Horst wrote:The life expectancy for a guardsman on Armageddon against the orks was 15 hours (they named the book 15 hours lol).

That seems reasonable given that specific environment-The world mobilizing itself completely against foreign invasion, given a gun and sent to the grinder.

Horst wrote:The life expectancy for a guardsman on Armageddon against the orks was 15 hours (they named the book 15 hours lol).

That...that wasn't Armageddon. It was some planet where only one city was being held by the Imperium after years and years of war. Bouchers Roc, I believe.

PresidentOfAsia wrote:I heard that the majority of the Imperial Guard will never see a single Ork,

The most common xenos in the galaxy is the Orks, and a Guardsman will more likely face them than Imperial rebellions. Take a look at this map:

[/URL]

I agree with the above.

Orks are everywhere. Like really. All over the place. Also like they're some sort of... fungus (hehehe see what I did there?).

Not all Ork attacks come in the form of major WAAAAGHs. It's most likely that an IG regiment who sees combat will see it against Orks, that or rebels, or simply on some form of garrison/patrol duty.

Imperial Guard never see Tau, Pulse Rifles and Rail Guns open up on them out of human eyesight range.

PresidentOfAsia wrote:I heard that the majority of the Imperial Guard will never see a single Ork, Eldar, Space Marine, Chaos Space Marine in their entire life and that they will spend most of their time fighting rebellions; is that true?

It all depends on the world, if your world or sector you are serving deep inside Imperium space. For example: Guardsman from some agri-world will mostly fight off rebelions and maybe some Ork invasion, they may not even see Astartes in their whole life of service. Cadians, Krieg, Armageddon and other well known worlds: their army's fight everything and saw everything, from the smallest of rebellions to the massive Black Crusades.

If so, then where the hell do ideas such as "most guardsmen will not live past 3 hours on the battlefield" come from? I'm pretty sure that their 4 months of training(the USMC has the same amount of training) will fare well against a bunch of rebel militas and traitor PDFs

Well.... USMC aldo the "most powerful military on Earth" ( yeah, right ) is not fighting unstoppable robots with guns that completely rips their skin off, huge monstrous aliens who wants to OM NOM NOM everything, chaotic super humans who wants to kill everyone in a number of painful ways, barbaric aliens who are made for FIGHTEN AND WINNIN', mysterious spehss elves who don't give a gak about anyone else, spehss elves who wants to torture them with the worst form of BDSM and anime fan space communists with guns that can blow them away before they can even see them. In most cases US army had better tech and outnumber their opponent, they also use air power and armor support a LOT. With Guard is different, every enemy is on different level and require totally different tactics. And seeing that most Guard commanders are slowed, most of Guardsman don't get trough 15 hours of single battle, not 3.

Also don't Guardsmen units such as the Tanith First and Only, Elysian Drop Troops and the Harkoni Warhawks value quality over quantity

It all depends on the Regiment. Chenkov see his men only as mean to clear minefields for his tanks. Gaunt see every men under his command like a person, and care about everyone equally, Creed to.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BeefCakeSoup wrote:Imperial Guard never see Tau, Pulse Rifles and Rail Guns open up on them out of human eyesight range.

Most guardsmen will face orks, tyranids and low level chaos cultists. Most wont see eldar or any flavor, necrons (as per the old codex, new codex they might see them more.), chaos space marines or demons. Some will see Tau, but that's more a regional thing, given how small tau space is.

Of course what complicates whether any guardsman will see some of the other nasties in the universe is that most guardsmen will not live to see anything other than a single enemy, and almost all will not see more than 2. Remember, a guardsman's equipment is worth more than the trooper, so quite often they will be thrown into meat grinder battles because they are just that expendable.

As to the 15 hours thing, I think that really depends on the enemy they face.

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:
Of course what complicates whether any guardsman will see some of the other nasties in the universe is that most guardsmen will not live to see anything other than a single enemy, and almost all will not see more than 2. Remember, a guardsman's equipment is worth more than the trooper, so quite often they will be thrown into meat grinder battles because they are just that expendable.

A bit of maths, if you will. There are 32,380 Hive Worlds in the Imperium. The average population of these worlds is around 200 billion each. We put these together and we get 6.476E15 (6,476,000,000,000,000,000 or 6.476 quintillion or 6.476 billion billion) people on Hive worlds ALONE.

I feel expendable after this calculations....

Depends on the xenos or the degree of chaos incursion. If daemons are present in large numbers, then the entire Inquisition is more than likely gonna bomb every regiment on the planet to ashes. Arguments have erupted between Space Marines and Inquisitors over this matter, as most Space Marines think this dishonors the Guardsmen who stood their ground. As for xenos, ork, tyranid, and tau sightings are alright, and the eldar if they win, but dark eldar, necrons, you'll probably get bombed or mind-wiped by the Inquisition.

Brother Coa wrote:

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:
Of course what complicates whether any guardsman will see some of the other nasties in the universe is that most guardsmen will not live to see anything other than a single enemy, and almost all will not see more than 2. Remember, a guardsman's equipment is worth more than the trooper, so quite often they will be thrown into meat grinder battles because they are just that expendable.

A bit of maths, if you will. There are 32,380 Hive Worlds in the Imperium. The average population of these worlds is around 200 billion each. We put these together and we get 6.476E15 (6,476,000,000,000,000,000 or 6.476 quintillion or 6.476 billion billion) people on Hive worlds ALONE.

I feel expendable after this calculations....

Not all of them are Imperial Guard though just the required 10% of population per year they are forced to provide. This fills up casualties, so yes they are very very expendable. Just not as expendable as the above would make you think.

n0t_u wrote:

Brother Coa wrote:

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:
Of course what complicates whether any guardsman will see some of the other nasties in the universe is that most guardsmen will not live to see anything other than a single enemy, and almost all will not see more than 2. Remember, a guardsman's equipment is worth more than the trooper, so quite often they will be thrown into meat grinder battles because they are just that expendable.

A bit of maths, if you will. There are 32,380 Hive Worlds in the Imperium. The average population of these worlds is around 200 billion each. We put these together and we get 6.476E15 (6,476,000,000,000,000,000 or 6.476 quintillion or 6.476 billion billion) people on Hive worlds ALONE.

I feel expendable after this calculations....

Not all of them are Imperial Guard though just the required 10% of population per year they are forced to provide. This fills up casualties, so yes they are very very expendable. Just not as expendable as the above would make you think.

Thats just the hive worlds......... there are probly more then 6.476 quintillioin Guardsmen active..... I need to start using conscripts for population control measures.

They are there to soak up any incoming fire that would scratch the tanks or injure the vets after all.

Joey wrote:Where did the 3 hour life expectancy come from?
Not all battles are meatgrinders, and not all enemies are willing to engage in such tactics. I can't see eldar or tau committing to a Somme-like battle to bleed the Imperial Forces dry.

Its stated by people who look down on the Guard, who else!

Horst wrote:The life expectancy for a guardsman on Armageddon against the orks was 15 hours (they named the book 15 hours lol).

Wrong. It was the average life expectancy for a replacement guardsmen that recently that's been posted to a frontline combat unit and even the book called 'Fifteen Hours' showed that statistics is not all knowing and true seeing as we have guardsmen in the book that have survived fighting the Orks for 10 years and even a couple of months. Oh btw the war that the book talks about wasn't the war for Armageddon.

But hey don't let facts stop your trolling about how the IG and Imperium suck .

MountainSquid wrote:
That...that wasn't Armageddon. It was some planet where only one city was being held by the Imperium after years and years of war. Bouchers Roc, I believe.

My interpretation of that book is that the planet the book talks about are one of the worlds lost due to bureaucratic screwups by the Administratum.

BeefCakeSoup wrote:Imperial Guard never see Tau, Pulse Rifles and Rail Guns open up on them out of human eyesight range.

Irrelavant as Artillery, Air strikes and Orbital bombarment make Tau toys look like crap .

SylvanaSekNadin wrote: Remember, a guardsman's equipment is worth more than the trooper, so quite often they will be thrown into meat grinder battles because they are just that expendable.

Again with this rash idea without using common sense thinking. The fact of the matter is that the Munitorium and Administratum say and make a lot of rules that are not always followed or are broken by loopholes and corruption etc. Like for example a Planetary governor is expected to provide 10% of his planets PDF to the guard and thery are to be highly trained but due to nepotism or plain corruption they suck but the PL governor won't care and will still send of these lowly PDF troops who are no renamed IG to die just to fulffil his obligations so as to not be executed or the PL governor doesn't use money to create a PDF and instead wastes it on Art or whatever and when the time comes to provide troops he conscripts some poor smucks and gives them a 4 month training and course and sends them off while saying to the Munitorium that they are fully trained and experienced IG when infact they truly aren't



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Deathly Angel wrote:

PresidentOfAsia wrote:I heard that the majority of the Imperial Guard will never see a single Ork,

The most common xenos in the galaxy is the Orks, and a Guardsman will more likely face them than Imperial rebellions. Take a look at this map:

[/URL]

Here's a better map:

It all depends on how long they live really. A Guardsmen who lasts a few years is bound to see Orks at the very least eventually, though rebellions and garrison duty is the most common things Guardsmen deal with.

