Codex: Space Marines | Multi-Part Intercessor & Vanguard Vet Teaser | Legends Culling

[L30n1d4s]

Don't forget, all Terminator melee weapons get a permanent additional -1AP (on top of what you see on their base profiles) and their ranged weapons also get -1AP when shooting a unit within 9" of their unit.

 

This means AP-3 PFs/PWs, AP-2 storm bolterts and Heavy Flamers within 9", and even attached characters (like TDA Chaplain, TDA Librarian, etc.) can benefit from these AP buffs as well!

[Vassakov]

A heck of a lot fewer rereolls and handing out +1 to hit or wound willy nilly.

 

This is good for the game. 

[Mogger351]

11 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

 

Nothing to do with the tabletop game is ever FULLY balanced around lore implications.  This is not a new thing, nor is it surprising.

The game has to be compelling to play, and there's plenty of things in universe that show up on the table that would just so heavily skew that fun away from one player that they have to be nerfed on their face.  Space Marines would crush basically every other factions non-elites on the tabletop and things like daemons would be unstoppable juggernauts against many armies.  That's not fun or compelling.

Compelling means different things to different people. I think heavy bolters firing a larger calibre of ammo but having a lower strength than a bolt rifle might be a fair example of the dissonance.

[GenerationTerrorist]

I don't really see any reason to run anything other than the Artificer Bolters on Sternguard.

The Heavy Bolter and Pyre Cannon are of no use by comparisson.

 

[DemonGSides]

11 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

Compelling means different things to different people. I think heavy bolters firing a larger calibre of ammo but having a lower strength than a bolt rifle might be a fair example of the dissonance.

 

Sure, and if Heavy Bolters Did It All, then it would be a less compelling to play game, as then it's just "Bring the heavy bolter, don't worry about anything else."  There's give and take with this.

The Bolt Rifle extra strength is very easily explained as "It's being targeted and scoped, whereas the HBolter is just spray.  Because it's being more deliberately aimed, the aiming is being done at weaker points, thereby increasing the practical strength of the round being fired."  Really easy to understand with both an in universe reasoning (Aiming v scattershooting) as well as having a compelling in game reason (T3 would be slaughtered if the HBolter was wounding on 2's against them).  Standard bolter shots remaing of the same strength because, well, same reasons; gameplay.

 

You were the one complaining over the past few weeks that these changes were egregious, and now you're sort of asking for even MORE egregious changes?  I don't really get it.

[Karhedron]

1 minute ago, GenerationTerrorist said:

I don't really see any reason to run anything other than the Artificer Bolters on Sternguard.

The Heavy Bolter and Pyre Cannon are of no use by comparisson.

 

 

The HB still has longer range, higher ROF and double the damage of the Infernus profile. You lose the flexibility to switch to the Plasma or Melta profiles but it is still an infantry hose. In fact I fancy playing Math Hammer 40K! The following calculations assume we are within RF and Melta range for all weapons. In fact the longer range of the HB means it will generally perform slightly better than indicated below because it is more likely to get its RF bonus than the other variants.

 

The numbers are averages for a single model firing

 

VS MEQs

Infernus - 0.67 wounds

Purgatus - 1.19 wounds

Heavy Bolter - 2.08 wounds

 

VS T10+ 3+ sv (monsters, tanks etc)

Damnatus - 1.11 wounds

Heavy Bolter - 0.69 wounds

 

So the Heavy Bolter is 3 times better into light infantry than the basic weapon and nearly twice as good into MEQs than the plasma profile. Only against T9+ does the killing power of Damnatus actually exceed the Heavy Bolter.

 

In short, always take the Heavy Bolter. It is only worse against T10 and higher when you are within melta range. In other situations, it is equivalent or better.

[HeadlessCross]

27 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

The HB still has longer range, higher ROF and double the damage of the Infernus profile. You lose the flexibility to switch to the Plasma or Melta profiles but it is still an infantry hose. In fact I fancy playing Math Hammer 40K! The following calculations assume we are within RF and Melta range for all weapons. In fact the longer range of the HB means it will generally perform slightly better than indicated below because it is more likely to get its RF bonus than the other variants.

 

The numbers are averages for a single model firing

 

VS MEQs

Infernus - 0.67 wounds

Purgatus - 1.19 wounds

Heavy Bolter - 2.08 wounds

 

VS T10+ 3+ sv (monsters, tanks etc)

Damnatus - 1.11 wounds

Heavy Bolter - 0.69 wounds

 

So the Heavy Bolter is 3 times better into light infantry than the basic weapon and nearly twice as good into MEQs than the plasma profile. Only against T9+ does the killing power of Damnatus actually exceed the Heavy Bolter.

