Fixing Index Space Marines

[Lysimachus]

With the less than stellar reception of the bloated, repetitive Index and weird choices in the Points document, I thought I'd have a go at a simplified methodology and layout for a basic fanmade Space Marines Index.

 

The plan is that I would still use all of the new datasheet design for stats/rules for units and weapons, and each unit would still have everything you need all in one place on its own page/section (actually a good idea, imho) …BUT identical units would be compiled where possible. This means that the more complicated units like Captains might need an extra page of options… but I think that is better than having to trawl through 8 different-yet-identical datasheets!

 

I'm also not distinguishing between Primaris vs Firstborn. Statlines are now officially the same anyway. Power Armour is Power Armour, regardless of which Mark it looks like. Phobos and Scout Armour are both just 'Stealth Armour'. There is no difference between TDA and Gravis (except Terminators are obviously far cooler!) Infantry is infantry, get in whatever tank you can fit in! A Dreadnought is a Dreadnought. Etc, etc.

 

Points would be back in for upgrades (though these will need to be worked out). Variable unit sizes would also be back. However, these changes would come at a cost of losing some complexity in other areas to maintain balance.

 

For example, to avoid too much bloat in the Datasheets, and following GW's example of Power Weapons, weapon stats would be (partially) simplified:

Rather than having Bolt Pistols, Heavy Bolt Pistols, Plasma Pistols, Grav Pistols, Inferno Pistols, etc, etc, etc, there would just be two choices; 'Bolt Pistol' and 'Archaeotech Pistol'. The latter could be represented on a model by any of the above fancy Pistol types, but they would all share one stat line (higher Str, better AP and D, but probably Hazardous). 

Likewise, things like TH, PF, CF, etc would all be compiled into one 'Heavy Power Weapon' profile.

 

Anyway, with these goals in mind I made a very quick start with some Character and Elite units, as they are probably the most complex to figure out with regard to variable loadouts.

 

Would like to hear people's thoughts. Am I on to something workable (better than the official Index) here?

 

Adeptus Astartes Army List

 

Characters:

 

Each HQ or Support Character must be equipped with one of the following:

Power Armour… 0pts

Stealth Armour… XXpts

Tactical Dreadnought Armour… XXpts

 

All Characters equipped with Power Armour may also select one of the following options:

Bike… XXpts

Jump Pack… XXpts

 

Wargear:

Power Armour: 3+ Save

Stealth Armour: 4+ Save, Stealth, Infiltrators

Tactical Dreadnought Armour: 2+ Save, 4+ InvSv. Character must replace equipped Bolt Pistol with Storm Bolter, Combi-Weapon or Storm Shield. Character must replace Chainsword (if equipped) with one of the CC options available on their Datasheet. TDA counts as two models for the purposes of Transport spaces.

Bike: gain MOUNTED, Movement x2, +1T, +1W, +1OC, Twin-Linked Bolt Rifle, may not use Transports.

Jump Pack: gain FLY, Movement x2, counts as two models for the purposes of Transport spaces.

Storm Shield: 4+ InvSv (or +1W if model already has an InvSv)

 

Leaders:  A Character may only Lead a Unit if he is equipped with the same type of Armour as that Unit (and equipped with Jump Pack/Bike if they are). A maximum of 1 HQ Character and 1 Support Character may Lead a single Unit.

 

HQ:

Captain… XXpts

M:6 T:4 Sv:3+ W:5 Ld:6+ OC:1 InvSv:4+

Rites of Battle and (choose 1 from: Finest Hour, Refuse to Yield, Master of Deceit, The Imperium's Sword, Angel's Wrath, Swift Assault)

Equipment:

Bolt Pistol, Chainsword

• May replace Bolt Pistol with:

MC Bolt Rifle… XXpts

Storm Bolter… XXpts

Combi-Weapon… XXpts

Archaeotech Pistol… XXpts

Bolt Pistol and Storm Shield… XXpts

• May replace Chainsword with:

MC Power Weapon… XXpts

Heavy Power Weapon… XXpts

• May replace all weapons with Twin Lightning Claws… XXpts
• May upgrade to Chapter Master (+1Ld and replace chosen ability with Inspiring Leader and Master Tactician)… XXpts

 

Chaplain… XXpts

*Statline and Special Abilities*

Bolt Pistol, Crozius Arcanum

• May replace Bolt Pistol with:

MC Bolt Rifle… XXpts

Storm Bolter… XXpts

Combi-Weapon… XXpts

Archaeotech Pistol… XXpts

• May upgrade to Master of Sanctity… XXpts

 

