Brief thoughts on the new space marine codex

Hi folks, 

Pretty brief post as I’m snowed under with Uni work and Space Marine assembly right now. Extremely happy with all things space marine at the mo and undergoing a massive assembly and reshuffle of the armies. I have a few posts I would like to add this week so look out for them:

Space Marine release thoughts
Conversion corner - the stalker/hunter 2 for 1 kit

Conversion corner – new space marine kits. 

Conversion corner – making full use of tactical combi-weapon parts.

Conversion corner – building better centurions

In the meantime though here’s a quick rundown of some things I noticed from skimming the new rules.

FAQ:

Helbrecht orbital bombardment – odd that the high marshall of a fleet absed chapter doesn’t have access. I think this will be FAQd as he doesn’t seem great for the points at the moment.

Special weapons in command squads – this has got to be an error. The box comes with them and the command squads in the book are pictured with them. A definite FAQ I’m certain so don’t go hacking those special weapons off yet!

Combat squads and mounted assault  - squads of 5 models or more are troops, but what about when you combat squad and one unit has an attack bike? I guess this happens after the army list is selected and so isn’t an issue but before deployment but clarification would be nice.

Would have been nice:

Chronus and Telion available for all – as of now they are restricted to UM chapter tactics only. Bit of a shame as this edition more than any has given the other lineages and attention, yet by removing the option to use the more generic, upgrade characters I feel that an opportunity had been missed. It wouldn’t exactly have harmed their sales to keep them more widely available though.  

Chief Librarians/Reclusiarchs – now that tiggy and cassius are restricted to the UM and their successors we can no longer access them in a non-UM force. I guess this was done mainly for balancing the chapter tactics and character special rules. (calgar as an Iron hand for example would have been super tough) Shame that other chapters can’t represent their senior members though.

Terminator captain entry – this just seems mega redundant to me as there is a terminator armour wargear list which seems exclusively for the use of the chapter master. Why not simply roll the captains terminator armour option into his entry? Anyone who can think why this was done please share with me.

Iron hands special character – not the first time I’ve said it but an iron hands special character would have been the icing on the cake. Next time.

Lots of great stuff, including:

Assault troops can now remove JPs  - great to have the option of a free rhino/DP in exchange for removing JPs.

Vulkan can take command squads – a weird little quirk of the old codex which has now thankfully been rectified. Now if only they could take meltas/flamers……

Land Speeder Storm as a DT – this should never have been a slot choice in the first place so I’m glad this change has finally come about. Plus it’s new rules/points are much more fitting.

Thunderfire barrage – excellent! Points remain the same but now it can shoot without LOS and snipe characters/specialists. Awesome stuff.