None of that seems to be an issue for the vast majority of RPG's, CCG's, or some other wargames. Flames of War published new army lists/units/errata online all the time.

the only players I've seen ever complain about updates and erratas being done on something other than a glacial pace and online is 40k players...on internet forums.

Backfire wrote:

Doctor Optimal wrote:
If this were 1995, or even 2000 you would be right. But it's 2011 and most people (especially most younger players, the ones who can't recite the fluff backwards and forwards) are well acquainted with the idea of going to a website.

True. And last thing they do there, is to read lengthy stories from the screen.

1. Tough cookies for them if they don't bother to read the fluff. Why should I have to pay for 20 pages about the Horus Heresy in each new book I buy?
2. Unwillingness to read long-form-text from a screen is a generational thing (one I'm on the cusp of, I just can't get used to it...).

Vaktathi wrote:None of that seems to be an issue for the vast majority of RPG's, CCG's, or some other wargames. Flames of War published new army lists/units/errata online all the time.

Actually, everything changing all the time WAS what drove me from MtG. So yeah, I can say that it was a pretty serious issue for me. RPG's are not played competively, and most gaming groups simply houserule everything anyway so any kind of standarization is not an issue at all.

Vaktathi wrote:
the only players I've seen ever complain about updates and erratas being done on something other than a glacial pace and online is 40k players...on internet forums.

Ever played Descent...?

Vaktathi wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
Yeah. Have you read anything beyond the Codex?

Yes? Your point? What terribly contradicts the codices?

Not 'contradicts', but further explains. Training for the Guard isn't done overnight, nor is it done in a practical basis. It goes based off the need(as the Munitorum sees it) for specific things and if the world in question can provide it.

To go back to the Tanith example: the Imperial Governor, who was an off-worlder originally, praised the stealth and innate navigation abilities of the Tanith. The Munitorum, which was wanting to raise some Regiments from Tanith, provided the same organizational and equipment training to the Tanith as they would the Valhallans or the Catachans. The difference is that the Tanith already had the stealth and navigatory training.

Not actually true. Flak armor is also universal . The only real 'difference' is how the flak armor is represented. Valhallans' longcoat stuffed with flak plates is just a different 'pattern' than a Cadians' full on body armor.

Not even then. Some regiments don't even use it, many Catachan's and regiments from primitive worlds like Kanak. When Catachan's *had* their own rules, they had 6+sv's not the Flak 5+.

Catachans actually, if you'll recall correctly, were just described as eschewing the flak armor but instead wearing a jacket or vest packed with flak plates.
Kanak is a big who cares. They're mentioned once as an example of a 'barbarian' regiment using melee weapons and pistols and have yet to really be seen again.

Very few are the regiments entirely decked out in Carapace Armor or Cameloline. And both are usually specialist regiments formed for a specific purpose.

Which again, given the size of the Imperial Guard, means potentially many tens or hundreds of thousands of regiments consisting of billions of soldiers.

if we're talking about how individual SM chapters get their own books simply for how they field certain troops, that's more than enough difference right there.

Except we're not. We're talking about fully fleshed out backgrounds and a kind of 'history' for these Chapters and how they field certain troops which differentiates them from the rest of the Astartes.

Not my problem that the dev team can't follow through with their own design philosophy.
If, say, the Tanith were to be given a Codex--I'm sure no one would really object that much. If the Cadians were given a Codex of their own or the Elysians, etc were there'd be an uproar from the ill-informed masses.

So what? Are you going to tell me that the make-up of, say, a culture like the Mordians is different than the Cadians? They're both effectively worlds 'under siege' and breed that warrior mentality.
To think that 'sheer diversity of ancient cultures' won't necessarily breed multiple examples of the same thing is silly.

Certainly not any less so than the loyalist SM books. There could be more than enough between those two worlds to make a book at least as different as C:BA is from C:SM if one wanted to. Not hard to find RL examples of similar technology/industrial base/oppressive military states' armies with significant differences in how their armies work. Look at WW2 with the Red Army versus the Wehrmacht.

And let's look at the US today versus the UK or Germany.
Not really too much difference there.

And again:
Codex: Blood Angels could have been done far better to differentiate it from Codex: Space Marines. The writer and the supervising staff is at fault for that issue, not necessarily the fluff for the book or the playerbase.

Except that's BS when you come down to it. The training of the Guard is done by the Munitorum, but almost always are they trained first as those 'conscript horde regiments of many tens or hundreds of thousands of troops'. As time goes on, the regiment may receive more specialized training--or they received it to begin with because they were founded for a specific purpose.

No, It is the planetary Imperial Commander's responsibility to train and equip troops for the Munitorum to take and use. The Munitorum may provide additional training if required, or sometimes step in and directly do so in special cases, but it's typically the job of the whatever world they come from to train and equip them.

You do know that the "planetary Imperial Commander" is a representative of the Munitorum, right?

There are many examples of such varied regiments as the hundreds of thousands strong conscript horde. The current book talks about such units when describing the reasons for the variation between regiments.

And again: so what? The Raven Guard, Dark Angels, Scythes of the Emperor, and several other Chapters regularly field Battle-Brothers in Scout Armour for operations to decapitate enemy leadership. Does that mean Commanders, etc should have a Scout Armour and Sniper Rifle, along with the option for orbital strikes as Heavy Support?

Although, admittedly, that would give Dark Angels something "unique" to them in that they could feasibly field an all Scout force. Provided Scouts are moved from Elite.

You know, here's the biggest problem I have with that example.
The "Cadian standard" is actually far beyond what the Codex shows. You've got the Kasrkin, they Whiteshields, et all. They were done a grave injustice by not actually being presented in a proper format, and leading to this idea that Cadia is a 'cookie cutter' army.

The Kasrkin are Stormtroopers trained on Cadia from their ranks instead of through the Schola. Whiteshields are Conscripts/trainees. Not seeing what the problem is, besides the fact that both of those units aren't exactly great given their current rules.

Which actually shows that you know diddly regarding the fluff.
Kasrkin aren't "stormtroopers trained on Cadia". They're genetically augmented, decked out with gear the equivalent of Skittari(the first time 'Kasrkin' were mentioned, which was within the Eisenhorn books, they had full carapace armour that had built-in IFF transponders, full environmental gear, and hellguns with autosense locks preventing them from being used against the Kasrkin or anyone they tagged as 'friendly'), and are identified from the time that they're Whiteshields rather than just being the offspring of noble families or of slain Imperial officials. By the time Kasrkin are actually selected, they've been through combat and are full Guardsmen rather than simply children. Which brings me to Whiteshields...

Whiteshields are, simply put, leaps and bounds above of Conscripts/Trainees. They'd be, at least, on par with the 'standard' Guardsmen of most conscripted regiments. They're put into live fire exercises constantly, and are trained/taught by the Cadian troopers themselves.

It's never explicitly been stated, as far as I know. But it's always been a point that they make of "the Dark Angels, unlike many Chapters, can still field examples of Pre-Heresy technology such as large amounts of plasma weaponry".

Other than the blurb describing the Plasma Gun in the current DA book wargear section about often taking PG's from armory because of their firepower (not necessarily that this is any more or less so than other chapters), and the fact that with the Index Astartes they could swap a Lascannon for a Plasma Cannon in Tactical squads (before that was a widespread option for SM armies, and no explanation was given) I don't see much that really says much about a preference for plasma weapons in any DA codex or their Index Astartes article.

Again: it's never really explicitly stated within the Codices. The novels, etc built up that imagery.

However, like other Astartes Chapters...they do adapt as the situation necessitates.

The biggest problem with the idea that 'Guard could be broken into multiple codices' is simply that Guard are adaptable. They don't get to have the egos of the Astartes when it comes to being told what to do. A Light Infantry Regiment may be told to put on Carapace Armor and go man the trenches, while a Mechanized unit may be told to buck up and foot slog it.

So just because they can be ordered (and thus follow a chain of command and make use of that discipline) to do something else given the circumstances or commanders incapable of taking advantage of their properties, means that they shouldn't have rules where because the SM's won't follow such orders they *need* them?

If you're going to try to use fluff justifications for the Guard having multiple codices?
Then yes.

Could the Guard benefit from multiple codices? Sure.
Will it happen? Probably not.
Why? Because let's face it, unless the game itself is drastically altered, then Guard variants will ultimately filter back to the 'mechanized' variant.

To be honest; I feel its gotten to the point where it would be amazing to see Eldar/Necrons/Tau/Whatever become the next uberbroken list; as it will actually get more Xeno players for sure.

I'm getting sick of coming up reasons why my Inquisition would fight Space Marines.

Mr Hyena wrote:I'm getting sick of coming up reasons why my Inquisition would fight Space Marines.

Heresy is the only reason you need. And the only one to which no retort may be offered.

Kanluwen wrote:
Actually yes. All lasguns are the same. The 'Triplex pattern' was basically a joke. Every pattern of lasgun has 'variable fire settings'.

Wait, so, all lasguns are the same, even though there are different types of lasguns? I'm not debating that they don't accept the same power packs (I'm loathe to use Black Library books as canon, and am ignoring the instance in the Tanith series when they received powerpacks in the wrong size. But, nevertheless, how would troops equipped folding-stock lasguns or lascarbines fight differently than those with the full-sized lasguns? I'm betting the troops that want mobility and maneuverability will choose the lighter weapons. It probably wouldn't be enough to warrant representation in the game, though.

You're talking about Catachans in their little tiny Codex.

That was replaced when we saw the next IG book. And it's still not applicable in that regard.

Hey, you said that all Guard units are organized the same way. I brought up that the Catachans are not, but now its an invalid exception?

As for "organic armor or heavy artillery"--no. That's not how it works. The Krieg "Siege" regiments are one of the few that actively have artillery rolled within their organization. Most Regiments will have a complimentary Regiment founded at the same time that will commonly be fielded with them.

Rubbish, but it sounds like the sort of rubbish that Games Workshop, in its utter cluelessness about military affairs, would write.

Yeah...maybe you should try reading something other than simply the Codex before trying to call me wrong. Specifically: Imperial Armour 8 makes mention of the Raven Guard having to fight to get an entire regiment of Elysian Drop Troops for a surgical raid that could decapitate the potential warmaking ability of a Waagh!. In the end, they had to essentially 'trade' the services of the Raven Guard for the Elysians.

Interservice rivalries are interservice rivalries. They are not Imperial deployment doctrine. Also, commanders are notoriously concerned with keeping their assets, and if you ask ANY commander for one of his units, he will most likely kick and scream. Now, while I haven't read IA8, I have the feeling that the reason that the issue was an Imperial army commander not wanting to give up a regiment to another army, or possibly a stubborn Administratum puke who didn't want to change his Holy Paperwork or whatever that stated who the Elysian regiment belonged to. I'd place my money on the former, though; I know for a FACT I would hold out to get markers with a Space Marines chapter.

The Armageddon Ork Fighters were an example of a rare exception. Was the entire Steel Legion dropping down into the jungle?
No?
Huh. How about that. Rare exception.
And once again: Catachan Codex is inapplicable.

Sure, the Armageddon Ork Fighters are an exception. However, how many other worlds have self-taught Ork jungle hunters? Barring that, again, the Catachan codex stated multiple worlds that produce Jungle Fighters. Oh, and it doesn't matter that the Catachan codex was superseded by the Doctrine Guard Codex. Rulewise, absolutely, but we're not talking about rules. We're talking about fluff, and the main place to get Catachan fluff is...the Catachan codex.

"Units of jungle fighters or light infantry" are considered specialist regiments. They're deployed piecemeal to the front as needed, not all at once.

They are indeed considered specialist regiments. However, they are NOT deployed piecemeal as distinct units-of-action. There is not a single place in the Guard codex where it addresses anything at the platoon or company level (aside from hero fluff; if I'm wrong, please point it out.); any mention of a unit is about the regiment as a whole, not a fragment of a company. Space Marines are deployed piecemeal, in their Companies. There's something in one of the IA books about an Elysian "detachment", but I did not care. I looked at it, saw it was some sort of a foil to 'nids, and moved on.

Now, SOME Guard units are attached to other Guard units. However, in my readings, these are specifically armored, mechanized, or artillery detachments to bolster units that do not have them. This, however, does not preclude units from having their own organic armor, mech, or artillery. It also does not preclude arty, armored, or mech units from being concentrated and used en masse.

However, by and large, Guard units, specialists included, are deployed in regimental groups. If we trust the Black Library books, ALL OF THEM feature a Guard unit, in many cases they are specialists (there's a Catachan book, a Tallaran book, and an Armored book, oh, and that brown-water-navy book) that are deployed as a single regiment.

Summary: Attack and Raid are not the same thing, and experience in one unit type will not necessarily translate well to another, because units operate in different manners.