No one is going to mention the Hrud?

KplKeegan wrote:No one is going to mention the Hrud?

Ok now....start counting....:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Category:Minor_Alien_Species_and_Factions#.TsKkaz0r27s

It entirely depends on where the Guardsmen in question is.


If he is around Terra or the Galactic Core, he is probably only going to encounter orks, rebels, and possably the odd Chaos Cult(just mortals with no daemons or CSM)

If he is on the eastern fringe near Ultramar or in Segmentum Obscures, he can encounter Orks, Nids, Tau, and Chaos Cults(again, only minor ones most likely)

If hes on Cadia or the general vicinity, he can expect CSM, Chaos Cultists, and Orks.

Eldar can theoretically be anywhere, but they are utterly impossable to predict. a small chance of them showing up in just about any location is the best prediction.

it is entirely possable a Guardsmen regiment will never see a Xenos and only go after rebels or chaos cultists.


Navy personell may go their entire lifetime without seeing an enemy of any stripe, outside of pict replays and sensor data.

PresidentOfAsia wrote:I heard that the majority of the Imperial Guard will never see a single Ork, Eldar, Space Marine, Chaos Space Marine in their entire life and that they will spend most of their time fighting rebellions; is that true?

Yes, except for Orks. Many IG will see Orks in their lifetime but probably not most of them.

Orks are almost like Cockroaches. Tough to kill, can survive almost anywhere, and just about everyone has them.

many imperial worlds have ork infestations in the more remote areas of the planet that basically just gives the PDF something to do. But if a full born Waaagh enters the system, the resident orks are going to come out in waves for a good old stomping.

They still die when yo shoot them...

But truth to be told, they have more planets then anyone. But the Imperium still is the largest faction out in the galaxy.

Largest unified faction anyway.

The orks as a race have many many more planets then the IoM, then its the IoM.


Nids don't have planets, Chaos has the whole space-time distortion thing going on, and Tau really arn't worth mentioning.

Crons are an interesting one, we really can't say how many worlds they have. Could be millions, could be a few hundred thousand...

Brother Coa wrote:They still die when yo shoot them...

But truth to be told, they have more planets then anyone. But the Imperium still is the largest faction out in the galaxy.

So do most things..

If they refuse to, then upscale the gun

The IOM is the largest cohesive faction in the galaxy (as the nids are mostly outside it and the daemons are in a parallel universe ), holding a lot of worlds, but very spread out,.

The orks hold more galactic space/worlds and have more in numbers, but cohesion is a foreign concept to most orks beyond a world or so. Great Waaaghs break this rule, as then tend to draw all orks within a large area together, but in general orks are not cohesive.

None of the current ork empires is individually a match for the IOM, or any other major player as a whole (except maybe the Tau, as they also have a dinky empire) , but the sheer number of these pocket stellar empires guarantees that wherever you are on the galactic disk you will eventually run into Orks..

I've been getting sick of seeing people claim most guardsman don't survive their first battle and live 15 hours or something equally as stupid.

The background is littered with veteran units who have survived years of combat. The third edition codex had this piece of a soldier of a fresh regiment writing home to his little brother, talking about the veteran unit who they were replacing. After 10 years of solid war, there was still around 200 of them left.

Games Workshop throw the occassional gung-ho, casulties don't matter General and regiment at us occassionally to remind us of the 'grimdark' nature they are trying to portray. But realistically, most Guardsman will have been trained soldiers on their home planet. Who will have then spent the months in transit in training before they reach the first combat zone. 99 times out of 100, they are not just going to be pulled off their farm, handed a lasgun and sent off to fight.

Most Guardsman will only be fighting other humans (seccesstionists, rebellions or chaos influenced) and the ever present Orks. Whilst Orks are dangerous, they are not unstoppable and a competent commander isn't going to engage the Orks on their terms where at all possible. Also, lets not forget lasguns are more than capable weapons in the background, especially against humans and the like. Regardless of what the front of the Imperial Guard Codex might say, the Guard don't usually conduct war by forming up and charging at the enemy.

If life expectancy was as low as so often claimed, the Imperial Guard would go no where. Campaigns would grind to a hault as the Imperial Navy struggled to keep up the supply of bodies. Logistics would become impossible. The Imperium of Man may have the bodies, but it's going to be an extremely well supplied campaign for a world that can say cross off 500 000 men without concern.

At the grand scale, the Imperium may be uncaring. But it's ridiculous to think that all your Colonels, Generals, Lord Generals, Lord Solars and whatever simply throw their men at the enemies guns. Sure, casulties are acceptable, but they are professional soldiers. Most will want to achieve their objective in the most resource efficient manner.

If there's one thing the Imperium hates apart from Xenos and Chaos, it's a waste of resources. Throwing men away needlessly is a waste of resources. A waste of soldiers for one, but also a waste of time. A waste of time training them, arming them and shipping them.

In a drawn out war, it is tough to survive.


There is a difference between the new soldier fatality and the experienced vet. new soldiers don't have the complete set of skills needed to survive. They didn't duck when they should have, didn't hug cover quite enough... Once they get those skills, assuming they are lucky enough to survive, they will have a longer survival rate.


Perhaps a better explaination of the 15 hour Guardsmen survival time is that its a Median number. 1/2 the Guardsmen have worse survival times, 1/2 have better.

besides, the 15 hours was for that specific combat zone. It wouldn't apply to every single combat zone. If you were facing a sustained assault from Chaos forces, I could definitly see life expectancy measured in hours or even minutes.

From what I've read the majority of Guardsmen see Xenos but the majority of Guardsmen don't see Chaos.

That depends on the definition of "Chaos" as a faction.

Does it include chaos cultists and followers of any stripe? Cultists that do nothing besides rise in rebellion, but recieve no major help from their gods in the form of Daemons or CSMs? Or is it just the Daemonic and CSM legions that is true Chaos?

I would think that Chaos Cults that have no daemonic aid can be seen alot. Amatures in the grand scheme of chaos. not worth of their god's notice. These are what Guardsmen might see alot, just waves of desperate cultists trying to attract attention.

As for CSM and Daemons, Guardsmen certaintly won't see many of those, and those that do are most likely going to die very shortly.

If the daemons don't kill them the Gk do

Romer wrote:

If life expectancy was as low as so often claimed, the Imperial Guard would go no where. Campaigns would grind to a hault as the Imperial Navy struggled to keep up the supply of bodies. Logistics would become impossible. The Imperium of Man may have the bodies, but it's going to be an extremely well supplied campaign for a world that can say cross off 500 000 men without concern.

Page 143 of the rulebook give an example of an imperial guard battle. on the part day 25 - 40 the guard suffer "moderate" causalities with the number around 70 000.
Throughout the rest of the campaign the casualties sustained is normally sitting in the "heavy" category. If that was just 100 000 troops to count as heavy, this planet alone would have resulted in the deaths of minimum 400 000. Further, the explanation of the strategies used pretty much expressly say that the guardsmen are supposed to die slowly enough to hold the enemies at their fortifications without reinforcements. Also note that this planet was merely a human planet going rouge (so no scary zenos just other humans, with very isolated rumors of demons) and the troops sent to secure it were the elite cadians, who are arguably the very best the guard has to offer.

I am not saying that the guard are pathetic, they are the best humans the planet has to offer. Hell even the claims of planetary corruption don't hold true because if a Governor sends inferior troops his life is forfeit. Hence of the imperial tithe, the best of the best 10% is sent to serve in the guard. On page 139 of the rule book it says that for the imperium, manpower is the cheapest of all its currencies. Millions of guardsmen are sent to die and capture the smallest of objectives because as a resource their lives are meaningless.

With regards to veterans though, they are the guardsmen that survive. After a single campaign a regiment is expected to be pretty devastated, however the survivors are generally far superior and will stand a good chance of surviving long enough to go up in the ranks. The number of veterans killed will decrease with every campaign they survive, however, their second new campaign will still kill the most veterans as they are still relatively green compared to the few veterans that survived more campaigns. Fresh green recruits though are pretty much expected to die in their first campaign.

The imperial guard, despite being the best humans the imperium has to offer, is called the hammer of the emperor for a reason.

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:

I am not saying that the guard are pathetic, they are the best humans the planet has to offer. Hell even the claims of planetary corruption don't hold true because if a Governor sends inferior troops his life is forfeit. Hence of the imperial tithe, the best of the best 10% is sent to serve in the guard. On page 139 of the rule book it says that for the imperium, manpower is the cheapest of all its currencies. Millions of guardsmen are sent to die and capture the smallest of objectives because as a resource their lives are meaningless.

Politics and loopholes can insure that such things don't happen.

