40k New Assault Terminators + Terminator Ancient + Crux Terminus Army Set

[HeadlessCross]

44 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

 

The proverbial genie is already out of the bottle; despite any claims of lethality going down (It for sure did), it is still a "Point at unit, delete" game, just across multiple units to accomplish.  It's a war game.  I think bringing terminators in line with the game as it stands is pretty reasonable.  2+ to hit instead of 3+ to hit (Which is what we are advocating for, not these megastormbolters that you're advocating for) is a small lethality increase compared to other things to a unit that is currently seen as a mostly poor anvil, not a damage dealing unit.  I think terminators in other factions have shown that a little juice is worth it and makes terminators good and fun to play, instead of mostly boring and not useful.

That small WS/BS increase wouldn't make them so overbearingly powerful (Your version would be strong, but not insane; Death Guard Blightlords have a stronger defensive statline than loyalist Terminators and similar (Actually probably better) weapons and they're still not played), while also retaining the idea that they should be smaller in presence on the board without nerfing them in the points department to uselessness.

 

I'm not saying that +1 WS/BS on terminators is the be-all end-all way of fixing them, but to treat it as some sacrosanct that's going to break the game if it WERE introduced is a bit silly.  And also would be a cleaner answer than "Here's more things you need to remember about them."

To clarify, Blightlords ARE used but not as much as Deathshroud, which is a unit that proves a W2+ equivalent on a Power Fist profile is not broken and they're actually strong through their other rules. WS2+ is simply the perfectly carved icing on the cake and they simply wouldn't feel the same without it. 

[dalmer]

11 hours ago, Blindhamster said:

because terminators aren't "more veteran" than vanguard or sternguard. 

Please accept my humble caveat that I haven't played seriously since 3rd edition and I've just been reading the lore and books and forum lurking and YouTubing...

 

With the whole "firstborn" and "primaris" stuff... wasn't one of the big things that the firstborn had centuries plus of experience in warfare over the primaris?  And it wouldn't be too much of a jump to imply that this experience includes wearing the Tactical Dreadnought armor?  So perhaps the folks "piloting" the terminator suits are "more veteran" than others.

 

Just my two cents.  Stat lines could reflect this without going overboard, I would think.

[Mogger351]

Much to address.

 

The timeline is a bit wibbly wobbly, there isnt a real definition between primaris and firstborn when it comes to terminators. Some of the primaris may have a century+ of experience in any event at this point.

 

D12 solve very little, its a separation of 8.3% between results. In real terms, if you bumped up a terminator by 1 value using 10 terminators in rapid fire range as an example, that translates to 40 shots, hitting a whole 30 times instead of 27. All it does is actually flatten out the differentiation between the values to make each small step up slightly less meaningful, whilst making you roll excessive volumes of ever increasingly large dice. This is also ignoring that I assume people would expect them to be hitting on a 3+ on a d12, rendering more of the dice values useless.

 

Regards veterancy, it's a poor excuse. Once we acknowledge we shouldn't have auto hitting, 2+ will contain, to name a few:

- The universe's premier duellists such as lucius etc.

- Eldari warriors with reactions and millenia of training beyond that of marines even

- Custodes who are engineered to be better than any other human offshoot in every way and have potentially millennia of experience

- Primarchs themselves

- Literal gods of war

 

And to that list you feel the need to add "marine in thicc armour"?

 

The final hurdle is, how good is a guardsman? A terminator is 34 points, a guardsman is 6.5.

 

The difference between these currently is already a 17% extra chance to hit, 2 points of toughness, a 2+/4++ compared to a 5+, and 2 wounds as a minimum. Ignoring the armaments altogether. How much cheaper is a guardsman willing to be, or more expensive a terminator able to go, to facilitate lethality creep.

 

Tl;dr: 2 wrongs don't make a right and doubling down on lethality creep for no reason other than wanting to kill more with terminators, isn't helping or clever.

Edited September 24 by Mogger351

[Blindhamster]

21 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

D12 solve very little, its a separation of 8.3% between results.

That already solves exactly what I said though 1 makes the game more granular.

 

not really terminator related though!

[Mogger351]

1 hour ago, Blindhamster said:

That already solves exactly what I said though 1 makes the game more granular.

 

not really terminator related though!

It is terminator related as people are suggesting it as a change to make the new models more desirable.

 

Honestly though, people always say this about bigger dice, but unless they're going to slap down the values a lot to utilise more of the dice values and/or use a notably larger die to the point of it being impractical, it doesn't really do a lot. As noted, is 3 more stormbolter hits out of 40 dice really granular enough to be worth tearing a game apart?