Good thing I said nothing whatsoever about that huh?
The 'basic' Guard regiment is the Cadian example--which is what the Imperial Guard Codex represents. It's made up of hardened line infantry, who

Kanluwen wrote:
Not 'contradicts', but further explains. Training for the Guard isn't done overnight, nor is it done in a practical basis. It goes based off the need(as the Munitorum sees it) for specific things and if the world in question can provide it.

To go back to the Tanith example: the Imperial Governor, who was an off-worlder originally, praised the stealth and innate navigation abilities of the Tanith. The Munitorum, which was wanting to raise some Regiments from Tanith, provided the same organizational and equipment training to the Tanith as they would the Valhallans or the Catachans. The difference is that the Tanith already had the stealth and navigatory training.

Ok, but it still doesn't mean that they are trained and equipped and organized in the same way as the Mordian 217th, Cadian 42nd, Tallarn 9th or the Krieg 953rd, etc.

Catachans actually, if you'll recall correctly, were just described as eschewing the flak armor but instead wearing a jacket or vest packed with flak plates.
Kanak is a big who cares. They're mentioned once as an example of a 'barbarian' regiment using melee weapons and pistols and have yet to really be seen again.

Kanak is an example of many barbarian troops. Again it just goes to show that very few things are universal.

Except we're not. We're talking about fully fleshed out backgrounds and a kind of 'history' for these Chapters and how they field certain troops which differentiates them from the rest of the Astartes.

Which, in general, is honestly rather little, and could easily be done to *every* other faction.

And let's look at the US today versus the UK or Germany.
Not really too much difference there.

Look at NATO vs Russia then.

And again:
Codex: Blood Angels could have been done far better to differentiate it from Codex: Space Marines. The writer and the supervising staff is at fault for that issue, not necessarily the fluff for the book or the playerbase.

And yet is *way* more differentiated than its ever been, and still isn't all that different.

You do know that the "planetary Imperial Commander" is a representative of the Munitorum, right?

Only insofar as he's also a representative of the Administratum and other Imperial factions.

And again: so what? The Raven Guard, Dark Angels, Scythes of the Emperor, and several other Chapters regularly field Battle-Brothers in Scout Armour for operations to decapitate enemy leadership. Does that mean Commanders, etc should have a Scout Armour and Sniper Rifle, along with the option for orbital strikes as Heavy Support?

No, nor does it mean there really should be multiple IG books or SM books.

Which actually shows that you know diddly regarding the fluff.

I like how anytime you disagree with someone you whip this out, despite not exactly being correct in many of your arguments. You repeatedly take tiny inferences or BL sources to totally override years and decades of established original GW fluff. Thanks.

Kasrkin aren't "stormtroopers trained on Cadia". They're genetically augmented, decked out with gear the equivalent of Skittari(the first time 'Kasrkin' were mentioned, which was within the Eisenhorn books, they had full carapace armour that had built-in IFF transponders, full environmental gear, and hellguns with autosense locks preventing them from being used against the Kasrkin or anyone they tagged as 'friendly'), and are identified from the time that they're Whiteshields rather than just being the offspring of noble families or of slain Imperial officials. By the time Kasrkin are actually selected, they've been through combat and are full Guardsmen rather than simply children. Which brings me to Whiteshields...

So we've got a couple paragraphs in Eisenhorn that means I don't know anything about fluff apparently. I don't have the books in front of me, and haven't read them in years, however they were created as Cadian Stormtroopers game-wise and have always been portrayed as such. It's also not like Stormtroopers don't go through most/all of that or more and don't have identical equipment. Aside from the bit about genetic engineering, it sounds just like normal Stormtroopers.

Whiteshields are, simply put, leaps and bounds above of Conscripts/Trainees. They'd be, at least, on par with the 'standard' Guardsmen of most conscripted regiments. They're put into live fire exercises constantly, and are trained/taught by the Cadian troopers themselves.

Where is this coming from?

White Shields have always been the premier representation of Conscripts since Conscripts were introduced in 3E. In fact I can't recall a WD, codex, Chapter Approved, etc where conscripts were *ever* represented by anything *but* white shields.

Again: it's never really explicitly stated within the Codices. The novels, etc built up that imagery.

So, I don't know diddly about fluff, but stuff that is never stated, only vaguely implied at best is totally what the Unforgiven are about?

If you're going to try to use fluff justifications for the Guard having multiple codices?
Then yes.

That's a rather poor fluff justification, and could again still be easily applied to the Space Marines, or are they so hidebound, prideful, stupid and egotistical that they can't change roles as the situation demands of psycho-indoctrinated genetically engineered super soldiers whose lives are built on discipline and combat adaptiveness?

Could the Guard benefit from multiple codices? Sure.
Will it happen? Probably not.
Why? Because let's face it, unless the game itself is drastically altered, then Guard variants will ultimately filter back to the 'mechanized' variant.

Nobody is arguing for multiple IG books. Only using IG to show why a *need* for multiple loyalist marine books is silly.

Kanluwen wrote:
And let's look at the US today versus the UK or Germany.
Not really too much difference there.

I had to stop reading the post that cropped up when I was responding to your post responding to me when I read this.

OF COURSE there will be very little doctrinal difference between the US, UK, and German armies. They're all NATO forces.

Lets compare a NATO force to, oh, say....the Chinese. Or, I believe, to any country that employs/d the Soviet model. Its quite different. Unless, "guys with guns, tanks, and artillery" means "its all the same."

*sigh*

Or, if you want, a specific US division, such as the 101st, 82nd, 24th Mech, 10th Mountain, to a Chinese or Iranian division.

Edit: Ninja'd by Vak. His post, BTW, compliments mine nicely.

Edit2: I'm curious, though. How is a unit of Guard who rely on masses of bodies, attrition, and abundant heavy artillery fight the same as another unit of guardsmen who fly around the battlefield in skimmers, when all that makes the Blue Space Marines different from the Green Space Marines is the organization of...what, one, maybe two of their 10 Companies?

Mr Hyena wrote:To be honest; I feel its gotten to the point where it would be amazing to see Eldar/Necrons/Tau/Whatever become the next uberbroken list; as it will actually get more Xeno players for sure.

I'm getting sick of coming up reasons why my Inquisition would fight Space Marines.

Haven't Space Wolves and Inquisition actually engaged in open war? I think it was in SW codex. And BA of course are under scrutiny and some of their successors chapters have already been declared renegade. Clearly they are on their way to Heresy and pre-emptive actions are best...

Backfire wrote:

Mr Hyena wrote:To be honest; I feel its gotten to the point where it would be amazing to see Eldar/Necrons/Tau/Whatever become the next uberbroken list; as it will actually get more Xeno players for sure.

I'm getting sick of coming up reasons why my Inquisition would fight Space Marines.

Haven't Space Wolves and Inquisition actually engaged in open war? I think it was in SW codex. And BA of course are under scrutiny and some of their successors chapters have already been declared renegade. Clearly they are on their way to Heresy and pre-emptive actions are best...

Spess Mehreenz should have literally been purged after the Heresy. Not even kidding. They're ticking timebombs and their political independence from the Imperium make them a liability to it.

Ogiwan wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
Actually yes. All lasguns are the same. The 'Triplex pattern' was basically a joke. Every pattern of lasgun has 'variable fire settings'.

Wait, so, all lasguns are the same, even though there are different types of lasguns? I'm not debating that they don't accept the same power packs (I'm loathe to use Black Library books as canon, and am ignoring the instance in the Tanith series when they received powerpacks in the wrong size. But, nevertheless, how would troops equipped folding-stock lasguns or lascarbines fight differently than those with the full-sized lasguns? I'm betting the troops that want mobility and maneuverability will choose the lighter weapons. It probably wouldn't be enough to warrant representation in the game, though.

Folding-stock lasguns/lascarbines are mainly issued to mechanized troops. In-game terms they really wouldn't do anything--maybe a few of them would pack higher energy capacity cells, etc. But that's where the 'hotshot' cells were supposed to be implemented, and prior to Cruddace they'd been moving away from 'stormtroopers=hotshot lasguns' and more towards 'hellguns' being their own unique piece of equipment.

You're talking about Catachans in their little tiny Codex.

That was replaced when we saw the next IG book. And it's still not applicable in that regard.

Hey, you said that all Guard units are organized the same way. I brought up that the Catachans are not, but now its an invalid exception?

Their fluff's been altered since then, which is why I say it's 'invalid'. You'll also note that I didn't say it's an 'exception' and that I've constantly mentioned 'Specialist Regiments'...
Anyways: Catachans have a minor divergence in terms of their organization, but not enough to really make them worth an entirely new Codex.

Especially not with how the Codex is organized now, don't you think?
Catachans were really always just 'veterans who fight well in jungles'. Hardened Veteran options work well here.

As for "organic armor or heavy artillery"--no. That's not how it works. The Krieg "Siege" regiments are one of the few that actively have artillery rolled within their organization. Most Regiments will have a complimentary Regiment founded at the same time that will commonly be fielded with them.

Rubbish, but it sounds like the sort of rubbish that Games Workshop, in its utter cluelessness about military affairs, would write.

I hate to say it but: so what? This isn't meant to be 'real life' or you wouldn't have people swinging swords at each other while using jetpacks.
Simply put, the Imperial Guard at large isn't meant to operate like a modern day force. They're meant to operate as a meatshield for the Imperium. It's reflected in their overall training, equipment, etc.

Yeah...maybe you should try reading something other than simply the Codex before trying to call me wrong. Specifically: Imperial Armour 8 makes mention of the Raven Guard having to fight to get an entire regiment of Elysian Drop Troops for a surgical raid that could decapitate the potential warmaking ability of a Waagh!. In the end, they had to essentially 'trade' the services of the Raven Guard for the Elysians.

Interservice rivalries are interservice rivalries. They are not Imperial deployment doctrine. Also, commanders are notoriously concerned with keeping their assets, and if you ask ANY commander for one of his units, he will most likely kick and scream. Now, while I haven't read IA8, I have the feeling that the reason that the issue was an Imperial army commander not wanting to give up a regiment to another army, or possibly a stubborn Administratum puke who didn't want to change his Holy Paperwork or whatever that stated who the Elysian regiment belonged to. I'd place my money on the former, though; I know for a FACT I would hold out to get markers with a Space Marines chapter.

Actually, it was the Ecclesiarchy pressuring the Munitorum. They wanted the 181st Elysian to be operated as line infantry, and had the backing of Inquisitors to go with their temper-tantrum.

And if there wasn't a Shrine World in the mix, the request would have been granted simply because when an Astartes says 'Give me X Guard Regiment and I'll decapitate this entire Waagh' they're usually met with 'Do you want Y and Z Regiments too?'.

The Armageddon Ork Fighters were an example of a rare exception. Was the entire Steel Legion dropping down into the jungle?
No?
Huh. How about that. Rare exception.
And once again: Catachan Codex is inapplicable.

Sure, the Armageddon Ork Fighters are an exception. However, how many other worlds have self-taught Ork jungle hunters? Barring that, again, the Catachan codex stated multiple worlds that produce Jungle Fighters. Oh, and it doesn't matter that the Catachan codex was superseded by the Doctrine Guard Codex. Rulewise, absolutely, but we're not talking about rules. We're talking about fluff, and the main place to get Catachan fluff is...the Catachan codex.

Actually, there's other places to get Catachan fluff. Like the three characters, a few novels, etc...

Catachan Codex is out of print and completely irrelevant to this discussion . So stop bringing it up.

"Units of jungle fighters or light infantry" are considered specialist regiments. They're deployed piecemeal to the front as needed, not all at once.

They are indeed considered specialist regiments. However, they are NOT deployed piecemeal as distinct units-of-action. There is not a single place in the Guard codex where it addresses anything at the platoon or company level (aside from hero fluff; if I'm wrong, please point it out.); any mention of a unit is about the regiment as a whole, not a fragment of a company. Space Marines are deployed piecemeal, in their Companies. There's something in one of the IA books about an Elysian "detachment", but I did not care. I looked at it, saw it was some sort of a foil to 'nids, and moved on.

Detachment 99 is a bit of an oddity in that it's an Inquisitorial asset, not a standard Guard asset.

However, I didn't say it was 'at the platoon or company level'. You mostly see it in terms of Veteran units like...what's that? Stormtrooper regiments? Ogryn regiments?

Now, SOME Guard units are attached to other Guard units. However, in my readings, these are specifically armored, mechanized, or artillery detachments to bolster units that do not have them. This, however, does not preclude units from having their own organic armor, mech, or artillery. It also does not preclude arty, armored, or mech units from being concentrated and used en masse.

Actually, it does. At most, you'll see Chimeras and maybe Sentinels within a Mechanized Regiment's purview. However, sometimes even Sentinels are fielded as their own Regiment and divvied up.
Armour is split up, as is artillery. The reason, as flimsy as it may be, is simply so that if a Guard infantry commander goes renegade--he doesn't take an armoured company with him.

