Space Marines - Redesign/Rules Development

[Vaaish]

it's not fluffy. That is why not. Marines aren't meant to have a lot of lances or have them on half the ships in their fleet.  If you want small numbers of lances, take the Nova or pay the premium and use a VBB. Stop complaining you can't get lances cheap on the SC because you shouldn't even be getting the option that's there now.

[horizon]

Lances in Marine fleet per current:
Firestorm RSV (rsv's should be ditched imo).
Nova
VBB


Still, LS, that wasn't a reason, that was a wish.

[BaronIveagh]

it's not fluffy. That is why not. Marines aren't meant to have a lot of lances or have them on half the ships in their fleet.  If you want small numbers of lances, take the Nova or pay the premium and use a VBB. Stop complaining you can't get lances cheap on the SC because you shouldn't even be getting the option that's there now.

Actually, if you're playing a pre-heresy SM fleet, it's exactly fluffy.  I dug around in some books that I previously skipped over last night.  It's not clear if it was a peculiarity of the Night Lords, but every reference to NL SCs, both pre and post heresy has their SCs equipped with lances.  Not just one or two.  ALL of them.  Though NOT all of them seem to have BCs, as they use their lances to destroy a Callidus facility, as opposed to using BCs.

What's not clear is if this is common through out SM fleets of the era or a peculiarity of the NL, though what we know of Dorn's fleet suggests it's not unknown in other fleets.

[Vaaish]

Well, of course it is in a pre-heresy fleet. If you want to do that, play chaos and take marine crews (I'm assuming you know that the Night Lords turned traitor). The list we've been discussing is most certainly NOT a pre-heresy marine fleet so this is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

[horizon]

Quote in the Strike Cruiser entry:

a number of strike cruiser designs date far back to the centuries immediately following the development of the Codex Astartes.

Thus Strike Cruisers are designed after the heresy, in a way the codex described. In the following millennia variants are known but rare and limited to older chapter/chapters with many resources.

Now, this means, that any book which says Strike Cruisers operate during or before the heresy are wrong and mistaken.

[BaronIveagh]

Quote in the Strike Cruiser entry:

a number of strike cruiser designs date far back to the centuries immediately following the development of the Codex Astartes.

Thus Strike Cruisers are designed after the heresy, in a way the codex described. In the following millennia variants are known but rare and limited to older chapter/chapters with many resources.

Now, this means, that any book which says Strike Cruisers operate during or before the heresy are wrong and mistaken.

Um, Horizon, I would humbly suggest that this has been retconned.  Since... while I can picture a single author getting it wrong, I have a hard time picturing all of them doing so, since they turn up again and again in the HH series.  And various CSM books that take place afterward.  

This leads to the question: either the SM have lost a disturbing number of ships sized by CSMs since the Heresy, OR, that they had them to begin with.  

I hate to say it, but BFG's rulebooks fluff has been getting retconned off and on, either by GW or FFG since 2003.  If you say 'well, it doesn't count as it's new' then you have to take the un-updated IA2, which was written at roughly the same time, and states that SM's have lances.  Or you could take the stance that 'new books trump old books', and thus space marines have lances and SC's were around before the heresy, which, by the way, fits better with the whole '40k is a technological downslope' as SC are supposedly hyper advanced and require few crew.

Or you could go back to old issues of WD, and discover that SM ships with lances predate BFG.  However, they're built by squats.  So...

Like the Leman Russ Vanquisher, they're in, they out, they're in, they're out, they're in...

Strike Cruiser Lances, the Pamela Anderson's Implants of 40k...

[Vaaish]

I think it's much more likely that there was no standardized design for a strike cruiser during the heresy with legions using regular naval ships or modified versions of them and after the heresy the strike cruisers we see in the marine fleet were designed in accordance with the Codex Astartes.

This is the reason you see things referred to as strike cruisers, yet there are very few of the modern style strike cruisers in Chaos hands. They haven't retconned the entire chaos fleet from BFG yet.

[horizon]

Anything published for the BFG game is Leading, the rest is a mistake if they don't follow the letter of BFG.



I have no faith in BL /HH series whatsoever to be background true.

[BaronIveagh]

I think it's much more likely that there was no standardized design for a strike cruiser during the heresy with legions using regular naval ships or modified versions of them and after the heresy the strike cruisers we see in the marine fleet were designed in accordance with the Codex Astartes.

This is the reason you see things referred to as strike cruisers, yet there are very few of the modern style strike cruisers in Chaos hands. They haven't retconned the entire chaos fleet from BFG yet.

But then Black Templars would have no Strike cruisers, in the modern sense, at all, as they took Dorn's fleet and left (as in, did not stay for more then an hour after Dorn agree to break up his legion, let alone hear the rest of that Gulliman had in mind), generally resisting Inquisition efforts to find out even the tiniest bit about them, and have never conformed to the Codex.  Ever, according to fluff.  Dorn and Russ barely agreed to even split their legions up, after all.  Corax openly reviled the restrictions on ships, feeling that his own legion would not have been decimated if they had a proper fleet with them at Isstvan.  

