Goatboy here again with a little list of the top 5 things I think 40k needs right now, to get out of a slump.

It’s interesting that we hear chatter a new edition is coming right when the current edition has hit a bit of stagnation with the dominance of Marines. I want to throw out 5 things that I think 40k needs right now to keep healthy as I feel if Marines don’t get a check sometime soon – will see some of the smaller events suffer as players don’t feel like slogging thru the power armor nonsense.

If you pay attention to the Competitive Scene you have seen a lot of top 8’s filled with Marine players. In fact it seems to be a common thing as while armies can have some answers to the “good” marine builds they lose out to some of the other builds that show up. Now I don’t think the original Marine codex is the issue here – it really seems too be the supplements that pile on additional rules and powers are the issue at hand. But – it would really suck if supplements were banned as it isn’t fair to just say banned Marine ones and leave the others working fine. So instead of just having a flat out ban we need to look at some of the things that could help this disparity of powers between the armies.

Too Many Marine Rules

We need to remove some of the extra rules these armies get. The Doctrine system is very cool and unique – but piling on additional rules on top of the Chapter rules they get has really just made these marines too much to deal with. Iron Hands seem to be the biggest issue as they get a lot of rules just by being Iron Hands and then a two more rules on top of it. Something needs to get pulled off to make this army not be nearly as devastating. The Reroll 1’s to hit randomly seems too good just to have auto starting and then the whole ignore move and fire penalties. The other Marine armies are good – but all of these rules just makes them seem amazing. There was a wonderful little meme that showed the Rules for Iron Warriors vs Imperial Fists. It was insane to see how many more “free” rules they get when compared to just about every other army. The Psychic Awakening updates have been nice – but nothing feels like the basic Rules Marines have and then they even got something amazing in Psychic Awakening. There just feels like a crazy difference between the top army and then the next level of army choices. I guess if Marines keep being too good – we’ll just let the policeman known as Tau out there doing crazy stuff.

Taming Forge World

FW needs to get this regular rules update coming soon. The Leviathan needs to either get matching the Chaos versions with a flat 5+ inv save, not be able to be “characterized”, or just rework some of their rules to make this not nearly as devastating. On top of that the Chaplain dreads that are not sold any longer need to either go away or get some kind of update to match their “rules” powers they have. It’s just really annoying a batch of FW rules that were most likely not tested with the Supplement rules are starting to rear their ugly heads. It happens during any release and the new update coming should hopefully fix some of this. Or at least just give a list of actual things you can play in matched play based on what you can purchase from FW. The newer FW rules have been fine lately as they feel more in line with the regular GW rules beyond just crazy bit of awesome Marines have. I hope we see all the Marine characters get actual sets of rules and with locked in Warlord Traits and other options to keep them from just showing up in whatever color Marine army you want.

Will Someone Rid Me of These Troublesome Stratagems?

Some of the Strats need to be relooked at and tweaked. The Martyrdom power needs to not work on Vehicles as it was meant to build off of protecting a character and not a big fat Dreadnought target. On top of that as well – they need to do some other balancing as other armies don’t get Relics for 1 CP and other options Marines have. I really like the overall change to the double attack power by needing to be within 1 inch of an enemy and feel this needs to flow to some of the other armies – even though it isn’t breaking the game currently everyone should be on even footing. I still really feel like we need a few more Default ones to help out and at least lock in powers for every army. Just more stuff beyond ignoring leadership, reroll, and attack before a charging unit.

Stacking Modifiers

I feel they need to look at stacking modifiers from multiple bits of -1 to hit and multiple options to cause wounds and other stuff. I know that Chaos seems to be the stacking champion followed by Eldar – but I think if those two armies just had rules like the Marine book then stacking can go away and we don’t have to worry about having things like – unhittable units. It just starts to get nutty as you try to figure out if you hit, the modifications, and how insane you can get a unit to be. I know it goes against what I play with most of the time but if Marines get nerfed then we have to worry about Eldar coming back to the front with hard to hit planes and other bits of nonsense.

Leadership

Finally I think we need to find some way to make leadership matter. Right now the game is so deadly that units either don’t survive the damage coming at them so leadership doesn’t matter or they are so tough that even getting a chance to get hurt by leadership never happens. It just feels like Leadership doesn’t mean a whole lot besides some random Daemon players you face and their lucky ability to roll 1’s and generate a few more gribblies to their unit size. It just doesn’t seem to work in the way they wanted it too. There are tons of ways to get a few more negatives to leadership but it just doesn’t matter. I want leadership to mean something but I don’t know how we can fix it? There are too many ways to ignore it by either dying to fast or just not needing to be worried about being scared.

I am sure there are a ton of other things to fix if we want to clean up 40k right now. I didn’t want to just pile down on Marines even though they are the current poster boy for sad games right now. I am hoping we see something done to them after Adepticon so will see. Of course as the poster boys for the current edition it helps making the army good and easy to get. It still just feels like we are fighting with wet noodles versus a chainsaw.

~Do you think Marines need to be fixed? Are you planning on going to any tournaments this coming year and not playing Marines?