 

In short, always take the Heavy Bolter. It is only worse against T10 and higher when you are within melta range. In other situations, it is equivalent or better.

The Heavy Bolter getting Rapid Fire 2 is actually pretty nasty. 

[HeadlessCross]

54 minutes ago, Vassakov said:

A heck of a lot fewer rereolls and handing out +1 to hit or wound willy nilly.

 

This is good for the game. 

There's been people on Reddit complaining about Roboute having a reroll aura, ya know a Primarch. 

 

These changes are interesting and I'm intrigued to see how it'll shape other datasheets. 

[Karhedron]

1 minute ago, HeadlessCross said:

There's been people on Reddit complaining about Roboute having a reroll aura, ya know a Primarch. 

 

Given that he can't join squads, an aura is pretty much the only way to buff other units.

[Vassakov]

25 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

Given that he can't join squads, an aura is pretty much the only way to buff other units.

 

27 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

There's been people on Reddit complaining about Roboute having a reroll aura, ya know a Primarch. 

 

These changes are interesting and I'm intrigued to see how it'll shape other datasheets. 

 

A singular datasheet for an Epic Hero who is likely to be in the 350+ point range, fine. Especially as it's only RR 1's and not full rerolls, which is less obnoxious. 

[Northern Walker]

1 hour ago, DemonGSides said:

 

Nothing to do with the tabletop game is ever FULLY balanced around lore implications.  This is not a new thing, nor is it surprising.

The game has to be compelling to play, and there's plenty of things in universe that show up on the table that would just so heavily skew that fun away from one player that they have to be nerfed on their face.  Space Marines would crush basically every other factions non-elites on the tabletop and things like daemons would be unstoppable juggernauts against many armies.  That's not fun or compelling.

Clearly no-one is asking for this sort of a scenario. However, how strong certain things are described as being relative to each other does create dissonance with the way they create datasheets.

 

Just because you find a game design style where maximising abstract points, and unit profiles being a vehicle to acheive that end, compelling doesn't mean everyone does. Quite the opposite infact.

 

The intent behind the game used to be about a shared experience of playing out a tale of a conflict, and having fun.

[DemonGSides]

3 hours ago, Northern Walker said:

Clearly no-one is asking for this sort of a scenario. However, how strong certain things are described as being relative to each other does create dissonance with the way they create datasheets.

 

The poster is literally asking for that scenario; they don't like that HBolter is S5 while a Bolt Rifle can get up to S6.

 

I think there's no dissonance here; an aimed weapon scoping in at weak points is going to be stronger than a machine gun just laying down swaths of shots.  That seems fair to me.

3 hours ago, Northern Walker said:

Just because you find a game design style where maximising abstract points, and unit profiles being a vehicle to acheive that end, compelling doesn't mean everyone does. Quite the opposite infact.

 

Every game of Warhammer since Rogue Trader has included a lot of abstraction, this isn't a surprise.

 

3 hours ago, Northern Walker said:

 

The intent behind the game used to be about a shared experience of playing out a tale of a conflict, and having fun.

 

Correct; hence why abstractions are important, since being able to argue over every little granule IS possible.  Abstractions move past the rivet counting so that the thing can be a game; that's what makes it a game, not a simulation.  Glad we can at least agree on that!

Edited yesterday at 08:14 PM by Xenith
Wheaton's law.

[Mogger351]

16 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

 

The poster is literally asking for that scenario; they don't like that HBolter is S5 while a Bolt Rifle can get up to S6.

 

I think there's no dissonance here; an aimed weapon scoping in at weak points is going to be stronger than a machine gun just laying down swaths of shots.  That seems fair to me.

Ok so this loops back in nicely, there are rules for precision, there is heavy for bracing and aiming carefully, there are lethal hits and devastating wounds for hitting lighter parts of armour and inflicting damage easier.

 

If a bolt rifle hits me in the eye whilst they hold the trigger down it now magically has less kinetic force and hurts less?

[DemonGSides]

2 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

Ok so this loops back in nicely, there are rules for precision, there is heavy for bracing and aiming carefully, there are lethal hits and devastating wounds for hitting lighter parts of armour and inflicting damage easier.

 

If a bolt rifle hits me in the eye whilst they hold the trigger down it now magically has less kinetic force and hurts less?

 

I agree it does loop back nicely; the extra strength is ANOTHER WAY of showing that the round is doing slightly more for that shot than it is normally.  Precision is a game mechanic for sniping specific characters; not really appreciable to the discussion at hand.  Lethal Hits would've been another avenue for making that specific change; I do think it might go a little stronger than the intent, since it skips the wound roll.  That would make them EVEN MORE STRONGER than the Heavy Bolter, something that you're not happy about, so I don't think it's a good solution for your particular complaint, same for Devastating wounds since it skips their ability to roll against the damage coming in, that's a 1/3rd increase in lethality.