However, by and large, Guard units, specialists included, are deployed in regimental groups. If we trust the Black Library books, ALL OF THEM feature a Guard unit, in many cases they are specialists (there's a Catachan book, a Tallarn book, and an Armored book, oh, and that brown-water-navy book) that are deployed as a single regiment.

The 'armored book' actually had the armored unit deployed as an attachment to a mechanized regiment.

Summary: Attack and Raid are not the same thing, and experience in one unit type will not necessarily translate well to another, because units operate in different manners.

Good thing I said nothing whatsoever about that huh?
The 'basic' Guard regiment is the Cadian example--which is what the Imperial Guard Codex represents. It's made up of hardened line infantry, who

It really did end that abruptly. I had to go back and check the original post.

You are missing my point. Your position is that all Guard units function similar. My story shows how two types of units that at a quick glance are somewhat similar are, in fact, drastically different.

Backfire wrote:

VoidAngel wrote:
You wait to put in totally new units until the next full release (edition of the game). Alternatively, you publish the rules for the unit on the web or *gasp* put them in the box.

And whadda ya know, this is what FW does, and majority of the playerbase ignores it.

VoidAngel wrote:
So, if you know you are going down to your FLGS this weekend, how hard is it to consult the website beforehand? *shrug*

Right, I consult the website, seeing that Land Raider Achilles is now legal for all Marine lists, so I have to put in more anti-tank, except that the latest update changed the points costs, so I have to refigure it all again. No thank you.

So, what I am hearing is, you're lazy - and you think everyone else is, too.

As for Forgeworld, I've never seen or played someone that refused a game because of alternate models or rules. You just don't spring it on them. "Surprise! I'm fielding a titan!" That would be the only possible scenario in which you'd get a refusal. Most people love to see that stuff.

Mr Hyena wrote:To be honest; I feel its gotten to the point where it would be amazing to see Eldar/Necrons/Tau/Whatever become the next uberbroken list; as it will actually get more Xeno players for sure.

I'm getting sick of coming up reasons why my Inquisition would fight Space Marines.

I honestly don't know about that (creation of more xenos players). DE seems capable of some real powerhouse builds, but I only know two 'new' players picking up the codex.

Guys, guys, GUYS. Please take the IG fluff-war to an appropriate thread. That isn't what this thread is about.

Thanks!

VoidAngel wrote:
So, what I am hearing is, you're lazy - and you think everyone else is, too.

It's a fact of life. People are lazy, and they will whine if things are not presented to them on silver platter, on a format which is simple and easy to digest. They don't want to gather information on small pieces.

VoidAngel wrote:
As for Forgeworld, I've never seen or played someone that refused a game because of alternate models or rules. You just don't spring it on them. "Surprise! I'm fielding a titan!" That would be the only possible scenario in which you'd get a refusal. Most people love to see that stuff.

The point is rather that very few people actually buy or use them, despite them being easily available on, you know, Internets.

Kanluwen wrote:

Now, SOME Guard units are attached to other Guard units. However, in my readings, these are specifically armored, mechanized, or artillery detachments to bolster units that do not have them. This, however, does not preclude units from having their own organic armor, mech, or artillery. It also does not preclude arty, armored, or mech units from being concentrated and used en masse.

Actually, it does. At most, you'll see Chimeras and maybe Sentinels within a Mechanized Regiment's purview. However, sometimes even Sentinels are fielded as their own Regiment and divvied up.
Armour is split up, as is artillery. The reason, as flimsy as it may be, is simply so that if a Guard infantry commander goes renegade--he doesn't take an armoured company with him.

You still get armored regiments deployed as whole armored regiments, not given away piecemeal to other regiments. Within one theatre of action you might occasionally have them deployed on a company level or as individual pieces, supporting the infantry regiments present, but they're still deployed to that theatre on a regimental level.

And no, my position is not that 'all Guard units function similar'. My position is 'all the major Guard archetypes can feasibly be represented by the Codex'. The Elysians, Krieg, etc are a rarity within the Imperium at large.

And "these space marines like plasma weapons but not psykers, and these field a slightly above average number of terminators" can't be represented by a single codex even better than Guard can? Guard have the most justification to get multiple codices, that's not necessarily to say that they have enough justification (even though they have more than enough to at least have each broad archetype covered by its own codex). Space Marines, in contrast, don't have even that.

Backfire wrote:

VoidAngel wrote:
So, what I am hearing is, you're lazy - and you think everyone else is, too.

It's a fact of life. People are lazy, and they will whine if things are not presented to them on silver platter, on a format which is simple and easy to digest. They don't want to gather information on small pieces.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I can't argue with that...but in that case, I'd just shrug and ask if they wanted to play anyway. It's a game, I'm fine with alternate/previous rules.

VoidAngel wrote:
As for Forgeworld, I've never seen or played someone that refused a game because of alternate models or rules. You just don't spring it on them. "Surprise! I'm fielding a titan!" That would be the only possible scenario in which you'd get a refusal. Most people love to see that stuff.

The point is rather that very few people actually buy or use them, despite them being easily available on, you know, Internets.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>That's because the stuff is priced like it's made of freaking uranium, and the quality is for shiite. Oh, and then you pay shipping that would buy you a whole other GW kit...

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Now, SOME Guard units are attached to other Guard units. However, in my readings, these are specifically armored, mechanized, or artillery detachments to bolster units that do not have them. This, however, does not preclude units from having their own organic armor, mech, or artillery. It also does not preclude arty, armored, or mech units from being concentrated and used en masse.

Actually, it does. At most, you'll see Chimeras and maybe Sentinels within a Mechanized Regiment's purview. However, sometimes even Sentinels are fielded as their own Regiment and divvied up.
Armour is split up, as is artillery. The reason, as flimsy as it may be, is simply so that if a Guard infantry commander goes renegade--he doesn't take an armoured company with him.

You still get armored regiments deployed as whole armored regiments, not given away piecemeal to other regiments. Within one theatre of action you might occasionally have them deployed on a company level or as individual pieces, supporting the infantry regiments present, but they're still deployed to that theatre on a regimental level.

Yes, within an entire theater of action.
40k does not represent that. Apocalypse does a better job representing it, but even then it really represents a larger 'chunk' of battlelines than the rest does.

40k, at best, represents a "small-scale skirmish". Regimental deployment is beyond the scope of 40k. At best, we're seeing a Company fielded. Not the entire Regiment.

And no, my position is not that 'all Guard units function similar'. My position is 'all the major Guard archetypes can feasibly be represented by the Codex'. The Elysians, Krieg, etc are a rarity within the Imperium at large.

And "these space marines like plasma weapons but not psykers, and these field a slightly above average number of terminators" can't be represented by a single codex even better than Guard can?

Could it? Probably. But that doesn't mean it will be represented well. Look at the Chaos Marines book or the Daemon book.

Guard have the most justification to get multiple codices, that's not necessarily to say that they have enough justification (even though they have more than enough to at least have each broad archetype covered by its own codex). Space Marines, in contrast, don't have even that.

And again: they really don't have the 'most justification'. Not without the game framework itself being radically altered.

Kanluwen wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Now, SOME Guard units are attached to other Guard units. However, in my readings, these are specifically armored, mechanized, or artillery detachments to bolster units that do not have them. This, however, does not preclude units from having their own organic armor, mech, or artillery. It also does not preclude arty, armored, or mech units from being concentrated and used en masse.

Actually, it does. At most, you'll see Chimeras and maybe Sentinels within a Mechanized Regiment's purview. However, sometimes even Sentinels are fielded as their own Regiment and divvied up.
Armour is split up, as is artillery. The reason, as flimsy as it may be, is simply so that if a Guard infantry commander goes renegade--he doesn't take an armoured company with him.

You still get armored regiments deployed as whole armored regiments, not given away piecemeal to other regiments. Within one theatre of action you might occasionally have them deployed on a company level or as individual pieces, supporting the infantry regiments present, but they're still deployed to that theatre on a regimental level.

Yes, within an entire theater of action.
40k does not represent that. Apocalypse does a better job representing it, but even then it really represents a larger 'chunk' of battlelines than the rest does.

40k, at best, represents a "small-scale skirmish". Regimental deployment is beyond the scope of 40k. At best, we're seeing a Company fielded. Not the entire Regiment.

Right. Which has exactly nothing to do with organization and deployment in fluff terms. Which is what you were talking about.

And no, my position is not that 'all Guard units function similar'. My position is 'all the major Guard archetypes can feasibly be represented by the Codex'. The Elysians, Krieg, etc are a rarity within the Imperium at large.

And "these space marines like plasma weapons but not psykers, and these field a slightly above average number of terminators" can't be represented by a single codex even better than Guard can?

Could it? Probably. But that doesn't mean it will be represented well. Look at the Chaos Marines book or the Daemon book.

Guard have the most justification to get multiple codices, that's not necessarily to say that they have enough justification (even though they have more than enough to at least have each broad archetype covered by its own codex). Space Marines, in contrast, don't have even that.

And again: they really don't have the 'most justification'. Not without the game framework itself being radically altered.

So the legions of trillions of humans from every conceivable culture, with examples that embody every military paradigm that has ever been used and then some, have less justification to have multiple codices covering broad categories of said paradigms than the tiny handful of mutants with identical equipment, who all follow a single ten thousand year old paradigm, and see deviating from that paradigm as heresy, with the differences between their chapters amounting to trivial variations in which of the pieces of equipment they all use they slightly prefer using above all the other equipment they also still use anyways?

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Now, SOME Guard units are attached to other Guard units. However, in my readings, these are specifically armored, mechanized, or artillery detachments to bolster units that do not have them. This, however, does not preclude units from having their own organic armor, mech, or artillery. It also does not preclude arty, armored, or mech units from being concentrated and used en masse.

Actually, it does. At most, you'll see Chimeras and maybe Sentinels within a Mechanized Regiment's purview. However, sometimes even Sentinels are fielded as their own Regiment and divvied up.
Armour is split up, as is artillery. The reason, as flimsy as it may be, is simply so that if a Guard infantry commander goes renegade--he doesn't take an armoured company with him.

You still get armored regiments deployed as whole armored regiments, not given away piecemeal to other regiments. Within one theatre of action you might occasionally have them deployed on a company level or as individual pieces, supporting the infantry regiments present, but they're still deployed to that theatre on a regimental level.

Yes, within an entire theater of action.
40k does not represent that. Apocalypse does a better job representing it, but even then it really represents a larger 'chunk' of battlelines than the rest does.

40k, at best, represents a "small-scale skirmish". Regimental deployment is beyond the scope of 40k. At best, we're seeing a Company fielded. Not the entire Regiment.

Right. Which has exactly nothing to do with organization and deployment in fluff terms. Which is what you were talking about.

Actually, it does. Because armoured regiments aren't committed to skirmishes 'en masse'. A few squadrons are diverted, maybe a platoon if the footsloggers are really lucky.

The same issue crops up with armies like the Elysian Drop Troops(D-99 excepted); who are really a 'broad picture' kind of army that would be deployed across an entire front not one specific part.

And no, my position is not that 'all Guard units function similar'. My position is 'all the major Guard archetypes can feasibly be represented by the Codex'. The Elysians, Krieg, etc are a rarity within the Imperium at large.

And "these space marines like plasma weapons but not psykers, and these field a slightly above average number of terminators" can't be represented by a single codex even better than Guard can?

Could it? Probably. But that doesn't mean it will be represented well. Look at the Chaos Marines book or the Daemon book.

Guard have the most justification to get multiple codices, that's not necessarily to say that they have enough justification (even though they have more than enough to at least have each broad archetype covered by its own codex). Space Marines, in contrast, don't have even that.

And again: they really don't have the 'most justification'. Not without the game framework itself being radically altered.

So the legions of trillions of humans from every conceivable culture, with examples that embody every military paradigm that has ever been used and then some, have less justification to have multiple codices covering broad categories of said paradigms than the tiny handful of mutants with identical equipment, who all follow a single ten thousand year old paradigm, and see deviating from that paradigm as heresy, with the differences between their chapters amounting to trivial variations in which of the pieces of equipment they all use they slightly prefer using above all the other equipment they also still use anyways?

Lets face it, it's pretty silly to be arguing that half a dozen small fighting bands that specialize is shock assault, ranging in size from a battallion to a brigade/regiment in modern terms, sharing 95% of the same units & wargear, **NEED** their own books apparently to be played correctly and fluffily, apparently way more than the **millions** of divisional sized fighting groups from a huge array of cultures, organizations, technology levels and training standards that hail from hundreds of thousands of different worlds and engage in every aspect of planetary based warfare imagineable.

Vaktathi wrote:Lets face it, it's pretty silly to be arguing that half a dozen small fighting bands that specialize is shock assault, ranging in size from a battallion to a brigade/regiment in modern terms, sharing 95% of the same units & wargear, **NEED** their own books apparently to be played correctly and fluffily, apparently way more than the **millions** of divisional sized fighting groups from a huge array of cultures, organizations, technology levels and training standards that hail from hundreds of thousands of different worlds and engage in every aspect of planetary based warfare imaginable.

