What is a Primaris & Do They Replace Normal Marines?

By Jack Stover | May 17th, 2018 | Categories: Editorials, Tabletop Gaming News

Brother Steve, the Primaris Marine can’t help you here. Today Jstove explores what a Primaris Marine is, and if they do replace normal space marines?

Today, I’m writing specifically about new players about Primaris Space Marines. When you come into a shop for the first time to look at 40k, Space Marines get shoved in your face. Especially when you’re in a GW/Warhammer shop.

What is a Primaris Marine and do they replace normal marines?

Primaris marines are cool new marine models that are bigger and beefier than their stumpier cousins, but they aren’t actually better or more necessary than the other guys. If you get them in a starter box, you can use them, but never let anyone tell you they are absolutely superior in every way or that they will ‘phase out’ the smaller marines.

Here’s the truth about primaris marines.

They suffer from generalism. Most primaris units have limited or no weapon options and they are hard-locked into being played a certain way. Most of their units are cool looking, but not superior to their tiny marine alternatives, some in certain cases may actually be inferior. Don’t lose sleep over it. Use what you’re given when you’re new, but don’t worry about whether one will make the other obsolete.
Primaris marines cannot use any transport except the Repulsor tank, so if you like Land Raiders, Stormravens, or any of the other marine transports your army may have access to, keep that in mind.
2 wounds is not always better. There are plenty of weapons in the game that will knock him down just as easily as any 1 wound marine.
What primaris marine units are recommended. The Hellblaster plasma primaris marines are universally accepted as the most powerful primaris marine unit and are legitimately pretty great. If you want to play a shooty marine army, they’re a good deal. The Redemptor dreadnought is also just pretty dang cool and you can get a cheaper snapfit version of him that has the minigun arm, which in my personal opinion is a cooler and more effective weapon option.

Shiny marines are HARD TO PLAY.

Shiny marines are super elite, super cool, and super “Specialized” marine armies that are very popular with new players. What are the shiny marine armies?

GREY KNIGHTS
DEATHWATCH (They’re actually black, not shiny)
ADEPTUS CUSTODES (They’re not actually marines, but they are a shiny marine army.)

What do new players like about shiny marines?

Low model count- shiny marine armies are so elite, they’re often low model count, making them less intimidating to collect a whole army.
Easy to paint- 90% of the painting done on shiny marine armies is accomplished with a can of gold, silver, or black spray paint.
Affordable- Because of the low model count, new players often mistake them for being cheaper because they need fewer models.

The truth about shiny marines…

Low model count- Actually makes the army completely unforgiving and difficult to play. The more expensive the model is, the more it hurts when you roll 1’s.
*Super elite- Shiny armies are billed as super specialized elite marines. They aren’t actually super specialized at all, they’re more like supreme generalists. Because they are so few in number, every unit in a shiny army has to do every job for you to succeed, because there’s no one else to do it. This makes them very hard to win with.
Affordable- This is a lie. What they don’t require in dudes, they require in support. Every shiny army needs expensive transports for its infantrymen to get to the front line safely. For shiny armies to be competitive, they often have to pick up more efficient cheap crappy dudes as allies to fill in the holes. Yeah, you read that correctly- The cheap hordes you were trying to avoid by playing shiny dudes are the ones you have to buy to make shiny dudes win.
Shiny marines are a trap for noobs. They look cheap to collect, cool to paint, and super boss, but in the hands of an inexperienced general, they are an absolute nightmare to learn the game with and an uphill battle. As an experienced 40k player, there’s nothing worse in the hobby than walking into a shop and seeing a new player slopping paint on some grey knights or custodians, and just standing back and biting your lip, knowing he’s not going to win a game for the first 6 months of his hobby life because he’s chosen such an unforgiving army to start with.

The difference between matched play and power points

This is a new development that started with 8th edition and it’s absolutely mind-melting, and I’m sure all veteran players hate it.

There are currently two point systems in the game, power points and matched play points. Tournaments and competitive games use matched play points, found on the back pages of the codex. Power points are the ones in the corner of the data sheet in each codex entry.

Both systems are fine and there’s nothing wrong with playing one or the other. Against other noobs and for Saturday afternoon pickup games at the shop, power points is perfectly adequate and does its job. However, as you get a better handle on the game and you want to participate in tournaments, or at a more balanced level, you’ll probably want to switch to matched play points.

In marine armies, lots of models have upgrades that are free in power points but have an associated cost in matched play. In power points, it’s assumed that the cost of upgrades is cooked into the total, you can just have anything you want. For example, an assault squad sergeant can have a power fist, melta bombs, and a plasma pistol. However, in matched play, he actually has to pay for all of those options, making him super expensive! Sometimes, the way you built your army might not transition well from power points to matched play.

As a veteran with a deep collection of models, I have a bunch of models for the different systems- upgraded tricked out dudes for power points where they are free, and bare-bones stock models with no expensive upgrades for matched play. They are different animals. Be prepared to make sacrifices if and when you decide to transition.

The Rulebook is actually kind of awful.

With a quick google search, you can find quick play rules online direct from GW. Also, you can buy a digital download of a complete rulebook.

In a PDF version of the rules, you can at least use the search function to find the sentence you are looking for and dig up the rule.

Spend your money on your CODEX. Buy a hard copy of that to read and hold in your hands, it’s worth it.

The most important thing is having fun. You’re definitely not going to have fun if you put your heart and soul into your hobby, and then constantly lose because nobody told you the facts about your army. You can still have fun when you lose as long as you make the other guy really bleed for it.