You COULD always reduce the cost of the Spacecraft and increase the cost of the landers, since its the landers that make the "value" of the spacecraft.

the drop pods would also need to be upped in price

Most landers work as aircraft, so there are other methods of deployment to consider.

Drop Pods in the Space Marine list (the biggest user of Planetfall IMO) are free (or to be politically correct, built into the cost of Drop Podding units).

This allows the Marine player to choose between free Drop Pods, free Rhinos, garrisoning, or embarking on Thunderhawk/Landing Craft for most of his infantry formations.

By putting a price on Drop Pods you put the pressure on the Marine player to use them. He will either pay for them with the intention of always Drop Podding, or not bother. Either way it is a reduction in the flexibility of the Marine army (a key aspect of their appeal).

Whether this reduction is good/bad, necessary/unnecessary, is up for discussion.

S Marines pay for somthing that if they garrison, they will never use.

I would think that if you had cheaper marines and you had to pay for the drop, then you would have options available rather than feeling as if you 'had to' take an air assault or drop fiorce to get your full 'bang for the buck'.

I do not like paying for something I have no intention of using (example: if I took assault marines on the ground rather than in a transport).

Premiums should be paid on the options, not on the base unit IMO.

Assault Marines cannot Drop Pod or Rhino-mount, whilst the Thunderhawk/Landing Craft are paid for in their own cost.

But I get your point with an example such as a Garrisoned Devastator unit.

The problem is that if you start charging points for Drop Pods/Rhinos to reduce the Marine Infantry cost, you no longer have 'options available' at the start of the game.
Rather than being able to choose Drop Pod/Rhino/Thunderhawk/Foot at the start of each game depending on terrain, opponent, etc- your already tied in to one of them when you paid all those pts to Drop Pod or Rhino-mount.

I'm a broken record on this but if you want ground forces, go Scions, it's a refreshingly different list in which I've used stuff I never would normally- Vindies, Whirlwinds, Predators- even Land Raiders.
The main SM list is for better or worse a Drop force/Air Assault list.
We could argue background on when, why and what SM's armies would fight like- but background can be twisted to justified any of the viewpoints.

I think you meant Apocrypha of Skaros?

The last reported series of games at my place has only seen Scions of Iron and Apocrypha of Skaros. I guess our group find the normal marine list quite 'ho-hum' and we prefer the extremes that the two mentioned lists offer.

So at the end of the day, I come from a different stand point yet agree on the ending. I prefer and would play the other lists in favour of the standard Marine list purely for the fact that I do not like paying for extras I may not use.

Cheers dude

I haven't seen Skaros, I really enjoy Scions though. When not using Thunderhawks and Drop Pods I see SM ground troops as very highly mechanised, very fast- like Blitzkrieg. I find it hard to see them holding trenches, garrisons, marching on foot- as they are a ridiculously small army and one hours bombardment would be enough to shatter them.

As for your preference for those lists- that's a good thing surely? I'm a strong advocate for variant lists to reflect radically different playstyles (or combat doctrines) rather than various colours of the same Marines. I.e. I would rather see Scions be official than say DA or BA who are just different coloured Ultramarines at Epic scale.

By having variant lists rather than trying to make the official list all things to all men, you can more effectively balance and design lists. For example, you don't want to use Pods and Hawks, a variant list omitting them can effectively point SM infantry to compensate. Trying to cater to non Pod/Hawk lists in a list also designed for Pods/Hawks is a nightmare.

In truth I think only SM's are guilty of pandering to the 40k mindset with regards variant Chapters. We're stuck with the legacy of BA/DA players crying if their almost-Codex Chapter doesn't have a full near-identical list.

Imperial Guard for example are a textbook example of effective Epic Army List variants.

Steel Legion= Mechanised/Infantry.
Siegemasters= Conscript Infantry/Seige/Trenchfighters.
Ulani= Armoured/Tank Regiment.
Elysian/Vanaheim= Airborne/Air Mobile/Elite Infantry

An example of a poor Epic Army List variant IG list could be a Cadian Army List that was essentially the Steel Legion list with a token Sanctioned Psyker character upgrade. It panders to a well-known 40k army and fanbase, but they aren't radically different enough in playstyle for it to be worthwhile.

I like my Cadians Then again, Im too new to IG to know the differences, but it seemed to have fortifications and artillery that Steel Legion didnt have.

