Warhammer Warhammer General discussion thread: Now with 100% more Space Marines

[Ixian]

As a general rule, you can't go wrong with a stock Leman Russ, but as for specifics, that depends on what else you have.

I've been eyeballing Demolishers, the +6 inch range I feel would make them very deadly. I've also got a shadowsword sitting unbuilt, but I'm not sure it's worth the point cost really.

Then I've got around 8 Basilisk and could throw together a decent artillery force if I could figure out how to protect them, infantry screeners are not enough if my last game is any indication, maybe bullgryns? Of course bullgryns are also point heavy.

 

[Battlegrinder]

I've been eyeballing Demolishers, the +6 inch range I feel would make them very deadly.

I think the executioner is statistically better the demolisher, but they're close enough in point cost you can switch them out as needed.

I've also got a shadowsword sitting unbuilt, but I'm not sure it's worth the point cost really.

If you regularly fight loads of enemy vehicles, or smaller numbers of tough targets like land raiders and knights, yes. Otherwise no.

Then I've got around 8 Basilisk and could throw together a decent artillery force if I could figure out how to protect them, infantry screeners are not enough if my last game is any indication, maybe bullgryns? Of course bullgryns are also point heavy.

I don't thibk you can legally field that many heavy guns, unless you can squadron them the limit is 3.

As for protecting them, distance and loS blocking terrain is your best bet, they're too thin skinned to withstand direct fire.

 

[Ixian]

I think the executioner is statistically better the demolisher, but they're close enough in point cost you can switch them out as needed.


If you regularly fight loads of enemy vehicles, or smaller numbers of tough targets like land raiders and knights, yes. Otherwise no.


I don't thibk you can legally field that many heavy guns, unless you can squadron them the limit is 3.

As for protecting them, distance and loS blocking terrain is your best bet, they're too thin skinned to withstand direct fire.

Executioners aren't a bad idea. I'll need to look into them.

Honestly my local meta is mostly marines, and mostly infantry. Occasionally the Tau players will bring in some significant armor.

Yeah, I squadron them into two squads of three. LOS blocking terrain isn't that helpful I've found, my opponents tend to be very mobile marines and eldar, occasionally a tau or nid player will show up.

I've tried to buff them with Shroud, and a Enginseer, but results are hit and miss.

 

[Battlegrinder]

If it's mostly marines and infantry, one of the baneblade variants with a blast weapon on the main gun would probably be the best bet in place of the shadowsword.

What do you mean by "very mobile" marines, precisely?

 

[Tyzuris]

You know I just suddenly realized that if Alpha Legion was at its max. estimated size of 180000 Astartes, then it's so large that if Alpharius and Omegon went their separate ways splitting the legion, they'd still end up with a force equal to a Legion of their own.

And those Legions wouldn't even be in the top three smallest Legions.

It would be kinda cool to see a fanfic with both an Alpha and Omega legion.

 

[Ixian]

If it's mostly marines and infantry, one of the baneblade variants with a blast weapon on the main gun would probably be the best bet in place of the shadowsword.

What do you mean by "very mobile" marines, precisely?

Lots of jump packs, bikers, and deep strikes.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Lots of jump packs, bikers, and deep strikes.

I think for that, you probably can just screen them out with infantry, particularly deep striking units and bikers. Not sure about jump packs, I rarely use them so I don't recall what they can and can't jump over in which phase these days.




in other news, my copy of the new forge world index arrived. Point costs seem roughly fair. Notable Changes (to units I have/care about):
-Tybero's lighting claw chainfists are now a single weapon with a mostly combined profile, rather than something you can switch between the two.
-The damocles command rhino doesn't need to have your warlord parked inside it to have it's CP regen rule work, and it now acts a relay for the captain and lt auras, so allied units within 6 inches of it benifit from those auras as long as the captain and lt are on the field. This is really nice, it might actually be worth taking in place of/alongside the rhino primaris now.
-The deredeo dreadnought lost it's ability to extend an invul bubble to nearby infantry, presumably because FW still hadn't gotten around to actually making a model for the bit that does that.
-the leviathan got smacked with the nerf bat, which is not surprising after it's reign of terror back in 8th. along with some stat nerfs, the storm cannons are weaker and fire fewer shots now, and the grav-flux bombards lost the "do an extra 1d3 shots for every 5 models in the target unit" rule and thier massive bonus damage against vehicles. One the plus side, it can take volkite guns now.
-The land raider achilles now only has a 5+ invul, and can now take volkite weapons as well.
-Vindicator laser destroy has gone from heavy 2 to heavy 3 (even though the model has 4 guns....the omnisiah works in mysterious ways, I guess), and the overcharge doesn't cause mortal wounds one a 1 if you stayed still.
-The Astraeus void shields now work more like lore void sheilds, in that they're this sort of weird regenerating abalative shield thing. It's not easy to explain.
-All superheavies are cheaper and easier to field. This is a good thing or bad thing based mostly on how many of them you have.