 

Terminators have always been an anvil, they still perform that fairly well really. They just suffer from the lack of focus of purpose others note. Assault terminators help with that quite a bit.

[Marshal Loss]

Another faithful update, looks fantastic

[Rhavien]

8 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

 

The proverbial genie is already out of the bottle; despite any claims of lethality going down (It for sure did), it is still a "Point at unit, delete" game, just across multiple units to accomplish.  It's a war game.  I think bringing terminators in line with the game as it stands is pretty reasonable.  2+ to hit instead of 3+ to hit (Which is what we are advocating for, not these megastormbolters that you're advocating for) is a small lethality increase compared to other things to a unit that is currently seen as a mostly poor anvil, not a damage dealing unit.  I think terminators in other factions have shown that a little juice is worth it and makes terminators good and fun to play, instead of mostly boring and not useful.

That small WS/BS increase wouldn't make them so overbearingly powerful (Your version would be strong, but not insane; Death Guard Blightlords have a stronger defensive statline than loyalist Terminators and similar (Actually probably better) weapons and they're still not played), while also retaining the idea that they should be smaller in presence on the board without nerfing them in the points department to uselessness.

 

I'm not saying that +1 WS/BS on terminators is the be-all end-all way of fixing them, but to treat it as some sacrosanct that's going to break the game if it WERE introduced is a bit silly.  And also would be a cleaner answer than "Here's more things you need to remember about them."

The mega stormbolters are not my idea, I just collected the ideas that were mentioned earlier, like upping the damage for hammers or giving every model a cyclone or stormcannon.

I'm absolutely in the boat that termis need a treat.

[Orange Knight]

No other infantry unit aside from Terminators uses Stormbolters in the current Marine range (I suppose the Rhino and Landraider do as well).

 

Aggressors have 3 Str 4 twin linked shots, and D6 str 4 shots on top of that, and all gain +1 AP when targeting the closest unit. Flamers are D6 + 1 shots and hit automatically.

I see absolutely no problem with making the Storm Bolter a 6 shot weapon that has better AP at half range. It's the fastest fire-rate bolter available, after all.

[Crimson Longinus]

13 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

No other infantry unit aside from Terminators uses Stormbolters in the current Marine range (I suppose the Rhino and Landraider do as well).

 

Aggressors have 3 Str 4 twin linked shots, and D6 str 4 shots on top of that, and all gain +1 AP when targeting the closest unit. Flamers are D6 + 1 shots and hit automatically.

I see absolutely no problem with making the Storm Bolter a 6 shot weapon that has better AP at half range. It's the fastest fire-rate bolter available, after all.

 

Yep. And that it boost vehicle stormbolters too is absolutely fine. They often are very pointless, and annoying to roll separately for the usual results of achieving nothing. 

[Mogger351]

3 hours ago, Orange Knight said:

No other infantry unit aside from Terminators uses Stormbolters in the current Marine range (I suppose the Rhino and Landraider do as well).

 

Aggressors have 3 Str 4 twin linked shots, and D6 str 4 shots on top of that, and all gain +1 AP when targeting the closest unit. Flamers are D6 + 1 shots and hit automatically.

I see absolutely no problem with making the Storm Bolter a 6 shot weapon that has better AP at half range. It's the fastest fire-rate bolter available, after all.

The entire grey knight range typically use storm bolters, I'd be expecting this to apply to chaos equivalents etc as well.

[Orange Knight]

51 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

The entire grey knight range typically use storm bolters, I'd be expecting this to apply to chaos equivalents etc as well.

 

I think it should apply to Chaos, but don't they have "Combi" bolters? Or is that just me showing my age? lol

 

As for Grey Knights - The whole range needs a refresh and a shake up, imo.

[Marshal Reinhard]

13 hours ago, dalmer said:

With the whole "firstborn" and "primaris" stuff... wasn't one of the big things that the firstborn had centuries plus of experience in warfare over the primaris?  And it wouldn't be too much of a jump to imply that this experience includes wearing the Tactical Dreadnought armor?  So perhaps the folks "piloting" the terminator suits are "more veteran" than others.

That idea behind the comparison would only have been relevant for the initial wave of Cawls homegrown marines. Most marines are primaris now, with a good chunk of that being ascended firstborn. Calgar, Dante, Azrael, Grimnar, Helbrecht etc are all primaris now. 'New' vs 'old' for experience makes little sense when the old are literally the new now.

