As a Space Marine player, and creator of my own chapter, the thought of a new Space Marine Codex right around the corner is more than a tad exciting! New models, new rules, new background and gadgetry to immerse myself into. Here I take a look at some of the rumours I'm most intrugued with and what directions I may take my army.
The combat tactics rules seem like a great idea and a much better way to represent armies. In the current (not for long) codex the only way to add real flavour is by taking one of the special characters. This doesn't lead to an awful lot of variety, hence why I've mostly used my own characters from stock. I can now choose which Chapter to allign mine with, and use those Combat Tactics to boost the skills of my army without the need for a special character.
It seems the points have been reduced for a number of units also. Tactical and Devastator marines have been reduced by 2 pts a model, which is more in line with Dark Angels and Space Wolves. Thank the Emperor for that! In a picture from a battle report I've also seen a dreadnought with twin linked lascannon and missile launcher was 135 pts, and I'm sure thats 10 pts cheaper than it currently is. It'll be interesting to see how it all adds up in an apocalypse force, which I'll be doing for a game the day after the Codex hits the shelves!
White Scars are going to be amazing. I may get more bikes to try them out a little! Hit and Run, +1 to Jink saves, bonus to Hammer of Wrath... wowser.
Theres a lot of talk about the Grav weapons, and I think they'll be great against elite armies with good armour but against hordes, not sure I'd bother. I'm doubtful about taking them either way, plasma has always done a good job of slaughtering termies even if my devastators rarely survive the battle due to overheating!
Flakk missiles for Missile Launchers. Hallalujah! As a huge fan of missile launcher toting devastators this is great news. Some more AA options are always welcome, and I love the new hunter tank with its single rocket launcher, looks fantastic!
Chapter Masters now have 4 wounds and 4 attacks.... more like it! Currently the only thing over a Captain they have is orbital bombardment and some different choices to take. Now they're a little bit better and with the addition of Chapter Relics we should be able to finally take on some of the nastier enemies our foes can throw at us!
Legion of the Damned are one of my favourite units. Not in how good they are, because they're an expensive unit that just take a lot of killing, but because I love the models. And now it seems they're 5pts cheaper and their weapons ignore cover. Thats awesome! Especially now I have one armed with a multimelta, be useful for those Tau and Eldar vehicles that have extr bonuses to cover saves and jinks.
Centurions are still a very unsure thing for me. Do I like the models? A little. Do I like the rules? Not so much. T and S 5 is cool, but no invulnerable? Hmm not sure how good that makes them. I'm sure they will have their uses but I'll wait and see how they are in the codex before judging them.
The final thing that affects me is to do with troop capacity on the drop pods and Land Raider. Both have dropped from 12 to 10, which is also in line with other marine codex books but its a bit annoying. Tactical squad with a character dropping down behind enemy lines cannot be done anymore, neither can you have 5 terminators lead by a chaplain or other character in the normal land raider. I can understand why but it is a bit of a shame.
All in all however I think we'll end up with a very competitive book, Space Marines are always competitive (at least in my eyes) and I've done well with them so far. Lets hope this continues and I'll love my as yet unamed chapter even more. September 7th, I await you!
The new codex does have a lot of promise, i'm particularly happy because I have Raven Gaurd & 'Scars both of whom seem to have been among the biggest winners in the new book.
ReplyDeleteNot as excited by this as 'Nids, but still really keen to get a read through...