And again, you're assuming that every one of those cultures, organizations, and technology levels are represented.
And quite frankly, that assumption is ridiculous. Many worlds contribute in such a way that they will never actively be deployed en masse, but will instead be broken up and deployed as necessary. The Tallarn, in most cases, are not deployed 'en masse'. But they are deployed in enough strength that they can operate by themselves and they usually will have some form of specialized support(such as the Mukaali Riders or modified Sentinels for operating in the desert) operating alongside them.

As for training standards: they all have a basic training regimen set forth by the Munitorum. Anything more is learned along the way or learned as necessitated by the Munitorum.

In regards to the Marines:
If they're actually written in a good enough manner in terms of the fluff and gameplay, you'd see a far better quality of game when it comes to the Marines and how they're played.

But let's face it: neither of those are likely to happen. Nor will the other thing that would necessitate 'balancing' the number of Marine codices which, simply put, is people actually playing armies for fluff reasons rather than playing for competitive reasons.

Kilkrazy wrote:The SM players would have to play with themselves.

(Apologies to Mr Meatballs, I just couldn't resist, and you didn't actually say it)
---
I've never quite understood the complaint that the number of space marine players betrays the fluff behind the army. Why should the number of player correspond to the number of the race in the fluff? Hell, if we really wanted the two numbers to correlate, everyone would play Orks and IG. The States would get two Daemon players, a Necron player, a few Eldar/Dark Eldar players, a handful of Chaos Players who could play once a year, and a contingent of fifty Tyranid players who all stuck together and moved around the country.

Kanluwen wrote:Actually, it does. Because armoured regiments aren't committed to skirmishes 'en masse'. A few squadrons are diverted, maybe a platoon if the footsloggers are really lucky.

Except fluffwise, the kind of bizarre isolated skirmishes between almost perfectly balanced forces that make up the tabletop game would be pretty rare. An artillery regiment would always be fielded together, well behind the front lines (as in, several rooms behind the table the game takes place on), while an armored regiment would operate at the lowest on a company level (which is... nine Leman Russes or three Baneblades, isn't it? I can't recall the specifics there). But this is really ignoring the actual debate, as the difference between regiments isn't "this one likes to use more terminators Leman Russes in its first company, and this one like to use scouts ratlings in its second company", it's "these regiments are trained to operate in jungles, and these are mechanized infantry (the APCs used by a regiment being part of that regiment), and these operate with only light ground vehicles and gunship support, etc".

The same issue crops up with armies like the Elysian Drop Troops(D-99 excepted); who are really a 'broad picture' kind of army that would be deployed across an entire front not one specific part.

Isn't the whole point of the Elysians that they're deployed from the air, with gunship support? So anywhere they show up, they're showing up because the only/most convenient way in was aerial deployment, which precludes non-elysian units from also showing up in that engagement.

1) Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Iron Hands, Raven Guard, etc do not 'follow a single ten thousand year old paradigm' in the sense that you're meaning. Nor do they consider their deviations as heresy. So that part is wrong.
The 'differences between their chapters' are not necessarily as simple as which piece of equipment they all use.

The Raven Guard, for example, field their Scouts in a way that is different than how the Iron Hands or the Ultramarines would field them, while the Dark Angels will use their Devastator Squads in a way that is not necessarily the same as how the Salamanders would. There's a lot more fluffwise going on, but again the issue is tabletop representation.
You can't very well have a 'balanced' game where a Raven Guard player has already assassinated the enemy commander before the battle even begins or the Dark Angels have kidnapped a member of the Fallen from within the midst of an enemy army and fled before the rest of the Imperium comes crashing down on that enemy army.

That's not a compelling refutation of "the only differences are a chapter slightly favoring one of the things that every chapter uses, but not to the exclusion of all the other things that they also all use."

2) The 'legions of trillions of humans from every conceivable culture' do not necessarily exist in such a way that they are all drawn upon for Imperial Guard regiments. Many worlds cannot contribute enough for a full Founding of the Imperial Guard, but instead contribute in production of arms, serve as a training ground for the Guard, etc.

Kanluwen wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:Lets face it, it's pretty silly to be arguing that half a dozen small fighting bands that specialize is shock assault, ranging in size from a battallion to a brigade/regiment in modern terms, sharing 95% of the same units & wargear, **NEED** their own books apparently to be played correctly and fluffily, apparently way more than the **millions** of divisional sized fighting groups from a huge array of cultures, organizations, technology levels and training standards that hail from hundreds of thousands of different worlds and engage in every aspect of planetary based warfare imaginable.

And again, you're assuming that every one of those cultures, organizations, and technology levels are represented.
And quite frankly, that assumption is ridiculous. Many worlds contribute in such a way that they will never actively be deployed en masse, but will instead be broken up and deployed as necessary. The Tallarn, in most cases, are not deployed 'en masse'. But they are deployed in enough strength that they can operate by themselves and they usually will have some form of specialized support(such as the Mukaali Riders or modified Sentinels for operating in the desert) operating alongside them.

As for training standards: they all have a basic training regimen set forth by the Munitorum. Anything more is learned along the way or learned as necessitated by the Munitorum.

They're recruited entirely from the local PDF, a locally trained and equipped force. Every world that maintains its own military force is obligated to regularly provide something on the order of the top ten percent of it (the codex says annually and no less than 10%, but that's a bit unworkable (so every year the PDF is increased by at least 10%, plus enough to replace those killed in training accidents or who reach retirement age, and can actually handle training and supplying all these troops?) and doesn't really mesh well with the fluff), and considering a regiment is generally placed in the low thousands of soldiers (regiments numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands are allegedly found, but that's another "really? they don't bother keeping them at reasonable logistical levels, and just fielding a few dozen of them?" sort of thing) I have a hard time seeing many planets being unable to provide at least one regiment.

In regards to the Marines:
If they're actually written in a good enough manner in terms of the fluff and gameplay, you'd see a far better quality of game when it comes to the Marines and how they're played.

But let's face it: neither of those are likely to happen. Nor will the other thing that would necessitate 'balancing' the number of Marine codices which, simply put, is people actually playing armies for fluff reasons rather than playing for competitive reasons.

There is absolutely no good reason for the smallest, most insignificant faction in the galaxy to make up fully half of all the codices. It could all be done with a single codex, with a handful of global variation rules. It's ridiculous that there are, I am willing to bet, many more Space Marine models than there are Space Marines in the fluff. There are less than one million of them at any point, and the differences between chapters is much, much less than the difference between even two very similar Guard regiments. So naturally they get a half dozen superfluous codices on top of the main one (which contains enough special rules to tailor it to several specific chapters already), while the Guard get a single one that entirely lacks any variant rules aside from a couple of special characters with extremely limited effects, and every other codex lacks even that.

Oh give it a rest already. You're playing the wrong game. Sell your models and buy some more magic cards or something. Jeeeebus, anyone that complains about Space Marines THIS much in THIS game is...just not playing with a full deck of cards. No pun intended.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Actually, it does. Because armoured regiments aren't committed to skirmishes 'en masse'. A few squadrons are diverted, maybe a platoon if the footsloggers are really lucky.

Except fluffwise, the kind of bizarre isolated skirmishes between almost perfectly balanced forces that make up the tabletop game would be pretty rare. An artillery regiment would always be fielded together, well behind the front lines (as in, several rooms behind the table the game takes place on), while an armored regiment would operate at the lowest on a company level (which is... nine Leman Russes or three Baneblades, isn't it? I can't recall the specifics there). But this is really ignoring the actual debate, as the difference between regiments isn't "this one likes to use more terminators Leman Russes in its first company, and this one like to use scouts ratlings in its second company", it's "these regiments are trained to operate in jungles, and these are mechanized infantry (the APCs used by a regiment being part of that regiment), and these operate with only light ground vehicles and gunship support, etc".

Artillery Regiments are usually fielded alongside Armour Regiments.

And by the way: Your Ratlings/Leman Russ example doesn't really work. Ratlings are abhuman auxiliaries which are assigned to most regiments as support staff, not combat staff.

The same issue crops up with armies like the Elysian Drop Troops(D-99 excepted); who are really a 'broad picture' kind of army that would be deployed across an entire front not one specific part.

Isn't the whole point of the Elysians that they're deployed from the air, with gunship support? So anywhere they show up, they're showing up because the only/most convenient way in was aerial deployment, which precludes non-elysian units from also showing up in that engagement.

The whole point of the Elysians is that they're airmobile. They can operate like archetypical 'airborne' forces in that they can deploy by grav-chute.

They're also, much like the aforementioned airmobile/airborne forces, used as a 'vanguard' force to take and hold objectives while the main force then breaks through to relieve and secure them.

1) Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Iron Hands, Raven Guard, etc do not 'follow a single ten thousand year old paradigm' in the sense that you're meaning. Nor do they consider their deviations as heresy. So that part is wrong.
The 'differences between their chapters' are not necessarily as simple as which piece of equipment they all use.

The Raven Guard, for example, field their Scouts in a way that is different than how the Iron Hands or the Ultramarines would field them, while the Dark Angels will use their Devastator Squads in a way that is not necessarily the same as how the Salamanders would. There's a lot more fluffwise going on, but again the issue is tabletop representation.
You can't very well have a 'balanced' game where a Raven Guard player has already assassinated the enemy commander before the battle even begins or the Dark Angels have kidnapped a member of the Fallen from within the midst of an enemy army and fled before the rest of the Imperium comes crashing down on that enemy army.

That's not a compelling refutation of "the only differences are a chapter slightly favoring one of the things that every chapter uses, but not to the exclusion of all the other things that they also all use."

Not sure what you really want as a 'compelling refutation'.

2) The 'legions of trillions of humans from every conceivable culture' do not necessarily exist in such a way that they are all drawn upon for Imperial Guard regiments. Many worlds cannot contribute enough for a full Founding of the Imperial Guard, but instead contribute in production of arms, serve as a training ground for the Guard, etc.

Kanluwen wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:Lets face it, it's pretty silly to be arguing that half a dozen small fighting bands that specialize is shock assault, ranging in size from a battallion to a brigade/regiment in modern terms, sharing 95% of the same units & wargear, **NEED** their own books apparently to be played correctly and fluffily, apparently way more than the **millions** of divisional sized fighting groups from a huge array of cultures, organizations, technology levels and training standards that hail from hundreds of thousands of different worlds and engage in every aspect of planetary based warfare imaginable.

And again, you're assuming that every one of those cultures, organizations, and technology levels are represented.
And quite frankly, that assumption is ridiculous. Many worlds contribute in such a way that they will never actively be deployed en masse, but will instead be broken up and deployed as necessary. The Tallarn, in most cases, are not deployed 'en masse'. But they are deployed in enough strength that they can operate by themselves and they usually will have some form of specialized support(such as the Mukaali Riders or modified Sentinels for operating in the desert) operating alongside them.

As for training standards: they all have a basic training regimen set forth by the Munitorum. Anything more is learned along the way or learned as necessitated by the Munitorum.

They're recruited entirely from the local PDF, a locally trained and equipped force. Every world that maintains its own military force is obligated to regularly provide something on the order of the top ten percent of it (the codex says annually and no less than 10%, but that's a bit unworkable (so every year the PDF is increased by at least 10%, plus enough to replace those killed in training accidents or who reach retirement age, and can actually handle training and supplying all these troops?) and doesn't really mesh well with the fluff), and considering a regiment is generally placed in the low thousands of soldiers (regiments numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands are allegedly found, but that's another "really? they don't bother keeping them at reasonable logistical levels, and just fielding a few dozen of them?" sort of thing) I have a hard time seeing many planets being unable to provide at least one regiment.

This is actually wrong. Guard Regiments are founded separately from the PDF, for the most part. That 'top 10 percent' of the PDF? They will likely make it in as NCOs or commissioned officers depending on their experience levels.

In regards to the Marines:
If they're actually written in a good enough manner in terms of the fluff and gameplay, you'd see a far better quality of game when it comes to the Marines and how they're played.

But let's face it: neither of those are likely to happen. Nor will the other thing that would necessitate 'balancing' the number of Marine codices which, simply put, is people actually playing armies for fluff reasons rather than playing for competitive reasons.

There is absolutely no good reason for the smallest, most insignificant faction in the galaxy to make up fully half of all the codices. It could all be done with a single codex, with a handful of global variation rules. It's ridiculous that there are, I am willing to bet, many more Space Marine models than there are Space Marines in the fluff. There are less than one million of them at any point, and the differences between chapters is much, much less than the difference between even two very similar Guard regiments. So naturally they get a half dozen superfluous codices on top of the main one (which contains enough special rules to tailor it to several specific chapters already), while the Guard get a single one that entirely lacks any variant rules aside from a couple of special characters with extremely limited effects, and every other codex lacks even that.