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:Page 143 of the rulebook give an example of an imperial guard battle. on the part day 25 - 40 the guard suffer "moderate" causalities with the number around 70 000.
Throughout the rest of the campaign the casualties sustained is normally sitting in the "heavy" category. If that was just 100 000 troops to count as heavy, this planet alone would have resulted in the deaths of minimum 400 000. Further, the explanation of the strategies used pretty much expressly say that the guardsmen are supposed to die slowly enough to hold the enemies at their fortifications without reinforcements. Also note that this planet was merely a human planet going rouge (so no scary zenos just other humans, with very isolated rumors of demons) and the troops sent to secure it were the elite cadians, who are arguably the very best the guard has to offer.

The deaths of 400000 men for the liberation of an entire planet would be pretty fantastic. The numbers of troops for a planetry invasion would be colossal when you consider the allies needed nigh on 200000 just for the Normandy landings. Casulties are likely to be huge. The claim that 70000 died in a single battle is pretty ridiculous though. Unless this battlefield was incredibly huge and the Guard decided they'd beat the oppossition by charging at them.

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:With regards to veterans though, they are the guardsmen that survive. After a single campaign a regiment is expected to be pretty devastated, however the survivors are generally far superior and will stand a good chance of surviving long enough to go up in the ranks. The number of veterans killed will decrease with every campaign they survive, however, their second new campaign will still kill the most veterans as they are still relatively green compared to the few veterans that survived more campaigns. Fresh green recruits though are pretty much expected to die in their first campaign.

But what's a camapign? A 10 year struggle for a world? A whole crusade? The idea that regiments are devastated after a single battle is an illussion. The fluff provides far more examples of regiments that don't get mauled every battle than it does Commander Chenkovs who send there 200000 men regiment to die to capture a ditch.

If casulties were so high, a world like Cadia would cease to exist.

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:The imperial guard, despite being the best humans the imperium has to offer, is called the hammer of the emperor for a reason.

s

Yes, because it grinds down the enemy with gun, tank, artillery and boot. That doesn't mean they march into battle intent on simply bleeding the enemy dry of ammunition. If they have to win by trading casulties, then that's what has to happen. But it wont be the default strategy. Just because people are a plentiful resource, it doesn't mean the Imperium throws them away unless it's the only immediate solution.

The 'grimdark' claim that the average soldier doesn't get past his first battle is slowed and without thought. GW peddle this line without thinking if it blends well with other Imperial Guard fluff, which it doesn't.

Most PDF will never see xenos or heretics, but Guard are very likely to end up fighting Orks or heretics.

Unless you're thinking of "chaos = chaos space marines and daemons only", in which case you are wrong, and should stop thinking that and be ashamed of yourself.

Well, like I said earlier, there is a difference between your everyday Chaos cult and a Cult thats getting CSM and Daemonic support or a full blown Chaos invasion.

the former I would expect to show up fairly often, enough to where Guardsmen could expect to put one down at least once in their lifetime. The latter 2 would certaintly be relativly rare.

Has anyone here watched the Star War's Clone Wars cartoons? It has a Jedi General named Krell whose idea of winning battles is to stay away from the frontlines and send his clone soldiers to their deaths in full frontal assaults while acting as much of a douche as possible to his subordinates like calling them by numbers and treating the clones as if they're not people. Why has he not been brought to justice for such acts and is instead being given medals? Its because he keeps wining battles which wins him medals.

Sounds a lot like Chenkov doesn't he?

Corporal_Reznov wrote:Why has he not been brought to justice for such acts and is instead being given medals? Its because he keeps wining battles which wins him medals.

Sounds a lot like Chenkov doesn't he?

I'm not denying those commanders don't exist. But if Guard fluff is taken as a whole, those commanders are the exceptions, rather than the rule. They give the Guard that abiliity to break a deadlock with the ruthless application of manpower if tactical innovations doesn't work.

But if most Imperial Guard units functioned like that, Imperial campaigns would fall to pieces due to logistical problems and the inabiliity to hold onto gains.

Edit: Just look at some of the special characters in the Guard 'dex. Creed, Al'reheim (spelling?), Bastonne, Pask, Harker and Kell. A tactically superb General, another tactically gifted officier, a veteran of countless battles and wars, a veteran tank commander and a veteran soldier/bodyguard. Yet there's only one Chenkov style officer.

Has anyone here watched the Star War's Clone Wars cartoons? It has a Jedi General named Krell whose idea of winning battles is to stay away from the frontlines and send his clone soldiers to their deaths in full frontal assaults while acting as much of a douche as possible to his subordinates like calling them by numbers and treating the clones as if they're not people. Why has he not been brought to justice for such acts and is instead being given medals? Its because he keeps wining battles which wins him medals.

Sounds a lot like Chenkov doesn't he?

I'm glad I wasn't the only one getting the Chenkov/IG vibe from Krell. Which reminds me, I need to get caught up on my Clone Wars watching....

Grey Templar wrote:Well, like I said earlier, there is a difference between your everyday Chaos cult and a Cult thats getting CSM and Daemonic support or a full blown Chaos invasion.

the former I would expect to show up fairly often, enough to where Guardsmen could expect to put one down at least once in their lifetime. The latter 2 would certaintly be relativly rare.

Chaos Space Marines are so rare as to essentially be nonexistent in the grand scheme of things. Most humans and marines likely never come across one. Probably 99.99% of all humans of any allegiance, and at least the majority of all loyalist marines.

Romer wrote:
I'm not denying those commanders don't exist. But if Guard fluff is taken as a whole, those commanders are the exceptions, rather than the rule. They give the Guard that abiliity to break a deadlock with the ruthless application of manpower if tactical innovations doesn't work.

But if most Imperial Guard units functioned like that, Imperial campaigns would fall to pieces due to logistical problems and the inabiliity to hold onto gains.

Edit: Just look at some of the special characters in the Guard 'dex. Creed, Al'reheim (spelling?), Bastonne, Pask, Harker and Kell. A tactically superb General, another tactically gifted officier, a veteran of countless battles and wars, a veteran tank commander and a veteran soldier/bodyguard. Yet there's only one Chenkov style officer.

What? I agree with you. Thats why I pointed out the example of Krell who is a Jedi from Star Wars. These type of generals and commanders are not an Imperium phenomenon, they can exist anywhere.

Psienesis wrote:
I'm glad I wasn't the only one getting the Chenkov/IG vibe from Krell. Which reminds me, I need to get caught up on my Clone Wars watching....

Chenkov doesn't represent the IG you know.

BeefCakeSoup wrote:Imperial Guard never see Tau, Pulse Rifles and Rail Guns open up on them out of human eyesight range.

humans have better eyesight than tau, so...no

Horst wrote:The life expectancy for a guardsman on Armageddon against the orks was 15 hours (they named the book 15 hours lol).

15 hours isn't bad compared to some of the life expectansies during the battle of stalingrad.

Occording to fluff most guardsmen will see some form of chaos. Usually just chaos fuelled rebellions or chaos sects causing trouble. Very few will actually see proper chaos forces though.

But yeah I would say most guardsmen on average won't see any zenos other than orks. And most of those will be feral.

Majsharan wrote:

Horst wrote:The life expectancy for a guardsman on Armageddon against the orks was 15 hours (they named the book 15 hours lol).

15 hours isn't bad compared to some of the life expectansies during the battle of stalingrad.

Occording to fluff most guardsmen will see some form of chaos. Usually just chaos fuelled rebellions or chaos sects causing trouble. Very few will actually see proper chaos forces though.

But yeah I would say most guardsmen on average won't see any zenos other than orks. And most of those will be feral.

The 15 hours thing is stupid anyway seeing as the book has Guardsmen who have survivied fighting against Orks for 10 years!

Corporal_Reznov wrote:

Majsharan wrote:

Horst wrote:The life expectancy for a guardsman on Armageddon against the orks was 15 hours (they named the book 15 hours lol).

15 hours isn't bad compared to some of the life expectansies during the battle of stalingrad.

Occording to fluff most guardsmen will see some form of chaos. Usually just chaos fuelled rebellions or chaos sects causing trouble. Very few will actually see proper chaos forces though.

But yeah I would say most guardsmen on average won't see any zenos other than orks. And most of those will be feral.

The 15 hours thing is stupid anyway seeing as the book has Guardsmen who have survivied fighting against Orks for 10 years!

The fifteen hour life expectancy wasn't for combat veterans, it was for the replacement guardsmen.

Coolyo294 wrote:The fifteen hour life expectancy wasn't for combat veterans, it was for the replacement guardsmen.

I know that, I posted the fact that the 15 hours wasn't meant for standard Guardsmen everywhere but some people do you the 15 hours thing as evidence that IG everywhere live for only 15 hours or less which is stupid. I was just stating that even the book whose name is 15 hours shows that the 15 hours idea is just nonsense.

Corporal_Reznov wrote:Has anyone here watched the Star War's Clone Wars cartoons? It has a Jedi General named Krell whose idea of winning battles is to stay away from the frontlines and send his clone soldiers to their deaths in full frontal assaults while acting as much of a douche as possible to his subordinates like calling them by numbers and treating the clones as if they're not people. Why has he not been brought to justice for such acts and is instead being given medals? Its because he keeps wining battles which wins him medals.

