To an extent, but that covers more at an organizational level than purely squad competence. Veteran (1st company) squads, for instance, shouldn't just be tactical marines with white helmets, but that's more or less what we have.

Now, FF/CC 3+, but otherwise unchanged marines, that'd be nice.

Would giving assault marines meltabombs (MW in CC) make a battle company without warhounds more attractive? Just brainstorming...

Yes, assault marines with meltabombs would be very attractive. Probably too powerful unless you price them very high. Unlike terminators they can move fast once they land and you can pack 8 into one thawk.

Probably a non starter due to how good theyd be, or how expensive theyd be.
I assume some special snowflake chapter has elite MW assault marines already, but expensive and 0–1 or similar

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It's an interesting thought anyway.

How about a similar rule to the autocannon in vanilla guard units? Half the number of stands get a MW attack? I don't think a price jump is going to break the bank when they are likely to be competing with Terminators as an air-assault asset. Similar resilience (if you take two units), less punch, but much more utility post-drop, so even upped to 200/225(ish) per they'd still compare fairly well with Termie prices. Plus people will still take scouts and speeders for their bulk units anyway.

If thunderhawk assaults are the concern, just rule that due to the jumpacks they count as 2 stands for transport like terminators.


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That would be terrible. I have a lovely little triple TH list. One of those Th is loaded with Assault marines and a Chaplain and Devastators with a Librarian - It's a fun little assault boat and I'd hat to loose it

Agreed.
Doubling the space occupied by an Assault Marine is not necessary, even with this upgrade.
However a cost increase of 25 points per unit upgraded like this would make an interesting alternative.

Give the Assault Marines Lance instead of MW, they will become more deadly to hard targets.

I agree with Ginger and Mard there's little need to play with AM stats. The Lance concept is far better and less tricky than the .5x MW CC attacks. It's actually interesting for something like the BA which really need to have a ground up rethink if we ever want to tackle them.

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Yeah, wasn't a serious or fully thought through suggestion. Just saying there there would be options if they proved too good in a TH. Lance is a very great idea. Would be nice if they worked like the fluff and got some play (this is the fluff discussion after all ! ;-) ).


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TBH for assault marines I would just give them extra attack or something. Striking scorpions are 2x4+ and are fine. MW doesn't really fit IMO, their primary attack is with chainswords

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To expand, the issue with marines in assaults is their small number of dice, compounded by their small numbers for resolution. Terminators get round it by having twice the dice, more than twice the killing power and twice the survivability.

Blood angels are free to adjust the formation size, which would make them pretty effective IMO. At 4 it's much harder.

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Agreed Kyrt, which is why I suggested that taking a Commander in one formation is almost mandated to ensure two or even three formations can be used even without being in a THawk, since this doubles or trebles the dice and formation size.

That said, I do like the idea of giving the AMs the option of upgrading their weaponry in some way at a cost of +25 per stand. This would actually be done by replacing one stand with another, in the same way as bikes and Landspeeders.

Doing this would allow several options eg

• sergeant armed with extra chain-sword (gains extra attack but also weaker FF)
• AM armed with Krak grenades (gains Lance)
• AM armed with flamer (gains Ignore cover and extra attack)
• etc

The point is that adding these upgrades is 'fluffy' IMO, while not completely unbalancing the formation - obviously you could add four 'sergeants' but now the formation is 275 minimum, and still very brittle as Kyrt points out.

However I am much less sure about adding stands (unless it is in a recognised codex that requires this) because this changes things to a far greater degree, which IMO is not necessary.

I think it's fine for blood angels to change numbers, codex are stuck with 4 realistically.

Not a huge fan of commander here, it can go some way to offsetting the issues but I think it's way too situational and has drawbacks, plus the captain just isn't worth the points to upgrade a formation like assaults. At 25 I would bite.

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BA assaults are already 6 strong

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