Librarian… XXpts

*Statline and Special Abilities*

Bolt Pistol, Force Weapon

• May replace Bolt Pistol with:

MC Bolt Rifle… XXpts

Storm Bolter… XXpts

Combi-Weapon… XXpts

Archaeotech Pistol… XXpts

• May upgrade to Chief Librarian… XXpts

 

Support Characters:

 

Lieutenant… XXpts

*Statline and Special Abilities*

Bolt Pistol, Chainsword

• May replace Bolt Pistol with:

Bolt Rifle… 0pts

Storm Bolter… XXpts

Combi-Weapon… XXpts

Archaeotech Pistol… XXpts

Storm Shield… 0pts

• May replace Chainsword with:

Power Weapon… XXpts

Heavy Power Weapon… XXpts

• May replace all weapons with Twin Lightning Claws… XXpts

 

Apothecary… XXpts

*Statline and Special Abilities*

Bolt Pistol, Chainsword, Narthecium

• May replace Bolt Pistol with:

Bolt Rifle… 0pts

Storm Bolter… XXpts

Combi-Weapon… XXpts

Archaeotech Pistol… XXpts

• May replace Chainsword with:

Power Weapon… XXpts

• May upgrade to Chief Apothecary… XXpts

 

Ancient… XXpts

*Statline and Special Abilities*

Bolt Pistol, Chainsword, Company Banner

• May replace Bolt Pistol with:

Bolt Rifle… 0pts

Storm Bolter… XXpts

Combi-Weapon… XXpts

Archaeotech Pistol… XXpts

• May replace Chainsword with:

Power Weapon… XXpts

Heavy Power Weapon… XXpts

• May upgrade to Chapter Ancient… XXpts
• May not take Stealth Armour

 

Techmarine… XXpts

*Statline and Special Abilities*

Bolt Pistol, Chainsword, Servo-Arm, Hand-forged Armour (if Power Armour is selected, it has a 2+ Save)

• May replace Bolt Pistol with:

Bolt Rifle… 0pts

Storm Bolter… XXpts

Combi-Weapon… XXpts

Archaeotech Pistol… XXpts

• May replace Chainsword with:

Power Weapon… XXpts

Heavy Power Weapon… XXpts

• May replace Servo-Arm with Servo-Harness… XXpts
• May upgrade to Master of the Forge… XXpts
• May not take Stealth Armour

 

Veteran Units:

 

Terminator Squad (Terminator Sgt and 4-9 Terminators)… XXpts

*Statline and Special Abilities*

TDA, Storm Bolter, Power Weapon

• Any Squad member may replace Power Weapon with Heavy Power Weapon… 0pts
• Any Squad member may replace Storm Bolter with Storm Shield… 0pts
• Any Squad member may replace all weapons with Twin Lightning Claws… 0pts
• 1 in 5 Terminators (not Sgt) may replace Storm Bolter with:

Assault Cannon… XXpts

Heavy Flamer… XXpts

Cyclone Missile Launcher… XXpts

 

Sternguard Squad (Sternguard Sgt and 4-9 Sternguard)… XXpts

*Statline and Special Abilities*

Power Armour, Bolt Rifle with SIA, Bolt Pistol, Close Combat Weapon

• Sgt may replace CCW with:

Chainsword… XXpts

Power Weapon… XXpts

Heavy Power Weapon… XXpts

• Any Squad member may replace Bolt Rifle with Combi-Weapon
• Up to 2 Sternguard (not Sgt) may replace Bolt Rifle with:

Heavy Bolter… XXpts

Heavy Flamer… XXpts

Melta Gun… XXpts

Plasma Gun… XXpts

Flamer... XXpts

 

Vanguard Squad (Vanguard Sgt and 4-9 Vanguard)… XXpts

*Statline and Special Abilities*

Power Armour, Bolt Pistol, Chainsword

• Up to 5 Squad members may:

Replace Bolt Pistol with:

Archaeotech Pistol… XXpts

Storm Shield… 0pts

• And/Or replace Chainsword with:

Power Weapon… XXpts

Heavy Power Weapon… XXpts

• Or replace all weapons with Twin Lightning Claws… XXpts
• All Squad members may be equipped with one of the following:

Bikes… XXpts

Jump Packs… XXpts

 

(A 3-man Terminator, Sternguard or Vanguard Squad may be taken and attached to an equivalently armoured/equipped Ancient and Apothecary to form a 5-man Command Squad for one of your HQ Characters. This Character's armour/equipment must also be a match, eg. a bike-mounted HQ Character could only be accompanied by bike-mounted Support Characters and bike-mounted Vanguard)

 

Dreadnought… XXpts

*Statline and Special Abilities*

• Twin Bolt Rifle, plus select two weapons from the list below:

