While Goonhammer’s A-Team is busy going through the new Space Marines Codex properly, we’ve dispatched our B-Team to offer a look at the new Datasheets in the books. Clearly with a big 40k release like this you want to do the best possible job, so here are, uhh, the Adeptus Titanicus guy, and the “jokes” writer whose supplement isn’t even showing up until January, because it’s busy hunting the Fallen.
Hello friends, it’s the article none of you have been waiting for, the one where instead of useful information that will help with your army, we just make fun of British spelling for a while. Here’s Greg and Condit with the newest glut of Space Marine datasheets. If you’re in the mood for a deeper look – that is, one with any meaningful details – we’d like to direct you to literally any other post on the site. With that said, here’s some of the new units that you can expect to see your local Iron Hands Salamanders player going 5-0 with.
Primaris Tech Marine
Greg: Aww yeah, here we go, starting with the least exciting new unit. It’s a techmarine, but with an extra Attack and Wound. He’s got the same axe, a better gun (an Assault 3, S5, AP-1, D2 bolter, yikes), a grav-pistol, and exactly the same abilities to repair vehicles and buff shooting as his smaller goofier brother. Oddly, the Servo-Arm isn’t Primaris, having the exact same stats as the non-Primaris version, which seems like the forgemasters really cheaped out, only upsizing his two meat-based arms.
Greg: If you’re wondering, I expected a Primaris Servo-Arm to get an extra attack.
Condit: Those buff abilities are pretty good, though – he gets to walk up to a vehicle with some kind of 41st millennium alarm clock and “awaken” its lazy machine spirit, which gives it a +1 to hit for a turn. Then it goes back to sleep unless you kick it again. Good to know that the entire Adeptus Astartes armory’s power save settings are set to “One Battle Round,” I guess.
Greg: Techmarine just jiggling the tank’s mouse every turn to keep the thing from going into sleep mode.
Condit: He does have a Mechadendrite, though, which he can wiggle at his opponent for a pair of extra attacks at S5.
Greg: Mechadendrites are just boneless servo-arms. I will not be accepting replies to this Take at any time.
Primaris Chaplain on Bike
Greg: This guy sucks because he has the same Litanies as every other Chaplain. I expected him to at least get The Catechism Of The Iron Hog, which is less of a chant and more of a coordinated series of engine revs and tire squeals. I’m not sure what effect that would have, other than being cool as hell.
Condit: I like to imagine that he sings the Litanies to the tune of Deep Purple’s seminal hit “Highway Star.”
Greg: No surprises other than that he doesn’t get the +2 attacks that the Outriders get. This is just a Chaplain with two extra wounds, and the movement and guns from the normal Primaris bike. I think he still qualifies as a 12 O’Clock Boy, the rude teens from Baltimore that do wheelies into cop cars, but I bet the model isn’t even poseable enough for that.
Condit: That and they wouldn’t let him put the basket on his handlebars because of the bolters so he has to chain his book to the front fender. So unfashionable.
Greg: Probably not even a bell on the front that he can ring when he passes you. Shameful.
Heavy Intercessor Squad
Greg: It’s Big Boy Season here at the Space Marine Factory, and I hope you’ve reinforced your flooring joists because BIG TROOPS are here and they are ready to moon bounce. If you take these as Dark Angels and park them next to Azrael, who will look amazingly small next to them, they’re functionally just Custodes with different guns. That rules.
Condit: These are also the first primaris that let you bring a single heavy weapon in the squad. It’s “only” a heavy bolter, but with the new damage 2 profile (damage 3 on the Executor Heavy Bolter) it looks interesting.
Greg: My favorite thing here is actually also regarding their guns. They’re S5, and they have the usual Intercessor options of a Rapid Fire, a Heavy, and an Assault weapon. OK, that’s fun. But the reason I love this is that the Heavy Bolt Rifle is actually Rapid Fire, and the new Executor Bolt Rifle is the Heavy one. Incredibly GW thing to do.
Condit: I like their new strat, Unyielding in the Face of the Foe, which for 1CP lets a Gravis unit cosplay as Rubric Marines for a turn and ignore -1AP. Between that and their defensive profile, it’s going to be real hard to shift these guys.
Greg: You won’t want to shift them in CC either, because these big sweaty boys will get their mitts on you and then, buddy, it’s all over.
Veteran Intercessor Squad
Greg: I love that these exist, and that they can take the Assault Intercessor loadout, which put out a frankly absurd 5 attacks each on the charge. Also, fun fact: they now share a force-org chart slot with Scouts! That’s right, the bloodied Primaris veterans of the Indomitus Crusade and their brand-new dynamic models, are apparently the same as the lumpy metal rubes that get bullied on the Fortress Playground during recess.
Condit: All jokes aside, the fact that I can now just pay points for something that never should have been a CP upgrade in the first place is an incredible value-add to my life.
Greg: It’s good, actually, to me, that a CP ability I never used has been replaced with a datasheet I will never use.
Condit: It’ll also let you shift some intercessors over to the Elites slot if for some reason you want to take more than 6 squads in a battalion and lock yourself out of using any of the actually cool stuff.
Greg: You and I approach this game very differently, friend.
Invader ATV Squad
Greg: Oh yeah. HELL yeah. This is probably the loudest model in the entire Space Marine range.
Condit: They also have a chance to explode on death, dealing a mortal wound to anything within 3”. I can’t wait to run a pile of these into something and watch the fireworks.