And you're actually missing something important.

While the Imperial Guard is scattered throughout the galaxy and occasionally withdrawn from rotation to be replenished, rearmed, etc--- the Astartes are constantly at war. They don't need to rest, they don't 'muster out' like Guardsmen, and they don't know anything besides war. When it comes to the Astartes representation in warzones--it will actually be higher than Guard when it comes to the time spent active.

That said, there is always that 1 kid who is extremely dedicated to painting his models to a high quality, have great manners, is very mature, started with Tau or some other underpowered Xenos faction and plays with stoic dignity against cheese Blood Angels. That kid is a prodigy, going against the grain, that kid is a hero. 1 in a hundred (the rest decided to start 40k with space marines) REMEMBER THIS KID. He should be praised.

This is actually wrong. Guard Regiments are founded separately from the PDF, for the most part. That 'top 10 percent' of the PDF? They will likely make it in as NCOs or commissioned officers depending on their experience levels.

From C:IG 3.5E "When a tithe is taken as troops, it soldiers will be recruited in the same way the Planetary Defence Forces are recruited, Sometimes the regiments raised will be identical, the tithe being drawn from the PDF". Top 10% could mean the top performers in training or physical fitness or war games results or any number of other things.

I remember the 10% of the PDF thing, just can't remember from where exactly.

While the Imperial Guard is scattered throughout the galaxy and occasionally withdrawn from rotation to be replenished, rearmed, etc--- the Astartes are constantly at war

Not all, the codecies and BL books are replete with examples of Regiments being raised and re-fielded until destruction. In fact the codecies say that they almost never are demobilized and sent home. The Astartes also are not everywhere by any means, and where they are they are generally *very* few in number, they are far more scattered than the IG is.

That said, the Space Marines are a non-entity in the greater 40k strategic view. They represent the tiniest fraction of the forces available in the tiny fraction of the Imperiums conflicts that they enter. Even a company of SM's needs rest and refit, if for nothing else than ammunition, repairs, and medical care. They spend a *lot* of time in Travel, a *lot* of time training, and often they spend quite a bit of time on their homeworld doing various things (preparing for campaigns, learning, administrating, training, etc).

They aren't in the thick of battle all day every day, that's pure fantasy.


However, even assuming you are right and the IG take a ton of time off and the SM's spend practically all their time fighting, lets look at this numbers wise and see what's by far the more important factor.

The IG codex states there are billions of IG regiments.

Assuming an IG regiment size of 5000 troops (lowball given that the Cadian 8th that is presented as a typical organization is 8,000) and plural "billions" to mean just *2* billion, we get about 10,000,000,000,000 Guardsmen (Ten Trillion)

That means 10,000,000 (ten million) guardsmen for each Space Marine.

Even if we take the SM's oft quoted 10 or a Dozen normal troops for every Marine (assuming this is a straight up man for man exchange ratio and not already taking into account greater SM mobility and command capability that we see on the table is closer to 3-4 normal troops for 1 SM), using the latter number of 12, if doing a straight up comparision between the entirety of the Astartes and the entirety of the IG in terms of fighting strength and galactic relevance, the IG could sustain losses in excess of ten, a hundred, a thousand, or even ten thousand times that ratio (assuming they sustain casualties all out of whack with even SM fluff due to apparently incomparable SM strategic genius and SM mobility) with each Space Marine slaying 120,000 guardsmen (each SM killing 25 regiments of Imperial Guardsmen), and still wipe out the Space Marines with almost no realistic decrease in fighting strength. (120,000,000,000-120 Billion IG casualties, about 1.25% of the Imperial Guard's manpower using the numbers above).

Even minimizing the IG's strength given the available numbers (using the minimum value of "billions" and barebones sized regiments) and grossly overexaggerating the SM's strenghts out of all proportion even by Mat Ward's standards, looking at the numbers the SM's simply are a non-factor.


Using the newest C:SM ratio of 12 for 1 (again assuming this isn't already taking into account force multipliers, although It makes more sense within the actual tabletop game if it does) against a more typical realistic 8,000 strong IG regiment, the entirety of the Adeptus Astartes 1,000 Chapters is equal to about 1,500 Imperial Guard regiments, or about 0.000075% of IG fighting strength (which by itself is the tiniest small fraction of simple yearly recruitment variation) assuming only *2* billion regiments). If you want to include Astartes fleet and the tens of thouands of chapter serfs in each chapter needed to crew SM vessels and other functions, in any realistic comparison at this level the IN will become involved (while the IN and IG are different forces, they are both part of the Munitorum and united under *its* command) as well unless you assume everything takes on a world where all these IG regiments just apparently simply happen to exist in a vacuum.

By the ratios given in the SM codex's (10/12 for 1) the entirety of the Astartes would have failed retaking Vraks, as the IG took 17 million in simply casualties while taking back the planet, with SM's unwilling even to commit at the beginning and only engaging for extremely limited amounts of time and very specified objectives due to the extensiveness of the orbital defense network and ground fortifications.


The SM fluff as a result sorta stops working on several levels when looked at i this light. On the one hand, they are portrayed as being worth 10-12 normal human troops by the codex fluff when it directly addresses that issue (not sure if this already takes into account force multipliers like speed and mass deep strike ability, which would make it fit closer to how the game plays). This ratio would make it so that the entirety of the Adeptus Astartes would likely have perished had it been only SM's fighting the relative sideshow of the Siege of Vraks (and using those numbers, it makes an Astartes Chapter worth about 2-3 IG Regiments, or in other words a completely negligible proportion of the Imperium's military might).

In this light, it's hard to take the SM's seriously as a galactically powerful force, rather than as mythical warriors whose legend means more than their actual actions.

Hey, guys, the stop the IG hate thread is over that way ==>

We're here to complain about SPESS MUHREENS

Kanluwen wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Actually, it does. Because armoured regiments aren't committed to skirmishes 'en masse'. A few squadrons are diverted, maybe a platoon if the footsloggers are really lucky.

Except fluffwise, the kind of bizarre isolated skirmishes between almost perfectly balanced forces that make up the tabletop game would be pretty rare. An artillery regiment would always be fielded together, well behind the front lines (as in, several rooms behind the table the game takes place on), while an armored regiment would operate at the lowest on a company level (which is... nine Leman Russes or three Baneblades, isn't it? I can't recall the specifics there). But this is really ignoring the actual debate, as the difference between regiments isn't "this one likes to use more terminators Leman Russes in its first company, and this one like to use scouts ratlings in its second company", it's "these regiments are trained to operate in jungles, and these are mechanized infantry (the APCs used by a regiment being part of that regiment), and these operate with only light ground vehicles and gunship support, etc".

Artillery Regiments are usually fielded alongside Armour Regiments.

Artillery sits many miles behind the front lines. Armor rolls over the front lines. They might both be present in a single theatre, but they wouldn't be deployed next to each other.

And by the way: Your Ratlings/Leman Russ example doesn't really work. Ratlings are abhuman auxiliaries which are assigned to most regiments as support staff, not combat staff.

That's completely missing the point. I was ridiculing the idea that "this chapter likes terminators more, and this chapter likes scouts!" is a bigger difference than "all these regiments follow radically different paradigms, and are equipped and trained to operate in radically different conditions."

The same issue crops up with armies like the Elysian Drop Troops(D-99 excepted); who are really a 'broad picture' kind of army that would be deployed across an entire front not one specific part.

Isn't the whole point of the Elysians that they're deployed from the air, with gunship support? So anywhere they show up, they're showing up because the only/most convenient way in was aerial deployment, which precludes non-elysian units from also showing up in that engagement.

The whole point of the Elysians is that they're airmobile. They can operate like archetypical 'airborne' forces in that they can deploy by grav-chute.

They're also, much like the aforementioned airmobile/airborne forces, used as a 'vanguard' force to take and hold objectives while the main force then breaks through to relieve and secure them.

Right, which considering the skirmish level of the game, which you yourself repeatedly pointed out in talking about just this, means you'd only see an entirely Elysian force in the game, as they are far ahead of the rest of the forces (who are maybe a few tables behind you by that point, if not further away), and by the time the rest showed up the skirmish would have been resolved. You wouldn't have a single platoon air dropped a hundred meters from a friendly tank column, because it's pointless: you already have heavier troops there, you don't need to put a handful of light paratroopers next to them.

2) The 'legions of trillions of humans from every conceivable culture' do not necessarily exist in such a way that they are all drawn upon for Imperial Guard regiments. Many worlds cannot contribute enough for a full Founding of the Imperial Guard, but instead contribute in production of arms, serve as a training ground for the Guard, etc.

Kanluwen wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:Lets face it, it's pretty silly to be arguing that half a dozen small fighting bands that specialize is shock assault, ranging in size from a battallion to a brigade/regiment in modern terms, sharing 95% of the same units & wargear, **NEED** their own books apparently to be played correctly and fluffily, apparently way more than the **millions** of divisional sized fighting groups from a huge array of cultures, organizations, technology levels and training standards that hail from hundreds of thousands of different worlds and engage in every aspect of planetary based warfare imaginable.

And again, you're assuming that every one of those cultures, organizations, and technology levels are represented.
And quite frankly, that assumption is ridiculous. Many worlds contribute in such a way that they will never actively be deployed en masse, but will instead be broken up and deployed as necessary. The Tallarn, in most cases, are not deployed 'en masse'. But they are deployed in enough strength that they can operate by themselves and they usually will have some form of specialized support(such as the Mukaali Riders or modified Sentinels for operating in the desert) operating alongside them.

As for training standards: they all have a basic training regimen set forth by the Munitorum. Anything more is learned along the way or learned as necessitated by the Munitorum.

They're recruited entirely from the local PDF, a locally trained and equipped force. Every world that maintains its own military force is obligated to regularly provide something on the order of the top ten percent of it (the codex says annually and no less than 10%, but that's a bit unworkable (so every year the PDF is increased by at least 10%, plus enough to replace those killed in training accidents or who reach retirement age, and can actually handle training and supplying all these troops?) and doesn't really mesh well with the fluff), and considering a regiment is generally placed in the low thousands of soldiers (regiments numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands are allegedly found, but that's another "really? they don't bother keeping them at reasonable logistical levels, and just fielding a few dozen of them?" sort of thing) I have a hard time seeing many planets being unable to provide at least one regiment.

This is actually wrong. Guard Regiments are founded separately from the PDF, for the most part. That 'top 10 percent' of the PDF? They will likely make it in as NCOs or commissioned officers depending on their experience levels.

Page 8 of the Guard codex. To paraphrase, "Planets are obligated to maintain a local military (a PDF), so that the Imperium doesn't have to come running to their aid every time an ork sneezes in their general direction. They're also obligated to provide at least the top ten percent of this local military force when tithed for recruits."

In regards to the Marines:
If they're actually written in a good enough manner in terms of the fluff and gameplay, you'd see a far better quality of game when it comes to the Marines and how they're played.

But let's face it: neither of those are likely to happen. Nor will the other thing that would necessitate 'balancing' the number of Marine codices which, simply put, is people actually playing armies for fluff reasons rather than playing for competitive reasons.

There is absolutely no good reason for the smallest, most insignificant faction in the galaxy to make up fully half of all the codices. It could all be done with a single codex, with a handful of global variation rules. It's ridiculous that there are, I am willing to bet, many more Space Marine models than there are Space Marines in the fluff. There are less than one million of them at any point, and the differences between chapters is much, much less than the difference between even two very similar Guard regiments. So naturally they get a half dozen superfluous codices on top of the main one (which contains enough special rules to tailor it to several specific chapters already), while the Guard get a single one that entirely lacks any variant rules aside from a couple of special characters with extremely limited effects, and every other codex lacks even that.

And you're actually missing something important.

While the Imperial Guard is scattered throughout the galaxy and occasionally withdrawn from rotation to be replenished, rearmed, etc--- the Astartes are constantly at war. They don't need to rest, they don't 'muster out' like Guardsmen, and they don't know anything besides war. When it comes to the Astartes representation in warzones--it will actually be higher than Guard when it comes to the time spent active.

They're outnumbered by the Guard millions to one at the very least. There are fewer Space Marines than there are Imperial planets. There are fewer Space Marines than there are titans. Their alleged accomplishments contradict the already absurd abilities they canonically have (each one is the match for a dozen real humans, that's why ten of them can take a planet! ), and the "best" of it reads like a bad Mary Sue fanfic written by a child.

SumYungGui wrote:Hey, guys, the stop the IG hate thread is over that way ==>

We're here to complain about SPESS MUHREENS

That's about people complaining about the pro-mech metagame. This about fluff.

SumYungGui wrote:Hey, guys, the stop the IG hate thread is over that way ==>

We're here to complain about SPESS MUHREENS

Granted. However, I think Vak's above post and statements calling the Space Marines, "a non-entity in the greater 40k strategic view" and Sir Pseudonymous' catagorization of them as, "the smallest, most insignificant faction in the galaxy" are dead on the money.