-The arvus lighter lost it's weapon options, probably because the model doesn't have any.

-The Knight Porphyrion didn't get any of the nerfs from the last knight index reversed (BOOO). But it's at least a bit cheaper, so I can at least field mine without feeling like I've handicapped myself.

- the Ta`unar's pulse ordnance multi-driver is now 3 seperate pulse ordnance drivers, so you can mix and match fire modes within a salvo.

 

[Tyzuris]

I was browsing a 40k forum called DakkaDakka where there was long lost information about 11th Primarch lying around. He was called Malibron.

The 2 lost primarchs. - Forum - DakkaDakka

www.dakkadakka.com

I think I've probably got the closest 'official' explanation of what happened to them
Sorry for everyone who has read this already and is sick of it

Some years ago (late 2000s) I was part of a forum (The Great Crusade) which was all a bunch of hobbyists that loved the Horus Heresy TCG and art books and were busy making 28mm miniatures of those concepts. This is before the Forge World books, before the official minis (everything was converted!) and the HH book series had just got started. It was a really cool community with some really creative people making the 'old' armour out of whatever they could sculpt themselves or get their hands on.

One of the forum 'Great Crusade' events was organised by Laurie Goulding (who went on to work as an Editor at Black Library). I think at the time Laurie was trying to get his foot in the door and knew a few of the BL authors as a result. One of these was Graham McNeil, who very kindly authored a quick bit of background 'The Assault on Gedren Prime' to serve as a background to the campaign. It was super cool, and started with this text (I have abridged this as the original was taken offline) " It is the 77th year of the Great Crusade. The Emporer of mankind leads his twenty legions ever outward through the galaxy, .." and.. "Corax, Progenitor of the Raven Guard and master of the expedition, was quick to order the invasion fleets of all twenty legions into position. Of the other Primarchs present within the fleet; Khan, Leman Russ and Malibron, there was no argument."

Hopefully everyone noticed the number of Legions and the extra name in there?

Basically one dude had turned up with his own chapter that didn't really fit in with the rest of the established legions, so he got to be one of the missing legions(!)
They were lead by the Primarch Malibron, name unknown but I can tell you there was some bright yellow and red combination for the colours

To summarise the events, the Legion got their butts kicked and lost a huge number of marines bringing the system to compliance - basically their capital ship, containing thousands of marines and a large proportion of the legion, was destroyed (there was a really cool 'mass battle' of the Legions assaulting a fortress while bits of the ship landed on the board during the game!). The Gedrenites (the conquered foes) had access to forbidden cloning tech. After compliance, Malibron virus-bombed the world that had been responsible for destroying his Capital ship, then tried to steal the cloning tech for his own purposes to replenish his legion, ending up with a massive cluster-feth that resulted in 'blue on blue' and Legionnaries fighting against each other, and when the dust had settled ultimately ended up with Malibron being sent back to Terra in chains. Corax was then responsible for disposing of the cloning tech (which is a nice segway into that later background material for the Raven Guard..)

The background is here to read if anyone has time on their hands!
Gedren Prime: Pre-Heresy Event and some battle reports with narrative Battle Reports

So.. not really official at all! But in light of words by Rick Priestly and others I think probably the closest we will ever get to it!

Apparently the 11th Primarch fucked up badly caused a giant blue-on-blue accident killing a lot of Space Marines of different legions and was imprisoned to Terra to face the Emperor's wrath. And this goes very well into why he would have been wiped from Imperial records as well.

Edit: And also remember when Horus was trying to say the name of the lost Primarch before Malcador psyker choked him? That name also began with "Mal".

 

[Battlegrinder]

Interesting writing, but it doesn't line up with the excessively mysterious "no one dares mention him, everyone agreed to be mindwiped, whatever happened was super super bad" tone that the HH novels have taken. Also, Goulding was involved, so that's an automatic red flag.

 

[Tyzuris]

Also, Goulding was involved, so that's an automatic red flag.

Who's Goulding?

 

[Battlegrinder]

Who's Goulding?

Laurie Goulding - 1d4chan

 

[Tyzuris]

BTW why do Space Marine Strike Cruisers and Battle Barges have that Imperial Navy style battering ram bow switched to that broad flat ended thing?

 

[Ixian]

BTW why do Space Marine Strike Cruisers and Battle Barges have that Imperial Navy style battering ram bow switched to that broad flat ended thing?

