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The rifle is used by one man, to kill another. There has never been a greater force equilizer in the history of mankind. One must use his brain and his brawn to maximize his killing potential. With walkers, monsterous creatures, tanks, skimmers, and heavily armored supermen, the rifleman just seems outmatched.

Currently the rifleman cannot use his brain in accordance with his brawn because the flanking of an enemy is ineffectual on the result of an attack. Positioning is in large, irrelevant in regards to you and the enemy. Furthermore the taking out of other infantrymen with the rifle is widely inefficient given the effectiveness and ubiquity of more specialized weaponry.

This saddens me greatly as the triumph of one squad over the other should be representative of the squads capabilities in the expertise of their bodies and minds, and not the quality of their weaponry.

You need to read more of the books. The rifle plays a huge role still. Along with tactics. The guard is predicated on the rifle man.

Righteousrob wrote:
You need to read more of the books. The rifle plays a huge role still. Along with tactics. The guard is predicated on the rifle man.

As is my light infantry regiment. The problem is that the rules within the game make them so.

try playing with a couple Vindicaires instead of an army.

My boltguns win me battles.

 Ashiraya wrote:
My boltguns win me battles.

Must be nice.

 carldooley wrote:
try playing with a couple Vindicaires instead of an army.

I've ran two Execution Forces as an army once.

It was actually pretty damn fun for both players. Though he kept mumbling about the Vindicare's aim.

 Sledgehammer wrote:
The rifle is used by one man, to kill another. There has never been a greater force equilizer in the history of mankind. One must use his brain and his brawn to maximize his killing potential. With walkers, monsterous creatures, tanks, skimmers, and heavily armored supermen, the rifleman just seems outmatched.

Currently the rifleman cannot use his brain in accordance with his brawn because the flanking of an enemy is ineffectual on the result of an attack. Positioning is in large, irrelevant in regards to you and the enemy. Furthermore the taking out of other infantrymen with the rifle is widely inefficient given the effectiveness and ubiquity of more specialized weaponry.

This saddens me greatly as the triumph of one squad over the other should be representative of the squads capabilities in the expertise of their bodies and minds, and not the quality of their weaponry.

All true, but this is in the context of having walkers, mc's, tanks skimmers and supermen all inhabiting the same place at the same time in a tiny area of space (a 6 by 4 board - there's not much you can do with that...). This would be no different in our era - how good is a rifleman when I can take him out half a world away with a drone piloted by a guy in Arkansas?
But you won't always have walkers, mc's tanks skimmers and super,en all inhabiting the same place at the same time. Plenty battles in the 40k-iverse involve rifle armed squad is on recon missions and scouting missions and flashpoint and firefights without any support from the above. I'm sure there are just as many battles between arbites and cultists where the heaviest thing in sight is a chimera or a looted sentinel with a heavy stubber as there are with Titans during it out with super heavies and aircraft bombing waves of monstrous creatures.

If you want that, then you need to go out of your way to make it happen. Talk to your opponents, cooperate and collaborate on an 'infantry only' mission where the heaviest thing is a heavy Bolter. Put together an interesting scenario with two forces that fit the scenario and are a decent match up for each other.

The rifle part of rifleman doesn't really matter in today's wars. Infantry are there to take up space and hold ground, which they do primarily by being small targets that are difficult to kill and by scaring away other infantry by making noise and having artillery and mortars shoot at them. Rifles don't really do anything or kill anyone, but they do make infantrymen feel better about themselves by giving them something to do - which is actually really useful.

But they don't inflict casualties.

Really, the most important part of infantry combat is getting the poor soldiers to stick around. You lose battles because your guys run away, not because they get killed.

Deadnight wrote:


If you want that, then you need to go out of your way to make it happen. Talk to your opponents, cooperate and collaborate on an 'infantry only' mission where the heaviest thing is a heavy Bolter. Put together an interesting scenario with two forces that fit the scenario and are a decent match up for each other.

I second this. Organize a Kill Team, Combat patrol, or Zone Mortalis game. IMO, ZM is especially fun! Riflemen become much more important in these smaller game types. With the right tactics, two, maxed out DKoK Grenadier squads can absolutely lay waste to a SM Tac, Termie, Scout list in ZM.

 Saber wrote:
The rifle part of rifleman doesn't really matter in today's wars. Infantry are there to take up space and hold ground, which they do primarily by being small targets that are difficult to kill and by scaring away other infantry by making noise and having artillery and mortars shoot at them. Rifles don't really do anything or kill anyone, but they do make infantrymen feel better about themselves by giving them something to do - which is actually really useful.