Incidentally, Vak, I did my own, extremely conservative calculations on the Guard, and I came up with something like 70,000 Guardsmen per Space Marine being inducted every year, and that was with one Regiment being Founded on a world every 20 years, from the top 10% of a world that's less militarized (and populated) than Earth is today. Oh, and also figured it with half of the worlds of the Imperium tithing in material, rather than manpower.

Nevertheless, back to Vak and Sir P's comments, I agree. If the Space Marines vanished, the Imperium would just need to raise extra units of Drop Troops. If the Imperial Guard vanished, the Imperium would fall.

Edit: Sir P got another post in when I was writing the above, so all I can say is, "damn straight, Sir P!"

Edit2: I also just realized that Kan's "example" of the limited employment of specialist troops......involves some Emperor-bothering idiot. Religion will screw up anything, and all it does for your "example" is sabotage it.

Nevertheless, i have two offers for you, Kal. If you want, i can dig up some ToO&E for the various kinds of US Army infantry units at the company level, and you'll see how their equipment, and thus their tactics, will differ. I may even be able to find FMs that detail how the tactics are different. I bring this up because I ask you if the US Army can have multiple different unit types that fight in different way, but all come from the same war-fighting culture (American), then how can the Imperial Guard, which comes from millions of different war-fighting cultures, not have these different types of units that fight in different ways?

The second offer is that if you want, I can go into the First Gulf War, and how all the different types of units fought there. I offer this because its obvious that you don't really get how the capabilities of units impact their employment on the battlefield. I chose the First Gulf War because I did my thesis on it, and am most familiar with it. Somebody else is more than welcome to do World War II, though. Or the Korean War; the match-up between Chinese and North Korean light infantry against UN/US firepower-heavy infantry is actually interesting.

1. Walls of text make Frazzled cry, and weiner legions antsy...for Dachshundskrieg!
2. Modquisition on. Lets keep it polite people-Kanluwen included. Keep it polite and stick to arguing the points in a non abusive manner. Thank you citizen!

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Artillery sits many miles behind the front lines. Armor rolls over the front lines. They might both be present in a single theatre, but they wouldn't be deployed next to each other.

Where did I say they're 'deployed next to each other'?
I didn't. So please, read better.

When it comes to organization, armoured regiments are deployed alongside artillery regiments. Does that mean they go to battle together? No. But the armoured regiments are usually going to have artillery attached to them when necessary.

And by the way: Your Ratlings/Leman Russ example doesn't really work. Ratlings are abhuman auxiliaries which are assigned to most regiments as support staff, not combat staff.

That's completely missing the point. I was ridiculing the idea that "this chapter likes terminators more, and this chapter likes scouts!" is a bigger difference than "all these regiments follow radically different paradigms, and are equipped and trained to operate in radically different conditions".

It's a stupid point to begin with, since you're trying to argue that it's a "big difference".
Leman Russes are not part of the command structure of a standard or even a mechanized Guard Regiment. Armour support and artillery support is drawn up and attached as necessary.
Ratlings just plain should not considered as combat troops, since they're the bloody cooks of the regiment.

And when it comes down to it: "This Chapter fields more Terminators" is a bigger difference than "all these regiments follow radically different paradigms"(which isn't true to begin with) or "and are equipped and trained to operate in radically different conditions"(which again, isn't true. Troops are equipped and trained to operate in the environments they're being sent to. Very rarely are they ever actually used in a manner that they're really experienced in, except for a few notable cases which we've already gone over time and time again).
Why? Because the "Chapter fielding more Terminators" is going to have radically different operational and organizational methods when compared to a Chapter like the Ultramarines which fields Terminators in smaller numbers as a rule of thumb. That Chapter which "likes Scouts" is again, going to have radically different operational and organizational methods when compared to a Chapter like the Space Wolves, whose Scouts operate outside of the chain of command and are pretty much used as saboteurs behind the front lines.

The same issue crops up with armies like the Elysian Drop Troops(D-99 excepted); who are really a 'broad picture' kind of army that would be deployed across an entire front not one specific part.

Isn't the whole point of the Elysians that they're deployed from the air, with gunship support? So anywhere they show up, they're showing up because the only/most convenient way in was aerial deployment, which precludes non-elysian units from also showing up in that engagement.

The whole point of the Elysians is that they're airmobile. They can operate like archetypical 'airborne' forces in that they can deploy by grav-chute.

They're also, much like the aforementioned airmobile/airborne forces, used as a 'vanguard' force to take and hold objectives while the main force then breaks through to relieve and secure them.

Right, which considering the skirmish level of the game, which you yourself repeatedly pointed out in talking about just this, means you'd only see an entirely Elysian force in the game, as they are far ahead of the rest of the forces (who are maybe a few tables behind you by that point, if not further away), and by the time the rest showed up the skirmish would have been resolved. You wouldn't have a single platoon air dropped a hundred meters from a friendly tank column, because it's pointless: you already have heavier troops there, you don't need to put a handful of light paratroopers next to them.

What is your obsession with "airdrops"? Get over the idea of Elysians as "paratroopers".

That's not how the Elysians operate in most campaigns unless a mission specifically dictates that they operate that way. And for those missions, they actually don carapace armor and generally will drop Veteran Squads rather than just standard Infantry Platoons.
But, for the most part they operate like a modern military force with helicopter support does: using their transports as a means to get to, and then further take and hold set objectives, while relying on the aircraft for fire support due to having a smaller amount of heavy weapons at their immediate disposal.

2) The 'legions of trillions of humans from every conceivable culture' do not necessarily exist in such a way that they are all drawn upon for Imperial Guard regiments. Many worlds cannot contribute enough for a full Founding of the Imperial Guard, but instead contribute in production of arms, serve as a training ground for the Guard, etc.

Kanluwen wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:Lets face it, it's pretty silly to be arguing that half a dozen small fighting bands that specialize is shock assault, ranging in size from a battallion to a brigade/regiment in modern terms, sharing 95% of the same units & wargear, **NEED** their own books apparently to be played correctly and fluffily, apparently way more than the **millions** of divisional sized fighting groups from a huge array of cultures, organizations, technology levels and training standards that hail from hundreds of thousands of different worlds and engage in every aspect of planetary based warfare imaginable.

And again, you're assuming that every one of those cultures, organizations, and technology levels are represented.
And quite frankly, that assumption is ridiculous. Many worlds contribute in such a way that they will never actively be deployed en masse, but will instead be broken up and deployed as necessary. The Tallarn, in most cases, are not deployed 'en masse'. But they are deployed in enough strength that they can operate by themselves and they usually will have some form of specialized support(such as the Mukaali Riders or modified Sentinels for operating in the desert) operating alongside them.

As for training standards: they all have a basic training regimen set forth by the Munitorum. Anything more is learned along the way or learned as necessitated by the Munitorum.

They're recruited entirely from the local PDF, a locally trained and equipped force. Every world that maintains its own military force is obligated to regularly provide something on the order of the top ten percent of it (the codex says annually and no less than 10%, but that's a bit unworkable (so every year the PDF is increased by at least 10%, plus enough to replace those killed in training accidents or who reach retirement age, and can actually handle training and supplying all these troops?) and doesn't really mesh well with the fluff), and considering a regiment is generally placed in the low thousands of soldiers (regiments numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands are allegedly found, but that's another "really? they don't bother keeping them at reasonable logistical levels, and just fielding a few dozen of them?" sort of thing) I have a hard time seeing many planets being unable to provide at least one regiment.

This is actually wrong. Guard Regiments are founded separately from the PDF, for the most part. That 'top 10 percent' of the PDF? They will likely make it in as NCOs or commissioned officers depending on their experience levels.

Page 8 of the Guard codex. To paraphrase,"Planets are obligated to maintain a local military (a PDF), so that the Imperium doesn't have to come running to their aid every time an ork sneezes in their general direction. They're also obligated to provide at least the top ten percent of this local military force when tithed for recruits."

So find examples of Cadian PDF. Go on, I'll wait.

But you won't find them. You know why?
Because many planets do not have PDF, instead having Guard Regiments that are kept on the homeworld if the planet is deemed significant enough strategically.

In regards to the Marines:
If they're actually written in a good enough manner in terms of the fluff and gameplay, you'd see a far better quality of game when it comes to the Marines and how they're played.

But let's face it: neither of those are likely to happen. Nor will the other thing that would necessitate 'balancing' the number of Marine codices which, simply put, is people actually playing armies for fluff reasons rather than playing for competitive reasons.

There is absolutely no good reason for the smallest, most insignificant faction in the galaxy to make up fully half of all the codices. It could all be done with a single codex, with a handful of global variation rules. It's ridiculous that there are, I am willing to bet, many more Space Marine models than there are Space Marines in the fluff. There are less than one million of them at any point, and the differences between chapters is much, much less than the difference between even two very similar Guard regiments. So naturally they get a half dozen superfluous codices on top of the main one (which contains enough special rules to tailor it to several specific chapters already), while the Guard get a single one that entirely lacks any variant rules aside from a couple of special characters with extremely limited effects, and every other codex lacks even that.

And you're actually missing something important.

While the Imperial Guard is scattered throughout the galaxy and occasionally withdrawn from rotation to be replenished, rearmed, etc--- the Astartes are constantly at war. They don't need to rest, they don't 'muster out' like Guardsmen, and they don't know anything besides war. When it comes to the Astartes representation in warzones--it will actually be higher than Guard when it comes to the time spent active.

They're outnumbered by the Guard millions to one at the very least. There are fewer Space Marines than there are Imperial planets. There are fewer Space Marines than there are titans. Their alleged accomplishments contradict the already absurd abilities they canonically have (each one is the match for a dozen real humans, that's why ten of them can take a planet! ), and the "best" of it reads like a bad Mary Sue fanfic written by a child.

Then you're quite clearly not actually reading the "best" of it.

You're reading authors like C.S. Goto, not pieces like "The Purging of Kadillus" by Gav Thorpe.

And there are not "fewer Space Marines than there are Titans". There are hundreds of thousands of Titans, counting all the various classes of Titans(from Warhound to Emperor class). A few classes of those Titans, it may be true that there's fewer Space Marines than there are Titans.

But again, just like the Marines...Titans are going to be constantly deployed to warzones not held in reserve.
Add to it that Marines are their own effective chain of command, in most cases employing their forces and tactics as they see fit, not as some hidebound Lord General wants them to--and you get an effective, diverse force.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:1. Walls of text make Frazzled cry, and weiner legions antsy...for Dachshundskrieg!
2. Modquisition on. Lets keep it polite people-Kanluwen included. Keep it polite and stick to arguing the points in a non abusive manner. Thank you citizen!

I'm being polite!

You know, it'd actually be pretty cool if GW only released models in proportion to fluff. Most people would end up having to buy 'nids, Orks and IG, yeah, but then those that really, really want to play Space Marines or Eldar/Dark or Chaos would probably be paying through the nose to get those models, they could be more powerful per point, and it'd be a big, BIG deal if one of those players showed up. 40k would still be played easily enough by those who enjoy it just for the game, you'd get crazy variations in some of the armies (oh, and by the way, it'd be Awesome if all the Nid players traveled in a group) and 40k would become not just a little game or fancy hobby, but in some ways a mark of prestige, if you had one of the limited run models. And when Chaos appears on the battlefield, well, people'd actually start panicking.

Modquisition on. Evidently we are hard of hearing.
Warnings have now been given. The next step is suspensions. Statements like "stupid" are actionable.

Kanluwen wrote:
Ratlings just plain should not considered as combat troops, since they're the bloody cooks of the regiment.

They fire guns in combat situations. How are they not combat troops again?

And when it comes down to it: "This Chapter fields more Terminators" is a bigger difference than "all these regiments follow radically different paradigms"(which isn't true to begin with) or "and are equipped and trained to operate in radically different conditions"(which again, isn't true. Troops are equipped and trained to operate in the environments they're being sent to. Very rarely are they ever actually used in a manner that they're really experienced in, except for a few notable cases which we've already gone over time and time again).
Why? Because the "Chapter fielding more Terminators" is going to have radically different operational and organizational methods when compared to a Chapter like the Ultramarines which fields Terminators in smaller numbers as a rule of thumb. That Chapter which "likes Scouts" is again, going to have radically different operational and organizational methods when compared to a Chapter like the Space Wolves, whose Scouts operate outside of the chain of command and are pretty much used as saboteurs behind the front lines.

Um.....If "We use more Terminators" is massively different from "we like scouts," how is "We drown the enemy in bodies" somehow the same as, "We outmaneuver our enemies by virtue of our IFVs and weight of fire"?