I don't think Jeridian was referencing Chroma's Cadian Gate list specifically, but rather a hypothetical Cadian-themed list with minimal differences from the Steel Legion list.

_________________
SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

Aye, I was being hypothetical, though I was probably always going to offend somebody as Epic unofficially has an army list for nearly every individual army mentioned in 40k lore.

I haven't looked at this Cadian Gate list specifically, but I stand by my example that Cadians have very little differences from Steel Legion in terms of unit/models used and the organisation of Companies.

I'll stick with the more obvious Space Marine examples in that when it comes to Red and Green Marines the list designer has to build in difference for difference sake even where there is none.

Take BA for example, they are/were a Codex Chapter except for the Death Company curse. In Epic this would simply be a Fearless Assault Marine unit in an Assault Marine formation, not worth a whole separate list.

Over the years GW has had to differentiate the BA with Baal's, Furiosos, Jump Packs galore. Even with these token units, the playstyle of a BA list is near-identical to a Codex Chapter- well...because it is a Codex Chapter.

Eventually, come 5th Ed, GW accosted the corpse of Raven Guard and made the BA Chapter Jump Pack crazy despite there being no real mention of BA having bought Jump Packs in bulk, or of having a 8th Company the size of thousands.
This at last gives us an Epic army that at least justifies a fresh unit- i.e. beefy Assault Marine units.

But alas, it's still not that radically different from Codex Chapter- it's still the Air Assault list...with red paint.

I much prefer Scions or White Scars or if it was somehow done well an Imperial Fist siege list. That way the Codex Chapters can use any of them as they are meant to be skilled in all forms of warfare, including BA.

I don't want to ban or stifle the dozens of lists including BA, but when it comes to the 'semi-official' tag for tournament use which are less numerous I'd prefer Scions, etc to Red or Green Marines.

On spacecraft, it's horses for courses:-

• Marine / Chaos tend to be more usefull for planetfalling, though they can lay down a barrage. There is usually at least one in any of the UK tournaments out of the 4-8 armies of this type.
  
• Eldar tend to take the smaller spacecraft purely as a means to shoot targets in the deployment area. Less frequently used, their ability to choose pin-point or barrage attacks is the selling point. I have seen the larger version used with planet-falling Vampires to some effect, but the weakness of the vampires and the brittle nature of Eldar in general make this very hard to use well.
  
• IG and ORKS have never used spacecraft in my experience.

On the cost of drop pods, you are into some very difficult discussions here. In the UK, we use a rule that allows Marines to choose how they will deploy their army once the nature of their opponent is used but before the reserves and garrisons are declared. This can provide the Marine player with quite a wide variety of strategies depending on the content of each formation, and makes up for the apparent 'loss' of transport if they are deployed as garrisons. Note, while this option has been available for several years, in practice it is not used extensively because players usually choose lists that are less flexible but more powerfull in some other respect.

Other lists pay for the transport and are less flexible, though the player may choose to discard the purchased transport prior to the start of the game to garrison them instead of using their mobility.

Jeridian - nice summary of the various flavours of Marine list, and the point on the Cadians.

How would you build more flexibility into the Scions, Cadians or Elysians?

Short answer, I wouldn't!?

Cadians- to be blunt, nothing stands out so drastically as to require anything more than Steel Legion with a grey paint scheme, or if your lucky Cadian models. In fact, they are so far reaching, so numerous and so flexible you can pass off a Cadian Regiment using almost any of the IG army list- a Cadian Tank Regiment or Siege Regiment is quite possible.

Elysians/Scions- They're plenty flexible within their own parameters/combat playstyle. Scions, for example, have a lot of options, what they don't have are Thunderhawk Gunship Air Assaults or Drop Pod Assaults. If you want them, that's what variant lists are for.

I'm sorry if I sound blunt but I'm not sure I get the question. They don't need more flexibility- by having a selection of variant army lists based on variant playstyles/combat doctrines the player can choose the one they like the most, but every list will have advantages and disadvantages compared to the others. You can't have everything, all the time- it's nigh-impossible to balance and inevitably ends in one 'netlist' that ignores most of the options anyway.

The Cadian list I've put together is an "elite infantry" army, both as a defense force and a "shock troop" army; Kasrkin, Psykers, and fortifications, with no big tank or arty companies.

Plays quite a bit differently from Steel Legion.