But they don't inflict casualties.

Really, the most important part of infantry combat is getting the poor soldiers to stick around. You lose battles because your guys run away, not because they get killed.

Entirely false. Armor without attached infantry elements can e easily ambushed and taken out. I recently saw some combat footage from the yemen saudi conflict in which the saudi tanks were ambushed by infantry.

Furthermore LRRPs in vietnam accounted for more than 10000 enemy KIA.

I have been drafting some stuff for a killteam though. My problem is that all riflemen do in 40k is shoot. Bounding can't be done. Suppression is impossible. Flanking serve little purpose. There really is no reason to have a light maneuverable infantry regiment when moving up on an enemy is more of a detrement than a benefit.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

 Saber wrote:
The rifle part of rifleman doesn't really matter in today's wars. Infantry are there to take up space and hold ground, which they do primarily by being small targets that are difficult to kill and by scaring away other infantry by making noise and having artillery and mortars shoot at them. Rifles don't really do anything or kill anyone, but they do make infantrymen feel better about themselves by giving them something to do - which is actually really useful.

But they don't inflict casualties.

Really, the most important part of infantry combat is getting the poor soldiers to stick around. You lose battles because your guys run away, not because they get killed.

Entirely false. Armor without attached infantry elements can e easily ambushed and taken out. I recently saw some combat footage from the yemen saudi conflict in which the saudi tanks were ambushed by infantry.

Furthermore LRRPs in vietnam accounted for more than 10000 enemy KIA.

I have been drafting some stuff for a killteam though. My problem is that all riflemen do in 40k is shoot. Bounding can't be done. Suppression is impossible. Flanking serve little purpose. There really is no reason to have a light maneuverable infantry regiment when moving up on an enemy is more of a detrement than a benefit.

You're playing the wrong game if you want those things. Considering its scale, scope and target audience, those things don't matter as much as huge super heavies and whatever. 40k is a Science fantasy/ space opera that is so loaded by chaos and insanity and backwards ness that striding forward to duke it out with your foe with swords is seen as the cleverest thing possible.

May I direct you to a game called Infinity instead?

 Sledgehammer wrote:
Entirely false. Armor without attached infantry elements can e easily ambushed and taken out. I recently saw some combat footage from the yemen saudi conflict in which the saudi tanks were ambushed by infantry.

What? This generalization has some exceptions, then clearly the generalization is not applicable at all and the exact opposite is true instead. Do go on.

 Sledgehammer wrote:
Furthermore LRRPs in vietnam accounted for more than 10000 enemy KIA.

Out of more than a million casualties. That's less than 1%.

Rifles have not been primarily about killing people on the battlefield for well over a hundred years. So, yeah, I agree that pinning and the like should be more common and falling back due to shooting more common, but let's not pretend that rifles kill a lot of people.

Riflemen would be relevant. Just not that much in ground warfare in a barren wasteland or crumbling useless ruins. Ship boarding crews might still have use for them.

Seems to me like someone is weirdly fixated on a very specific form of infantry. 40K isn't really about modern warfare, anyway.

40k isn't a realistic setting. They just released rules for space marines moving terrain around for example. Infantry are required, no matter what, to hold objectives, particularly of an urban nature. 40k doesn't take that into account. Realistically, any engagement the imperium would get into would be decided by the fleet bombing the crap out of everything and then sending the guard with close air support and armoured assets in to kill off survivors. Much like they do in any contemporary US war theatre.

So yeah riflemen certainly have a place in the imagined, hard sci fi fantasy we guard player have of 40k, but maybe not the tabletop reality. But that's okay, it's still cinematic seeing them all get killed to a man. The best and most realistic thing they could to to improve the guard is expand their off-board assets like artillery and air strikes.

Infantry used to have a place in 40k. I remember infantry being quite useful back in 4th ed. Now...not so much. They just die.

If you want infantry to be usable again, the following must happen

1) SHV / GC go back to apoc where they belong
2) No ignore cover
3) No Strength D
4) No cover for MCs unless it covers 50% of them
5) Limit the number of S6+ high rof weapons

That's from the top of my head. Probably more is needed.

If you want a game that's more infantry focused, something like Infinity or Gates of Antares might by what you are looking for atm.

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Deadnight wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:

 Saber wrote:
The rifle part of rifleman doesn't really matter in today's wars. Infantry are there to take up space and hold ground, which they do primarily by being small targets that are difficult to kill and by scaring away other infantry by making noise and having artillery and mortars shoot at them. Rifles don't really do anything or kill anyone, but they do make infantrymen feel better about themselves by giving them something to do - which is actually really useful.

