Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: 7th Edition Space Marines are Back!
Do you remember the days of Warhammer 40K 7th Edition, when Marines got all the Battle Company Detachment goodies for free? They’re back!
I know it’s been a while since we heard the dreaded words – Battle Demi-Company Formation. The old super Marine option from back in 7th Edition that gave those pesky marines free dedicated transports before all that new Primaris stuff came out. These were the days of free Drop Pods raining down, White Scar grav cannons throwing out pain after leaving their free Rhino, and the sheer audacity of an army of fully operation objective secured nonsense.
Are Marines Back to 7th Edition?
Those formation days were pretty dire indeed with a ton of other things set up with “taxes” that really hide powerful rules within their hallowed formation rules. The first digital Dataslates released out into the wild and left to fester in the stew that was 7th Edition. Of course this new Marine set of points updates and shifts to their rules has me wondering are we just in a world of Battle Company 2.0?
Well – I don’t think so. Yes this is going to be a hey day for the current best marine Chapter (Iron Hands and all their successors) but this is less of having too many always scoring options and instead looks like an army full to the top with deadly damage. This has me thinking it is more a return of War Convocation style detachment we saw used effectively during those 7th edition days.
We’ve Been Here Before
To give you an idea it was Cult Mechanicus, Skitarii, and a Knight detachment from White Dwarf that was able to get all the upgrades to all the units free. This basically super charged their shooting capablities in a way that was pretty insane during 7th edition. The amount of plasma, special weapons, and just every dodad to add to each unit made this army feeling like it was playin 500-700 pts ahead of you. Mix in some other bits from other armies and you start to see how having that many more points than your good enemy neighbor is a bit of an issue.
The last time we saw this much “free” add ons to armies in 9th edition was the pre nerf to Nids and all the abilities to throw out spore mines. I think it was something like 900 points of nonsense vomited out by some gross looking Alien hybrid designed to birth termagants 24/7. We knew it wasn’t good then and will see how it goes now.
Are Free Upgrades 40K Future?
Of course you can’t say this is really free units as Marines are not generating anything new on the battlefield. This is just a really aggressive point change and most likely a new thought in how they should build units. I love and loathe how 40K has a lot of crunchy options in building your army. Between taking out a single model and just balancing the effects of having better guns versus more bodies is a delicate dance of numbers and army builders.
Removing this is both an annoyance and a blessing as it really does help clean up some of the building aspects in the game that have become – well kind of a pain. It also makes army building apps a lot more complicated as you have to build all the points, all the shifts, and all the options to allow it to work.
AoS really moved away from that and I am hoping GW continues to do this. Also look at things like buy a single box to get your full unit instead of having to buy 2.5 boxes to get all the options available and working. Will see as 10th gets closer and some of the newer releases start to match up what will be 10th edition.
Get Ready For More Marines
But yes – this new Marine meta will be a rough one as they just feel like the found a whole new basement full of war gear. So many toys will show up on the battlefield that you will start to wonder if sales got ahold of rules and asked them to discount a vehicle in game so it might fly off the shelf.
Or more likely, it is really just a grand experiment in getting Space Marines to work that can just be easily adjusted by spitting out a PDF and updating an army builder. I think GW should always have their Marine armies be somewhat good as they are easy to get, sell well enough, and are the poster children for the grim dark universe.
I just don’t want them to be too good.
