I am a keen supporter of a change being made of some kind to SM air.

As has been discussed at length in the past there is evidence from the SM Codexes and Forge World books that SM do fight large scale mechanised engagements sometimes. For example during the Vraks campaign the Dark Angels committed half the chapter to a mechanised assault across 200km during a 10 day campaign. I wouldn’t disagree with you that SM are good at airbourne assaults, but they’re flexible elite soldiers, not one trick ponies. I believe the core rule book list intended mechanised SM forces to be a viable force too, but badly misjudged the costs and effectiveness and we’ve still yet to properly rebalance it to a better internal balance.

The suggestion of moving Thunderhawks and Landingcraft to air so they count as part of the 1/3 from air and titans is too limiting I feel as it invalidates most commonly used lists. To give one example; say a SM player wanted an all airdrop SM army with a Landing Craft, 3 Thunderhawks, a flight of Thunderbolts for air cover and nothing on the ground at all at the start (not the most competitive build, but a characterful one I’ve seen used and one that should be allowed by the list). Even with no titans the aircraft alone would come to 1,100 points and so not be possible under the 1/3.

To take a look at how much air and titans people were using in practice I went to the Epic-UK lists online and counted up the combined total spent on air and titans in the most recent 18 lists (I could have carried on but that seemed enough to get an idea). Out of those 18 lists 13 of them spent more than 1/3 combined on air/titans. Given such prolific usage I believe limiting them to 1/3 air/titans would be too radical and limiting a change.

Instead I would like to suggest a modified version, that I think is the best of all options – leave the costs the same as now and move the Thunderhawk and Landingcraft into the air section, but rather than the list building rule stating “A maximum of up to a third of the points available to the army may be spent on Imperial Navy and Titan formations.” it should be revised to instead read:

"A maximum of up to a third of the points available to the army may be spent on Titan formations. More widely a maximum of up to 40% of the points available to the army may be spent on aircraft and Titan formations combined."

That preserves more of the air potential and uniqueness of the list and leaves many generally used lists unchanged, while limiting lists from going heavily into both air and titans, rather having to make a difficult decision of one way or another or a bit of both.

The maths is dead simple, but just to make the figures obvious for discussion/comparison:
At 3000 points that would equate to 1,200 points (rather than 1,000 for 1/3)
At 4,000 points that would equate to 1,600 points (rather than 1,333ᵒ for 1/3)
At 5,000 points that would equate to 2,000 points (rather than 1666.6ᵒ for 1/3)

Going back to the Epic-UK lists mentioned above, these are the actual combined totals that were spent on air and titans by each, in order from smallest to largest: 500; 500; 700; 750; 900; 1050; 1050; 1100; 1100; 1100; 1100; 1200; 1250; 1250; 1250; 1400; 1600; 1600.

Under my proposal 12 of them in green would have no change whatsoever. The 3 of them in orange all included the same – 2 Thunderhawks, 2 Thunderbolts and 2 x single Warhound. Under the proposed restriction this would be 50 points over the restriction and would have to be slightly adjusted – one possible option that would even allow them to keep the same models would be to combine the two Warhounds into formation. It’s just the 3 in red which went particular extremely into including both titans and air (two included a Warlord Titan, 3 Thunderhawks and a flight of Thunderbolts for example) that would have to cut that back a fair bit in favour of more marine ground forces.

Titans are important and valued assets to the Imperium and it makes sense for titans to be found more alongside ground armies than wandering round a battlefield initially on their own, or with only a few others. The ubiquitous presence of titans in nearly all SM lists people use is out of character as they are a separate organisation requiring lengthy negotiation and sometime outright bribery (as during the Badab War) to persuade them to commit titans to a fight. Space Marines are a very independent fleet based force, which a lot of the time may fight without titans or allied air cover being available in the area or on the planet at all.

I (and I think Dave) would both disagree with you, ground SM are a very viable force and we have both done very well with them. They simply have a steeper learning curve then air drop Marines but they can be (in the current incarnation), just as effective.
I also think the "coolness" factor comes into play as well. What's "cooler", having Marines zipping around in Rhinos (like you can in a regualr game of 40K) or breaking out the Thunderhawks and Titans?

An increase to 225 for Thunderhawks would be acceptable, 250 is too high.

I'm sure they do fight large mechanised battles sometimes but the Codex list should represent first and foremost the typical way they fight - airborne insertion. The Codex list represents this very well and only needs small changes similar to the EpicUK ones though not necessarily directly following them. You can already use the Codex list to depict other fighting styles- mech, drop pod etc they just aren't as effective as the primary tactic.

I'd like to see a parallel list combining the best features from the Scions+Apocrypha without the clutter + off-putting names to represent a Codex list forced to fight a ground based campaign/battle with no transport thunderhawks.

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I agree with the first part. Upping the cost of the THawk because it's better/offers better synergies comparably to tanks is not the right solution. Upping a unit's points should be done for external balance issues (how it compares to another army's units), not for internal one (how it compares to its army's units). For internal balance issues you should be decreasing the points of the things you think are under-performers.

On the second part of what Steve said and other's have echoed. I think it's a misnomer to label the Codex list as an "air-cav list". If it truly were an air-cav list then it wouldn't have options for rhinos and the tanks at all. It may play better as an air-cav list as others say but that doesn't make it one.