But they don't inflict casualties.

Really, the most important part of infantry combat is getting the poor soldiers to stick around. You lose battles because your guys run away, not because they get killed.

Entirely false. Armor without attached infantry elements can e easily ambushed and taken out. I recently saw some combat footage from the yemen saudi conflict in which the saudi tanks were ambushed by infantry.

Furthermore LRRPs in vietnam accounted for more than 10000 enemy KIA.

I have been drafting some stuff for a killteam though. My problem is that all riflemen do in 40k is shoot. Bounding can't be done. Suppression is impossible. Flanking serve little purpose. There really is no reason to have a light maneuverable infantry regiment when moving up on an enemy is more of a detrement than a benefit.

You're playing the wrong game if you want those things. Considering its scale, scope and target audience, those things don't matter as much as huge super heavies and whatever. 40k is a Science fantasy/ space opera that is so loaded by chaos and insanity and backwards ness that striding forward to duke it out with your foe with swords is seen as the cleverest thing possible.

That's a misconception.
40k isn't as stab happy as everyone seems to want to believe. Its very rare you will find generic soldiers who want to get into cc.
Please show me the swords on guardsmen, or tactical marines.

 Sledgehammer wrote:
The rifle is used by one man, to kill another. There has never been a greater force equilizer in the history of mankind. One must use his brain and his brawn to maximize his killing potential.

In modern day, between one human and another.

With walkers, monsterous creatures, tanks, skimmers, and heavily armored supermen, the rifleman just seems outmatched.

Therein lies the problem.

We can't generalise rifles to compare to these things because they don't exist in modern day. The truth is, the rifleman IS outmatched by these things. Explain to me how a guy with a rifle can bring down something like a Trygon or Riptide. It's just so unlikely it's not funny.

Currently the rifleman cannot use his brain in accordance with his brawn because the flanking of an enemy is ineffectual on the result of an attack. Positioning is in large, irrelevant in regards to you and the enemy. Furthermore the taking out of other infantrymen with the rifle is widely inefficient given the effectiveness and ubiquity of more specialized weaponry.

This saddens me greatly as the triumph of one squad over the other should be representative of the squads capabilities in the expertise of their bodies and minds, and not the quality of their weaponry.

Except it's not just one squad against another - it's a unit of infantry, fighting a unit of highly trained, genetically engineered, well armoured/armed killing machines, or an alien race with superior tech, or just sheer strength, or literal manifestations of unreality and hellspawn. It's like medieval peasant bowmen going up against a modern fireteam. There is naturally a gap of power between the two.

If you're after strategic placement at the micro level, 40k is not for you.
As it stands, the game is on a larger scale than ever before - GMCs and superheavy tanks move alongside infantry, huge blocks of men are wiped out by titanic explosions and gunfire from ancient or alien weaponry and the very terrain is commanded and reshaped by the combatants. This is not normal war. This is 40k. Individuals are quickly forgotten about, and any advantage from unit placement is forgotten on such a large scale.

If you are after lower scale fights, try out Kill Team. Especially Herald of Ruin's version. Less big stuff, more about model placement and tactics.

My rifleman do well against other rifleman. The problem with today's game is you may not even know the army you are fighting let alone what it has. In real world and fluff you tend to have an idea so you don't stumble upon a knight with all infantry or a tank army with a blob guard. Not likely in real world with drones and scouting. So I think if you want that than do what we do and put restrictions and forge the narrative. Way more fun for me personally.

Remove the ability of any unit to claim an objective and return it to Troops choices that have the Infantry unit type.

The game has inflated to a scale where rifleman really aren't meaningful anymore. The background fluff emphasizes this more, but in a game where relatively common, non-MC/vehicle units can shrug off nearly 900 Lasgun shots, or in some cases be buffed to the point where a single such model would take over 5,000 Lasgun shots to slay (superfriends psyker supported TWC sporting blessings from Endurance, Invisibility, and Veil of Time), and common basic Troop infantry from some armies requires nearly 30 Lasgun shots to kill (Decurion Warriors), it's really pretty much impossible for "rifleman" to have a meaningful effect on things in many instances. There's also some issues with game mechanics for the sake of a functional game. An Elephant for instance is approximately the size of many MC's, but I can put one down by myself with a Kalashnikov *relatively* easily, poachers do it all the time, they don't have 30 dudes out there hosing the beast down, a couple dudes unload magazines into them in a couple of seconds and call it good, but MC's in 40k not only have armor but between the T values and the way Wounds work, you need several dozen rifleman to hose such a creature down in order to kill it.