Sounds a lot like Chenkov doesn't he?

feth HIM that deuce!; Order 66 is now competely justified in my book if Krell was killed; I hope his Jedi Interceptor was shot down and he landed into a Sarlacc with Jar Jar Bink while being forced to watch the remastered Blu ray prequels

Talk about the worst Jedi! The Sith in the Sith Academy in KOTOR was more compassionate then this xeno scum

jordanis wrote:

BeefCakeSoup wrote:Imperial Guard never see Tau, Pulse Rifles and Rail Guns open up on them out of human eyesight range.

humans have better eyesight than tau, so...no

MEDIC!

I need icepacks stat!

Romer wrote:If there's one thing the Imperium hates apart from Xenos and Chaos, it's a waste of resources. Throwing men away needlessly is a waste of resources.

To a small or large degree, I agree with this. However, this brings up my most hated bit of the IG codex.

Chenkov

Why he's anything special is beyond me. Enemies approaching? Send soldiers at them. Mine fields? Send soldier at them. His entire strategy for every problem seems to be just "send soldiers at it. If that fails, send more". If anything I suspect he's a stunted ogryn with that kind of tactic. It also brings up how appearantly scary he is, and how no soldier will risk his wrath. This practically puts him on the same scale as commissars which is also ridiculous.

So basically he's reached the rank of Colonel by trying to shove the square in the circle hole and throwing tantrums when people don't agree with him.

Corporal_Reznov wrote:

Coolyo294 wrote:The fifteen hour life expectancy wasn't for combat veterans, it was for the replacement guardsmen.

I know that, I posted the fact that the 15 hours wasn't meant for standard Guardsmen everywhere but some people do you the 15 hours thing as evidence that IG everywhere live for only 15 hours or less which is stupid. I was just stating that even the book whose name is 15 hours shows that the 15 hours idea is just nonsense.

The thing is in any military the new fresh green troop has a very low life expectancy. Normally because they are brave and stupid and don't really know how war works. Unfortunately in a universe where killing humans is almost a national sport for the alien races, life expectancy drops significantly lower. The 15 hour rule is kind of silly, but if you think about it, it represents the average. Taking into consideration that so many troopers survived the conflict, and that so many troopers died pretty much instantly when the chimera doors opened.

The Guard exist to win wars of attrition. The idea behind wars of attrition is that each of your losses mean less than the losses of the enemy. Think of it this way, imagine an entire chapter of space marines goes rouge. Spending the lives of 10 000 guard to kill 1 space marine is a net win for the guard. Furthermore, in most cases they wont even loose that many guardsmen killing that 1 marine.

The Imperial Guard's most abundant resource is humans. I wouldn't say Chenkov-style leadership is all that rare - the DKoK practice it as well, just to name one example, and not everybody's the Tanith First or Cadian.

Why are Chapters of Space Marines going red? Are they trying out new fall colors?

Or are you meaning that they go rogue?
In that case, the Guard will not be fighting alone. A rogue Astartes Chapter will usually get the Inquisition and its "pet" Chapters like the Red Hunters on its bum so fast they'll be wondering what that noise is behind them.

I should also add that "Fifteen Hours" is by no means representative of the Guard at large. It was "Fifteen Hours" for a 'new fish' dropped into the combat at Bucheroc, which was on a planet overrun entirely by an Ork Waagh! where the Imperium had no actual knowledge of the situation at hand and was not resupplying said troops.

Now yeah. Chenkov style leadership is not necessarily that rare--but neither is it likely that common. The Guard's most abundant resource is humans, but it's also experienced humans and your troops do not become experienced by dying.

The Guard can't out attrition everyone. That tends not to work againts Orks and Tyranids, who arguably are both more numerous than humans (although I'm not sure baout Nids since we don't have any clear ideas on their numbers) but tend to be more easily replaced than the humans. Humanity may be quite prolific in 40K, but until they find some way to speed up human growth (or pull a Grand Army of the REpublic) there are going to be situations and enemies that attrition won't beat no matter how many men General Brannigan throws at them. Attrition warfare tends to work against only certain kinds of enemies: Heretics and Chaos would seem to be the most common examples (although even there it can be of mixed results), and some aliens (like Eldar, although the Eldar are advanced/powerful enough that they can make this quite painful if the Imperium tries.) You can have (And probably do have) officers who will spend their troops like water to achieve an objective, but unless it gains success he is probably going to be shot for wasting valuable resources. Prolific as it is, a soldier is still a resource and must not be squandered needlessly (what qualifies as "needless" is open to debate, of course.)

The problems inherent in warp travel and astrotelepathy that make direct administration of the Imperium difficult would also apply to their military forces. I always figured the fifteen hours thing was just a sector-specific issue. Things in one region of the Imperium won't neccesarily correspond to another region. If there was to be a "standard example" for the Guard, I'd say it would be one of the named, high profile regiments like the Cadians. (The Cadians in particular have been named as an oft-emulated regiment at least in equipment if not ability, I think.)

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:Unfortunately in a universe where killing humans is almost a national sport for the alien races, life expectancy drops significantly lower.

Actually 40k's national sport is Xenocide/Genocide and slavery. But othern than that, you make good points.

Seaward wrote:The Imperial Guard's most abundant resource is humans. I wouldn't say Chenkov-style leadership is all that rare - the DKoK practice it as well, just to name one example, and not everybody's the Tanith First or Cadian.

I really don't think one can use the DKoK as a bad thing seeing as the Kreig don't actually mind dieing.

Corporal_Reznov wrote:I really don't think one can use the DKoK as a bad thing seeing as the Kreig don't actually mind dieing.

Indeed. The Commissar's attached to DKoK Regiments often have to hold the DKoK in check so they don't throw away their lives pointlessly. Mind you the Krieg way of waging war is to challenge the enemy to a contest of trenchworks, siegeworks and prolonged attrition. They do it rather well, all things considered.

Seaward wrote:The Imperial Guard's most abundant resource is humans. I wouldn't say Chenkov-style leadership is all that rare - the DKoK practice it as well, just to name one example, and not everybody's the Tanith First or Cadian.

The Death Korps are basically cloned soldiers, indoctrinated to feel like nothing but a number. The whole planets idea of warfare is based around attrition I agree. But the Death Korps get sent where other methods of war wont work. They are a specialised regiment.

Sure, not everybodys the Tanith First or Cadian. But let's look at the other examples of models we're given. Elysians, Catachans, Tallarns, Valhallans, Steel Legion and Mordians.

The Elysians are a well trained, skilled and often veteran drop troopers. Sure, in high profile missions they die in droves. But that's the lot of paratroopers. I've still yet to here of an inexperienced Elysian regiment.

Catachans are probably a bad example because of the world they come from. They are born survivors. So it's no suprise they're tough soldiers.

Tallarns are generally described as skilled soldiers, winning battles and wars with tactics, marksmanship and the abilities in the desert they learnt at home.

Valhallans are a mixed bunch. We've got Chenkov. But we've also go Cains Valhallans. There was also this run of articles in an oldish WD about all the different Guard regiments. They described a Valhallan mountain Rangers units that seemed pretty skillful. They didn't simply march into the enemies guns.

And so on. The Imperial Guard is constantly at war. It makes sense that most commanders would want to hone their tactics into something other than trading numbers because they'd stand a better chance at winning with veteran troopers.

Romer wrote:
And so on. The Imperial Guard is constantly at war. It makes sense that most commanders would want to hone their tactics into something other than trading numbers because they'd stand a better chance at winning with veteran troopers.

No one is claiming that the generals of the imperial guard don't bother with strategy. Keeping their troops alive is beneficial to the whole of the imperium and so they would prefer to use them wisely. Survivors, and veterans make for easier campaigns, not to mention less casualties mean less work for the commissars to keep moral up. That said though, manpower is the cheapest currency in the guard, and if they had to choose between loosing a lemun russ tank or a couple of hundred guardsmen, they will choose to sacrifice the troopers.

with regards to being unable to out attrition orks and tyranids, you are partially correct. If the orks ever united into a large enough Waaagh then yes the guard cannot replenish its troops on the battlefield to keep the orks at bay, a useful example is Armageddon. In general though, most ork war-bands are relatively small. Unfortunately, the reason why they cant out attrition to orks is more because of the delays and logistics of mobilizing that many guardsmen and getting them to the war before its too late. With Tyranids, unfortunately they really do bring more to the field than the humans do. Although there imperium effectively turns towards a scorched earth strategy. The attrition thing might work if the tyrinids didn't replenish their numbers for every piece of biomass they recover from a battle.

BeefCakeSoup wrote:Imperial Guard never see Tau, Pulse Rifles and Rail Guns open up on them out of human eyesight range.

For now, Tau doesn't have access to any efficient spacefaring technology that Imperium, Eldars, Orks, Chaos, and Necrons have. their dominion is closely packed in the eastern fringe. and it seems Tau aren't willing to take a risk using Warp travel, the Medusa IV campaign concluded that.
unless that an Ethereal learned how to navigate the webway or Tau navy captured any Necron tomb ships.