 

And for the longest time being a veteran within a space marine chapter means having earned the privilege to wear terminator armour. Not all chapters have enough suits to let every one of their veterans equip the armour at the same time, which is why veterans in power armour are still adorned with the crux terminatus. The dark angels were actually somewhat of an outlier because everyone in the deathwing wore it.

 

So veteran status typically meant having terminator honours even if it didn't mean you always wore it, so implying that terminators are more veteran than other veterans make little sense to me. 

 

Both type of marines, primaris or not can also wear the suit.

Edited September 24 by Marshal Reinhard
Phone related typos and grammar for readability

[Brother Tyler]

I'm very pleased to see the Assault Terminators finally embiggened. The legs look like they're the same as those used for the [shooty] Terminator squad (unless I'm missing something ). I would have liked to see some more variation from the shooty squad's legs, even if it was nothing more than changing the decorations (without changing the positions). That would have allowed for every model in a 10-man squad, whether shooty or smashy, to have different legs.  That's not a huge complaint, however. The torsos, too, look the same, though I'm very pleased to see some with the aquila in place of the imperialis (and it would be nice to see some other chest decoration variations, too). It looks like the helmets are the same, with the exception of the one with the skull on the forehead (the one in the shooty kit has the targeting right eye - I haven't opened the kit to see if there are others). The bare heads look to be different, which is very good.

 

I'm looking forward to seeing the inevitable Warhammer Community article in which members of the community paint these models up in the colors of other Chapters.

 

Pipe dream: I'd love to see Chapter-specific sprues allowing for Chapter-specific options, whether sold as part of (most likely limited run) big boxes or (even less likely) small boxes. Imagine an Imperial Fists counterpart to the Crux Terminatus kit, replacing the Terminator Captain with the new Lysander and enabling all of the models in the box to be kitted out as proper yellow Terminators; or a similar big box for the Iron Hands with an appropriate Terminator-armour-clad Iron-Father and cog and fist iconography everywhere. In most cases, this might simply be shoulder pads with the appropriate Chapter badges, and perhaps a few chestpieces with Chapter iconography. The existing upgrade kits (Black Templars, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Deathwatch, Imperial Fists, Iron Hands, Raven Guard, Salamanders, Space Wolves, and White Scars) are okay, but they don't have near enough Terminator bits to allow hobbyists to make full 10-man squads where every Terminator has proper Chapter imagery; and the Ultramarines don't even have an upgrade kit despite their distinctive Greco-Roman stylings (unless I'm missing something). And my real pipe dream is that I'd love for the Salamanders to be able to create a proper 3rd edition version of the Firedrakes where their Terminators might be equipped with a storm bolter and thunder hammer. I can dream, can't I?

 

Seeing these models reminds me of my concerns about base sizes when using regular WH40K Terminator models in Space Hulk. That's a discussion for elsewhere, however.

 

Another area where this kit pleases me is that it helps me to continue working on my Kill Team/Space Hulk crossover project. That, too, is better discussed elsewhere.

 

I'm very pleased with the Terminator Ancient, though I have a difficult time imagining the Ancient striding into a space hulk with the banner/standard held aloft (I almost always envision Terminators in the context of Space Hulk, however, so that might be a niche view).

 

I want everything that's in the Crux Terminatus box, so I'll try to get one, especially since, expensive as it will most certainly be, it will be cheaper than buying all of the kits separately. Fingers crossed.

[Ramell]

19 minutes ago, Brother Tyler said:

the Ultramarines don't even have an upgrade kit despite their distinctive Greco-Roman stylings (unless I'm missing something).

We had one for Primaris, and an older one pre-dating them, but both appear to be gone from GW's site. Must've been a relatively recent discontinuation of them.

But neither had anything specifically for Terminators. The Primaris one was in the same format as the other 8th edition ones, still seen with chapters like the Salamanders.

[HeadlessCross]

5 hours ago, Mogger351 said:

The entire grey knight range typically use storm bolters, I'd be expecting this to apply to chaos equivalents etc as well.

Maybe for the Terminator ones, but the special wrist mounted ones for PA dudes could always be statted differently. That IS one benefit to bespoke rules on the datasheets. 

[HeadlessCross]

11 hours ago, Mogger351 said:

Much to address.

 

The timeline is a bit wibbly wobbly, there isnt a real definition between primaris and firstborn when it comes to terminators. Some of the primaris may have a century+ of experience in any event at this point.