That said, in real warfare, rifleman aren't the big killers either, artillery/aircraft and crew served weaponry is, but they're a damn sight more capable than they are in 40k currently.

Ask the troops in afghan or whatever war zone who is doing the majority of the killing. It's always the ground pounders.

Righteousrob wrote:
Ask the troops in afghan or whatever war zone who is doing the majority of the killing. It's always the ground pounders.

That's somewhat different than conventional warfare, heavier weapons are available almost exclusively to one side, and attacks made by the other side are pretty much exclusively made by infantry ambush or IED as a result. We're not really talking about armies clashing in that instance, and engagements tend to end very quickly and one-sidedly once the side that has artillery, aircraft, and crew served weapons brings them into play.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Righteousrob wrote:
Ask the troops in afghan or whatever war zone who is doing the majority of the killing. It's always the ground pounders.

That's somewhat different than conventional warfare, heavier weapons are available almost exclusively to one side, and attacks made by the other side are pretty much exclusively made by infantry ambush or IED as a result. We're not really talking about armies clashing in that instance, and engagements tend to end very quickly and one-sidedly once the side that has artillery, aircraft, and crew served weapons brings them into play.

Insurgencies can still happen in the 40k universe.

Terrain is also a huge factor. In Vietnam we used LRRPs against the VC because they primarily operated in densely forested / mountainous areas. Tanks are going to be at a huge disadvantage when they are having to slog through thick vegetation and suffer from a small visual range.

 Sledgehammer wrote:
Terrain is also a huge factor. In Vietnam we used LRRPs against the VC because they primarily operated in densely forested / mountainous areas. Tanks are going to be at a huge disadvantage when they are having to slog through thick vegetation and suffer from a small visual range.

In Vietnam we also had rules about not causing excessive civilian casualties, or at least pretending to care about it. In 40k that just isn't a factor. If the enemy hides in dense forests where you can't bring your big guns you bomb the whole forest flat and cover the remains in chemical weapons until nothing is left alive. And so what if you just burned a whole bunch of children to death, you were going to kill them anyway and saving the execution squads a little work is a nice bonus!


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 the_Armyman wrote:
Remove the ability of any unit to claim an objective and return it to Troops choices that have the Infantry unit type.

Which is a bad idea because it kills off fluffy armies that focus on units other than troops choice infantry squads. For example, my IG armored company goes back to having no scoring units and therefore no realistic hope of winning a game.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:
Terrain is also a huge factor. In Vietnam we used LRRPs against the VC because they primarily operated in densely forested / mountainous areas. Tanks are going to be at a huge disadvantage when they are having to slog through thick vegetation and suffer from a small visual range.

In Vietnam we also had rules about not causing excessive civilian casualties, or at least pretending to care about it. In 40k that just isn't a factor. If the enemy hides in dense forests where you can't bring your big guns you bomb the whole forest flat and cover the remains in chemical weapons until nothing is left alive. And so what if you just burned a whole bunch of children to death, you were going to kill them anyway and saving the execution squads a little work is a nice bonus!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the_Armyman wrote:
Remove the ability of any unit to claim an objective and return it to Troops choices that have the Infantry unit type.

Which is a bad idea because it kills off fluffy armies that focus on units other than troops choice infantry squads. For example, my IG armored company goes back to having no scoring units and therefore no realistic hope of winning a game.

Unless you char the entire planet, there will still be places to hide, and areas to fight from. Hell look at mt suribachi we bombed and shelled that place for forever and there were still japs crawling all over the place.

If a mountain can stop bombs, than an underground fortress complex made of ceramite can hold off orbital bombardments.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Righteousrob wrote:
Ask the troops in afghan or whatever war zone who is doing the majority of the killing. It's always the ground pounders.

That's somewhat different than conventional warfare, heavier weapons are available almost exclusively to one side, and attacks made by the other side are pretty much exclusively made by infantry ambush or IED as a result. We're not really talking about armies clashing in that instance, and engagements tend to end very quickly and one-sidedly once the side that has artillery, aircraft, and crew served weapons brings them into play.

Insurgencies can still happen in the 40k universe.

They can but that's not really the type of engagement that 40k is designed to portray nor what the rules are really intended to function around. A skirmish scale game like Necromunda is the best way to portray that kind of combat.

