Games Workshop has previewed the first new Space Marine dataslates ahead of their 11th edition codex release, and if you play another Warhammer 40k army, you might want to brace yourself. GW had already foreshadowed a power boost for the Space Marines that would make the army play more like the elite force that's depicted in the novels - it didn't warn us that Roboute Guilliman was going to be as hard to kill as a daemon primarch.
Guilliman has clearly spent a lot of time polishing the Armour of Fate, because he's now Toughness 10, has 16 wounds, and gains Feel No Pain 5+. That's still two less Toughness than Mortarion, daemon primarch of the Death Guard. But he's also one quarter the size of Mortarion, and as such he gains the Lone Operative ability while he's within 3″ of a friendly Adeptus Astartes unit, meaning units more than 12″ away can't shoot at him until they wipe out his screen.
Guilliman will be just as hard to kill as his brother, but in different match ups: melee armies will chop up Guilliman more easily than Mortarion when they reach him, but he'll have a far easier time hiding from long range shooting. Of course, that's only for the time being: I have to assume the Lord of Death's reworked 11th edition datasheet will be even more imposing.
One surprising aspect of Guilliman's datasheet is that it is, very slightly, simpler than the 10th edition one. Guilliman's 'Author of the Codex' ability used to give him a choice of three unique special abilities each round: now it just lets him select one Combat Doctrine and apply it to a friendly unit for the round. He no longer has the ability to (potentially) resurrect upon death - he just gets six extra wounds. And his ability to reduce the Command Point cost for a unit using a Stratagem is now just a bonus CP each round, and it's a rule that also appears on Captains.
He does have a couple of new abilities, but they're simple enough - he gains the benefit of all three Combat Doctrines at all times, and he projects an aura that lets friendly Astartes models reroll rolls of one to hit and to wound. I'm glad to see a reroll aura stapled to Guilliman, specifically because I want it to be extremely rare, and having it appear on one of the most powerful models in the game suggests it's not going to be that common.
The other Space Marine datasheets in the WarCom article demonstrate some more welcome streamlining. The Sternguard Veterans now have one profile for their basic ranged weapons but three different fire modes, effectively a melta profile, plasma profile, and bolter profile.
This reflects the fact that there are clearly melta and plasma combi-weapons on the squad without posing any modelling challenges, while making the fixed loadout Sternguard from the Leviathan boxed set less frustrating to run - everyone has the same guns.
The Sternguard's combi-weapons do however lose Devastating Wounds, which seems to continue the pattern from Codex Orks of reducing this Ability's prevalence. Guilliman keeps Dev Wounds on the Emperor's Sword - which incidentally gets bumped up to S10, so it can still wound Marines on a 2+, and replaces four of its attacks with Cleave 2 so it doesn't become too effective as an anti-vehicle weapon - while the newly revealed Librarian also gets it on the Hazardous profile of his psychic attack.
Speaking of continuing trends from Codex Orks, so far the only Space Marines datasheet with Feel No Pain is Guilliman. That's a good thing. Thematic as it may be, it's a messy mechanic that wrecks dice rolling during attack resolution for multi-model units.
I'd be remiss not to give a shout out to the Terminator Squad here. We knew Toughness 6 and Strength 5 Storm Bolters were coming, but not that the Termies would get +1AP against targets within nine inches - making them far more effective at clearing their target on the turn they deep strike. Returning to the theme of quality-of-life improvements, the Cyclone Missile launcher now has a flat eight shots. Which might feel wrong if you're used to random shots on blast weapons, but you're still rolling to hit.
I'm impressed by what I've seen. The changes seem rational, thematic, and no more complicated than what we had in 10th edition. If this is the direction of travel for all the Warhammer 40k factions, then I'm on board. What do you think? Would love to hear your thoughts in the Wargamer Discord community!