stay the course - and since they can push new Primaris stuff harder, or at least that's the decision they've made (eg, not showing any Firstborn models ever again, apparently) new kits will likely be Primaris. The rumoured Terminators will be interesting to see whether they are/n't Primaris, as the rumours conflict. As much as I want fresh sculpts of Indomitus Terminators and not Primaris Super Cawl-Terminators, now with added butt wiping built in to the suits, I don't see GW changing course unless it turns out to be a Heresy release.

[Captain Idaho]

I think if the new Desolation squad sells GW will genuinely know they can sell anything and the community will buy it. As someone who actually liked Centurions and the Storm Talon despite much of the community hating on them Online, I appreciate tastes may vary, but the new Desolation squad is so god awful and outside the theme and feel for grim dark Marines and the community reaction so negative towards it, if it sells GW has literally no incentive to do better ever again.

[Blindhamster]

41 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

I think if the new Desolation squad sells GW will genuinely know they can sell anything and the community will buy it. As someone who actually liked Centurions and the Storm Talon despite much of the community hating on them Online, I appreciate tastes may vary, but the new Desolation squad is so god awful and outside the theme and feel for grim dark Marines and the community reaction so negative towards it, if it sells GW has literally no incentive to do better ever again.

I’d honestly say the same about centurions.

I’d say desolation marines are still better marine models, because at least they’re in normal looking power armour (mkX tacticus for sure counts as normal looking power armour as much as any other mk).

 

I don’t think specially like either mind

Edited February 21, 2023 by Blindhamster
Elaboration

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

As far as scouts go Black Templars now have Primaris Neophytes, so it is only a matter of time. FB scouts being 1W and an elite choice as well the Neophyte/Primaris scout is a superior choice.

 

A lot of people want Primaris Terminators… I know I do and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that either. They will be better than the FB equivalent. I know that those who love FB (some of whom apparently hate Primaris) must feel threatened, it’s only natural. I don’t have anything against FB and use some of these units. I do like Primaris better though for many good reasons.

[Evil Eye]

16 minutes ago, BLACK BLΠFLY said:

A lot of people want Primaris Terminators

But why? Why would new Terminators need to be Primaris? You already have "Primaris Terminators", they're called Aggressors. Terminators are a Firstborn unit; if you make them Primaris they aren't Terminators anymore.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Aggressors are not Terminators. There are no jump pack terminators nor will there be. That I want Primaris Terminators should not concern you.

 

Edited February 21, 2023 by BLACK BLΠFLY

[WrathOfTheLion]

I don't know of many people that view Aggressors as Terminators. Try telling Dark Angels players that the unit painted green is a replacement for their Deathwing... you won't get very far.