40K Tough Love: Basic Marines Are Stuck
Chaos or Loyalist, it doesn’t really matter – your “backbone” basic Troop Marines kind of suck right now and it’s not even their fault.
When it comes to units that get passed over time and time again, Tactical Marines and your basic Chaos Space Marines share that “role” in a lot of armies. If you play competitively or have been to a tournament in 8th edition, you’ve probably noticed a distinct lack of everyone’s formerly “favorite and reliable boys in 3+ Power Armor holding those objectives in the back.” So what happened? Let’s chat.
Other Units Do It Cheaper
Larry addressed a lot of this in his article this morning. There is a glaring issue with specifically both the Space Marine and Chaos Space Marine codexes when it comes to units that are supposed to be the “backbone” of their respective armies. That issue is that Scouts and Cultists fill the same role and are much cheaper. It’s outsourcing on the tabletop-scale. But, it’s not JUST Scouts/Cultists – it’s also the way detachments work, too.
Think about it the last couple of Imperial Soup lists you’ve seen. Here’s the basics:
- Imperial Knight Detachment w/Castellan
- Astra Militarum Detachment – Either Battalion or Brigade (depending on flavor)
- Blood Angel’s Detachment – Battalion with 3 Smash Captains and 3 minimum Scout units
Yes, the Blood Angels are probably one of the biggest offenders in this regard but the whole list concept is slanted away from Space Marines to begin with. You really only want the Smash Captains and the Scouts are the cheapest “Troop Tax” units you can squeeze in there. Heck, if you could divert those points away from Scouts and back into the AM units, you’d probably do that instead. But you want those CPs so you’re stuck.
And that’s the point. You go with Scouts because they are 1) Cheap and 2) required. You’re not taking them for their killing potential or their usefulness of holding objectives – those 6-9 guardsmen squads can do almost the exact same thing and probably better, too! There always seems to be a Cheaper Option.
Basic Marines Just Aren’t That Killy
Some of you might remember the heyday of the 5-man Las/Plas Tactical Squads. Those units were fairly points efficient and were pretty killy because they had both a Plasma gun and Lascannon. They typically rolled in a Razorback, too. This helped with their ability to be mobile and provided some more firepower to boot. Now, when was the last time you even THOUGHT about running a unit like that for Space Marines? It’s probably been awhile – and here’s the thing: Vehicles are in a good spot right now! A Razorback isn’t a bad unit for the firepower – but it’s just not that impressive as a total package for the points.
A couple of Lascannon shots these days is barely going to scratch the paint off a Knight. That’s basically the standard folks are measuring units by these days: How much damage could this reliably do to a Knight? Are we in the ball park of killing it or severely wounding it? If yes, how many points are we investing? If no, how many times would I need to ctrl+c/ctrl+v to make that Knight sweat?
Can’t Touch This.
Ultimately this boils down to efficiency. Yes, a Las/Plas Squad can hurt a Knight, but do I want to pay the X points to have enough of them on the table to actually matter to the Knight? Most competitive players will answer with a resounding NO and will spend those points on other units that are more points efficient and can do that job better, too. And if they need Troops, see above – there are always cheaper options for Marines.
In past editions, we’ve seen the pendulum swing the other way where Troop units were super points efficient. If you played in 5th edition, you probably remember seeing a LOT of Space Wolves on the tabletop. Grey Hunters were a thing. They were really points efficient and that’s what made them so popular. Heck, even CSM were better back then – when you could Mark them and have bonuses. My Mark of Khorne CSM units were great with buckets of attacks on the charge. These days…not so much.
Now you can just take Berzerkers if you want a killy close combat option from CSM. That’s not a bad thing, btw – just an observation.
The Points Conundrum
The final problem is that basic Marines are actually pointed correctly and, in a vacuum, they are actually a solid choice. But we don’t play 40k in a vacuum – there are lots of other options and things to consider. We also have areas where units ARE more points efficient and thus more valuable than a “correctly” pointed unit. Basic Marines are in a really bad spot because of this Conundrum.
If the cheap units go up in points, those units become less viable. I’m sure there is some point on the curve where there is an equilibrium between the cost of cultists, their value, and the cost of a Chaos Marine and their value. However, I’m not an economist and can’t answer that question. But does it really make sense to pay 7, 8, 9, or 10 points for a Chaos Cultist?!
Will work for basically nothing. And LIKE it.
We’re in this weird spot right now where point values are askew. Warhammer 40,000 appears to be a game where the point-scale is just slightly off. Maybe that’s because of all the different units in the game. Maybe it’s a problem unique to Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines. There was another game where the point values were off and cheap things were more dominate and “expensive” options got passed on. That game was Star Wars: X-Wing and the designers did two things that drastically altered that game.
The first thing they did was double the value of the points in the game, pretty much across the board. Things that were 20 points were now 40 points basically. To match this, they also doubled the point limits in the games, too. In 40k terms, this would be basically the same as doubling the cost of a Marine from 13 points to 26 points, but now we’re all playing at 4000 points. You following me? Good.
The second major thing was that they then went back and adjusted all the points and addressed things on a per ship basis. So one upgrade for a ship might be 3 points. But that same upgrade on a different ship might be 6 points. They also shaved off points on the high end for some ships. In 40k, this would be equivalent to going back to the old codex style where the unit options and their points were unique to that unit – a Lascannon for a Tactical Squad would be costed differently than a Landraider. And if Tactical Marines were 26 points a model, they might drop them to 23 points or something similar.
Things looked a lot like this.
Does this make list building harder? In some ways. Does it make adjusting points more difficult – yes, because points get a lot more granular. It’s a LOT more work. Would the game be better off for it? Honestly, I don’t think it would. I think this problem would just crop-up somewhere else down the line. But maybe GW will consider this for the next edition.
Between a Rock…
Basic Marines for both Chaos and Space Marines are in a tough spot. There aren’t really any good solutions for them either. I was hoping that maybe CSM would at least get some new rules to match their new models. But it doesn’t look like they are changing in Shadowspear. And classical Tactical Marines…well, the writing is on the wall. First they got outsourced with Scouts and now the Replacements are showing up with Primaris. It’s just not looking good for your Basic Marines.
What do you think about the State of Basic Marines in 40k? Let us know in the comments!
