Boarding Marines: rules overview

Boarding Marines of Imperial Fists

Boarding Marines have been around ever since Forgeworld conceived Badab War books. Their primary mission would be to board and assault enemy ships in void space. As a player of Black Templar's successor it would be a perfect unit for my style of play. I was tempted to either buy one of the books or just buy upgrade kit from Forgeworld. Both temptations were successfully resisted thanks to the price £90 for the book, content most of which was not interesting to me. You would not pay such amount for 2 pages of really useful stuff, would you? In case you would, you will need a Badab War part I book from Forgeworld. Second reason was lack of open references to the boarding marines equipment. The site states: 

Detailed resin conversion kit consisting of two lascutters, a graviton gun, and sufficient boarding shields, weapon arms and heads to build five Boarding Space Marines, as well as additional components to build a Boarding Sergeant.       

Forgeworld loves to invent old-new weapons and leave their profile buried in books and useless pictures. What type of lascutter? Is it a graviton gun from old codexes or similar to Blood Angels graviton grapple? What is the difference between boarding and combat shield? £90 is an answer. I would assume that if you live outside UK its even more expensive. So a scrapped the idea. 

However, the Emperor has answered to my prayers and gave me a chance to have a look inside of one these blessed books. I saw the pictures. I saw the rules. I saw the points. Then I closed the book and congratulated myself on saving some money. Let me explain why.

1. Profile. Boarding Marines are absolutely no different from any other codex Space Marine stats. Same stats as any Tactical squad. No bonuses, no extra skills, nothing. Extra 50 points. 
2. Really "unfluffy". Forgeworld authors describe that becoming Boarding Marine is more of death sentence from the Chapter. WTFK? These guys should have done a research on Black Templars, who fight most of their battles in space and zero gravity. Not to mention that this kind of operations would require at least some skill and training. No, in their mind Boarding Marines are just over pimped cannon fodder.
3. Questionable Equipment. With boarding shield marine gets 5+ invulnerable save. Wonderful, isn't it? But Space Marine with power armour in zero gravity CANNOT RUN WITH IT! Yes, super soldiers need to visit the gym more often. On top of that, even if Boarding Marines will assault anything they never gain bonus for extra weapon. Why???! To represent that shield is so heavy and its so difficult to fire bolter while carrying it? Or to limit us to using them as move and fire unit? Then why Captain, Veterans or even Sergeants may take storm shield with power armour? 
4. Strange lascutter. Imperial Armour 2: Project Aphelion featured lascutter in Elysian Drop troopers inventory. Range: base contact, S:10, AP:? auto hit on immobile targets except infantry; ideal for breaking doors and cooking big bugs in assault. Boarding Marines get a lascutter which adds +1 to our Initiative in assault but we lose any bonuses for charging. Auto hit in assault with S:9, AP:1, ignores armour. Why lose Strength? Why repeat that it ignores armour if in most cases it is a case of Instant Death? Poor Guardsman can charge in an wipe the 'nids face with it, and super soldier can not? Mind you, I'm paying £90 for this.

So is there a bright side for Boarding Marines? Well, yes there is. 2 models per unit may take either support weapons like multi-melta. Unit may accompanied by 2 types of Drones: Fire Wasp and Devastation drone: one with flamer other with demolition charge of 5" blast, (again, why not use normal Blast?). Graviton Gun is actually a cool weapon with Range 18" AP3 and nasty surprise to anything which will come under a blast area. But despite everything, if you really like Forgeworld resin you will enjoy the quality of the kit, don't mind the rules. Unless of coarse you would take a risk and make a conversion.

     
Sincerely yours
Mark-Paul.