SylvanaSekNadin wrote: That said though, manpower is the cheapest currency in the guard, and if they had to choose between loosing a lemun russ tank or a couple of hundred guardsmen, they will choose to sacrifice the troopers.

That's where I disagree. The logical choice there is to sacrifice the tank.

There far fewer examples of commanders falling in line with GWs hyperbole than there are the other way around. Would Creed throw 200 men at an objective to save a Russ? No. He'd throw his armour at it. Lose that single tank and use his infantry to follow in behind and secure the objective.

Leman Russ tanks are an STC produced vehicle. Any civillised world could churn them out. There hardly going to be in short supply, which gives the well supplied Guard commander the ability to choose the tool that produces the fewest losses in manpower and material.

If tanks are in short supply due to logistical issues, certainly, they'd just use the soldiers and take the losses without blinking. But I can't think of many guard commanders I've read about who would choose a tank over 200 men.

Manpower is the guards greatest resource because it allows them to prevail on a galactic stage where others couldn't, not because other equipment is so valuable.

Romer wrote:

SylvanaSekNadin wrote: That said though, manpower is the cheapest currency in the guard, and if they had to choose between loosing a lemun russ tank or a couple of hundred guardsmen, they will choose to sacrifice the troopers.

That's where I disagree. The logical choice there is to sacrifice the tank.

There far fewer examples of commanders falling in line with GWs hyperbole than there are the other way around. Would Creed throw 200 men at an objective to save a Russ? No. He'd throw his armour at it. Lose that single tank and use his infantry to follow in behind and secure the objective.

Leman Russ tanks are an STC produced vehicle. Any civillised world could churn them out. There hardly going to be in short supply, which gives the well supplied Guard commander the ability to choose the tool that produces the fewest losses in manpower and material.

If tanks are in short supply due to logistical issues, certainly, they'd just use the soldiers and take the losses without blinking. But I can't think of many guard commanders I've read about who would choose a tank over 200 men.

Manpower is the guards greatest resource because it allows them to prevail on a galactic stage where others couldn't, not because other equipment is so valuable.

You NEVER sacrifice the tank. Those are much more expensive to replace then a few hundred guardsmen.

LRBTs are not churned out by any civilized world, they are made on Forge Worlds only.



The Imperium can replace soldiers for free, tanks cost resources.

yeah the codex is pretty clear that LRBTs are in short supply, and there aren't really enough of them to go around. I am sure every commander would love to have millions of them, but as GT said thye are made my Forge worlds only, a class of planets that has taken quite the beating recently.

Chenkov is probably the worst example of an imperial commander going. Even Schaeffer cares more about his men than Chenkov.

Grey Templar wrote:
You NEVER sacrifice the tank. Those are much more expensive to replace then a few hundred guardsmen.

That's what the Munitorum and AdMech keep telling people, because they like to obsessively stockpile and keep/maintain huge stockpiles (such as worlds like Vraks, where you have ludicrously huge stockpiles of material that rarely ever seem to be touched in significant quantities. They even regard lasguns as being more important than troopers, FFS.

LRBTs are not churned out by any civilized world, they are made on Forge Worlds only.

I'm pretty sure Imperial Armour 1 said that Russes can be made at hive worlds at least as well (5th edition IG codex mentioned LR production facilities on Armageddon for example, and that industrial worlds will churn out tanks as well as forge worlds.)

The Imperium can replace soldiers for free, tanks cost resources.

Troops cost money to train, equip, feed, and maintain, even if you don't use them. They might be cheaper than tanks (although I'd say that would depend on how food and such is supplied) but they are most certainly not free.

Seaward wrote:The Imperial Guard's most abundant resource is humans. I wouldn't say Chenkov-style leadership is all that rare - the DKoK practice it as well, just to name one example, and not everybody's the Tanith First or Cadian.

Indeed. The 12 or so "famous" regiments are not typical of the IG. There's still billions the fight WWII soviet style and even WWI trench warfare style.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:There's still billions the fight WWII soviet style and even WWI trench warfare style.

Examples don't back that up. Not to mention that fighting trench warfare style/static defense when you've got equipment like tanks, fighting planes, armoured transports, drop troopers is idiotic.

Considering the Guard have atleast 4 months training each, it doesn't add that they would end up fighting 'soviet style'.

On the Russ, I've read somewhere or another that they can be produced on places other than forge worlds. Forge worlds just have the capability to produce the advanced stuff and stuff in massive numbers. Armageddon is an industrial hive world (not a forge world) and it churns out Chimera's like sweets. Civillised worlds are likely to produce their own armour if they don't have STC patterns available to.

And as said, men certainly arn't free. They are still an investment. A wrecked Russ may also be salvagable.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Seaward wrote:The Imperial Guard's most abundant resource is humans. I wouldn't say Chenkov-style leadership is all that rare - the DKoK practice it as well, just to name one example, and not everybody's the Tanith First or Cadian.

Indeed. The 12 or so "famous" regiments are not typical of the IG. There's still billions the fight WWII soviet style and even WWI trench warfare style.

So? Trench Warfare is the only way to stop Orks, today's hit and run or mobility tactics don't help ( because they are horde ). And sometimes commanders are so desperate to hold down objective that they actually are sending thousands to their deaths just to buy time ( Stalingrad ).

And other sci-fi factions use that kind of warfare because it is effective in some situations, despite having high tech ( Star Wars, Starship Troopers, Halo ).

Romer wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:There's still billions the fight WWII soviet style and even WWI trench warfare style.

Examples don't back that up. Not to mention that fighting trench warfare style/static defense when you've got equipment like tanks, fighting planes, armoured transports, drop troopers is idiotic.

Considering the Guard have atleast 4 months training each, it doesn't add that they would end up fighting 'soviet style'.

On the Russ, I've read somewhere or another that they can be produced on places other than forge worlds. Forge worlds just have the capability to produce the advanced stuff and stuff in massive numbers. Armageddon is an industrial hive world (not a forge world) and it churns out Chimera's like sweets. Civillised worlds are likely to produce their own armour if they don't have STC patterns available to.

And as said, men certainly arn't free. They are still an investment. A wrecked Russ may also be salvagable.

Brother Coa wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Seaward wrote:The Imperial Guard's most abundant resource is humans. I wouldn't say Chenkov-style leadership is all that rare - the DKoK practice it as well, just to name one example, and not everybody's the Tanith First or Cadian.

Indeed. The 12 or so "famous" regiments are not typical of the IG. There's still billions the fight WWII soviet style and even WWI trench warfare style.

So? Trench Warfare is the only way to stop Orks, today's hit and run or mobility tactics don't help ( because they are horde ). And sometimes commanders are so desperate to hold down objective that they actually are sending thousands to their deaths just to buy time ( Stalingrad ).

And other sci-fi factions use that kind of warfare because it is effective in some situations, despite having high tech ( Star Wars, Starship Troopers, Halo ).

You guys need to read a little something called The Seige of Vraks 1,2 & 3. If you only read one 40K thing ever, make it that.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
You guys need to read a little something called The Seige of Vraks 1,2 & 3. If you only read one 40K thing ever, make it that.

So you will not respond to your detractors and will instead focus on fluff that focuses on the DKoK regiments and because of that say that all other IG do the same thing as the DKoK?


Yeah, ignore this one guys.

Corporal_Reznov wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
You guys need to read a little something called The Seige of Vraks 1,2 & 3. If you only read one 40K thing ever, make it that.

So you will not respond to your detractors and will instead focus on fluff that focuses on the DKoK regiments and because of that say that all other IG do the same thing as the DKoK?


Yeah, ignore this one guys.

Uh yeah, that's not what I said there guy.

Corporal_Reznov wrote:

But hey don't let facts stop your trolling about how the IG and Imperium suck .

MountainSquid wrote:
That...that wasn't Armageddon. It was some planet where only one city was being held by the Imperium after years and years of war. Bouchers Roc, I believe.

My interpretation of that book is that the planet the book talks about are one of the worlds lost due to bureaucratic screwups by the Administratum.

BeefCakeSoup wrote:Imperial Guard never see Tau, Pulse Rifles and Rail Guns open up on them out of human eyesight range.

Irrelavant as Artillery, Air strikes and Orbital bombarment make Tau toys look like crap

Obvious Troll is obvious

Guardsmen are regularly thrown into the meatgrinder, because in large part their job is to stall for evac of the civies, or to provide a solid defense for space marines (that whole 10 men to a space marine thing).

It is entirely probable that many humans and guardsmen, lest they be stationed near such locals, will never witness anything other than orks and rebellious hive rioters. Simply because statistically those are the most populous options for the universe (love the statistics up there on just the hive worlds...not counting the other worlds that also get guardsman tithes). Guardsmen are designed to be expendable, even on the table. They're given armor that would make veitnam war veterans laugh, guns that, in comparision to their foes, is like fighting off the USMC with an army of stick wielding natives, and commanders who largely adhere to their own version of the codex astartes, and thus all use the same tactic: march the men foreward, dig trenches, pound your target with artillery until your lines collapse, fall back, repeat.

