Wh40k 10th Edition Faction Focus: Space Marine Chapters

[DemonGSides]

agree; the name "Charge Bonus" is super opaque, and would be better named "Crushing Blows" or "Hammer Strikes" or something, because the Red thirst is a 'charge bonus' but isn't the "Charge Bonus".

Super annoying.

[Blindhamster]

thanks both, helps make me feel better on the heroic intervention angle, suspect that'll be the "best" way to play BA - setup juicy targets, then counter charge with stuff like DC using heroic intervention

[Karhedron]

9 minutes ago, Blindhamster said:

Wolves wants you to lean heavily into characters, which to be fair, has been a thing for them since 3rd ed (where they used to require a character for every 500 points of army). There's definitely some wording issues with the wolves sagas that make them seem harder than I think they're intended to be too. Wolves do have the potential to be far better than any of the others if they can complete a couple of sagas though, which I think is cool, and the majesty one is potentially straight up busted OC3 grey hunters!!

 

Very true but I think that Majesty is a very hard one to accomplish. Most armies start the game with a unit on their Home Objective so you can't simply drop a Pod on it and score it T1. This is very easy to screen against and you might catch a player out with this once but probably not twice. Even charging out of Deep Strike is going to be tricky to pull off ad again it can be screened against.

 

Bear requires a character to lose >50% of their Wounds but not die. That is quite a small margin for error. Again it is pretty situational although I suppose you can give everyone plasma pistols and hope to get "lucky" with your overheats. 

 

Warrior Born is not too hard to pull off but you would be lucky to score it before T3 and you would have to build around throwing a sufficiently punchy character into melee. Actually the easiest way to score this might be a Phobos Captain with sniper rifle and a couple of squads of Eliminators. That should allow you to fairly reliably snipe a character out of a unit to trigger it but it seems unfluffy.

 

Beastslayer again is probably not so hard to line up but with the toning down of most melee weapons, even Thunder Hammers are going to need 5s to wound against most Monster and Vehicles. You can hope that the accompanying unit softens up the target enough for the Character to finish it off. You have a bit of a narrow margin as you want to bodyguard unit to do enough damage but not to actually kill the unit themselves.

[Rune Priest Jbickb]

8 minutes ago, Blindhamster said:

Wolves wants you to lean heavily into characters, which to be fair, has been a thing for them since 3rd ed (where they used to require a character for every 500 points of army). There's definitely some wording issues with the wolves sagas that make them seem harder than I think they're intended to be too. Wolves do have the potential to be far better than any of the others if they can complete a couple of sagas though, which I think is cool, and the majesty one is potentially straight up busted OC3 grey hunters!!

 

The trick with the wolves is, as you mentioned the earliest benefit is T2, but those tasks are all pretty difficult to complete T1 so its more likely you get nothing until T3. And you can only claim 1/ battle round so you have to be lucky enough to get all of the stars to align to unlock all of these. And while it is super fluffy to have a ton of characters that's a pretty harsh tax on a type of rule that just about every other army just has starting at T1 with, to the best of our knowledge, few restrictions. 

[DemonGSides]

It'll mean more once we get to see datasheets; if those same characters already start with a good ability and a better than average stat line, then it's fine that you have nothing turn 1.  Do I expect it? No, but you never know.

Edited June 2, 2023 by DemonGSides

[Blindhamster]

2 minutes ago, Rune Priest Jbickb said:

 

The trick with the wolves is, as you mentioned the earliest benefit is T2, but those tasks are all pretty difficult to complete T1 so its more likely you get nothing until T3. And you can only claim 1/ battle round so you have to be lucky enough to get all of the stars to align to unlock all of these. And while it is super fluffy to have a ton of characters that's a pretty harsh tax on a type of rule that just about every other army just has starting at T1 with, to the best of our knowledge, few restrictions. 

to be fair:

DA rule does nothing except for when you fail battleshock - so realistically does nothing T1, possibly T2 as well

BA rule only works if you charge (or heroic intervene), not when charged and has no effect outside of close combat, probably does nothing T1 either, maybe does something for 1 unit.

The Gladius and Deathwatch rules are both awesome but each of the options works for exactly 1 round, meaning they need some real finesse on player part on knowing exactly when to use them to best advantage. These at least can go off T1, but they still only get detachment benefits for 3/5 or 6 turns.

 

The only army that seems to have somehow come out with always on, easy to use benefits are templars, overall they feel the strongest as a result, that said....

 

DA rule and Majesty rule are going to be most useful late game, and in a game where objectives seem even more important than ever, I think they may well be the actual best rules of all the detachments.

 

[Kallas]

9 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

if those same characters already start with a good ability and a better than average stat line, then it's fine that you have nothing turn 1.

Except that everyone else will have those same characters and a Detachment buff from the beginning...

[Blindhamster]

Just now, Kallas said:

Except that everyone else will have those same characters and a Detachment buff from the beginning...

see above, most space marine armies won't get the real benefit of their detachment buff all the time either, not really, they're all either limited use or entirely situational.

