Goatboy’s Warhammer 40k: About Those New Marine Supplements
Goatboy here to talk about what we need out of the new Marine Supplements that are coming soon.
I won’t lie – the ones for the regular chapters – while good – were just not that exciting. I talked about it before but thought they could have put in a lot more effort into creating either a few unique units for each Marine Army. Something that set them apart from each other that just made them unique – beyond a initial broken Doctrine interaction or specific set of powerful Stratagems.
This is what I think about when I start to imagine what the new Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Death Watch, and Dark Angels books are going to look like. We’ve seen how some of the FAQ updates lost some units – Sammie lost his extra special Land Speeder (do they still sell the sprue/kit with the Land Speeder?), Blood Claws/Swift Claws/Etc claws lost berserker charge, and look at the Wulfen themselves. So the question I have is what are we going to see in these new supplements?
If they follow the route that we saw for the older chapters are we going to get a bunch of the units reprinted? I would think so as these armies have a good deal of stuff that doesn’t match up with the new Space Marine book. Of course do those things actually work out to being good? I am not here to judge that just the idea that a new supplement might just follow the old ways of a few characters, a batch of stratagems, and some extra fiddly rules.
Blood Angels
Let’s look at the Blood Angels. Their little Index like update has a ton of stuff in there. They lost all their cool movement tricks and now feel like just an “Angry” set of Marines. Are we going to get that back or has the whole slew of “guaranteed” deep strike charges gone away? Is this army just going to be a more psychically active set of assault marines like the plethora of other Marine armies we have – Space Wolves, Black Templars, and White Scars? Are we going to get a better set of unique unit rules as well? Are we going to see some of the non plastic characters get kicked? Or are we finally going to get the Primaris golden big boy? Will there be a new grav Baal Gladiator?
Space Wolves
From the vampiric thirst that is the Blood Angels with a ton of resin characters, and interesting units, we move onto the Space Wolves. This army feels like it doesn’t have an identity as much as it used too. It just feels like a blue grey set of marines with a fetish for wolves tails, rune stones, and wild spikey hair. I am hoping we see a big push into the feral nature of the army as we can easily see a big push into the Thunder Wolf territory. I noticed that that all the Claw units lost the Berserker charge which is a shame. If you like the Wulfen then I would just wait for the new book to come out in hopes that the unit choice gets a tweak. Overall the update just feels boring and I hope we don’t see this be the common set up for these updated Marine armies. the Wolves reject the Codex Astartes, so let’s hope for some real distinctiveness.
Death Watch
I would talk about the Death Watch but overall it is just a weird book. Some initial rules made them weirdly powerful for a bit but now they just feel odd. Their identity of being an army of marines sent to guard the Wall is an interesting one that never really stood out that way with their design. Sure we could make a ton of objective secured Outriders but is that any good? Is any of this weird mash up of units be any good? Where is their unique set of bolter/bullet/etc rules?
Dark Angels
The true winner and what I feel is most likely the closest to what will see in their new book is the Dark Angels. Their rules and keywords all set up to create an interesting set of an army. Sure they lost some unique options when it comes to the biker aspect – but the overall chapter within a chapter set of rules is pretty dang good. You want to make the classic Marines good – just look towards the Dark Angels. I don’t know how “fair” it really use as some of the new upgrade Marines are part of the inner circle – but it at least makes the index update interesting when compared to the other three. I expect to see a lot of Dark Angels players to come out of the woodwork as people dust off their Deathwing Knights and figure out if a pack of slow moving jerks is any good.
I am writing this as I finally finished painting my current “Marine” army. I went with my own color scheme as I will most likely shift around to cover some of the other aspects I might like within Marines. Between Dreadnoughts, biker nonsense, and just other options – I want to truly fill out this scheme to allow myself to try playing the good guys come next year when I get a chance to play again. This is why I hope these new supplements are actually good and unique – not just a few pages of Stratagems, some spells, and a unique character or two.
What do you think we will see with the new books? Are we just going to wait to see a true big update with Death Guard as these other books are just rehashed Psychic Awakening stuff?