Even on the table the ability to form stubborn blob squads reflects that in large part all they are is a bunch of bodies to prevent the important things from getting killed.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
You guys need to read a little something called The Seige of Vraks 1,2 & 3. If you only read one 40K thing ever, make it that.

I did. Of particular note was where it said siege warfare regiments were specialists like armour and drop troops. EG they're not common. Furthermore, I recall as well that "trench warfare" was option 3. Option one was a "swift assault" followed by "blockade." Neither of which suggest trench warfare is all that common.

Actually I also remember a rather inept Vindicaire assassin as well (firing on a shielded target and yet not having shield penetrator rounds? OOPS!)

Connor MacLeod wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
You guys need to read a little something called The Seige of Vraks 1,2 & 3. If you only read one 40K thing ever, make it that.

I did. Of particular note was where it said siege warfare regiments were specialists like armour and drop troops. EG they're not common. Furthermore, I recall as well that "trench warfare" was option 3. Option one was a "swift assault" followed by "blockade." Neither of which suggest trench warfare is all that common.

Actually I also remember a rather inept Vindicaire assassin as well (firing on a shielded target and yet not having shield penetrator rounds? OOPS!)

I recall them taking years just to land and then digging in immediately. Nothing swift about that.

dbsamurai wrote:
Obvious Troll is obvious

Guardsmen are regularly thrown into the meatgrinder, because in large part their job is to stall for evac of the civies, or to provide a solid defense for space marines (that whole 10 men to a space marine thing).

It is entirely probable that many humans and guardsmen, lest they be stationed near such locals, will never witness anything other than orks and rebellious hive rioters. Simply because statistically those are the most populous options for the universe (love the statistics up there on just the hive worlds...not counting the other worlds that also get guardsman tithes). Guardsmen are designed to be expendable, even on the table. They're given armor that would make veitnam war veterans laugh, guns that, in comparision to their foes, is like fighting off the USMC with an army of stick wielding natives, and commanders who largely adhere to their own version of the codex astartes, and thus all use the same tactic: march the men foreward, dig trenches, pound your target with artillery until your lines collapse, fall back, repeat.

Even on the table the ability to form stubborn blob squads reflects that in large part all they are is a bunch of bodies to prevent the important things from getting killed.

Flak armour is quite good for autoguns and protecting from non-direct hits but other than that your just trolling.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
I recall them taking years just to land and then digging in immediately. Nothing swift about that.

Yeah, because they chose the third option of long siege war which was then done by specialized siege regiments known as the DKoK. The first option was swift direct assault by Adeptus Astartes and orbital strikes by Naval units. The second was a blockade.

And they obviously didn't opt for the options.

Astartes are usually reserved for highly critical operations, that's why.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:And they obviously didn't opt for the options.

WTF? Just read the damn books to find out why. You stated you've read the books and yet you don't know why?

Corporal_Reznov wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:And they obviously didn't opt for the options.

WTF? Just read the damn books to find out why? You stated you've read the books and yet you don't know why?

I didn't ask you why. It seems pretty obvious from your disjointed responses that come out of no where that English is not your first language. Pro-tip when struggling to communicate, error on the side of politeness because you may be misunderstanding things.

Romer wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:There's still billions the fight WWII soviet style and even WWI trench warfare style.

Examples don't back that up.

Sure they do. In every Guard novel I've read - that I can recall, at least - there's almost always a foil regiment that fights in the "Send in the next wave!" manner to make the contrast between them and the heroic protagonists clear.

Not to mention that fighting trench warfare style/static defense when you've got equipment like tanks, fighting planes, armoured transports, drop troopers is idiotic.

Idiotic warfare is a hallmark of the game, especially on the IoM side.

Considering the Guard have atleast 4 months training each, it doesn't add that they would end up fighting 'soviet style'.

Four months of training really isn't a lot.

Honestly, I don't know why Guard players fight tooth and nail against the notion that the Imperial Guard, by and large, adopts the tactic of throwing enough meat into the grinder to eventually make the gears seize. You can still play your army as the humane, cares-about-their-troops type, because there are certainly examples of those, too.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
I recall them taking years just to land and then digging in immediately. Nothing swift about that.

For the siege warfare? Yes, that took forever. But that's not my piont. My point was Siege Warfare was not option 1. They did not look at Vraks and say "THIS LOOKS LIKE A JOB FOR TRENCH WARRIOR". That was the third option, after swift assault (combined attack from orbit directly on the fortress using Space Marines, troops, and naval support.) That was the "obvious" answer. Next was blockade. Then was Siege Warfare.

Considering how insanely resource intensive siege warfare is (both in terms of material, troops, support personnel, etc.) and how time-consuming it is... it's not exactly an ideal choice for a Imperium who cannot always rely on stable and consistent long-range logistics is it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Seaward wrote:Honestly, I don't know why Guard players fight tooth and nail against the notion that the Imperial Guard, by and large, adopts the tactic of throwing enough meat into the grinder to eventually make the gears seize. You can still play your army as the humane, cares-about-their-troops type, because there are certainly examples of those, too.

Because they really don't have unlimited resources and doing it that way is a good recipe to lose? Can you seriously tell me that attrition warfare is going to work against Orks or Tyranids? Or Necrons, for that matter? It might work against some enemies (Chaos and HEretics) but as a standard doctrine there are lots of enemies it is not going to work against, and will just end up losing the Imperium valuable resources and territory (such as a whole segmentum to the Tyranids.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Four months of training really isn't a lot.

I could be wrong, but that's longer than US Army basic training.

Edit: Basic seems to be 10 weeks according to wikipedia. More advanced adds 6 to 52 weeks depending on what the training involves.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
I didn't ask you why. It seems pretty obvious from your disjointed responses that come out of no where that English is not your first language. Pro-tip when struggling to communicate, error on the side of politeness because you may be misunderstanding things.

Yes, English is not my first Language especially when it comes to writing it and grammar. But I do try my best.

Still what did you mean by your post anyway if you were not asking what I thought you were asking?

Seaward wrote:
Sure they do. In every Guard novel I've read - that I can recall, at least - there's almost always a foil regiment that fights in the "Send in the next wave!" manner to make the contrast between them and the heroic protagonists clear.

Idiotic warfare is a hallmark of the game, especially on the IoM side.

Four months of training really isn't a lot.

Honestly, I don't know why Guard players fight tooth and nail against the notion that the Imperial Guard, by and large, adopts the tactic of throwing enough meat into the grinder to eventually make the gears seize. You can still play your army as the humane, cares-about-their-troops type, because there are certainly examples of those, too.

Its not really by and large. It simply depends on the commander and the doctrine that the regiment fight under which in of itself varies.

Connor MacLeod wrote:
Because they really don't have unlimited resources and doing it that way is a good recipe to lose? Can you seriously tell me that attrition warfare is going to work against Orks or Tyranids? Or Necrons, for that matter? It might work against some enemies (Chaos and HEretics) but as a standard doctrine there are lots of enemies it is not going to work against, and will just end up losing the Imperium valuable resources and territory (such as a whole segmentum to the Tyranids.)

Humans are the closest thing they have to an unlimited resource. There are billions upon billions upon billions of them.

As for it working against Orks and Tyranids? Sure, it'll work against Orks, as Orks are rarely united in the numbers humans can be. There are more Orks in the galaxy, but that doesn't matter if they're not all coordinating with each other - which they're not.

As for Tyranids, very little works against them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Four months of training really isn't a lot.

I could be wrong, but that's longer than US Army basic training.

Indeed.

I've edited the above 2 posts.

Even if you're jesting please don't use homophobic slurs, there's no need. Thanks.

Can we use ***?

DakkaDakka wrote:

Corporal_Reznov wrote:

Flak armour is quite good for autoguns and protecting from non-direct hits but other than that your just trolling.

So what you're saying is that their armor is great as long as you don't shoot it? I give in, that right there is the definition of amazing armor lol . Every army has AP5 weapons in bundles, guardsman armor is pathetic. Again, its like the so called "flak" armor they gave soldiers in veitnam. It wouldn't stop a bullet, it wouldn't protect them at all. It's little more than a chest plate and a helmet. They're supposed to be expendable it's why they don't give them SM scout armor. Compare to the Tau, there's even an excerpt in the 4th edition codex:

"unlike the Imperium of Man, the Tau empire cannot draw on limitless manpower, so the strategy of attrition is unknown to them"

the imperium has limitless manpower, they don't care if their troops have good armor, they just want fearless soldiers (stubborn blob squads anyone?) who they can tell to go die to save the workers of the imperium (you know, the important people who feed the vast quadrillions of the empire). In addition, equipping such a vast army is expensive, so the most they can afford is armor that the standard guns in most armies can punch right through. It's why carapace armor is rare and always has been.

