The latest Warhammer 40,000 balance update dropped yesterday, making Space Marines of different kinds faster, tougher, and more deadly. But what do those changes mean for the other armies of the 41st Millennium?
An increase in AP on boltguns and chainswords is a new challenge to overcome for units universally. It will encourage some factions to pivot to defensively focused detachments, or units with an invulnerable save that is the same or better than their default save characteristic, to minimise this change on your army. This is also dependent on what role you want a unit to play in your army.
For example, you are playing Tyranids and you have deployed Termagants to act as a screening* unit to protect your Excocrine from being charged by some Deep Striking Chaos Space Marine Terminators. Regardless of your opponent’s shooting, the Terminators are unable to charge your more important Exocrine due to the increased distance you created using your Termagants. Boltguns being more powerful doesn’t change the fact that your Termagants have fulfilled their purpose, and if your opponent has included more boltguns instead of a lascannon, a plasma gun, or a meltagun, then their efficacy against your more valuable Exocrine will be reduced.
There will also typically be fewer Space Marines on the battlefield to shoot or charge, likely meaning your opponent will be looking to maximise their points with the most effective units available to them, so boltguns and chainswords may be the least of your worries.
This also means that although Space Marines are tougher to kill now, there will be fewer of them on the battlefield. So, while the Exocrine from the above example will now be wounding them on a 3+, each one destroyed will have more of an impact on the Space Marine player’s plans.
As Space Marine variants make up the majority of armies within Warhammer 40,000, it’s generally wise to construct your army assuming you will be battling them at some point. Many of the units that were good at killing Space Marines are still good at it. Brôkhyr Thunderkyn, Doomsday Arks, Howling Banshees, Riptides, and Knight Despoilers will continue to cause problems for the Adeptus Astartes.
So having broken down what the impacts are, what are the upsides to this change for you?
As we’ve said, there are going to be fewer Space Marine bodies actually on the battlefield, which will change how they approach the game. They won’t be able to trade** for objectives as well as many non-Space Marine armies, and they will find it more challenging to hold down objectives and safely achieve secondary objectives. More horde-focused armies such as Astra Militarum, Drukhari, and Genestealer Cults will be better equipped to trade bodies into the brutal meat grinder for that sweet victory.
The increase in strength to boltguns and chainswords has mixed degrees of value against your armies. For the average Human, Aeldari, Leman Russ, or Goliath Rock Grinder, this change means nothing, as it’s not enough to improve their odds to wound against these types of targets.
This all comes with new strategies, new army compositions, new challenges, and new triumphs to achieve, all of which requires some trial and error to find the right way to approach and overcome. So don’t be disheartened if you don’t find your army running rampant across the fields of Chogoris or wastes of Baal immediately – even Abaddon took 13 tries to crack Cadia, remember?
Download the latest balance update now so you can be ready for whatever the Space Marines try and throw at you.
* A screening unit is one that is cheap in points and often used to deny your opponent movement. This might be through standing in the way and physically blocking opposing models, by denying areas of the board for units to arrive from strategic reserves, or to make it harder for your opponent to charge into another target.
** Trading means units that are typically more effective for their points cost at holding and challenging for objectives than their opponents, generally by destroying units more expensive in points than themselves.