1st Arm:

Ballistus Twin-linked Lascannon

Macro Plasma Incinerator

Heavy Onslaught Gatling Cannon

Brutalis Fists (must be taken as a pair)

Brutalis Talons (must be taken as a pair)

2nd Arm:

Dreadnought Close Combat Weapon with Heavy Flamer or Onslaught Gatling Cannon

Ballistus Missile Launcher

Brutalis Fists (must be taken as a pair)

Brutalis Talons (must be taken as a pair)

 

• If Brutalis Fists or Talons are selected, Twin Bolt Rifle may be replaced with:

Twin Heavy Bolter… XXpts

Twin Multi-Melta… XXpts

• Any Dreadnought may take an:

Icarus Rocket Pod… XXpts

Ironhail Heavy Stubber… XXpts

 

 

 

**********

 

More units to come, but that would already be a meaningful cut to the number of extraneous Datasheets?

 

As mentioned, thoughts/input would be very welcome!

 

 

Edited June 20, 2023 by Lysimachus

[apologist]

It's a noble effort; and as a personal project, one I'd strongly encourage. My note of caution is that as the criticisms vary so much – what some people hate, some people love – that the approach you're proposing might be a bit too extreme for the broader audience, and not get much take up. 

 

Having said that, that's no reason not to pursue it and discuss it. Thought exercises like this are really handy for people to get to grips with what exactly they dislike – and, perhaps more importantly – help them pinpoint the details that they really want changed. That way, people can write to GW with their polite criticisms.

 

So; I won't dive too deeply into the detail with my comments, but will stick to your broader aims:

 

1 hour ago, Lysimachus said:

each unit would still have everything you need all in one place on its own page/section (actually a good idea, imho) …BUT identical units would be compiled where possible. This means that the more complicated units like Captains might need an extra page of options… but I think that is better than having to trawl through 8 different-yet-identical datasheets!

 

Compiling units is an excellent idea, and well within the overall design philosophy of the edition. Given the card mechanics, I don't fundamentally mind having multiple datasheets to go through (as you'll only bring the ones you need to the battle), and would suggest that you row back a little bit.

 

I'd very much agree that 'Primaris Captain' and 'Captain' don't need to be two separate datasheets, but think there's an argument to be made to keep the different armour types separate; if only to ensure there's no odd interactions when joining units. I think my guides would be 'Does this model have the same statline as another?' and 'Does this datasheet differ from another only in equipment and a single special rule?'; and if the answer to both of those is 'yes', consider compiling them

 

I would compile the Captains, for example, into:

• 'Captain' – combining Captain and Primaris Captain.
• 'Assault Captain' – combining Captain on Bike and Captain with Jump Pack; the equipment chosen determining the special rule.
• Gravis Captain
• Terminator Captain
• Phobos Captain

Reducing it from 8 to 5, while maintaining the variety.

 

The Lieutenants could be just two:

• Lieutenant – combining Primaris Lieutenant and Lieutenant
• Phobos Lieutenant – combining Lieutenant in Phobos armour and Lieutenant in Reiver armour; again, the equipment chosen determining the special rule.

While less ambitious than your approach, simply removing the distinction between Primaris and non-Primaris officers goes a long way to streamlining things – and that's even without folding very similar units like Intercessors and Tactical Squads together. At a quick scan, the simple removal of the 'Primaris' distinction and combining bike and jump pack models into a single datasheet reduces the number of officers datasheets – that is, Captains, Lieutenants, Librarians, Chaplains and Techmarines to 14 from 22; a significant saving.

 

If you wanted to take it further, then removing the distinction between Terminator and Gravis is an option – but causes problems with the different units in the same armour. Personally, I quite like the difference between Gravis and Terminator roles, so I'm happy for them to stay; but they could easily share a statline and differ in equipment – as (say) Tactical and Devastators do.

 

 

Quote

I'm also not distinguishing between Primaris vs Firstborn. Statlines are now officially the same anyway. Power Armour is Power Armour, regardless of which Mark it looks like. Phobos and Scout Armour are both just 'Stealth Armour'. There is no difference between TDA and Gravis (except Terminators are obviously far cooler!) Infantry is infantry, get in whatever tank you can fit in! A Dreadnought is a Dreadnought. Etc, etc.

• Fully agree on removing the Primaris/non-Primaris distinction. I can't think of any in-universe reason; it's got to be a commercial choice.
• Because the armour alters the statline and which units a model can join, I'm inclined to keep the distinction between types, as note above.
• Agree on transport options not being unnecessarily restricted – again, must be a commercial decision.
• Dreadnoughts could very much be rethought. The Dreadnought, Contemptor and Redemptor could easily be a single datasheet with weapon options, for example.

