6th ed Space Marine Codex Commentary

So the new Space Marine Codex came out on the seventh of this month, and I’ve spent some time looking through it. These are a few of the assessment’s I’ve made about it:

=NEW STUFF=
-Chapter Tactics: This is a new set of rules that give you some circumstantial bonuses depending on the progenitor chapter that you are running. Each Chapter (Ultra Marines, White Scars, Imperial Fists, Black Templar, Iron Hands, Salamanders, and Raven Guard) each get a couple special rules that add to the feel of the chapter, making it less Ultramarine crazy like it was in 5th. For example, my chapter, the Ember Sons, is a Salamanders offshoot. So they get to reroll failed saves against wounds caused by flamer weapons, as well as reroll failed to wound dice while attacking with a flamer weapon. It also makes it that each character in my army may upgrade one of their weapons to Master Crafted at no additional cost, even if that weapon was purchased as an upgrade to what his normal load out is. For people who aren’t really sure what they think about the various chapters and their histories they’ve added a decent section of fluff regarding each one, including the Black Templar, which got assimilated into the regular Marine Codex. In my opinion it gives the ‘Nilla Space Marines a more customized feel and gives credit to people who actually pay attention to the Chapters and which Legion they had sprung from. People can gripe as much as they want about ‘Nilla Marines sucking as much as they want, I feel GW is working towards having a more universal codex that encompasses all of the Legions/Chapters with a unique feel. It’d not surprise me if they end up making a Universal Space Marine book that gives each chapter a unique unit or expands a touch upon Chapter tactics and allows particular rules via those.

-Black Templar: They’ve done their best to try and meld the Black Templar with the ‘Nilla Codex, but they’ve left a good amount for the Black Templar specifically; though mechanically this only really shows up as their Chapter-specific named characters, inability to take Librarians, and their alterations to the Tactical and Scout squads. Having not read over the Black Templar’s previous Codexes I don’t have a real opinion on how this is, however I feel that GW did try to leave them open to feeling unique as a chapter.

-Grav-Weaponry: This is the new weapon for the ‘Nilla Marines, and is rather interesting. The main rule is that you use the armor save of the unit you are attacking to wound. So if the person has a 6+ armor save you wound on 6+, but if they have a 3+ armor save, you wound on a 3+. All total that makes this weaponry style rather hit and miss. It is most effective against Marines, both regular and Chaos, but least effective against Tyranids and Orks. Against vehicles, you don’t roll to glance or pen, but roll a single die for every hit. On a 6 the vehicle is immobilized and takes a point of hull damage, so in effect you can easily ‘glance’ the vehicle to death with this. The main advantage that this weapon type has is that beyond pistol it is Slavo, making it dangerous against smaller armies and somewhat effective against swarm armies. I personally don’t see playing these much, but I can see having an HQ in an Assault team with a combi-grav, or grav-pistol if nothing else getting up to another HQ and popping him right off.

-Centurion Squads: Summed up, these are the Loyalist Marine’s version of the Obliterators and Mutilators from the Chaos Space Marines. They don’t have the weaponry versatility that their Chaos brethren have, but they make up for it in a couple small ways. First of all, the Centurions have Strength and Toughness 5 rather than the standard Space Marine 4, they also have the ability to fire two weapons in the round, as well as ability to gain Split Fire should you pay the points for it, along with a couple extra bonuses. All things considered they are not bad units; however, I don’t see myself getting them. For one I personally think that the models look silly, along with the assembly looking obnoxious. Unlike most of the other Marine units the Centurion squad (Which you get three per box) has three full sprews of little pieces that somehow puzzle together into the full models. Granted that a good chunk of this is the weaponry for both Assault and Devastator Centurion squads, and that just makes things look ominous, but I really don’t feel like fishing around for the proper pieces.

-Hunters and Stalkers: I honestly haven’t poked at the Flying rules very much so to a point this is a bit weird for me. These are the two new tanks that the Space Marines have gotten specifically as anti-air. Stalkers are rapidly firing cannons that seem to me to run with the thought of ‘put as many shots into the air and you’ll kill it eventually’, though it seems more profitable against armies that have multiple flying units like Daemons. Hunters, on the other hand, are more along the thought of ‘hit it hard’. It only has one shot per turn, but if it misses you put a counter on the creature. Per counter you get to roll a die and if you succeed the Flyer is hit anyway, the fluff being that they are basically heat seeking missiles.

=OLDER STUFF=
To a point the Older stuff that they have messed with, in comparison to 5th is mainly tidying up the book a lot. Instead of half page upgrade and alterations lists they have moved everything to one page and saying that BLAH unit has access to X, Y, and Z lists. This has also ‘collapsed’ a couple units into others, the prime example being Venerable Dreadnaughts, which have been added to the regular Dreadnaught (But not Ironclad) list as an upgrade.
-Named Units: Did anyone else get frustrated in 5th when someone playing some non-Ultramarines chapter was able to put Marneus Calgar on the field? Granted, I took Sergeant Telion a couple times with a Scout Sniper squad, mainly to take out my friend’s Space Wolf Longfangs and Rune Priest. They’ve done away with that. Named characters are now Chapter Specific, sort of; meaning that if you want to take Marneus Calgar, Captain Sicarius, or Sergeant Telion, you need to have the Chapter Tactics of Ultramarines. They have several named characters for all the Chapters, at least one per Chapter, except for the Iron Hands. Hopefully this should lead to some more fluff added to the game rather than people just relying on the special Named Units.

-HQs: They’ve balanced out these units a bit to my perception. The Chaplain lost the ‘you may reroll any failed to-hit rolls in melee’ (Which I always took as only one reroll per die), and replaced it with Zealot. I’m still going to be putting them with my Assault squads, because having Hatred and Fearless is nice. With the Librarian they’ve gotten rid of calling the upgraded one the Epistolary, and making just Mastery Level 2, which suits me just fine (Even if it does get rid of the Lore a little). The Librarians get access to Biomancy, Pyromancy, Telekinesis, and Telepathy. I personally will be taking Pyromancy basically to exclusion of all others because my Chapter’s a Salamanders off shoot, seems properly thematic. There are a couple other changes in this area, I’m sure, but I haven’t really looked at them.

-Techmarines: Now no longer an Elite choice, as you now purchase them as ‘additions’ to your HQ. For each HQ you take, not including additions like Honor Guard and such, you can take a Techmarine that doesn’t take any allocation slots. You can still add Servitors onto them, which makes them effectively support characters that don’t count against your army’s allotment restrictions.