Further, they know that the billions upon billions of imperial guardsman out there will likely never face more than orks (who have a 6+ armor save) and renegades (mostly civies who wear clothes), so they don't care that their armor can't stop anything, because most of the things they're expected to face are shootas and las weapons.

dbsamurai wrote:
So what you're saying is that their armor is great as long as you don't shoot it? I give in, that right there is the definition of amazing armor lol . Every army has AP5 weapons in bundles, guardsman armor is pathetic. Again, its like the so called "flak" armor they gave soldiers in veitnam. It wouldn't stop a bullet, it wouldn't protect them at all. It's little more than a chest plate and a helmet. They're supposed to be expendable it's why they don't give them SM scout armor. Compare to the Tau, there's even an excerpt in the 4th edition codex:

I meant that it was good for taking Lasgun and auto gun shot and making them survivable. It obviously can't tank anti-armor and explosives in direct hits but against shrapnel its fine. Also where did you get the idea that 40k flak armor is the same as RL earth armor cause they have the same name. Then why do 40k 'Lasers' not act like RL lasers?

"unlike the Imperium of Man, the Tau empire cannot draw on limitless manpower, so the strategy of attrition is unknown to them"

Actually recent fluff shows that the Tau have learned the concept of attrition and are now using human auxiliaries for this purpose.

the imperium has limitless manpower, they don't care if their troops have good armor, they just want fearless soldiers (stubborn blob squads anyone?) who they can tell to go die to save the workers of the imperium (you know, the important people who feed the vast quadrillions of the empire). In addition, equipping such a vast army is expensive, so the most they can afford is armor that the standard guns in most armies can punch right through. It's why carapace armor is rare and always has been.

Further, they know that the billions upon billions of imperial guardsman out there will likely never face more than orks (who have a 6+ armor save) and renegades (mostly civies who wear clothes), so they don't care that their armor can't stop anything, because most of the things they're expected to face are shootas and las weapons.

That is the function of the army is it not, to save the civilians or are you just mocking the IG while praising the Tau?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here is what Dark Heresy core rulebook has to say about Flak armor:

Dark Heresy rpg: Core rulebook pg 144 wrote:Flak Armor

Comprised of layers of ablative and impact-absorbent material,
flak armour is effective against small arms, shrapnel and
proximity blasts. Flak armour counts as AP 5 against any
hit from a weapon with the Blast quality, provided the
wearer was not on the spot where the blast originated.

On an armor table in the next page it mentions this:

Flak Armour

Flak Helmet=Head

Flak Gauntlets=Arms

Light Flak Coat Arms, Body, Legs

Flak Vest=Body

Flak Jacket=Arms, Body, Legs

Flak Cloak=Body

Guard Flak Armour=All

Rogue Trader rpg mentions this:

Rogue Trader rpg: Cor rulebook pg138 wrote:Flak Armour

The most common type of armour in the galaxy is Flak
Armour as it is standard issue to the countless millions of
Imperial Guardsmen. Many layers of ablative and impact
absorbent material go into making each suit, enough to
deflect or negate most low-level attacks such as small arms,
shrapnel and proximity blasts. Solid hits from high impact
weapons can generally negate it, but given that it is relatively
lightweight, cheap to produce, and dependable in most
combat situations many veterans keep using it even when
offered better. As long as the wearer is not on the target spot
of the blast, Flak Armour counts as AP 5 against damage from
weapons with the Blast quality.

Fluff sources has statements that IG can sometimes mix armor to have things other than just flak.

Seaward wrote:Four months of training really isn't a lot.

US Marine training is 12 weeks. Long enough to send your boys to war competently aparantly. And that's 4 months of Guard training. After already being PDF soldiers.

Seaward wrote:Honestly, I don't know why Guard players fight tooth and nail against the notion that the Imperial Guard, by and large, adopts the tactic of throwing enough meat into the grinder to eventually make the gears seize. You can still play your army as the humane, cares-about-their-troops type, because there are certainly examples of those, too.

Because it's a ridiculous notion?

Corporal_Reznov wrote: I meant that it was good for taking Lasgun and auto gun shot and making them survivable. It obviously can't tank anti-armor and explosives in direct hits but against shrapnel its fine. Also where did you get the idea that 40k flak armor is the same as RL earth armor cause they have the same name. Then why do 40k 'Lasers' not act like RL lasers?

They behave the same too. as you noted in your quote, it's desined to stop flak, IE blasts. Well given the propensity for armies (such as my beloved blood angels, or my beloved IG) to carry a variety of explosives that are AP5 (flak missiles, flak grenades, in fact anything named flak) it's clear that the so called flak armor is not very good at stopping flak weapons.

Corporal_Reznov wrote:Actually recent fluff shows that the Tau have learned the concept of attrition and are now using human auxiliaries for this purpose.

recent fluff shows we've incorporated guardsmen into the armies as auxilieries from whatever IG heathens defected. we don't throw them away (says so in the Tau codex again when discussing storming a location "stormers are not cannon fodder, it is up to the sqauds providing covering fire to identify enemy firebases and eliminate them before the assualters suffer too many casualties")

Corporal_Reznov wrote:That is the function of the army is it not, to save the civilians or are you just mocking the IG while praising the Tau?

I'm mockin the fact that everyone doesn't seem to understand that it's a real life tactic. when defending a location the best tactic to do is keep throwin bodies forward until you run out of men or you don't need to hold it anymore. Just look at the battle of stalingrad.

Corporal_Reznov wrote:
The most common type of armour in the galaxy is Flak
Armour as it is standard issue to the countless millions of
Imperial Guardsmen.given that it is relatively
lightweight, cheap to produce, and dependable in most
combat situations many veterans keep using it even when
offered better.

Fluff sources has statements that IG can sometimes mix armor to have things other than just flak.

and yet it still offers next to no protection. It's like all guard equipment: cheap and easy to maintain. It's GW's excuse for why IG sereants (despite being ostensibly more valuable than the men they lead) keep using las weaponry.

I love how everyone's getting mad over their tactics, when these have been legitimate military tactics for milennia. Throw bodies at the problem till it dies. It worked for the persians (even after circling the greeks they still threw bodies at them for a full day before they could kill 300 dudes). It worked in WWI (hey britain and america, lets throw bodies at the germans until they give up!) it worked in the civil war of america (hey north, we outnumber them 5 to one, so lets march straight into their cannons!), it worked in WWII (hey russians, the germans are pushing us back on every front...throw bodies at them in stalingrad until winter comes!), and it works now. All the veitnamese had to do was keep throwin bodies at us until sentiment turned, all the iraqies are doing is throwing bodies at us, killing one or two of our monumentously courageous men and women every day until the fat cats in power say "eh screw it" and give up. When you have nothing but bodies and the people to replace them, it's the simplest and most effective tactic in terms of defense (which is sadly pretty much the entire MO of the IG...cadia defends the eye of terror for example)

Brother Coa wrote:

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:
Of course what complicates whether any guardsman will see some of the other nasties in the universe is that most guardsmen will not live to see anything other than a single enemy, and almost all will not see more than 2. Remember, a guardsman's equipment is worth more than the trooper, so quite often they will be thrown into meat grinder battles because they are just that expendable.

A bit of maths, if you will. There are 32,380 Hive Worlds in the Imperium. The average population of these worlds is around 200 billion each. We put these together and we get 6.476E15 (6,476,000,000,000,000,000 or 6.476 quintillion or 6.476 billion billion) people on Hive worlds ALONE.

I feel expendable after this calculations....

I also read somewhere that one out of 1000 people are psykers. If 1000 psykers are fed to the Golden Throne every day, that means that the process will exhaust itself (If the psyjkers remained finite) in 17 billion years. That is insignificance, ladies and gentlemen.

Romer wrote:

Seaward wrote:Honestly, I don't know why Guard players fight tooth and nail against the notion that the Imperial Guard, by and large, adopts the tactic of throwing enough meat into the grinder to eventually make the gears seize. You can still play your army as the humane, cares-about-their-troops type, because there are certainly examples of those, too.

Because it's a ridiculous notion?

Ya it's suppose to be ridiculous. The IG is ridiculous. It's part of there charm. If you take that away, they really don't have anything to them.

dbsamurai wrote:
They behave the same too. as you noted in your quote, it's desined to stop flak, IE blasts. Well given the propensity for armies (such as my beloved blood angels, or my beloved IG) to carry a variety of explosives that are AP5 (flak missiles, flak grenades, in fact anything named flak) it's clear that the so called flak armor is not very good at stopping flak weapons.

I believe you mean Krak or frag grenades.

recent fluff shows we've incorporated guardsmen into the armies as auxilieries from whatever IG heathens defected. we don't throw them away (says so in the Tau codex again when discussing storming a location "stormers are not cannon fodder, it is up to the sqauds providing covering fire to identify enemy firebases and eliminate them before the assualters suffer too many casualties")

Other recent fluff say otherwise but I know you'll just ignore them.