Templars are the outliers in that theirs are always on, but even for them, 1 of the options is situational to playing vs psyker heavy enemy, two are situational to melee, so whilst very good (as unlike the BA one, they're in effect EVERY melee round), they still only become meaningful once you get lots of stuff into melee, the only real exception is the kinda obnoxious FNP AND better LD army wide from turn 1 - which is indeed just generally better than any other detachment benefit.

[Arkhanist]

37 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

I am pretty certain that you can take chapter-specific units in a Gladius Strike Force because otherwise there would be no way to field Guilliman, Calgar etc as there is no UM-specific detachment. My understanding is you can take a GSF but as soon as you add a chapter-specific unit, you cannot take units specific to a different Chapter.

 

To use the example above, if you have a DA army with Belial and a Deathwing Command Squad, you can run that as an Unforgiven Taskforce. You can also choose to run the same army as a Gladius Strikeforce if you decide you would rather use Combat Doctrines than Grim Resolve. However, having DA units in a GSF means that you cannot then include BA, SW etc.

 

Certainly from what we've seen that's how it works for codex-compliant chapters. And we've seen that non-codex chapters can take the Gladius detachment. By inference, we can assume that non-codex compliant chapters can take the gladius detachment AND their keyword locked units & characters, same as codex-compliant chapters can.

 

However, it hasn't actually been confirmed in writing or by example that that's how it works, and we have seen that e.g. taking a different non-codex detachment prevents taking your usual units/chars. Plus in the Dark Imperium indexes period there were a number of units, and some rules IIRC that specifically excluded BA, DA, SW, GK etc, and some of that continued where changes to the main marine codex didn't trickle down to the other codexes for a while.

 

So I too expect non-codex chapters taking the Gladius will work the same as codex-compliant chapters, as it seems the most obvious and likely implementation. But this is GW, and arbitrary and/or stupid rules (waves at Death Guard) is definitely something they sometimes do. Plus the new vanilla marine codex which will arrive shortly could completely upend this, as they have done several times in the past; or it might not.

 

I'm just a little wary about stating as near fact that that's how Gladius will work for BA, SW, DA etc, or how long for just yet, when it still remains an inference rather than something concrete. Once bitten, twice shy and all that!

[Mmmmm Napalm]

I see that Sword Brethren are able to be equipped with the combi weapon in the kit. That's fine, but I hope that their minimum size is still 4, and that you aren't forced to include the Castellan as squad leader. That would be lame and a needless removal of flavor, but highly likely given recent trends.

[DemonGSides]

14 minutes ago, Kallas said:

Except that everyone else will have those same characters and a Detachment buff from the beginning...

 

No?  Each of the flavored space marine factions are getting their own stat cards, and they also have bespoke units.  So, no, they won't have the same characters; that's kind of the whole point of the specialty flavors of Space Marines, is to have slightly different stuff.

The point you glossed over, is that we have only seen Hounds of Morkai for Space Wolves, so we don't really KNOW how good their Characters are, or what their enhancements might do to make acquiring the Sagas easier/more likely, or what.  LIke if the Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf has an ability that GIVES him a saga, that's pretty good AND not completely out of consideration, when compared to something like Ahriman being able to use one of his ritual powers per turn for free.

My point isn't that I GUARANTEE Space Wolves are great, just that we are still up in the air on that army rule.  It could very well suck absolute butt, but it also has the opportunity to be pretty strong.

Edited June 2, 2023 by DemonGSides

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

I don’t really understand why people are having such a hard time understanding this when nothing has really changed.

 

if your models are nominally painted and modeled as UM, but you want to use the BA detachment you now have ultra angels and can only use what’s available to the BA.

 

if your models are nominally painted and modeled as BA, and you want to use the SW detachment you now have wolf angels and can only use what’s available in the SW index.

 

this is no different than how it is now. If you want to use UM models to pay with the BT supplement you are now a blue Templar, so on and so forth.

[Rune Priest Jbickb]

1 hour ago, Blindhamster said:

to be fair:

DA rule does nothing except for when you fail battleshock - so realistically does nothing T1, possibly T2 as well

BA rule only works if you charge (or heroic intervene), not when charged and has no effect outside of close combat, probably does nothing T1 either, maybe does something for 1 unit.

The Gladius and Deathwatch rules are both awesome but each of the options works for exactly 1 round, meaning they need some real finesse on player part on knowing exactly when to use them to best advantage. These at least can go off T1, but they still only get detachment benefits for 3/5 or 6 turns.

 

The only army that seems to have somehow come out with always on, easy to use benefits are templars, overall they feel the strongest as a result, that said....

 

DA rule and Majesty rule are going to be most useful late game, and in a game where objectives seem even more important than ever, I think they may well be the actual best rules of all the detachments.

 

 

You do have a point, however, there is no wondering if they are going to have it, they have it that's it. With wolves you have to make sure a Character completes a side mission. So to get majesty you have to get into you opponents deployment zone and hold an objective with a character. Sure the ability is good late game and that's when you earn it, but thats if you earn it. You can't rely on it happening, especiall as its good enough that a competent player will work to delay characters from getting to objectives to delay this ability as much as possible.  With DA you know that ability will happen when you fail battleshock, also there are several armies that force battleshock early and for other reasons than attrition and so it is not without benefit early on.

