New 40k

GW will make a lot of money with these guys.

 

Wow lots of stuff since my last post! Time for another rambling summary.

The difference between points and power levels was addressed. Honestly I can't believe how many people saw the Thousand Sons datasheet and devolved into gurgling cries of "AH MAH POINTZ ARE GONE!" despite the fact the article clearly said points and power were two separate things. It's pretty much what I expected: Power is a rough indication of a unit's strength and can be used to quickly cobble together approximately equal forces, whereas Points is exactly what it is now. I like this. I like this a lot. At first I thought it was a bit redundant but the more I think about it I like it. How often do I agonize over a handful of points? How often do I take weapons I don't like just because they're a more "optimal" choice? A lot. And would I really care if the person across the table from me was say 50pts over or under? Outside of a tournament, not really.

Faction Focus on Daemons confirmed that you need to pay points for the models you summon. Good. It used to be that way back in 3rd anyway, so no big deal. The one thing I don't really like is having to pay points for things that create units/models in-game that you have no control over. Now I'm making some pretty drastic assumptions here - but lets say the Chaos Boon table still exists and I roll "Spawndom". My Character is dead, and I now have a Spawn. This is not a good thing. But I have to pay points for the spawn? What if I roll Daemonic Ascension? Do I need to pay points for a Daemon Prince that in most likelihood will never see the table? What about abilities that MIGHT turn an enemy model into a Spawn on a lucky roll? Horrors splitting? For me the issue here is that you're already paying points for the units that have this ability. Surely their points cost/power rating should just reflect this and we call it a day.

Moving on, each Daemon type has cool bonuses... except Tzeentch. Why on earth do they stick to the same tired old "God of +1 to Invulnerable Saves" thing. Tzeentch is SO much more interesting than that and GW has always horribly failed at portraying it in 40k. The other 3 gods get thematic and cool rules, but Tzeentch again gets a shitty invuln bonus. They had the opportunity to start from scratch, but instead decided that the same mediocre bonus CSM have ignored for the past 7 years is good enough. Pretty salty about that.

Stratagems looks pretty cool. It's an interesting concept that makes your army composition matter. How much of an impact they have on games remains to be seen but I like the look of it.

Faction Focus on T'au (now with added apostrophe!) has a few interesting points. Stormsurges move and shoot without penalty, and can even do so when retreating from combat. I imagine this will be pretty standard across large walkers like this. They also drop in a mention of the FLY keyword on Crisis suits which has the same affect (among the other benefits to having FLY which have not yet been mentioned).

We also got a look at the new fangled Primaris Space Marine. Stat-wise he's essentially a 2W Space Marine with a better boltgun. Not really a game changer. Lore-wise... I don't hate it. I thought I would, but I don't. Space Marines getting new stuff each edition is pretty much assumed knowledge at this point, and actually saying "Hey this is new!" instead of "What? We always had these..." is refreshing. Messing around with geneseed and new marks of power armour isn't unprecedented. This is essentially a new founding that's been a long time in the making. Not really sure what happened to finsihing developing Mk8 or Mk9 armour (they just skipped to Mk10/MkX... presumably because X is cool) but what the hey.

Now the most interesting thing for me is in both the T'au and Primaris datasheets. I shall call them "variable faction keywords". For T'au it is <SEPT> and for Primmie it's <CHAPTER>. At a guess we'll see more of these, like <CRAFTWORLD> or <LEGION> and they'll be used much in the same way that current "Chapter Tactics" are for Space Marines, or the Legion detachment rules for Chaos Space Marines. I love it, and hope we see lots of it. Some small variation between different forces from the same faction makes for a fun and varied game.

 

But these new ones are even spacier and marinier than ever before! And now include parts that will be totally incompatible with normal sized marines! Seriously though these guys actually have the laziest design, they just took the marines from the calth box, made them bigger and gave them standard pauldrons from the tacticals kit because the ones from the calth box are just so much harder to paint *sighs of disappointment echo across the universe as space marine players begrudgingly open their wallets*

 

From what i have heard, they will also get a unit of assault marines, special vehicles and a unique dreadnought.

 

I think this was stated in one of the articles about them. As a filthy traitor I don't care about the infantry and tanks, but if that dread is good I'll add it to my collection as a dirty heretic war machine.

 

If they go the same way they did with AoS, then yea, you need to pay again for these new models. And yeah, it's stupid. Especially for stuff like the horrors. Of the top of my head 10 pink horrors in AoS are a ~150 point 10 blue's are 60 and 10 brimstone are 40 or something along those lines. Which results in the following:

• Just 10 pinks: 150 (not too bad)
• 10 blue's + 10 brimstone: a 100 points - actually a completly fair prize for what it is.
• 10 pinks + 20 blue's + 20 brimstone: 350 - stupidly expensive for what is in essence just 1 unit of cannonfodder. Yea it is a magnificent tarpit, but the prize is horrendous. And this gets progressivly worse if the pink horror's banner summons reinforcements.

Maybe the rules for summoning I made up for AoS (alongside some other magic rules) might be beneficial here as well... Though maybe they'l have learned from the flaws in AoS and fixed this issue somehow.

Also please for the love of god tell me that there is some way besides just keeping an intial point reserve to pay for summoning in 40K... It's fine to have some limit on it by having to pay for it,but if it is just as expensive as just starting with the unit out on the field the actual value of summoning is vastly diminished as it's basicly a glorified thunderstrike...