Greg: This sucks because if you look at the statline – 8W, 4A – this is clearly just two Outrider bikes stacked together in a metal trenchcoat, and now I’m mad that Outriders don’t also explode.
Greg: What I think makes this particularly absurd is the idea of a Chief Apothecary following them around. Since they’re BIKER, and not VEHICLE, the Apothecary can resurrect them to their full 8 wounds for free, and then heal twice for 3 wounds each. I kind of get why Necron players are mad about Reanimation Protocols now!
Condit: I’m glad to hear that they were finally able to issue all of the Primaris Apothecaries the Cawl-Pattern Amovatus Allen Wrenches. Having to sit on that little nugget of forbidden knowledge these last few months has been hell.
Greg: Possible Downside: the Apothecary has to run really fast to keep up with them. Or, uh, well there’s a Ravenwing Apothecary, if you play The Good Chapter.
Condit: I wasn’t aware Ravenwing were Space Wolves.
Storm Speeder (Hail/Thunder/Hammer)Strike
Greg: I’m a BIG MARINE and I need a BIG SPEEDER. This Duplo looking-ass brick comes in at either 8 or 9 power, depending on weapons, which are entirely fixed and have no options other than which of the three different datasheets you build. Which is great because they named two of them after inclement weather and then ran out of ideas and just went with Hammer for the third one. Do they not have a third type of precipitation in England?
Condit: I think that’s referring to the weekly tradition at Warhammer World where they hold a staff tournament and throw the losing army out the window at the unsuspecting people on the street below. This is conducted once weekly at a random time and is preceded by the ceremonial blowing of the official Nottingham Hammer Alert Siren, which causes all god-fearing citizens to run for their lives lest they be covered in tiny pinpricks from the deluge of hormagaunts that is about to blanket the town.
Greg: Ah yes, that fine weather we all know, the completely real Hammer Storm.
Greg: These are legitimately enormous, nearly the size of an Impulsor, though they get to keep FLY where all the other hovering bus tanks lost it. They also get kind of jobbed by being 10W each, which is just enough to have a degrading statline. Absolute junk.
Firestrike Servo Turret
Greg: With a 3 inch move, and 2A at S4 without even a chainsword, we aren’t really sure how this works as a CC unit – even in a full squad of 3 it doesn’t seem as effective as Assault Intercessors, which are also new in this codex. Very strange that it’s in HS, and unless we’re missing something, 6PL for something with two attacks seems like it sucks. Hard pass from us.
Condit: I like that it’s on tiny little grav-plates, like those “ski-blades” that the ski-rental places kept trying to tell me were the “next big thing” like 15 years ago.
Greg: If I were the techmarine that got assigned to this stupid thing instead of a Thunderfire or a tank or something, I would get on the back of it and slowly hop backwards into the sea until the waves took me.
Gladiator (Lancer/Reaper/Valiant)
Greg: This looks like the kind of vehicle you’d see in a totally sick Russian dashcam video crushing highway overpasses, but it can’t even do that right because it floats. It lacks FLY, which is fair because this thing’s aerodynamics are a form of blunt force trauma.
Condit: This is what you’d get if you crossed a Predator with an Impulsor and then kicked both of them together with their disgusting progeny down the stairs into a bucket of superglue, sawdust, and despair. I hate it. I’m going to buy three of each of them.
Greg: An even bigger speeder? Ok then! I would actually kind of love this if they weren’t all in the 220-250 point range. At that point, just take a Repulsor, my dudes. At least then you can get a plasma option for it, which none of these terrible things have.
Hammerfall Bunker
Greg: Remember when this was previewed, and everyone lost their minds over it? Ah, an array of heavy bolters that fire on every unit within range, this is so sick, and it probably Deep Strikes too!
It doesn’t. It’s a fortification. Despite the fluff text saying, and I quote, “Hammerfall bunkers are launched from the Space Marines’ warships in the same manner as Drop Pods”, it is not deployed in at all the same manner as a drop pod. Thing already looks like a trash can, put it inside a slightly larger trash can and just walk away.
Condit: It’s also less durable than a Repulsor, which can also, you know, move if your opponent happens to be awake and conscious and attempts to leave line of sight.
Greg: We finally get a good Whirlwind turret, but it’s stuck on top of a rejected Burger King playplace structure.
Condit: Is it good, though? I refuse to believe that a weapon that fires “Superfrag” and “Superkrak” missiles is actually effective. It’s just trying too hard. I think the real strat here is to take the Hammerfall heavy bolter array and then literally double the length of your Shooting phase as you get to fire it at every unit within 36”. This is a weapon that deals psychic damage, but the target is your opponent’s patience.
Greg: The only good thing about this being a Fortification is that it means no one will ever put it on the table, which is good because it makes Imperial Fists players mad because their stupid chapter really hates buildings for some reason, probably because they’re all space hobos and are jealous of anyone who gets to sleep indoors, but they never get to shoot at any.
Is that it?
Yes, dear reader, unfortunately this blog is now over. We had a lot of fun here talking about Space Marines, but there’s nothing Space Marines about cutting class, so stay in school.
If our plan didn’t work, and we aren’t fired, we’ll be back soon with basically the same post, but about Necrons instead. So, apologies in advance for that one, and if you want to light up our inbox about how much you don’t like this, please let our bosses know over on Facebook/Twitter, or email them directly at contact@goonhammer.com.