 

Sagas remove alot of player control from your Detachment ability. It leaves a lot up to dice and the opponent as well. None of the other marine, or even other army detachment abilities are so reliant on forces beyond your control to exist.

[Blindhamster]

2 minutes ago, Rune Priest Jbickb said:

 

You do have a point, however, there is no wondering if they are going to have it, they have it that's it. With wolves you have to make sure a Character completes a side mission. So to get majesty you have to get into you opponents deployment zone and hold an objective with a character. Sure the ability is good late game and that's when you earn it, but thats if you earn it. You can't rely on it happening, especiall as its good enough that a competent player will work to delay characters from getting to objectives to delay this ability as much as possible.  With DA you know that ability will happen when you fail battleshock, also there are several armies that force battleshock early and for other reasons than attrition and so it is not without benefit early on.

 

Sagas remove alot of player control from your Detachment ability. It leaves a lot up to dice and the opponent as well. None of the other marine, or even other army detachment abilities are so reliant on forces beyond your control to exist.

yeah what you say makes sense, I just also think it's totally doable for you to get multiple of them, you don't get them turn 1, but many don't, you should be getting at least 1 by turn 3, depending on the matchup, you may get one in turn 2, most of the things listed, are things you'd want to do anyway (except maybe getting wounded to half wounds on a character, that one is odd), Realistically it needs some game data to see how people fair with it in practice to tell, but with the epic challenge strat, getting the sustained hits ability seems doable, or doing it via phobos sniper shots as mentioned (which to me doesnt feel unwolfy, its basically like you're doing wolf scout approach!), the majesty one could be tough, but mid-late game is also probably doable, and if its not, chances are its because your opponent is actively working to thwart you getting it rather than doing something like working toward objectives of their own.

killing a monster/vehicle seems unlikely with the new toughness/wounds on such things though.

[Karhedron]

10 minutes ago, Blindhamster said:

killing a monster/vehicle seems unlikely with the new toughness/wounds on such things though.

 

Bjorn seems like the only one who can do this semi-reliably with shooting. In most cases you will need a melee character to finish off a wounded target.

[Rune Priest Jbickb]

I just have a really hard time with all the maybe inherent to sagas, when I can take Gladius and while I only get the benefits for 3 turns I can control when I get them, I just dislike how unfluffy it is to take it. If the sagas weren't character locked, or if just majesty was character locked, I think I would feel differently about it.

[Karhedron]

Ironically I think Doctrines will work quite well for Wolves. T1, activate the Devastator Doctrine and have everything close at speed while firing at full effect. Turn 2 Assault Doctrine and slap the enemy silly. T3, use Tactical Doctrine to pull out of combat, hose the enemy with fire and then charge straight back in again.  Looks like it will reward aggressive, committed play which suits Wolves well. 

[Starlight_Wolf]

2 minutes ago, Rune Priest Jbickb said:

I just have a really hard time with all the maybe inherent to sagas, when I can take Gladius and while I only get the benefits for 3 turns I can control when I get them, I just dislike how unfluffy it is to take it. If the sagas weren't character locked, or if just majesty was character locked, I think I would feel differently about it.

 

Honestly this is what gets me the most about it as well, the benefits are there, but you have to go out and earn your benefits that other armies get as standard.

 

Yes, Wolves can get buffed to ridiculous levels, but on the flip side they can be absolutely hamstrung in having to chase down something they may not otherwise be going after to gain a benefit, potentially causing them to have to choose between gaining an army rule or going for a win condition.

 

That's where the majority of my annoyance comes from as other chapters get a choice or set bonus, which then informs how your army plays, wolves don't get that from what we have seen and I wonder why it was that it wasn't just similar to BT's that we pick from a list as opposed to the system that is in place?

 

I'm aware this is in a rules vacuum currently as we don't have rules for models or points yet, but currently Gladius seems a better option for Wolves than our standard detachment rules, unless I'm missing something?

[Blindhamster]

Gladius seems better than most of them in a vacuum 

[WrathOfTheLion]

The DA one can be useful even in T1, there are units like Plagueburst Crawlers that can force a battleshock test on models that are hit. So you won't lose a back objective if they shoot you t1.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

2 hours ago, WrathOfTheLion said:

The DA one can be useful even in T1, there are units like Plagueburst Crawlers that can force a battleshock test on models that are hit. So you won't lose a back objective if they shoot you t1.

That one seems like potentially the strongest from a tournament perspective to me.

[Karhedron]

Forcing Battleshock tests at range could potentially be strong. You don't need to do much damage, but if you plink away at 2 or 3 Objective holders over the course of the game, chances are they will fail a couple of tests, potentially swinging the Primary scores.

[jaxom]

I’ve started reading through the rules and it looks like Battleshock is every turn once a unit is below half strength. That could have some interesting and unexpected results later in a game.

[Captain Idaho]

Do we know when Marines are getting the reveals treatment?

[Blindhamster]

believe codex marines is the 9th and other chapters is the 12th, assuming you mean access to datasheets