 

If the eye is your only weakspot, it's definitely more likely to be hit by the scoped in bolter than the heavy machine gun.

I'm glad we could come to a conclusion on this.

[Mogger351]

2 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

 

I agree it does loop back nicely; the extra strength is ANOTHER WAY of showing that the round is doing slightly more for that shot than it is normally.  Precision is a game mechanic for sniping specific characters; not really appreciable to the discussion at hand.  Lethal Hits would've been another avenue for making that specific change; I do think it might go a little stronger than the intent, since it skips the wound roll.  That would make them EVEN MORE STRONGER than the Heavy Bolter, something that you're not happy about, so I don't think it's a good solution for your particular complaint, same for Devastating wounds since it skips their ability to roll against the damage coming in, that's a 1/3rd increase in lethality.

 

If the eye is your only weakspot, it's definitely more likely to be hit by the scoped in bolter than the heavy machine gun.

I'm glad we could come to a conclusion on this.

I'm glad you can invent head canon to avoid a reasonable point, yes.

 

So we've established those s4 scout snipers will be at least S6 so they can go through tanks easier, the fact the heavy bolters calibre is 33% larger than the bolt rifles just means it shoots bigger bullets faster that don't do anything more than the smaller bullets when the person shooting thinks really hard.

 

I guess it's a real mystery no other units in even the space marine army have considered actually aiming to do double damage? 

[Moonstalker]

1 hour ago, Karhedron said:

 

The HB still has longer range, higher ROF and double the damage of the Infernus profile. You lose the flexibility to switch to the Plasma or Melta profiles but it is still an infantry hose. In fact I fancy playing Math Hammer 40K! The following calculations assume we are within RF and Melta range for all weapons. In fact the longer range of the HB means it will generally perform slightly better than indicated below because it is more likely to get its RF bonus than the other variants.

 

The numbers are averages for a single model firing

 

VS MEQs

Infernus - 0.67 wounds

Purgatus - 1.19 wounds

Heavy Bolter - 2.08 wounds

 

VS T10+ 3+ sv (monsters, tanks etc)

Damnatus - 1.11 wounds

Heavy Bolter - 0.69 wounds

 

So the Heavy Bolter is 3 times better into light infantry than the basic weapon and nearly twice as good into MEQs than the plasma profile. Only against T9+ does the killing power of Damnatus actually exceed the Heavy Bolter.

 

In short, always take the Heavy Bolter. It is only worse against T10 and higher when you are within melta range. In other situations, it is equivalent or better.

 

I think the heavy weapons may still ultimately be left behind because of the Assault rule on the bolters.  The extra mobility of being able to always advance and fire, plus that making it easier to get them into rapid fire range, will probably trump the damage increase.

[jaxom]

13 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

So we've established those s4 scout snipers will be at least S6 so they can go through tanks easier, the fact the heavy bolters calibre is 33% larger than the bolt rifles just means it shoots bigger bullets faster that don't do anything more than the smaller bullets when the person shooting thinks really hard.

I'm having trouble following this. Could you explain further, please?

[DemonGSides]

11 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

I'm glad you can invent head canon to avoid a reasonable point, yes.

 

So we've established those s4 scout snipers will be at least S6 so they can go through tanks easier, the fact the heavy bolters calibre is 33% larger than the bolt rifles just means it shoots bigger bullets faster that don't do anything more than the smaller bullets when the person shooting thinks really hard.

 

I guess it's a real mystery no other units in even the space marine army have considered actually aiming to do double damage? 

 

I don't really know even what you want out of this conversation than to try to say you know more lore details than an imaginary opponent that you're fighting with, but the question is not around lore implications, because we are talking about the tabletop game.

 

I think you're being purposefully obtuse to try to score some dunk points, so I'll just move on.  +1S on a gun when used in a particular way is just as good of a way to show it's being used slightly different than the normal way the gun works, without completely lopsiding the lethality of said weapon.

 

We didn't 'establish' anything, because you keep moving the target.  Have a great rest of your day.

[phandaal]

58 minutes ago, Northern Walker said:

The intent behind the game used to be about a shared experience of playing out a tale of a conflict, and having fun.

 

Agree 100%. It still is for many people. It's actually nice to see more people bringing this up even here where it is not the dominant topic.

 

Some crazy people (me, and sometimes my opponents ) even act out particularly wild scenarios as they happen on the table, complete with sound effects.

 

If you aren't going *PSHHHHEEW* *CHHHSSSSHHHH* *PCHHHWWW* and turning minis over on their sides to demonstrate how badly they just got wrecked, are you really even playing a game?

[DemonGSides]

11 minutes ago, jaxom said:

I'm having trouble following this. Could you explain further, please?