 

I don´t think this will actually happen. I´ve heard lots of SM players very annoyed at seeing how their 10-year old (or even older) SM collection will just be replaced (because let´s face it, they´ll eventually replace "unscaled" marines). First tactical, then assault, tanks, dreads, and so on. Sure there´ll be many hype around, but I don´t even think it´s majority. I myself as a SM player (and I have literally 0 points of built army) am not looking forward for this change.

 

I disagree. GW will make a killing on this. They haven't invalidated the previous iterations, instead they've provided a shiny new improved version that can be used alongside them. I agree that some players might be pissed off, but overall it will be of a net gain from them. What GW produces, the masses will buy. Look at the huge backlash at AoS (a game which I'm sure I don't have to repeat my opinion of) received, and yet they apparently sell really well.

Mind you this is coming from a guy who doesn't play or like Space Marines in the slightest.

 

I didn´t mean to say they won´t sell, nor that they are ugly and thus nobody will buy them (I will probably buy them myself ) but rather that people are annoyed at seeing their huge collections of space marines, the super emperor´s badass soldiers, becoming, say, puny, side by side with these primaris space marines.
An this isn´t official, but it is very likely (could almost be said that GW indirectly confirmed it) that they will eventually discontinue the current SM in favor of these, and people are just annoyed at that.
It´s basically like when you get your old 5th edition saurus/skinks side by side with the ones GW sell now: it doesn't feel right, they don´t seem to be the same unit (at least for me)
I´m just saying that people (in general) aren´t 100% happy with the release

 

Remember that GW only cares about people's feelings as it pertains to sales. If sales are good, people's feelings are irrelevant.

Once again that works in GW's favor. They will gradually phase out the old, so that people are forced to buy the new.

GW has sold a lot of Space Marines in the past (more than any other model), this results in couple of things we need to consider:

• people have huge quantities of SM models, so they have no need to buy new ones... now they've effectively created that need
• the secondary market, like Ebay, is flooded with SM models. You can get your hands on them for very little money, so why buy from GW? These new SM will be very scarce in the secondary market, thus funneling customers into the hands of GW.

At the end of the day, GW doesn't really care all that much if they disgruntle players that already have a great number of SM models. These people were unlikely to purchase more. What you've spent in the past is meaningless, all they care about is what you're willing to spend now and in the future.

This is true, but when is this ever not true as it pertains to GW releases?

That is my hope for all Space Marines.

 

Gotta say, I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I like furthering the fluff a tad and something new for Space Marines (which, whilst I have some SM, they aren't in desperate need of an update compared to some of the other factions *cough*Sisters of Battle*cough*), but on the other, like other posters have said, unless they were the Custodes/Thunder Warriors/Grey Knight, the Astartes were the cream of the crop, so to speak. I don't know, maybe I'm feeling some kind of inferiority complex on behalf of my marines (which given that they're mainly Ultramarines, seems to be a bit ironic given it's Guilliman and Cawl who created the new ones). That and I understand completely that it's GW, and they can do what they please with their IP. @NIGHTBRINGER You pretty much summed it up with your comment above with regards to GW.

I also remember someone joking somewhere that with these new fangled Marines, the average Guardsmen is now more akin to a Grot- that or they would feel like one by comparison haha. Actually, just thought of a quick question: what are the new Marines going to be like when compared to say, the Sternguard unit? Especially considering the Sternguard are the elite versions of tactical squads with some slightly different weapon loadouts (might be new weapons and points that are different between Sternguard and New Marines? Perhaps?)

Spoken like a true follower of the Hive Mind

I suppose it's my own fault for feeling undecided, for focusing the majority of my own purchases on my Lizardmen (because of AOS) than completing my Space Marine Armies with their current line of miniatures Right, where's my Burning of Prospero marines? *looks around*

 

None of this stuff should come as a surprise to anyone.

These guys called it years ago, (starting @0:44 specifically)

 

Good old classic GW!

 

There are a lot of people who dislike the new Primaris marines as a concept. As I said, I'm not fussed. I don't mean to sound scathing, but they've been stated more than once to be re-enforcements rather than replacements to "normal" marine armies so people crying about their poster boy armies being invalidated are being ridiculous. Dropping Space Marines in their entirety because of a few new hyper-elite units would be like discontinuing the rest of the Stormcast range when the Extremis Chamber was released or scrapping the rest of Chaos Space Marines because of the new Thousand Sons models.

Will they eventually phase out standard marines in favour of Primaris? Maybe one day. But have they phased out any other army in recent history? The only 40k armies that have ever been totally dropped are Squats and Zoats and that happened well before I even started playing. As it stands now there are so many marine kits that are less than 2 codex iterations old it would be insane to think they'll discontinue the whole line any time soon. Chaos, Orks and Imperial Guard still have kits in production from the 90s, and the basic Tyranid troops are almost as old. There's also a lot of crossover between 40k and 30k Space Marines, since the kits are compatible with one another.

 

On the fantasy side Bretonnia and Tomb Kings were "phased" out. So there is some sort of precedence. However I do agree with you that standard Space Marines will still be viable for a very long time. I think people are upset because Space Marines are always portrayed as the biggest and the baddest, but they are slowly moving towards being "ordinary". As such, anyone who has invested significant money, time and effort might exhibit a bit of backlash and push-back.

Like I said though, smart move on GW's part.