And quite frankly, that assumption is ridiculous. Many worlds contribute in such a way that they will never actively be deployed en masse, but will instead be broken up and deployed as necessary. The Tallarn, in most cases, are not deployed 'en masse'. But they are deployed in enough strength that they can operate by themselves and they usually will have some form of specialized support(such as the Mukaali Riders or modified Sentinels for operating in the desert) operating alongside them.

Um. Cite, please? In the 'dex, on page 17, Battlegroup "Desert Fox" is composed of THREE, count it, THREE, Tallaran regiments. If three Tallaran regiments are amalgated, that kinda infers that Tallaran regiments are deployed as distinct units of action. Furthermore, if we trust Black Library stuff, one of the Ciaphus Cain books features a Tallaran regiment. Last, the Imperial Guard 'dex makes mention of multiple Catachan regiments that fight as a distinct unit of action.

So, I think its safe to say that your perception of the deployment of specialists is....problematic. If not wrong.

So find examples of Cadian PDF. Go on, I'll wait.

Easy. The Cadians that stay on Cadia. The ones who go off Cadia are Guard regiments. The ones who stay on it are PDF.

But you won't find them. You know why?
Because many planets do not have PDF, instead having Guard Regiments that are kept on the homeworld if the planet is deemed significant enough strategically.

Wrong. "All of the million worlds of the Imperium shall look to their own defence [sic]. They shall also look to the defence [sic] of the Imperium, and to the prosecution of such wars as the Emperor in his wisdom shall decree, according to such requirements as shall be imposed by the Administratum. To this end each populated planet shall rise and maintain forces for its defence [sic] and, from its ranks, shall it provide the best of its troops for recruitment into the largest of the Imperium's armies - the Imperial Guard." Codex: Imperial Guard, "Introit to the Codex Exercitus, incorporating the Amalathian Oath. Emphasis mine, of course.

Then you're quite clearly not actually reading the "best" of it.

You're reading authors like C.S. Goto, not pieces like "The Purging of Kadillus" by Gav Thorpe.

Who's CS Goto? Oh, he's written....crap I don't care about. Hell, I don't particularly care about Gav Thorpe's books on the Space Marines.

I'm curious. Have you read any Guard books? At all? I'll admit, I haven't read any Space Marines books. Except for one of the Soul Drinkers books, which was absolute drivel. I don't see how any of the other Mary, Mark, or Morgoth Sue chapters will be any different.

edit: As for why we are all being so contentious, Frazzled, its because of Rule Three Eighty-Six: http://xkcd.com/386/

edit2: Kal, I will promise to read though the Dark Angels 'dex the next time I'm at my FLGS hanging around. I mean, they're Green Power Armored Freaks and all, but I'll do it. Just for you.

Kanluwen wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Artillery sits many miles behind the front lines. Armor rolls over the front lines. They might both be present in a single theatre, but they wouldn't be deployed next to each other.

Where did I say they're 'deployed next to each other'?
I didn't. So please, read better.

When it comes to organization, armoured regiments are deployed alongside artillery regiments. Does that mean they go to battle together? No. But the armoured regiments are usually going to have artillery attached to them when necessary.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here. "Of course they won't be fielded next to each other, they'll just be attached to them"?

And by the way: Your Ratlings/Leman Russ example doesn't really work. Ratlings are abhuman auxiliaries which are assigned to most regiments as support staff, not combat staff.

That's completely missing the point. I was ridiculing the idea that "this chapter likes terminators more, and this chapter likes scouts!" is a bigger difference than "all these regiments follow radically different paradigms, and are equipped and trained to operate in radically different conditions".

It's a stupid point to begin with, since you're trying to argue that it's a "big difference".
Leman Russes are not part of the command structure of a standard or even a mechanized Guard Regiment. Armour support and artillery support is drawn up and attached as necessary.
Ratlings just plain should not considered as combat troops, since they're the bloody cooks of the regiment.

Right, it was meant to *mock* the differences between Space Marine chapters. Which means it was intentionally ridiculous.

And when it comes down to it: "This Chapter fields more Terminators" is a bigger difference than "all these regiments follow radically different paradigms"(which isn't true to begin with) or "and are equipped and trained to operate in radically different conditions"(which again, isn't true. Troops are equipped and trained to operate in the environments they're being sent to. Very rarely are they ever actually used in a manner that they're really experienced in, except for a few notable cases which we've already gone over time and time again).
Why? Because the "Chapter fielding more Terminators" is going to have radically different operational and organizational methods when compared to a Chapter like the Ultramarines which fields Terminators in smaller numbers as a rule of thumb. That Chapter which "likes Scouts" is again, going to have radically different operational and organizational methods when compared to a Chapter like the Space Wolves, whose Scouts operate outside of the chain of command and are pretty much used as saboteurs behind the front lines.

The difference between a Space Marine in power armor and a Space Marine in terminator armor is less than the difference between a guardsman in flak and a guardsman in carapace, except the terminator suit cost more to build than a baneblade, if the comparative numbers are anything to go by.

What is your obsession with "airdrops"? Get over the idea of Elysians as "paratroopers".

That's not how the Elysians operate in most campaigns unless a mission specifically dictates that they operate that way. And for those missions, they actually don carapace armor and generally will drop Veteran Squads rather than just standard Infantry Platoons.
But, for the most part they operate like a modern military force with helicopter support does: using their transports as a means to get to, and then further take and hold set objectives, while relying on the aircraft for fire support due to having a smaller amount of heavy weapons at their immediate disposal.

Which really has nothing to do with my argument. They're more mobile, with lighter ground support and a greater variety of gunships and air transports. They're still not getting put next to a tank column, because that defeats the entire purpose of their added mobility.

So find examples of Cadian PDF. Go on, I'll wait.

But you won't find them. You know why?
Because many planets do not have PDF, instead having Guard Regiments that are kept on the homeworld if the planet is deemed significant enough strategically.

Page 8. Imperial Guard Codex. The column directly next to what I paraphrased, "On the Chaos-plagued world of Cadia every man, woman and, child is expected to serve in the Cadian Defense Force and, by extension, the Imperial Guard." Return to the start of the page for "Every Imperial Commander ... is responsible for the defense of their world. This is crucial as a planet may need to defend itself ... for many months, or even years, before reinforcements arrive. To this end, they are duty bound to recruit, equip, train and maintain a fighting force."

Then you're quite clearly not actually reading the "best" of it.

You're reading authors like C.S. Goto, not pieces like "The Purging of Kadillus" by Gav Thorpe.

The only CS Goto I've ever read was something about Eldar, and after reading only the first page the unadulterated terrible compelled me to stop. Pretty much the same situation I run into when trying to read the Space Marine codex. The sickening mary sue tone of it all makes me gag until I close it again.

Ok, perhaps I shouldn't have said "the best of it reads like a Mary Sue fanfic written by a child," just "most of it." The best manages to reach the "peak" of low-grade sci-fi fare.

And there are not "fewer Space Marines than there are Titans". There are hundreds of thousands of Titans, counting all the various classes of Titans(from Warhound to Emperor class). A few classes of those Titans, it may be true that there's fewer Space Marines than there are Titans.
But again, just like the Marines...Titans are going to be constantly deployed to warzones not held in reserve.

The point is to illustrate that Space Marines are individually rarer than the giant "God-Machines", the smallest of which packs more firepower than an entire company of marines, if not an entire chapter.

Also, the vast majority of the Titan legions just sit on forgeworlds. Something like half of them are on Mars alone.

Add to it that Marines are their own effective chain of command, in most cases employing their forces and tactics as they see fit, not as some hidebound Lord General wants them to--and you get an effective, diverse force.

The Space Marines still see a rhino with a slightly different gun, that's been around for thousands of years, as dangerously new and untested. That's not "diverse and flexible," that's "set in the ways they've followed for ten thousand years."

Anvildude wrote:You know, it'd actually be pretty cool if GW only released models in proportion to fluff. Most people would end up having to buy 'nids, Orks and IG, yeah, but then those that really, really want to play Space Marines or Eldar/Dark or Chaos would probably be paying through the nose to get those models, they could be more powerful per point, and it'd be a big, BIG deal if one of those players showed up. 40k would still be played easily enough by those who enjoy it just for the game, you'd get crazy variations in some of the armies (oh, and by the way, it'd be Awesome if all the Nid players traveled in a group) and 40k would become not just a little game or fancy hobby, but in some ways a mark of prestige, if you had one of the limited run models. And when Chaos appears on the battlefield, well, people'd actually start panicking.

Dark Eldar actually either outnumber or roughly match the Guard in terms of numbers. The entirety of their society is martial to some extent or another, and Commoragh dwarfs the largest of Imperial Hives, which house hundreds of billions to the low trillions of people, which puts their population at the minimum in the low trillions. Which matches with "small" raids being able to seize or kill every man, woman, and child on a planet with a population in the billions within a few hours...

Allow me to point out that in the Taros Campaign, the IG was able to fairly quickly pull up 3 Tallarn Regiments for a relatively insignificant campaign. Those 3 Tallarn Regiments were requested because the campaign would be on a dessert world, and the Tallarn are expert dessert fighters. The planners of the crusade didn't put out a call for Desert Fighter regiments...they put out a call for Tallarn Regiments. To me this implies that most IG regiments are dedicated to a single purpose.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Dark Eldar actually either outnumber or roughly match the Guard in terms of numbers. The entirety of their society is martial to some extent or another, and Commoragh dwarfs the largest of Imperial Hives, which house hundreds of billions to the low trillions of people, which puts their population at the minimum in the low trillions. Which matches with "small" raids being able to seize or kill every man, woman, and child on a planet with a population in the billions within a few hours...

Absolutely not. Imperial Hives house hundreds of millions, with hive worlds housing multiple billions, typically less than 100 billion total--and in such situations there is absolutely no domestic infrastructure to support the population without massive imports from other 'support' planets for agrarian production.

Multiple trillions of people, mathematically, would not fit onto a planet unless it was so large and its gravity so high that they would all be crushed.

Even if Commorragh dwarfs an Imperial Hive, even if it's 2x the size of the largest, and even if 99% of that population is martial (and I'd call these very specious stats), you're looking at less than 200 billion combatants, which is significant but still tiny next to the size of the IG.

If we begin to factor in that the footprint of the Eldar empire at its zenith was about equivalent or possibly slightly larger than that of the IoM, and that in the Fall a high-ninety-percentile of their citizenry was consumed by Slaanesh, and that the remaining diaspora was further divided between the Craftworld Eldar and the Dark Eldar, we inevitably end up with a fraction of a tiny fraction dwelling upon Commorragh, and DE numbers compared to IG are truly insignificant.

sourclams wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Dark Eldar actually either outnumber or roughly match the Guard in terms of numbers. The entirety of their society is martial to some extent or another, and Commoragh dwarfs the largest of Imperial Hives, which house hundreds of billions to the low trillions of people, which puts their population at the minimum in the low trillions. Which matches with "small" raids being able to seize or kill every man, woman, and child on a planet with a population in the billions within a few hours...

Absolutely not. Imperial Hives house hundreds of millions, with hive worlds housing multiple billions, typically less than 100 billion total--and in such situations there is absolutely no domestic infrastructure to support the population without massive imports from other 'support' planets for agrarian production.

Multiple trillions of people, mathematically, would not fit onto a planet unless it was so large and its gravity so high that they would all be crushed.

Even if Commorragh dwarfs an Imperial Hive, even if it's 2x the size of the largest, and even if 99% of that population is martial (and I'd call these very specious stats), you're looking at less than 200 billion combatants, which is significant but still tiny next to the size of the IG.

If we begin to factor in that the footprint of the Eldar empire at its zenith was about equivalent or possibly slightly larger than that of the IoM, and that in the Fall a high-ninety-percentile of their citizenry was consumed by Slaanesh, and that the remaining diaspora was further divided between the Craftworld Eldar and the Dark Eldar, we inevitably end up with a fraction of a tiny fraction dwelling upon Commorragh, and DE numbers compared to IG are truly insignificant.

For the 32 trillion figure given as the population for Terra, you would get a population density of 67,000 per square kilometer, in hives many miles high and deep. Tokyo has a population density of ~6000 per square kilometer, and I'd be willing to bet that's all within well under 9% of the vertical distance of at least the Terran hives. Armageddon is stated in the Guard codex to have a population in the hundreds of billions. Hiveworlds are generally described as having a significant portion of the surface area covered in miles high arcologies. For contrast, to use Tokyo again: it has a population of around eight million, on a piece of land amounting to .0015% of the surface area of the land on Earth. If only a third of the surface area of the planet (30% of the surface area of the earth is land) was covered in a comparable density city, there would be around 550 billion people in it, which ignores that Hives are multi-mile high arcologies instead of conventional cities... So yeah, hundreds of billions to the low trillions is feasible for a large hive (even if the norm is multiple smaller hives, we have at least one example of a hive taking up an entire planet in Terra).

