Prime Brother Balance

[darkgoldfish]

So I'm quite new to this rules set, but I've been looking for a wargame alternative for a long time. So far digging through the rules everything looks pretty good.

But I'm very puzzled about the 'prime brothers'. It seems like their basic infantry have triple the ranged attacks and double the melee attacks of the regular 'battle brothers' along with regeneration, all for 75 points. Using the battle brother list it's 50 points for the veteran upgrade and +1 to hit (which doesn't even get them close).

Am I missing something here?

[zcharles]

It's WH conversion; rapid fire becomes A1, assault becomes A2 and so assault-bolt-rifle-gun or what the heck it's called becomes A3. W2 becomes regeneration.

Looks like secondary marines are a thing of the past for every ruleset.

I agree with you but that's how it is.

[thorlek]

I agree with you that it seems OP when you compare the single unit, and zcharles explanation of why they have those stats is pretty good.

On the otherside of the argument tho, you need to look at the whole army to get the full picture.

The extra 75 points for all that goodness one a single unit, means that your 2000pt list has maybe 2 or 3 or 4 less units than battle brothers... in the same way battle brothers would have 2 or 3 or 4 less units than say orcs.

so one v one the unit looks op. but the chances are you can double shoot or double charge them alot of the time, or have more units to capture objectives, etc so the 75pts can be cheap, but it can also be expensive.

[thorlek]

And while I'm thinking about it... sometimes these types of things come back to the basic building blocks of the rules systems.

So your battle brother are "good" at shooting, so hit on a 3+
prime brothers are better at shooting, so your options are to give them 2+ to hit, which might be op, especially when they get heavy weapons to shoot at vehicles
So your next easiest option is to give them more attacks
After that I guess you have something like AP(1) which is probably even more OP, or maybe Relentless

The regeneration is the same, Battle Brothers already have 2+ save, so you cant give them 1+ so to make them tougher you have regeneration
Another option would be Tough(2) but that would be ridiculous unless their save got worse, which makes no sense.

And I think that brings me to the basic building blocks of the rules system being D6 dice to decide everything.
If you used D10 or D12, you could just give battle brothers 5+ to hit, and primes 4+.... and battle brothers a 5+ save, and primes a 4+ to show they are better.

But at the end of the day, no matter what you do, comparing single units will always bring up strange things like this, the more important thing is trying to keep the army list as a whole balanced and list i said in my last post, the extra 75pts can really make a big difference when building a list

[darkgoldfish]

But surely the next step in firepower would be 2 attacks... or giving them rending, or relentless... or -1 AP. But three attacks is a huge jump!

[hellonstrikers]

Ive Been playing AI Games against Primaris and can say some things, Its a slug fest Early to mid turn, but the second they run out of activation and you still have 5, it turns into shooting fish in a barrel.
That and they lack good anti tank. They have plasma spam to scuff up the paint job, but if you can keep the rare fusion guns at arms reach, they can only tickle your tanks and walkers.
Regular marines on the other hand are a lot more flexible with upgrades and cover more bases than Primaris.
In conclusion, Primaris are very anti infantry, but struggle against armor and can get out activated.

[zcharles]

Darkgoldfish, Autoboltrifle is Assault 3, so by the conversion rules of this game becomes A3; What's strange is Boltrifle, that in this game should be A1 because it's rapid fire, but it would be too weak compared to other 2 options so they made it A2.
In this game AP(1) comes with things like Heavy Bolters, meaning S5 AP-1.
The problem lays into the conversion where rapid fire is A1 and assault is A2; that's odd.
Maybe they should have done something like assault is A1 too, but can shot after Rush action.
But since things are this way now, the conversion is formally correct.
Keep in mind that this huge gap between assault and rapid fire is everywhere; I play guard and orks: a guard shoots A1 24", an ork shoots A2 18". Same quality. It's a HUGE difference. It's everywhere but it's probably the most easy conversion.

[darkgoldfish]

zcharles,

So I get wanting to take on some of the 40k fluff, but it feels like a very weird choice to jump the power on similar basic infantry weapons that much - going from 1 to 3 shots is a big leap that doesn't really make narrative sense. I get that maybe they were trying to do a direct numerical translation. Regardless, the points cost increase seems too low for that big of a spike in unit quality.

[zcharles]

You're right.
Now I'm gonna say my personal opinion on all this; it does not have much to do with the autobolt gun, it's just a panoramic view.
You know what else does not have narrative sense? Ultra-conservative Dark Angels taking into their sacred blessed secret ranks new stupid big boys grown as clones that know nothing about their traditions, their secrets ecc... I would imagine that a terminator DA, seeing those new boys onboard its ship, wearing DA armour, simbols, weapons, would say something like "WHO THE FUCK ARE THOSE STUPID CLONES? FOR THE GLORYH OF MY CHAPTER I WILL NEVER EVER LET THOSE STRANGERS WALK ON THIS SACRED DECK AND WEAR OUR SYMBOLS! I WILL DIE WITH GLORY TODAY FIGHTING FOR THE MOST SACRED THING OF THE UNIVERSE, THE DARK ANGELS HONOUR! IF THEY HAVE TO REPLACE US, I WON'T IT HAPPENS WITHOUT FIGHITNG! CHAAAAARGEEEE!"
This is how it should have gone. Insthead all thousand of pages of war, glory, honour and basically nationalism that filled the stories and codices of the past means nothing today.
Insthead GW dictates, and also Grimdark Future ruleset has to accept the GW decisions and adapt.
Nothing counts anymore.
All our WH traditions of the '80 and '90 are gone forever, so is the once 'feared boltgun', that's a useless piece of junk today.
It's all a joke.
Also in WH plays a primaris with its Assault 3 can shoot 3 times at 24, while a secondaris marine only 1; this ruleset it's not bad in it's conversions.
The problem is that secondaris marines are a thing of the past.
As hellonstrikers says they have few anti-tank weapons, but that's FOR NOW, since they're getting 5 new unit at year.
Now for the point cost:
Primaris are a big problem because it's almost impossible to balance units that are so powerful, it's really impossible. Ork vs human vs eldar it's easy, few differences. But this is REALLY hard, so it's normal to have huge problems.
It's a joke and we have to accept this.
Personally I have SO MUCH fun killing primaris that you cannot imagine. In the name of 20 years of gaming, I follow that Dark Angel Terminator on that deck:
CHAAAAAAAARGE!!

[Lobokai]

If anything, Primes are underpowered... so few wounds and activations really cripples them midgame

agreed on the lore travesty that are GW Primaris 

[jojo]

I found a point difference mainly for Prime Brothers when using patrion calculator. I have ran all PB units through and they all came out cheaper.
I recommend anyone who has access to the calculator to give it a try and see the point differences for prime brothers, say like a sqaud of 5 regular prime brothers comes out 20 pts cheaper.
This may or may not help with balance.

[Lobokai]

Comes out exactly the same for me... I ran 4 different units 

[jojo]

Nov 12, 2020 6:12:18 GMT Lobokai said:

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Comes out exactly the same for me... I ran 4 different units 

Thanks for the reply Lobokai.


I believe fearless is added in Prime (fearless is not in the stat block), so I didn't add fearless to the equation.

"Prime: Counts as having the Fearless rule, as well as having Regeneration against nonspell attacks (this stacks with Regeneration)".


This brings my unit of 5 to 205pts.