Editing Primaris Space Marines (section)

==On the Tabletop==
Crunch wise, Primaris Space Marines are about as physically dangerous as Space Marines are already supposed to be fluff-wise, so they get an additional Attack; weapons which deal additional Wounds seem to be fairly common now, so while it might not be a big improvement it can still be helpful. However, they also have exclusive access to shiny new toys from Cawl, including a "basically Kraken" Bolter with +6" range and -1 AP, a Plasma gun with +6" range and -4 AP, and half-range [[AWESOME|one-handed Assault Heavy Bolters and Plasma Cannons. That they dual-wield. With jump packs.]] Defensively, so far only they have access to Gravis armor, which grants +1 Toughness (and even then only the Captain, Aggressors, and Inceptors can use it). Finally, their squads don't mix weapon types, with all members carrying the same loadout; whether this will be a benefit or a downside relative to "standard" marines being able to carry a mixed loadout remains to be seen with the other new rules in 8th, such as the ability of any squad to split its fire across multiple targets.

Most of the Primaris units so far also cost nearly twice as many points as their older counterparts and have unit sizes no larger than a <del>5</del> 10 model maximum (including the Serge). This strongly suggests they will be more useful as a supplement to standard Marine forces than they might be as outright replacements; they're far too inflexible and expensive to be fielded effectively on their own, and their lack of melee specialists and access to weaponry with a range greater than 36" is a glaring flaw (for now) as well. And while their movement is no worse than any other Marine, for reasons that totally aren't financial in origin they can't take '''any''' transports usable by standard Marines. Not [[Rhino|Rhinos]], not [[Drop Pods]], not [[Land Raider|Land Raiders]], not even the motherfucking [[Mastodon]]. They can use the Thunderhawk, but odds are you're not going to have room for it in your standard 2000 points game, and even then, it has to be carrying only Primaris Marines (and in that case, it still can't carry too many). They have a special transport called a Repulsor (which is a [[Awesome|grav tank]]), which somehow can't carry non-Primaris, but besides that they have no choice but to go footslogging.

However, single-model units can be astonishingly efficient - the most extreme case is the Primaris Librarian, who has a static, unchangeable loadout, but costs the exact same as a non-Primaris Librarian with the same loadout (a bolt pistol and Force Sword).

Primaris armies can seem deceptively small, however, they have an incredible wound density. This makes your basic squads like Intercessors far more point efficient than Tactical Marines (since in 8th edition Tac Marines just kind of completely suck eggs), and are the better option when it comes to holding down homefield objectives. They're also by far some of the best bolter infantry available, with a number of advantages over basic Sternguard (though lacking access to combi-weapons). Other squads such as Hellblasters vs Devastators, Aggressors vs Terminators, etc. are less clear-cut, but overall the Primaris squads are more than able to carry their own weight, providing value in their role, sacrificing a little bit of flexibility for durability but not quite enough to make them Eldar-level cripples outside their niche.

Currently the Primaris are considered to be much more of a shooty army than a punchy one. They can handle themselves in melee yes, and aggressors and rievers can dish it out in CQC, but they currently lack ultraheavy weight facepunchers like Assault Terminators, Killsaw Meganobz or Bikernobz, Necron Wraiths, Melee Warriors and 'Fexes, Wraithblades and so on. They can handle the chaff in close combat but lack true top tier facepunchers. The majority of their shooting is also within the 4-7 strength range and virtually all of it is within the 12-36 inch range bracket due to their extreme focus on infantry. They're a little awkward to use as a standalone army at the moment since they currently have a fraction of the unit choices available to more established armies, but entirely usable to newbies and old pros alike and are a generally very forgiving army where while there's not a whole lot of units and load-outs to choose from, everything's role is pretty immediately obvious at a glance.

It is very unlikely that this will remain the case indefinitely as their model range is almost certain to expand dramatically over the years with goodies like fliers, vehicles, walkers, new guns, melee units, bikes and all that neat stuff but keep in mind that as of right now they're an army meant to dominate infantry gunfights, not win artillery duels, go about tank jousting, bomb things from the stratosphere, zoom around objectives in bikes or transports, or punch things in the face. That being said, they'll shred shit up in short to mid ranged infantry gunfights and have enough other options to handle other targets without feeling hopeless. The other benefit of course, is that this is an army that is very young and have the spotlight shining on them and are guaranteed to only get more options in the near future until they can finally rival the bewildering array of toys the OG Space Marines can field.

Of course the downside to that is that none of us are exactly sure how future content will change up the Primaris as an army as they're still finding their character as a faction so it's difficult to plan around that and you'll almost definitely find yourself needing to get at least some of the future models. Looking at the patterns of stormcast eternal releases over in Age of Sigmar seems to be a somewhat decent guide to what the future might hold though. Certain sore weaknesses that will likely get closed at some point are dedicated anti-tank infantry (rather than the Eliminators with las-fusils being anti-heavy infantry and Hellblasters being jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none), transports with large model counts, heavy assault infantry with Invuln saves like Terminators, bikers, a non-transport non-super heavy tank, artillery, fliers and Primaris Techmarines (no, the Repulsor pintle gunner doesn't count). Note that pretty much all of these are covered by the OG marine range, but these are likely to come up over the years.

As of the 9e release announcements, basic assault infantry in the form of Assault Intercessors, anti tank infantry in the form of Eradicators, bikers in the form Outriders, elite assault in the form of Bladeguard Veterans (+ their Ancient), fast attack in the form of the Invader ATV, dedicated AA in the form of the Firestrike-Servo Turret, fortification in the form of the orbital dropping Hammerfall Bunker, Judiciar executioners, Chaplain on Bike and a standard Techmarine are now on the books.

===Rules Datasheets===
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File:New40kPrimarisCaptainAgainFull.jpg|Stats for the Captain. GW is being awfully generous with these datasheets.
File:New40kIntercessorDatasheet.jpg|Behold the Intercessor Datasheet (thanks GW!).
File:New40kPrimarisInceptorVersion2Full.jpg|The Inceptor rules, sadly the shoe-shovels have no stats.
File:Hellblaster stats.jpeg|Hellblaster stats, because leaks are great for those on the outside. Note how when their guns explode they die, rather than take damage.
</gallery>