Terrain is also a huge factor. In Vietnam we used LRRPs against the VC because they primarily operated in densely forested / mountainous areas. Tanks are going to be at a huge disadvantage when they are having to slog through thick vegetation and suffer from a small visual range.

Right, but tanks aren't the only form of crew served weapons, and the US brought lots of such abilities into play. The US dropped more ordnance on Vietnam than on both Germany and Japan in WW2 combined. Artillery and aircraft delivered munitions were used in mind boggling amounts, and even with infantry engagements, belt fed machine guns and mortars are the core of the firepower base once we start getting into company level engagements.

 Sledgehammer wrote:
Unless you char the entire planet, there will still be places to hide, and areas to fight from. Hell look at mt suribachi we bombed and shelled that place for forever and there were still japs crawling all over the place.

Yes, but one will also notice it was a one-sided battle with a pre-determined outcome from the start, the Japanese on that island had no illusions that they were going to win. Surviving the bombardment is one thing, being able to achieve victory is another.

If a mountain can stop bombs, than an underground fortress complex made of ceramite can hold off orbital bombardments.

Hrm, depends on what we're talking about and how much. A mountain will stop a convention bomb, they may shelter those inside from a relatively small fission based nuclear bomb, but you drop a 5 megaton fusion bomb directly on it and nothing underneath is going to survive.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
[

Right, but tanks aren't the only form of crew served weapons, and the US brought lots of such abilities into play. The US dropped more ordnance on Vietnam than on both Germany and Japan in WW2 combined. Artillery and aircraft delivered munitions were used in mind boggling amounts, and even with infantry engagements, belt fed machine guns and mortars are the core of the firepower base once we start getting into company level engagements.

.

That is kind of my point. We used so much ordinance, and yet the infantry were still very relevant.

 Sledgehammer wrote:
Unless you char the entire planet, there will still be places to hide, and areas to fight from. Hell look at mt suribachi we bombed and shelled that place for forever and there were still japs crawling all over the place.

Sure, but those places to fight may or may not be places that can allow light infantry to hide and fight effectively. Great, the open deserts are untouched, good luck surviving against patrolling bomber formations. Or have fun "fighting" in a random forest halfway around the planet from all of the valuable strategic objectives.

If a mountain can stop bombs, than an underground fortress complex made of ceramite can hold off orbital bombardments.

An underground fortress is not an insurgency, it's a conventional military strategy. And troops sitting in a fortress are useless, point some artillery at it and shell anything that tries to come out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sledgehammer wrote:
That is kind of my point. We used so much ordinance, and yet the infantry were still very relevant.

Again, because of rules of engagement combined with less-effective ordnance than 40k. The infantry would not have been relevant if the US had been willing to nuke a buffer zone 100 miles across between North Vietnam and everything of value, combined with nuclear attacks on all North Vietnamese cities, industrial capacity, military bases, etc. Infantry are much less relevant in a campaign of extermination, which is what virtually every war in 40k consists of. Killing civilians with WMD attacks on military targets is just a nice bonus, since you're going to kill all of the civilians anyway once you get done eliminating the military threat.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Sledgehammer wrote:
Unless you char the entire planet, there will still be places to hide, and areas to fight from. Hell look at mt suribachi we bombed and shelled that place for forever and there were still japs crawling all over the place.

Sure, but those places to fight may or may not be places that can allow light infantry to hide and fight effectively. Great, the open deserts are untouched, good luck surviving against patrolling bomber formations. Or have fun "fighting" in a random forest halfway around the planet from all of the valuable strategic objectives.

If a mountain can stop bombs, than an underground fortress complex made of ceramite can hold off orbital bombardments.

An underground fortress is not an insurgency, it's a conventional military strategy. And troops sitting in a fortress are useless, point some artillery at it and shell anything that tries to come out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sledgehammer wrote:
That is kind of my point. We used so much ordinance, and yet the infantry were still very relevant.

Again, because of rules of engagement combined with less-effective ordnance than 40k. The infantry would not have been relevant if the US had been willing to nuke a buffer zone 100 miles across between North Vietnam and everything of value, combined with nuclear attacks on all North Vietnamese cities, industrial capacity, military bases, etc. Infantry are much less relevant in a campaign of extermination, which is what virtually every war in 40k consists of. Killing civilians with WMD attacks on military targets is just a nice bonus, since you're going to kill all of the civilians anyway once you get done eliminating the military threat.

But the thing is past a certain point 40k no longer becomes logical. If that were the case there really wouldn't be a need for the Imperial guard, the Space Marines, or the Adeptas Sororitas as the imperial navy would just nuke everything from orbit.