The exact description of Commoragh from the DE codex is "Commoragh is no mere metropolis, for it is to the largest of Imperial Hives as a soaring mountain is to a mound of termites. Its dimensions would be considered impossible if they could be read by any conventional means." It should be noted that it also contains seven stars, which makes that description seem much less of an exaggeration.

Making a conservative estimate we end up with numbers comparable to the consistent Guard numbers of several trillion. The Dark Eldar started as scattered refugees with absolutely nothing; they've spent the last ten thousand years multiplying in Commoragh (and increasing its size as they go along, too), with nothing but their own internal conflicts to thin their numbers, and the entire galaxy to provide resources for them.

Eyes...bleeding (see avatar)...can't read...any...MORE! Brain throbbing at idea of people that play game, but object to Space Marines.... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

(steps backward away from thread, weapon raised in case it gives chase)

It's possible to object only to the horrible favoritism, blatantly overpowered rules and truly out-of-whack release schedule marines get. Not saying I do personally, just saying it's possible.

Vaktathi wrote:

In this light, it's hard to take the SM's seriously as a galactically powerful force, rather than as mythical warriors whose legend means more than their actual actions.

I love you. Like seriously, I love you. Thank you for much more eloquently stating exactly what I was thinking. I mean, doctrinal differences between two units that perform similar jobs, the USMC and the Royal Marines, are significant enough that you could easily write a book about it (and they do, field manuals and all ). That's on Earth. Methinks I agree that Catachan and Cadia are producing regiments that differ more significantly than Dark Angels from Ultramarines.

The real comparison, as alluded to above, would be if Catachans were called "Jungle Fighters" because they wore green flak and the Catachan HWT and Sentinel pattern were the only real differences in load-out. However, if I go by fluff, Cadian regiments have more mech, APC's, and specialized troops like Kasrkin, and are also cool with Commissars, while in a book like "Deathworld", the Catachans deploy sans armor in basically what would amount to Vet and SW squads, and we all know how Catachans feel about Commissars.

Space Marines are really cool. I don't believe that they warrant 60-70% of tabletop attention and 90% of fluff. If those numbers were like 40% / 50-60%, respectively, you'd have a much more balanced universe that would remind me much more of when I picked up the game during the tail end of 2E. I hate that the over-saturation of the past ten years has made me despise them, to the point that the fluff I've written for my Inq/SoB/IG system is decidedly prejudiced against them, BA in particular.

For 12 pages? No, that indicates some sort of deep mental effedupedness. This is getting like a NASCAR fan complaining about how loud the engines are.

VoidAngel wrote:Eyes...bleeding (see avatar)...can't read...any...MORE! Brain throbbing at idea of people that play game, but object to Space Marines.... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

(steps backward away from thread, weapon raised in case it gives chase)

Heh, I don't object to the idea itself, but at the end of 2E I didn't feel like the game was THE MIGHTY SPACE MARINES VERSUS THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, it was more like a wargame where you could use mighty Space Marines against the entire universe. They should definitely be present, popular, and fit in to the fluff as warriors of legend.

I would think that one's eyes might roll more heartily at the idea of a complex, imaginative game universe being dominated by a single faction within a faction because 12-year olds can collect them on the relative cheap.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

VoidAngel wrote:For 12 pages? No, that indicates some sort of deep mental effedupedness. This is getting like a NASCAR fan complaining about how loud the engines are.

As opposed to, you know, an indication that perhaps GW has gone a little far with the space paladins? I think NASCAR fans would complain about the engines if they had those ghetto-style whistle tips on them.

In 2nd edition, I think there were 37 models, total, in the catalog.

There were perhaps a 10th the number of players.

I do get it that they've gone a bit overboard. I've said multiple times I'd like to see more stuff for ALL the races (I play almost all of 'em). What I don't get is how "I want more for my favorite" becomes "I hate the very core of this game (SMs)". The two can exist apart from each other. The first is understandable. The second...well, somebody needs to climb back onto the Imperial Fists Storm Raven.

The premise of Space Marines is cool. If the entirety of their fluff was rewritten to actually make sense, and to remove the terrible Mary Sue parts, then they would be alright. I remember when I was first introduced to 40K with DoW, the Space Marines seemed pretty cool: genetically engineered supersoldiers in power armor fighting aliens, ok. The more I learned about their fluff, however, the more repellent they became, as I realized what a patently ridiculous mess their background was. To the point where I can't even read their main codex without feeling sick, to say nothing of the even more egregious superfluous ones.

SumYungGui wrote:It's possible to object only to the horrible favoritism, blatantly overpowered rules and truly out-of-whack release schedule marines get. Not saying I do personally, just saying it's possible.

Yeah, that's what I object to.

Well, that, and the nauseating Mary Sue fluff they get. And....well, theres other things, but the words don't really come to me right now.

edit:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:The premise of Space Marines is cool. If the entirety of their fluff was rewritten to actually make sense, and to remove the terrible Mary Sue parts, then they would be alright. I remember when I was first introduced to 40K with DoW, the Space Marines seemed pretty cool: genetically engineered supersoldiers in power armor fighting aliens, ok. The more I learned about their fluff, however, the more repellent they became, as I realized what a patently ridiculous mess their background was. To the point where I can't even read their main codex without feeling sick, to say nothing of the even more egregious superfluous ones.

This.

SP -

Space Marines, on an individual level, are supposed to be greater than the best regular human heroes *could* ever be.

How should *their* heroes be characterized?

I'm not saying that I agree with the latest insanity, but you joined through a videogame. You've got no sense of what this faction was like for the 15+ years prior to the current passel of codex authors.

VoidAngel wrote:SP -

Space Marines, on an individual level, are supposed to be greater than the best regular human heroes *could* ever be.

Um, where is this written? I'm pretty sure men like Macharius and Yarrick would disagree?

The premise of Space Marines is cool. If the entirety of their fluff was rewritten to actually make sense, and to remove the terrible Mary Sue parts, then they would be alright. I remember when I was first introduced to 40K with DoW, the Space Marines seemed pretty cool: genetically engineered supersoldiers in power armor fighting aliens, ok. The more I learned about their fluff, however, the more repellent they became, as I realized what a patently ridiculous mess their background was. To the point where I can't even read their main codex without feeling sick, to say nothing of the even more egregious superfluous ones.

This, a thousand times this.

The Space Marines were way more interesting when they were more "cleanse/purge/kill" and less "for the honorable glory of the gloriously honorable honor of glory!". The first Dawn of War's portrayal of them was excellent (up until later expansions, and II's was just....bad) where they certainly weren't invincible or mary sue, they weren't single handedly annihilating their foes with little or no effort like most of their fluff has them doing now, but they were certainly scary & powerful and more techy.

I think there's a fluff gap between that era and now. SM's used to be more techy, more brutal looking. They had more pipes/servos/blades/bullets/etc on stuff. As poor as the rules were, I really really liked the artwork, visuals, fluff and feel of the 3rd edition stuff.

Now the Marines are more "knights in shining armor" and a *lot* less "brutal, xenocidal, fanatical genetically engineered, psycho indoctrinated, super solider warrior monks of a theocratic oppressive military state", which takes away from a lot of their character and as a result they appear far more Mary Sue, and suffer a lot more from Superman Syndrome, than they used to.

VoidAngel wrote:
SP -

Space Marines, on an individual level, are supposed to be greater than the best regular human heroes *could* ever be.

Um, where is this written? I'm pretty sure men like Macharius and Yarrick would disagree?

In the stat line.

statlines alone are not a measure of greatness, and I'm fairly certain by that standard Commissar Yarrick is significantly greater than most Space Marines save for the fighty HQ characters.

But is he greater than a Space Marine hero?

If you are looking at just his stats alone? moreso than anything short of a captain generally. In terms of abilities and backgrounds, better in a fight than some SM characters, and with army buffs. In terms of fluff, I'd say he speaks for himself.

Vaktathi wrote:
Now the Marines are more "knights in shining armor" and a *lot* less "brutal, xenocidal, fanatical genetically engineered, psycho indoctrinated, super solider warrior monks of a theocratic oppressive military state", which takes away from a lot of their character and as a result they appear far more Mary Sue, and suffer a lot more from Superman Syndrome, than they used to.

YES. It is so hard for me now to picture how so many "Mr. Smith" (of gone-to-Washington fame) types could have turned on their oh-so-benevolent Emperor. When I had the idea of more chapters being like the Flesh Tearers, the line was finer, and I could really enjoy the duality of Chaos versus normal Space Marine. Now, that has become such a dark vs. light deal, which 40k is not about. When you read some of the dark humor, especially from Rogue Trader or the 2E codex collection, you get that the intention was never to have a knight in shining armor. That is, until marketing research revealed that Space Marines were the most popular, so of course, the best business decision wasn't to reinforce the pivotal role of the Space Marines with a chapter book, but rather, to have it usurp the entirety of the story.

EDIT: Don't forget that SoB used to be faith-driven killing machines, instead of the next set of bowling pins for Dante to knock over.

IMO, the video games and such have been some of the main culprits to the devolution of the story.

VoidAngel,

I feel ya. To me, it's been a poor business decision, and a poor games decision, to focus sooo very much on Space Marines. They are some of the key protagonists, but then, anybody who has spent 400+ dollars or pounds on their force likely to think of their chosen army as the protagonist. I just think GW would be wise to remember this. Push the story via the Space Marines, but don't forget that they number one million in a universe of trillions. There's always something going on in the 40k universe, and more often than not, it has nothing to do with Marneus Calgar or the 2nd company of the Silver Skulls.

VoidAngel wrote:SP -

Space Marines, on an individual level, are supposed to be greater than the best regular human heroes *could* ever be.

I beg to differ. (To select one of the lists arbitrarily, I got the link from a TVTropes page that mentioned a specific person on that list.)

How should *their* heroes be characterized?

It depends on what you mean by "hero." If you're talking about mythical figures like Odysseus or Beowulf, who are by modern standards considered rather ridiculous and poorly crafted, hero archetypes they may be, then probably just about how they are now. Otherwise, toned down quite a bit from how they are now.

I'm not saying that I agree with the latest insanity, but you joined through a videogame. You've got no sense of what this faction was like for the 15+ years prior to the current passel of codex authors.

What it was like is kind of irrelevant when talking about how it is. I don't know the ins and outs of the old fluff, but it doesn't really matter: either it was better, in which case GW is ruining it, or it was worse, in which case they're not doing a very good job fixing it. Regardless of which it was, it is not good the way it stands now.


Edit: forgot to include this in the last post:

For the Space Marines to make sense given how they're portrayed, their numbers would have to be more on a level with the current Guard numbers, while the Guard would have to be increased to at least several dozens of trillions to match how they're portrayed. A few tens of thousands of soldiers managing to take a planet held by many millions of mutant cultists (normal situation for the guard)? Pretty heroic, and implies extremely elite and mobile troops. A few dozens of soldiers taking that same planet? That's "oh god I just threw up in my mouth at the pure inanity of that."

To compare Space Mariens with IG is like comparing a torpedo with a big pile of hand grenades.

If you take the metal and explosive out of a torpedo and use it to make hand grenades, you can probably get 10,000 hand grenades.

You can throw those hand grenades at a battleship all day, and it basically won't notice what is happening.

Hit the battleship with one torpedo, though, and it is in big trouble.

To flip the analogy, you can give the torpedo to an infantry regiment, and with a lot of hard work they might get it into position to blow up one enemy bunker. Give them 10,000 hand grenades instead, and they can attack hundreds of bunkers.

The point of all this is that Spase Marines and IG both have a valid place in 40K, and so do the other armies.

There is too much attention on Space Mairnes.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

VoidAngel wrote:SP -

Space Marines, on an individual level, are supposed to be greater than the best regular human heroes *could* ever be.

I beg to differ. (To select one of the lists arbitrarily, I got the link from a TVTropes page that mentioned a specific person on that list.)

Strawman. It's obvious I meant "in game."

What the hell happned here? This thread started as a joke/experiment. Anybody remember 'The Best thing about 40K is Space Marines" Thread made at the same time by the same guy? No? Alright, nevermind.

VoidAngel wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

VoidAngel wrote:SP -

Space Marines, on an individual level, are supposed to be greater than the best regular human heroes *could* ever be.

I beg to differ. (To select one of the lists arbitrarily, I got the link from a TVTropes page that mentioned a specific person on that list.)

Strawman. It's obvious I meant "in game."

So humans with much, much better equipment and training, indoctrinated from birth to be fanatically loyal to the Imperium, with the added benefit of being fictional, are supposed to be less able to pull off insanely heroic/brave/insane/physically impossible things than actual humans, with primitive equipment and only a few months of training, who'd been raised since birth to value life and freedom?

Of course, I suppose there might be a point to that, since many of the things that garnered a medal of honor would be deemed outrageously unrealistic if presented in any other context.

I find your post both disrespectful and facetious. As well as obdurate, combative, and other things not worth mentioning.

Frazzled edit: closing as its getting pretty flamy at this point.