I agree with Athmospheric in that the core lists should be as open as flexible as possible and not "themed". Variant lists are themed and adhere to Jervis' "defined by what they lack" more than any of the core lists because they don't have all the core list's units. Core lists should be generic and open to multiple play styles and adhere to "what they lack" in broad terms: artillery/large formations (SM), good CC/FF (IG), good training/accuracy (orks).

So anyway, what to do then...

The impression I've always gotten from SM discussions is SM tank formations are harder to use then THawks, and as a result the list is referred to as an "air-cav" list. If this is truly the case then something should be done for the under-performers, not the THawk. In essence, make the tank formations more idiot-proof (not trying to offend) if people are clamoring for it. Test some point reductions to those and see what happens, I don't think they're needed but I'm the minority there. See if spamming is possible and see if a ground-pounding list can hold up against an air-cav list. When they can then you know internal balance is close, then try them on other opponents and test external balance. Don't touch the THawk.

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Squats 2019-10-17

That's why every infantry formation comes with tanks by default.



The off-putting name is there to represent that it's not supposed to be a particular chapter, but it's instead supposed to be more-or-less what you describe (you CAN still take transport Thunderhawks, but they're not a particularly competitive choice).

And when it was trying to be a parallel list, people pitched little hissy fits about how it was unnecessary. Among them the Army Champion at the time. So...yeah.

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Well if your going by that then the most effective lists at EUk tournaments are mech lists as they general feature 4 formations in rhinos and 1 air assault - so then there isn't any problem as the list isn't an air assault list.

Fair enough on names but both apocrypha+scions put people off with their names and, for me, that they have too many units and fudge their purpose by still allowing air assaults etc.

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Imperial Fists is an attempt to write a marine list without transport aircraft.

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I broadly agree with this, however you are implying that there are no external balance issues with codex marine air assault, I disagree. Marine air assault needs to be more expensive because it is more powerful than its current point values.

EpicUK army list page for codex marines (the only broad data I have access to) indicates that lists with 2+ thunderhawks/LC have ~20% more winning records than losing records.

The internal balance of ground vs air is a different problem to the external balance of air assault.

TLDR: Thunderhawks need to go up due to external balance, ground need to go down due to internal balance.

+1 Steve

The point that people are missing here is that these debates are being driven by the 3K "Tournament" scenario and its objectives. People naturally try to optimise their 'competitive' army to achieve these goals. To that end, the current 'optimal' list only contains 1-2 THawks and 1-2 TBolts, nearly always 2x Warhounds and 1-2 Terminators. The rest of the list is 'Rhino' based - no LR, preds or Whirlwinds. Increasing the cost of one or more of these favourite formations will not make the "Ground-pounder" list more attractive.

The issue is not the list, but rather the capabilities and roles that each formation and unit fulfills. To use an extreme analogy, the Marines are the equivalent of the allied airborne troops at Arnheim durable but relatively lightly armed; while the IG represent the allied armoured ground thrust trying to break through the German lines to link up.

And incidently this is the reason why the Vindicator is very rarely used:- it has a highly specialised role that does not easily fit either into the marine strategies and capabilities, or the tournament requirements

It is also worth reviewing the Epik-UK championship stats which now have 4-5 years data. The Marine stats for winning and losing are slightly above average, suggesting that they are reasonably well balanced now although with a tendency to a binary result (they either win or lose fairly quickly)

....and is Defensive Siege themed.

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I really think you are missing the point here; the "air lists" that you have been examining generally only have 1-2 THawks in them - LC are much rarer (though I have tried to use them to carry the ground-pounders into action).

More imporantly, people will tend to use the formations and tactics they find easier (and so prefer). The better players have found ways of using the air-power to concentrate their forces to good effect in co-ordination with ground troops. Equally the "all-air" lists are generally suboptimal - if they were *not*, then marine air units would be truley undervalued.

Much of this debate actually centres on how the player use his forces, his strategies and tactics, that are in turn dictated to some extent by the objectives. So for example the winning lists all have Warhound titans in them as a means to kill enemy BTS formations. Indeed you have to ask whether it is the "air power" or the Warhounds that is actually doing the 'winning'.

Not an unfair point.

However, in that case it does still seem fair to ask why all the lists seem to have Air Assaults (and certain other units) while certain other units tend to be left out.



The Apocrypha's smaller than it used to be, and will be smaller again at some point. Hell, next version's probably going to lose several formations (the units will remain, but the formations are going).

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If I implied that it was unintentional. I'm implying that ground forces are fine, but obviously many disagree. That being said I think it's an internal problem and one that shouldn't be solved by increasing the points of the THawk.

If there is an external cost problem with the THawk I'm in no position to comment, having played few games with them. My gut tells me though (and this seems to be corroborated by Ginger and others) that THawks are just easier to play with than the ground stuff. Like how Guard/Orks tend to be easier to play than Marines, their strategies are more straight forward (sit and shoot stuff or double and CC stuff, respectively).

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No, the 'air lists' ive been looking at have 2+ thunderhawks/LC (as I stated, and you quoted), my criteria was 2+, 1TH lists were counted as 'ground' lists (as they largely contain ground formations and often have heavily upgraded tactical formations, land raiders, predators etc. I agree that hybrid ground/1TH lists are popular and effective, they do not change my opinion that thunderhawks are too cheap.

In that case, the units that are left out aren't worth their points compared to what is used in the list. Increasing the points of the "effective" units doesn't help, it would actually work to make the list worse overall. The single air assault is comparable to the "hard hitters" in other lists, Air Transported Aspect Warriors, LR formation, etc.