| Brood Brother |
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Joined: Mon Jul 18, 2005 9:08 pm
Posts: 356
Location: Beavercreek, Ohio, USA
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As much as I am dismayed to find myself proposing this, what do you guys think of scrapping the SM Transport rule? It's confusing and throws all sorts of monkey wrenches into considerations of point value.
Neal? What are you doing? Seriously, I thought you were smarter than this. You know it is a bad idea, and by even entertaining discussion on this you are only going to make your job with the Space Marines even harder. Stop what you are doing, put the Kool Aid down, look around, and back away from the camp fire.
What is wrong with the Space Marine Transports rule? How can it be confusing? I find it brutally simple: if your detachment is listed as "with transports" then you get the minimum number of needed Rhinos for free if you want them. If you buy Razorbacks or Land Raiders as upgrades then you obviously don't need as many Rhinos. If you want to have your Space Marines on foot so they can be in garrison or on drop pods then you don't need any Rhinos. This is pretty easy stuff here. As my wife and I like to say: "It's not rocket surgery!"
Are you worried about players doing a last-minute decision between Drop Pods or Rhinos? Well, if you don't think that the cost of a Strike Cruiser is sufficient payment to allow that kind of flexibility (Drop Pods need a spaceship for Planetfall) then make Drop Pods a no-cost line item that forces players to declare their transport choice.
Are you worried about the prevalence of air assault armies over ground based ones? Well, that's a valid concern, but introducing 5 and 10 point increments in a game that traditionally sticks to 25 point increments is only going to create more confusion, not solve it.
Before you do anything like this, you need to take a "big picture" look at the Space Marines and try to figure out why certain things are being proposed. Let's take a high-level look at the Space Marines and put things in perspective. I think that will help you determine different "carrots" to encourage players to take ground armies and "sticks" to discourage air-assault armies.
The Space Marines have all of the hallmarks of a maneuver oriented fighting force. This means that they are best when they try to use their superior speed and command abilities to deliver a high concentration of high potency combat units at a certain spot on the battlefield. By winning certain engagements and assaults with minimal losses they can affect the course of a battle on a greater scale. Instead of beating on an enemy with sledgehammer attacks and soaking up losses (attrition warfare) the marines are all about rapid concentrations of firepower and the tactical threat of action on other enemy formations to influence the enemy and win a battle.
The Space Marines achieve their command abilities through the 1+ activation roll, ATSKNF, and through the high availability of commanders. (This might need further enhancing to really bring out this character of the army - suggestions include Techmarines and Apothecaries, 1 free commander per X number of points, Land Raider Prometheus, Rhino Damocles)
The Space Marines achieve their superior speed through a very high Speed rating on all of their non-infantry and non-Planetfall units. Almost all non-infantry / non-Planetfall units have a 30cm Speed rating. Notice I said "almost all." Take note of the non-infantry / non-Planetfall units that have less than a 30cm Speed:
Dreadnoughts
Land Raiders
Vindicators
Take note of the Space Marine units that have had the most discussion about them:
Dreadnoughts
Land Raiders
Vindicators
Some would say that the two lists being the same is merely a coincidence. I disagree. I think why they are the most problematic units for people on the forums is because of their lack of speed. What amazes me is that almost everybody wants to address these problem units with fixes of anything but take care of their speed problem.
Furthermore, you are seeing these problems played out in games by army formation selection. While there are exceptions, hardly anybody took Dreadnoughts, Land Raiders, or Vindicators because their speeds were incompatible with the rest of the army. If anything, people were replacing or supplementing them with higher speed units: Drop Pods, Landing Craft, and Thunderhawks. With planetfall units you can negate the low speed of the problem units by plopping them in the middle of a battle. Why walk that Dreadnought when you can carry it with a Thunderhawk? Why drive that slow Vindicator or Land Raider when you can fly it in with a Landing Craft? Give "Free Planetfall" to either of these fliers and you are going to make air-assault armies even more attractive.
The Vindicator has been discussed to the point where nobody is going to budge from their position on the matter. Everyone has looked at the Demolisher Cannon as the method for making the Vindicator worth its points. Initially I advocated that the Vindicator was just fine, but once I re-evaluated my reasoning I realised I was wrong. But instead of up-gunning the Demolisher Cannon I think the best fix for the Vindicator is increasing the speed to 30cm just like all of the other Rhino-based units. This will make it operate seamlessly with all of the other Rhino-based units (which happen to all have a Speed of 30cm) that make up a majority of the Space Marine armored fleet.
The Land Raider is a speed 25cm unit, with little justification for increasing its speed to 30cm. (If I'm wrong on this I invite anybody to come in and correct me.) I suggest that we make the Land Raider more worth taking to compensate for the Speed deficiency. Suggestions include: improving the FF rating (which is pretty much agreed upon), creating veteran infantry units that may use the Land Raider, and allowing the Land Raider to carry Dreadnoughts.
The Dreadnought is a bit of a tough one to solve. To be honest I don't think any solution has a strong argument to it. There is a little bit of merit to the idea of upping the armor to 3+, but all of the reasoning has been pretty thin and iffy. Improving the FF rating to 3+ is interesting, but is equally ill-justified and might provide precedence to lower the FF rating of other units just to lower them. But forget all of that. Let's assume that both the armor rating and the FF rating are improved - would both of those changes really improve the dreadnought enough to make it worth taking? Do they overcome the inherent deployment inflexibility? Do they make the dreadnought better able to keep up with the fast and fluid nature of Space Marine operations?
In my opinion, no.
If you really want to address the speed issues of the dreadnought, especially in ground based forces, you have to make it transportable in APCs. Until that is done you have relagated it to garrisons and the air-assaulting fliers. The problem here is that the idea of dreanoughts being transported hasn't been around since very early editions of WH40K and Epic. And why would WH40K address the issue of transporting dreadnoughts? All WH40K games start out close enough where their low speed is not an issue, or hidden by the abstract movement rules. Since dreadnought speed is not an issue in WH40K it is not addressed, and since it is not addressed in the infallible omniscience of WH40K    it may never be done in Epic.
Neal, listen, the problems with the Space Marines are not lack of firepower, or armor protection, or confusing rules, or over-flexibility; it's speed. Correct the speed issues, throw in some improved command ability, make the minor unit corrections that have already been agreed upon, and I contend that our beloved Codex Space Marines will be fixed.
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I shot a Deathstrike Missile and destroyed an enemy titan in my pajamas last night. ?How it got into my pajamas I still don't know...
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