Because they aren't really supposed to be effective in ship-to-ship combat.

They are meant for planetary assaults.

The Heresy made the Imperial government really hesitant to allow the Astartes Chapter their own true warships.

 

[Battlegrinder]

BTW why do Space Marine Strike Cruisers and Battle Barges have that Imperial Navy style battering ram bow switched to that broad flat ended thing?

I think some of it is a different design goal. I saw a diagram somewhere that said marine ships had the hanger in their bow section, which I assume means they can't use the big armored bow design the navy does.

Because they aren't really supposed to be effective in ship-to-ship combat.

They are meant for planetary assaults.

The Heresy made the Imperial government really hesitant to allow the Astartes Chapter their own true warships.

I'm pretty sure that's not the case, anytime you read the fluff about battlebarges and the like, it'll not that they're very powerful ships and that when operating in conjunction with their marine complement conducting boarding operations, are easily the equal of proper naval battleships and cruisers.

They're still focused on planetary assault first and foremost, yes, but many of the features that make useful for that are also useful in space combat, they just need to use a differant set of tactics than the navy to reach the same goal.

 

[Ixian]

I think some of it is a different design goal. I saw a diagram somewhere that said marine ships had the hanger in their bow section, which I assume means they can't use the big armored bow design the navy does.



I'm pretty sure that's not the case, anytime you read the fluff about battlebarges and the like, it'll not that they're very powerful ships and that when operating in conjunction with their marine complement conducting boarding operations, are easily the equal of proper naval battleships and cruisers.

They're still focused on planetary assault first and foremost, yes, but many of the features that make useful for that are also useful in space combat, they just need to use a differant set of tactics than the navy to reach the same goal.

Battle Barge - Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum

wh40k.lexicanum.com

I direct you to the ship to ship combat section. Battle Barges are most certainly not the equal of any Naval Battleship. They rely on boarding during ship combat because they simply aren't designed to be able to hulk an enemy ship of equal tonnage.

Yes, there are exceptions it is 40k after all, but on average a Astartes Battle Barge is doomed in combat with a true Battleship if they don't manage to get a boarding party on the enemy ship.

Of course these are Space Marines, and Battle Barges do have plenty of options for overwhelming a traditional Battleships point defenses to insure they do get a boarding party across, and if they manage that they have a good chance of disabling an enemy from within.

Failing that, they can attempt to use bombardment cannons on the enemy Battleship, which are powerful, but very short ranged, and the last place you want to be in relation to a Battleship is short ranged.

 

[Battlegrinder]

I direct you to the ship to ship combat section. Battle Barges are most certainly not the equal of any Naval Battleship. They rely on boarding during ship combat because they simply aren't designed to be able to hulk an enemy ship of equal tonnage.

There isn't a "ship to ship combat" section. What that page does say is

It is also a dangerous enemy, especially with boarding actions but also contains enough firepower to destroy all but the most powerful of warships. Battle Barges are some of the most powerful ships the Imperium has at its disposal, due to both the power of the ships and their contents.

Battle barges are explictly stated to be some of the most powerful ships in the imperium in their own right, and it doesn't say anything regarding battleship vs battlebarge matchups, only that they rely on boarding action in space combat.....which doesn't align with them being increablity powerful ships in thier own right, even though the page says they are.

EDIT: The only canonical incident of battle barge vs battleship combat I'm aware of was the Liberatorii Delictum vs the Anarchy's Heart during Vraks, and even thought the Delictum's marines were already deployed on the surface, the battlebarge decisivily won that confrontation.

 

[Ixian]

Battle Barges are Battleship scale. So of course they make mincemeat of escorts, frigates and cruisers. "The most powerful" in that excerpt would refer to battleships and larger ships.

Actually, I may be wrong in this. I went looking at the Battlefleet Gothic stats, and it appears that Battlebarges are indeed the equal of most classes of Battleships with the possible exception of Retribution class battleships. They just have to survive long enough to get close and launch boarding pods or use the bombardment cannons, which with their heavier armor is quite possible.

 

[UberSink]

I had a friend give me a start collecting Orks set, with no experience in 40k before. any links to guides on building them/learning the game?

 

[Ixian]

I had a friend give me a start collecting Orks set, with no experience in 40k before. any links to guides on building them/learning the game?

Step 1: Paint vehicles red
Step 2: Go fasta
Step 3: ???
Step 4: WAAAGH!

 

[Urabrask Revealed]

I had a friend give me a start collecting Orks set, with no experience in 40k before. any links to guides on building them/learning the game?

Forget about hitting anything from a range, focus on getting in melee distance.