May not be a giant super unit with gattling guns and rockets, but still incredibly important, Relic has revealed the Assault Marines!
We have already seen a bit of them from the gameplay trailer so far and those from both DoW 1 and 2 are more than likely already familiar with the unit. It is a pretty core unit for the Space Marines to have afterall.
Assault Marines are melee-oriented Space Marines that are organized into strike squads on the battlefield. They complete specialized combat training designed to simulate fights in confined spaces, giving them an advantage in close quarters combat.
Over ten thousand standard years ago, the first Assault Marine squads were formed. Built for the old Space Marine Legions during the Great Crusade, these squads were often equipped with Jump Packs. Although the Jump Packs allow for very brief flight, their operation prevents heavy weaponry use. It is because of this that most modern Assault Marine squads rush into battle with the iconic Chainsword and Bolt Pistol.
Source: RelicAbilities
Jump: The Assault Marines jump to the targeted area and knockback enemies.
Usage
Relic has described Assault Marines as being strong in melee, having high health and doing weak ranged damage. They have also revealed that they have light armour and will be susceptible to piercing ranged attacks. Their intended goals are to attack enemy units in cover, disrupt setup teams and to harass Listening Posts.
Thoughts
There was initially some confusion and nerd rage when finding out a Space Marines armour was being described as 'light', but thankfully Kat (Associate Community Manager) clarified a bit on the official forums.
Of course you’re right that all Space Marine armour isn’t really “light” from the lore perspective, and all Dawn of War III Space Marines will be decked out in their iconic Power Armour.
Speaking in relative terms, we can say an Assault Marine has light(er) armor compared to a heavy vehicle unit, but it’s not light compared to other Space Marine infantry. This all boils down to the in-game classifications that help you make quick decisions on how to counter the units you engage on the battlefield. An Assault Marine will stand up to explosive damage, but struggle against piercing damage. The exact naming conventions for these classifications may change, but that’s the general idea.
That said, health and armour are two different beasts. Armour classification will dictate which damage type is effective against that unit, while a higher amount of health will allow that unit to take more punishment. So while Assault Marines are classed as light armour, they’ve still got quite a bit of health and won’t go down easily!
Source: KatAll that leaves are the typical questions anyone who has played previous games would ask. How high is high for melee damage? What's the recharge time of their jump? Will they be good at chasing kiting ranged units? How much do they cost in comparison to the units that they counter? Will there be a Sternguard upgrade? All very serious questions that I would be legitimately surprised if they could be answered at the stage of development that they are in.
The only thing that ever came to mind as I was reading about them, besides the light armour nerd rage, was that the Assault Marine chainsword looks like a lightsaber when they were attacking. It would be very easy for a modder to put a robe on the Marines and then change the colour of their sword flashing to be blue rather than yellow. They could even make the robes black and chainswords red so they could feel like they're
Chaos Sith!