 

They're trying to argue that a Heavy bolter, which has been described as firing larger caliber than a standard boltgun (Which the poster has then abstracted to mean that all bolters fire smaller caliber than a Heavy Boltgun, though no Caliber is actually provided for the HBolter and the regular Boltgun even has varying size of caliber depending on the pattern) shouldn't be a lower strength than the Bolt Rifle.  They are then extrapolating because I said that the S6 on the 'focused' form of the Bolt Rifle is to show that they are aiming the gun and targetting weak spots, that then Scouts will now get s6 guns (I never intimated this, I was fully in the camp of the S6 is a game mechanic abstraction so that you're eeking a LITTLE more power out of the Bolt Rifle without making it insanely more lethal such as giving it keywords or bigger stat changes would confer) since they are also aiming.

It's just someone lashing out.  Easy enough to just move on.

3 minutes ago, phandaal said:

 

Agree 100%. It still is for many people. It's actually nice to see more people bringing this up even here where it is not the dominant topic.

 

Some crazy people (me, and sometimes my opponents ) even act out particularly wild scenarios as they happen on the table, complete with sound effects.

 

If you aren't going *PSHHHHEEW* *CHHHSSSSHHHH* *PCHHHWWW* and turning minis over on their sides to demonstrate how badly they just got wrecked, are you really even playing a game?

 

There's not a lot of wrong ways to play 40k, but if you aren't saying "pew pew" at least once per game (Ideally once per battle round) you are for sure doing it wrong.

Edited yesterday at 05:28 PM by DemonGSides

[Mogger351]

4 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

 

I don't really know even what you want out of this conversation than to try to say you know more lore details than an imaginary opponent that you're fighting with, but the question is not around lore implications, because we are talking about the tabletop game.

 

I think you're being purposefully obtuse to try to score some dunk points, so I'll just move on.  +1S on a gun when used in a particular way is just as good of a way to show it's being used slightly different than the normal way the gun works, without completely lopsiding the lethality of said weapon.

 

We didn't 'establish' anything, because you keep moving the target.  Have a great rest of your day.

I haven't moved the target, the game reflects the fluff less, which you seem to be agreeing.

 

To all who seemingly know little about heavy bolters:

 

A bolter fires a .75 calibre round, a heavy bolter carries near enough a 1.0 calibre round. The round is notable bigger and more damaging. The heavy bolter conserves more energy when firing due to the mechanism being electrically driven rather than a hammer and using the grass to expel the rounds.

 

I'm not a gun nut but even I know this means a bigger heavier lump of more explodey flies at you faster. 

 

In older editions it was a Heavy weapon that needed bracing/stationary to fire with any accuracy, vastly out shot a bolter in range, shots and had higher strength and AP. It served the purpose it was there to hit things like nobz/nid warriors/light vehicles.

 

Now a bolt rifle with the smaller round fires with a higher strength and the same damage due to apparently "aiming". The heavy bolter is basically a normal bolter with d2 that goes brrrrr if you run at people with it.

 

Its fluff and lineage are discarded for what? People who shrug and roll more dice.

[HeadlessCross]

4 minutes ago, phandaal said:

 

Agree 100%. It still is for many people. It's actually nice to see more people bringing this up even here where it is not the dominant topic.

 

Some crazy people (me, and sometimes my opponents ) even act out particularly wild scenarios as they happen on the table, complete with sound effects.

 

If you aren't going *PSHHHHEEW* *CHHHSSSSHHHH* *PCHHHWWW* and turning minis over on their sides to demonstrate how badly they just got wrecked, are you really even playing a game?

I only make those noises when doing Lego fights with the nephews and niece.  

 

I go full Shakespearean and make a death speech on 40k for each model that dies instead. 

[FarFromSam]

1 hour ago, HeadlessCross said:

There's been people on Reddit complaining about Roboute having a reroll aura, ya know a Primarch. 

 

These changes are interesting and I'm intrigued to see how it'll shape other datasheets. 

Reddit is not a place for healthy people. 

 

Also, the HB bolter is a tank mounted weapon.  And a Heavy weapons team piece.

Edited yesterday at 05:37 PM by FarFromSam

[Nephaston]

2 hours ago, GenerationTerrorist said:

I don't really see any reason to run anything other than the Artificer Bolters on Sternguard.

The Heavy Bolter and Pyre Cannon are of no use by comparisson.

 

 

Taking the pyre cannon enables me to make *FWOOOOSH* and other burning sounds in the shooting phase to supplement the *BANG BANG* of the regular bolter profile.

[Mazer Rackham]

18 minutes ago, FarFromSam said:

Also, the HB bolter is a tank mounted weapon.  And a Heavy weapons team piece.

 

Pfft. C'mon, bro, I lift.