 

D12 solve very little, its a separation of 8.3% between results. In real terms, if you bumped up a terminator by 1 value using 10 terminators in rapid fire range as an example, that translates to 40 shots, hitting a whole 30 times instead of 27. All it does is actually flatten out the differentiation between the values to make each small step up slightly less meaningful, whilst making you roll excessive volumes of ever increasingly large dice. This is also ignoring that I assume people would expect them to be hitting on a 3+ on a d12, rendering more of the dice values useless.

 

Regards veterancy, it's a poor excuse. Once we acknowledge we shouldn't have auto hitting, 2+ will contain, to name a few:

- The universe's premier duellists such as lucius etc.

- Eldari warriors with reactions and millenia of training beyond that of marines even

- Custodes who are engineered to be better than any other human offshoot in every way and have potentially millennia of experience

- Primarchs themselves

- Literal gods of war

 

And to that list you feel the need to add "marine in thicc armour"?

 

The final hurdle is, how good is a guardsman? A terminator is 34 points, a guardsman is 6.5.

 

The difference between these currently is already a 17% extra chance to hit, 2 points of toughness, a 2+/4++ compared to a 5+, and 2 wounds as a minimum. Ignoring the armaments altogether. How much cheaper is a guardsman willing to be, or more expensive a terminator able to go, to facilitate lethality creep.

 

Tl;dr: 2 wrongs don't make a right and doubling down on lethality creep for no reason other than wanting to kill more with terminators, isn't helping or clever.

You'd have a point on the Eldar thing if it weren't for the fact I was actually on board when GW did the W2 WS5 BS5 for Exarchs in 6th/7th. It was a fantastic way to differentiate them from normal Sergeant models as more combat oriented vs leadership oriented. 

 

As for HQ units that are prominent duelists, you conveniently forget they often have redundant rules with their melee to begin with that enhance their hitting and wounding capabilities. Crowe rerolls hits on Character units and he already hits on a 2+. Lucius does the same for hits (and wounds) when hitting Character units + Walkers + Monsters and once again hits on a 2+. 

 

 Nothing stated there is unprecedented. You're just falling into the same trap that GW has in regards to being obsessed with legacy stats. 

[Mogger351]

32 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

You'd have a point on the Eldar thing if it weren't for the fact I was actually on board when GW did the W2 WS5 BS5 for Exarchs in 6th/7th. It was a fantastic way to differentiate them from normal Sergeant models as more combat oriented vs leadership oriented. 

 

As for HQ units that are prominent duelists, you conveniently forget they often have redundant rules with their melee to begin with that enhance their hitting and wounding capabilities. Crowe rerolls hits on Character units and he already hits on a 2+. Lucius does the same for hits (and wounds) when hitting Character units + Walkers + Monsters and once again hits on a 2+. 

 

 Nothing stated there is unprecedented. You're just falling into the same trap that GW has in regards to being obsessed with legacy stats. 

Yeah but an exarch does deserve to be WS/BS5 from their fluff, a terminator doesn't. It's not about being trapped in legacy stats, it's about realising that once you start pushing for large chunks of the game to get closer and closer to auto hitting - which is a weird fallacy brought on by power creep and wanting the endorphin rush of "my guys are so good!" - combined with the constant need to kill more stuff more efficiently, it self perpetuates the arms race.

 

We've had the cycle at least once with Saves > AP modifiers get over handed out > invuln saves proliferate > rules to ignore invuln saves spring up > rules to ignore rules that ignore invuln saves appear.

 

Maybe terminators shouldn't get better, maybe everyone else that pushes them out should get worse. Maybe the community should want tactical depth rather than more dead dudes faster.

[HeadlessCross]

2 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

 

Maybe terminators shouldn't get better, maybe everyone else that pushes them out should get worse.

That doesn't work due to the fact most of the Marine codex is better than Terminators. Bringing down 99% of the game is straight up dumb. 

[Mogger351]

11 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

That doesn't work due to the fact most of the Marine codex is better than Terminators. Bringing down 99% of the game is straight up dumb. 

You honestly place space marine terminators in the bottom 1% of the game?

[Lord Nord in Gravis Armour]

1 hour ago, Ramell said:

We had one for Primaris, and an older one pre-dating them, but both appear to be gone from GW's site. Must've been a relatively recent discontinuation of them.

But neither had anything specifically for Terminators. The Primaris one was in the same format as the other 8th edition ones, still seen with chapters like the Salamanders.

 

Yeah, same format as far as the size of the frame and transfer sheet but also a different retail factor as the big four were released in 2017 and 2018 with just a single frame/sheet per kit and as far as I know that was never changed. Meanwhile, all of the 2019 non-UM compliant chapter upgrades were released exclusively in a "double-dip" format, with two frame and two sheets.

