On the other hand, marines are almost never pictured fighting large campaigns on their own. Most of the 40K fluff is about skirmishes (40K games) or surgical strikes (air forces, planet-falling, teleport insertion....).

I think if marines are involved in a prolonged campaign in the ground, they in fact always work in tandem with the navy, the guards or titan legions. At least, they're just about always pictured as such in the fluff... So in fact I don't see any issue on that front. The GW fluff just doesn't picture marines as an autonomous force in a game scale such as Epic.

If the issue is marines taking two singleton Warhounds, just make single Warhounds 0-1 as I said, and this won't be a possibility any more. Marines would have to take either a single warhound at 275Pts, or a pair at 500Pts, or a pair and a single one for 775Pts... that would solve the issue. Actually, the same modification could possibly be made in IG and AMTL lists if necessary.

If the fluff is the concern, sadly the background would in fact suggest that marines are more special forces than army, and that they don't really have their place as an autonomous force in epic... You can't expect an E:A army to simply look like a larger Wh40k one.

Athmospheric: Epic scale games don't represent a "prolonged campaign", they represent an hour or so of battle.

yes, but it still represent Battle, as opposed to very small skirmishes. Special force don't usually go at it against heavy armour all by themselves. The argument still stand.

Engagments in the Cs:SM
White Panthers engage and destroy Kethran PDF - unsupported. Pg 3, C:SM 3e
Ultramarines engage the Eldar with (at most) PDF support - pg 34, C:SM 5e
The White Scars and Raven Guard engage a crapload of Traitors in the Hunt for Voldorius - pg. 42, C:SM 5e
Arguably the Astral Knights on the World Engine - 700 Marines against limitless Necrons - p. 44, C:SM 5e
The Purging of Contqual sees the Iron Hands purging an entire subsector without mention of supporting elements - p. 45, C:SM 5e
The Zeist Campaign sees a large, co-operative force from several Space Marine Chapters - p.48, C:SM 5e

Then there's all the various battles mentioned on Armageddon where the SM work without support for various reasons.

So, yeah. SM fight unsupported all the time. If only because they're the only ones around and other people can't be expected to keep up.

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Remember, that's a 40k codex, it's naturally going to focus on how awesome Marines are, and sideline any allies, etc. as a sales promtion thing.

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I know it's the way E:A game (tournament style) is set up, but I have always wondered why there wasn't an option for 1/3 of an army to be made up from 'allies' (list the allied races and take formations from there). Indeed, the existing 1/3 rule already provides for this to some extent already

Has anyone tried this?

Fluff will be compromised for commercial purposes. Such is the nature of the game. That doesn't invalidate it.

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Allowing allies from other lists is a recipe for min-maxing and impossible to balance.

QFT.

Much better to have an army list that self-incorporates allies, like the Saranse Imperial Crusade list. That way it can be internally and externally balanced.

Morgan Vening

Isn't that what the imperial armies already all do, counting for example forces from the navy and the titan legions in an special category with assorted point restrictions ?

E40k did that. Common was the army comprised only of Land Raiders and IG Artrillery.

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An Epic SM force is weak battalion at best in the GT scenario. Surely this firce can fight on its own at the scale the game is set at. And just because SM are "like" special forces does not mean they operate like SF. They carry a lot more armour and heavy weapons for sure, including organic tank, skimmer and artillery formations. The battle company with supports is clearly very apt for fighting the kind of engagements EA focuses on. Titans and Navy support I see as more commandeered troops than "allies" per se.

Well, I just checked, the official listing for the ultramarine chapter, if it's any indication, gives 25 predators, 9 Whirlwind and 8 Vindicators for the whole damn chapter. So if you have a force based around a battle company (2 Tactical detachments, 1 Assault detachment, one Devastator detachment), you should be able to get, on average and rounding up, 3 predators and a single whirlwind.

I certainly wouldn't call a single whirlwind "Artillery formations". Even if you were to field 2 Battle companies (that's about 4*300 + 2*175 + 2*250 = 2050 Pts, 2150Pts with the captains), on average you would only get 1.5 tank formation and 0.5 artillery formation. Saying they get skimmers is a bit misleading as well; Land speeder formations are not exactly a fair analogue to what is usually called skimmer in, say, an eldar or a tau army.

Get on with it, if you want your marines to be in line with GW background, you'll have to accept a lot of contortion. They are indeed like special forces or shock troops. A chapter actually has more thundehawks than predators (the ultras get 31 of those !)...

The background of marines stress their autonomy, true, but it also stresses that the main factor of their efficiency is actually fear and their ability to decapitate the enemy with a surgical strike before they have to face them as an army.
And examples about the Armageddon War are hardly going to prove that marines can do it by themselves when there are hundreds of IG regiments, a sizeable fleet and several Titan legions (around 6 legions actually!) engaged in the same conflict. The fact that they actually go in strength to take out specific strategical targets is actually getting some length to support what I am saying.

Don't get me wrong : I love to be able to field terminator formations, artillery, tanks and titans, air support and all that stuff, but when it come to marine armies, reference to the background are only going to get you so far.

The most important thing is that the list is about balanced, that it is fun to play and has a few options. I'm not sure removing options is the best way to balance the list if isn't viable to play without warhound or termies, or if punishing a player that want to take titans in an epic game is actually something that make sense at all. Reaver and Warlord are already too much of a gambit to be played in a usual list, lets not take away the only option to field WE from the marine for the sake of a background that is IMHO unsatisfactory anyway.

The background makes the Titan Legions, the Adeptus Astartes, the Guard, the PDFs and the Navy different entities, but if that should make us feel that taking aircraft or titans in an imperial list is in contradiction with the background, I say screw* the background.


*Actually, it makes me say something else, but I'm not quite sure about the language policy around here

It's important to remember that the entire Chapter doesn't always deploy at once - if you're using the C:SM 3e, look at the actual deployments at the bottom of that chart.

31 Thunderhawks actually isn't nearly enough, either, if you think about it. It sounds good, until you remember that the first Company needs more, and you need some for fleet defense, and that they're not all transports. And that they need to get the damn vehicles down, too.

The most recent BA Codex has numbers for Space Marine equipment that seem to make a lot more sense.

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Of course the entire chapter doesn't usually deploy as one, but that still give an idea of how much predators or Whirlwind you might expect to find with a given battle company in its strike cruiser : not much. If we were to adhere strictly to the background, there wouldn't be Warhound nor terminators in a typical marine "army". But there wouldn't be around more than 3 tanks, artillery included, as support for an entire company...

I don't have the last BA codex, but well, my point that the official background behind marines army should be taken with a pinch of salt, specially in epic, still stand.