And, the various night lords books seem to definitly describe an SC in the 'modern' sense and they have more then one of the same class.  It's smaller then a regular cruiser with fewer crew.  So it's either an SC or a chaos light cruiser.  Take your fluff poison of choice.

[horizon]

So, correct, no Strike Cruisers for the Black Templars then. Interesting. Perhaps as an oddity in the fleet (eg replacing destroyed vessels?).


Also, the cool aspect of this discussion is the fact it is the same discussion the Primarchs had after the Heresy. haha

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

Yep so I would say by this time BT shouldn't have any more ships since they prefer the old style. I would think that by now majority of those ships would have been destroyed after 13 Black Crusades as well as battles vs Orks and if they really don't want to give up the old style ships, sure no problem since the High Council can just order the AM not to repair or maintain those ships.

Ok with you then Iveagh?

[Sigoroth]

Of course there were no pre-heresy Strike Cruisers. The SMs had fleets of their own. The SC was made as a replacement for their loss of ships.

[Vaaish]

ut then Black Templars would have no Strike cruisers, in the modern sense, at all, as they took Dorn's fleet and left (as in, did not stay for more then an hour after Dorn agree to break up his legion, let alone hear the rest of that Gulliman had in mind), generally resisting Inquisition efforts to find out even the tiniest bit about them, and have never conformed to the Codex.

That doesn't make much sense. Ok so they took the fleet and ran for the border and are now quite secretive. 10k years of battle means some attrition, there's just no way around it. That means they either actively salvage chaos ships to replace losses, build their own ships (unlikely), or have since accepted the standardized strike cruiser and battlebarge designs. The last option makes the most sense because it doesn't assume they have access to shipbuilding capabilities on a scale that rivals a forgeworld or have the manpower to devote to construction. Not to mention better technical skill than the mechanicus with "lost" technologies. Second, the modern SC and BB are very good at what marines do most of the time, that is attack planets, so from a practical standpoint I don't see why they would shun the new ships just because they follow the codex. At the very best I'd say BT would just use the chaos list and be forced to take marine crews on all ships to represent Dorn's fleet. At worst, they should have access to a larger number of VBB to represent the remaining ships in Dorn's Fleet.


In any event, your best example for having lances in what is arguably the lists for Codex Astartes based marine fleets is the one that by your own admission disregards completely. That's a pretty weak argument for having lances.

[BaronIveagh]

ut then Black Templars would have no Strike cruisers, in the modern sense, at all, as they took Dorn's fleet and left (as in, did not stay for more then an hour after Dorn agree to break up his legion, let alone hear the rest of that Gulliman had in mind), generally resisting Inquisition efforts to find out even the tiniest bit about them, and have never conformed to the Codex.

That doesn't make much sense. Ok so they took the fleet and ran for the border and are now quite secretive. 10k years of battle means some attrition, there's just no way around it. That means they either actively salvage chaos ships to replace losses, build their own ships (unlikely), or have since accepted the standardized strike cruiser and battlebarge designs. The last option makes the most sense because it doesn't assume they have access to shipbuilding capabilities on a scale that rivals a forgeworld or have the manpower to devote to construction. Not to mention better technical skill than the mechanicus with "lost" technologies. Second, the modern SC and BB are very good at what marines do most of the time, that is attack planets, so from a practical standpoint I don't see why they would shun the new ships just because they follow the codex. At the very best I'd say BT would just use the chaos list and be forced to take marine crews on all ships to represent Dorn's fleet. At worst, they should have access to a larger number of VBB to represent the remaining ships in Dorn's Fleet.


In any event, your best example for having lances in what is arguably the lists for Codex Astartes based marine fleets is the one that by your own admission disregards completely. That's a pretty weak argument for having lances.

The Imperial Fists Strike Cruiser Terrible Angel was fired upon by IF the when Dorn objected to the Codex (Codex: Black Templars, page 6) and was the event that persuaded Dorn to accept splitting his legion.  

BT fluff implies that they build their own equipment and have little to no ties with the Mechanicus.  However, they have extensively refitted the Eternal Crusader, Sigismund's flagship, which was a battlebarge, but has been so extensively refitted it seems to approach a FM in size, with docking for escorts.  

As far as technical expertise, the BTs did develop a new Land Raider variant from a discovery made on Crusade, something that is not usually achieved outside the AdMech.


And, I'm not arguing that non-fleet based (ie Codex) chapters would have such a thing.  However, for the Crusade list, since it's to represent a fleet base chapter (not a Imperial Crusade, but rather a Crusade in the Black Templars/Lamentors sense) they would be more likely to have such a thing.  For this particular list, as it does not represent a standard codex chapter, I would suggest that the original Str 2 lance swap be allowed.

That aside, any chapter with extensive holdings that they control directly is likely to have one or two lance ships (adequately represented by the costly upgrade)

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

There's a literally and figuratively a huge difference between equipment and kilometers long warships.