 

So with BA, DA, and SW all getting a new upgrades and transfers box, the Ultramarines were the only chapter that still had that specific style of retail kit. The fact that the existing kit is gone from the store could simply mean that they're finally moving over to the "double-dip" style with the same exact bits and transfers, but given that we know the Smurfs are getting a meatier refresh, it's more likely they'll also be getting a chunkier "upgrades and transfers" box like the BT and the rest of the big four got.

[Indy Techwisp]

I see we've hit the "Absurdly buff Terminators pls" part of the thread.

I'm just gonna reiterate my stance that Terminator Stormbolters should have the same Statline as the Sisters of Battle Stormbolters.

 

That said, these Terminators don't have any Guns, so I don't really see why the Stormbolter stats are that relevent.

 

The box is nice, I'd like to buy it because I currently have 0 LSM Terminators but I'm almost certainly not gonna be able to get my hands on it immediately.

[Brother Tyler]

42 minutes ago, Ramell said:

We had one for Primaris, and an older one pre-dating them, but both appear to be gone from GW's site. Must've been a relatively recent discontinuation of them.

But neither had anything specifically for Terminators. The Primaris one was in the same format as the other 8th edition ones, still seen with chapters like the Salamanders.

 

If I remember correctly, one of the Primaris upgrade kits (there were two) had a couple of Terminator shoulder pads. The other Primaris upgrade kit didn't have anything for Ultramarines Terminators, and the preceding Ultramarines upgrade kit (not Primaris) (the one with the crested helmet) didn't have anything for Ultramarines Terminators (unless you count the bare head, the swords, or the Ultramarines icon).

 

My hypothetical Terminator upgrade kits for Chapters might also include helmets with Chapter icons (one or two per kit) as well as tilt shields with Chapter icons. Those, in addition to other Chapter-specific stuff, would be of immense help for hobbyists who are trying to give their models a little bit more character and differentiation.

 

I'm not sure why anyone thinks these models signal any real changes to the [Assault] Terminator squad rules.

[Marshal Reinhard]

The new kit highlights the need (or at least deep rooted want) for chapter specific upgrades. The terminators themselves look better than they ever have but I really miss the old forge world upgrade kits which even had gorgeous unique looking storm shield for BT (a design reused as recently in the bulwark cosmetic kit for space marine 2 but I digress...)

 

What does look rather promising for people looking to get a full squad of both variants, assault and normal is the ability to mix and match bodies from the kits effortlessly

[phandaal]

41 minutes ago, Marshal Reinhard said:

The new kit highlights the need (or at least deep rooted want) for chapter specific upgrades. The terminators themselves look better than they ever have but I really miss the old forge world upgrade kits which even had gorgeous unique looking storm shield for BT (a design reused as recently in the bulwark cosmetic kit for space marine 2 but I digress...)

 

What does look rather promising for people looking to get a full squad of both variants, assault and normal is the ability to mix and match bodies from the kits effortlessly

 

With how good the new Deathwing Knights and Wolf Guard look, some chapter-specific bits would be a great addition. The kits are so ready-made for things like shin plates and hand plates to be swapped that I wonder if this is not already the plan.

 

(Yes, there are a ton of 3rd party bits for Terminators already and they do look great, but people want official stuff.)

[DemonGSides]

1 hour ago, Brother Tyler said:

I'm not sure why anyone thinks these models signal any real changes to the [Assault] Terminator squad rules.

 

I don't think anyone, so far, has expected any sort of rule change; feels like the reveal article would've at least hinted at that if it was the case, but it was absolutely a "Check out this MODEL KIT" type of post, not a "Check out this new datasheet" post.

Most people were just brainstorming ideas for making terminators worth their points costs.  Someone asked if another poster truly thought they were in the bottom 1% of the game and for sure that's hyperbole, but standard terminators are basically unseen in the COMPETITIVE realm, which is the only place that question really matters; what people bring for their kitchen table games is always going to be informed by what's collected, and the new kit and box will make sure that they see play in the day to day, much like any other widely available kit.

 

That being said, I think even right now there's some merit to Assault Terminators with their current stat lines; most of the terminator wishlisting in the thread was for regular terminators anyways.  The only thing I'd want for the A-Terms would be a way to deepstrike better; teleport homers exist, but in current fashion are pretty meh whereas if they got something that let them ape the Deathshroud Terminators of the DG, well, that'd be pretty cool.

Edited September 24 by DemonGSides