 

[Lysimachus]

Thanks Apologist, very much appreciate your thoughts! 

 

Would you say your biggest concern with over-compiling the datasheets would be that it might cause issues for Leaders joining Units? (And perhaps causing problems with Keywords?) It's certainly a valid concern!

 

What I was thinking about adding was an addendum to the Leader rule, that a SM Character can only Lead a unit that is equipped with the same Armour type as he is wearing (and equipped with JP/Bike if he is, etc). In fact, doing it that way, you could also completely remove from the Datasheets all the lists of which Characters can Lead which Units!

 

The other idea I had with this was to divide the Characters into HQ and Support - for exactly this reason. You could say that a single Unit can be joined by max of 1 HQ Character and 1 Support Character, and thereby get rid of a lot of (needlessly) specific bits on the cards again?

 

Edit: added the above point to the first post.

 

Edited June 20, 2023 by Lysimachus

[apologist]

22 minutes ago, Lysimachus said:

Would you say your biggest concern with over-compiling the datasheets would be that it might cause issues for Leaders joining Units? (And perhaps causing problems with Keywords?) It's certainly a valid concern!

 

To a degree – it's more to do with trying to ensure any revisions to the Index stick to broader game-wide conventions. One of those is that Leaders have (rightly or wrongly) been given quite limited lists of who they can join, across every army.

 

I'm not sure that GW's approach is one that I would have taken with a new edition of 40k, were I '40k Grand Overlord*'; but if you want to revise the Index, it's more likely to get take-up if it sticks to the game-wide conventions.

 

Of course, having said that, there are other implicit conventions – everything must fit on the datasheet, for example – that trump consistency, so it's very much swings and roundabouts. 

 

*God-Emperor forbid! :D

+++

 

On the particular point of over-compiling the datasheets, I think the main risk is that we create very crowded, potentially confusing cards, or introducing unintended consequences. As noted in my earlier post, once you've picked your army, you only have to refer the relevant datasheets, so – for me at least – it's more important that each one is clear in isolation. 

 

Now, taking only that into account, we may as well have dozens or hundreds of potential Captain datasheets, one for each possible combination of wargear, with no options whatsoever. The flip-side to that is to cram every option into a single datasheet.

 

Neither of those extremes, I think, are workable. Fundamentally, given we probably want to stick to GW's game-wide conventions, there's a happy medium between the two – and I think we agree that GW's is verging too much towards the former. Ultimately, it'll come down to taste – but I'd also note that having a smaller number of datasheets than in the Index is desirable from GW's own stated philosophy of 'simplified, not simple'.

 

I'd argue fewer datasheets is healthier for the game overall, as it's less for non-Space Marine player to parse the info. Is there really a need to distinguish a Primaris Captain from a non-Primaris captain? Is there a good reason a one of those Captains can't have a jump pack, or ride a bike? Probably not. Much healthier for the game overall to have fewer Captains with fewer bespoke rules to remember – as long as there are sufficient remaining to be fun for the Space Marine player, and have the meaningfully different models (in terms of physical appearance) different in terms of rules.

 

+++

 

Abstraction can be great – I love Epic, where pretty much every infantry weapon is small arms – but I think that rather loses the granularity at 40k scale. Given the reception amalgamating some weapons (Chaos Chosen, Vanguard Veterans, combi-weapons) have received I'm a bit leery of doing the same for pistols – better, I think, to have another entry on the armoury card, or simply restrict upgrades more generally. Assault Squads, for example, used to only be able to bring flamers.

 

+++

 

What I was thinking about adding was an addendum to the Leader rule, that a SM Character can only Lead a unit that is equipped with the same Armour type as he is wearing (and equipped with JP/Bike if he is, etc). In fact, doing it that way, you could also completely remove from the Datasheets all the lists of which Characters can Lead which Units!

 

The other idea I had with this was to divide the Characters into HQ and Support - for exactly this reason. You could say that a single Unit can be joined by max of 1 HQ Character and 1 Support Character, and thereby get rid of a lot of (needlessly) specific bits on the cards again?

 

Both seem neat ways of going about it. There are precedents in other armies to vary the look of the Datasheet (Guard Orders for example); and to have multiple statlines (Guard Command Squad, Ork Gretchin, Eldar Guardians) on one datasheet. 

 

The same rule could be applied more broadly as a USR – Leader as it currently stands, and '[Support Character]' (or whatever). This would cover edge cases like Ork Oddboyz, Chaos and Imperial Marine support characters, Guard Priests etc.