I'm mockin the fact that everyone doesn't seem to understand that it's a real life tactic. when defending a location the best tactic to do is keep throwin bodies forward until you run out of men or you don't need to hold it anymore. Just look at the battle of stalingrad.


and yet it still offers next to no protection. It's like all guard equipment: cheap and easy to maintain. It's GW's excuse for why IG sereants (despite being ostensibly more valuable than the men they lead) keep using las weaponry.

I love how everyone's getting mad over their tactics, when these have been legitimate military tactics for milennia. Throw bodies at the problem till it dies. It worked for the persians (even after circling the greeks they still threw bodies at them for a full day before they could kill 300 dudes). It worked in WWI (hey britain and america, lets throw bodies at the germans until they give up!) it worked in the civil war of america (hey north, we outnumber them 5 to one, so lets march straight into their cannons!), it worked in WWII (hey russians, the germans are pushing us back on every front...throw bodies at them in stalingrad until winter comes!), and it works now. All the veitnamese had to do was keep throwin bodies at us until sentiment turned, all the iraqies are doing is throwing bodies at us, killing one or two of our monumentously courageous men and women every day until the fat cats in power say "eh screw it" and give up. When you have nothing but bodies and the people to replace them, it's the simplest and most effective tactic in terms of defense (which is sadly pretty much the entire MO of the IG...cadia defends the eye of terror for example)

I never said that this wasn't valid or not that doesn't happen. What I've been saying is that its not the only tactic of the IG. They can do armored tank assaults, Urban fighting, paratroopers etc. Not merely march towards enemy fire.

Also, it does offer protection from autoguns, lasguns and shrapnel but not direct explosives but nice ignoring that.

SylvanaSekNadin wrote: Trenches are nice, they have many uses, but part of the problem facing a guard army is that quite often it is not a realistic tactic. Hell even in today's modern warfare, trenches are not really realistic.

This is because our so called modern "wars" hardly qualify as war compared to what has happened in history.

The numbers of troops involved in entire modern wars are sometimes smaller then the estimated casuality list in WW1 or even earlier. Some of the battles Julius Ceaser won against the Gauls had Gaul casualities in the hundreds of thousands.


We don't have the massive fighting forces of 2 nations fighting each other. We have small military forces being deployed against insurgents that are hiding in a civilian population we don't want to harm.

Yes, small. The forces being used on our current battlefields are puny compared to what has happened before. Numbers in the hundred thousands to occupy an entire country and face off with insurgents that arn't maintaining a battleline of their own.


If a full scale war ever breaks out, Trench warfare will return in some areas of fighting. Particularly in flat areas with little to no cover for the infantry soldier. In this situation, a series of trenchs with footmen hiding in them will provide a massive stumbling block for an army trying to claim ground.

Tanks are hindered because of the danger of man portable anti-tank weaponry and the trenchs are good at keeping infantry away.

Trenchs also arn't seen today because all the fighting is done in mostly Urban enviroments. places where you already have cover and don't need to make your own.

We are also fighting in places were we arn't going out to take and hold ground. its mostly "go on patrol for 4 hours and then return to base". Its not the land grab that WW2 and WW1 were.

Romer wrote:

Seaward wrote:Four months of training really isn't a lot.

US Marine training is 12 weeks.

LOL. No, it isn't. Not even close. Nice try with the Wikipedia, though.

Seaward wrote:

Romer wrote:

Seaward wrote:Four months of training really isn't a lot.

US Marine training is 12 weeks.

LOL. No, it isn't. Not even close. Nice try with the Wikipedia, though.

Then how long is it?

Also you made a post earlier that said the Imperium considered Armageddon important enough to deploy the marine is not really true. Marine's are autonomous within the Imperium, they decide for themselves where and how to fight.

Corporal_Reznov wrote:Then how long is it?

Depends on your job.

Also you made a post earlier that said the Imperium considered Armageddon important enough to deploy the marine is not really true. Marine's are autonomous within the Imperium, they decide for themselves where and how to fight.

That wasn't me who said that, no.

Seaward wrote:
Depends on your job.

Understood.

That wasn't me who said that, no.

My mistake then. Sorry.

dbsamurai wrote:

Corporal_Reznov wrote: I meant that it was good for taking Lasgun and auto gun shot and making them survivable. It obviously can't tank anti-armor and explosives in direct hits but against shrapnel its fine. Also where did you get the idea that 40k flak armor is the same as RL earth armor cause they have the same name. Then why do 40k 'Lasers' not act like RL lasers?

They behave the same too.

No they don't. Flak Armor has in addition heat absorbers for Laser and Plasma shots witch our modern armor doesn't.
And metals put into that armor is not kevlar, but as I can remember from some book Iridium, Paladium, Platinum... And those metals are one of the toughest in known universe.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

dbsamurai wrote:It's like all guard equipment: cheap and easy to maintain. It's GW's excuse for why IG sereants (despite being ostensibly more valuable than the men they lead) keep using las weaponry.

Pulse Rifle is expensive to manufacture and hard to maintain, yes?
Then what would you arm your Fire Warriors with if you had them like Imperial Guardsman in numbers?
The reason every Guardsman don't have Plasma Gun or Bolter is their numbers, sometimes even Lasguns are not enough to equip every one of them.
And with facilities that manufacture those far, far away... Guardsman must learn to maintain it on the field.

dbsamurai wrote:They behave the same too. as you noted in your quote, it's desined to stop flak, IE blasts. Well given the propensity for armies (such as my beloved blood angels, or my beloved IG) to carry a variety of explosives that are AP5 (flak missiles, flak grenades, in fact anything named flak) it's clear that the so called flak armor is not very good at stopping flak weapons.

Frag grenades/missiles: AP6
Krak grenades/missiles: AP4
Mortars: AP6

Against the blast of Frag grenades/missiles/fragmentation mortar rounds it appears that Flak armour does quite well.

I'm mockin the fact that everyone doesn't seem to understand that it's a real life tactic. when defending a location the best tactic to do is keep throwin bodies forward until you run out of men or you don't need to hold it anymore. Just look at the battle of stalingrad.

Stalingrad had a crucial strategic importance in that whoever controlled it had access to the oilfields, a resource both sides desperately needed - Germany wanted the fields because they had little to no access to petroleum, the Russians needed it because their oil production was so poor that the loss of some oil fields dented their production heavily. Thus both sides were desperate to maintain control of it.

When you're defending a location it's best to make use of cover, good fields of fire & shoot the enemy down as they approach. That way you have more chances to shoot the enemy down before they get to you and allows you to spring 'traps' and 'surprises', such as mines, explosives etc to injure & demoralise the enemy as they approach. Running out of men by throwing them forward repeatedly will lose you the battle - whats the point if you've got no-one left to defend your objective? If the Guardsmen get hammered during their advances they will not be so willing to advance and all the shouted orders down voxcasters will make no difference. Put your men into positions where they can gun the enemy down and their options for retreat are limited and you've got a far more viable tactic immediately.

and yet it still offers next to no protection. It's like all guard equipment: cheap and easy to maintain. It's GW's excuse for why IG sereants (despite being ostensibly more valuable than the men they lead) keep using las weaponry.

Autoguns/pistols, stub weapons, etc all fire big, heavy bullets, far larger than the 5.56mm/5.54mm bullets most commonly in circulation today. That flak armour can stop those large calibre autogun/pistol, stub pistol/revolver/stubber bullets is a testament to the materials they use in the 41st millenium. Also that lasfire, which deals large amounts of damage to human tissue readily enough, can be stopped by flak armour is quite impressive.

I love how everyone's getting mad over their tactics, when these have been legitimate military tactics for milennia. Throw bodies at the problem till it dies. It worked for the persians (even after circling the greeks they still threw bodies at them for a full day before they could kill 300 dudes). It worked in WWI (hey britain and america, lets throw bodies at the germans until they give up!) it worked in the civil war of america (hey north, we outnumber them 5 to one, so lets march straight into their cannons!)...

Thermopylae was actually fought with nearer 7000 on the Greek side, in a narrow defile which greatly limited the Persian advantage in numbers, so to get past they had no option but to keep marching forward and considering that melee was the primary form of combat how else are they going to attack? The North had trouble in the American Civil War because the Generals were useless - McClellan was so sure that Robert E. Lee outnumbered him that he deliberately held back troops to cover his army for when Lee's 'overpowering' attacks would materialise (they never did). He had several chances to win the war quickly, in 1861 outside Richmond, 1862 at the Second Manassas, 1862 at Antietam, yet he failed abysmally becayse of his fears. Don't forget that tactics of the time were massed musket/rifle fire at close range so troops had to march up close so that their weapons had a higher chance of hitting. Musket/rifle duels were often fought at ranges shorter than 100 yards, terrifyingly close but not quite as short a range as musket duels of early c18 - early c19. As for WW1, that was a war of attrition engineered by Generals who didn't have a clue what it was like being on the recieving end of rapid fire weapons, who still thought that cavalry could play a part and that war should be fought as it had been in the 1850s - lines marching up against each other to trade shots until one side, their side, obviously, is victorious. 'Going over the top' was one of the only options they had for attacking - when you have tens of miles of trenches you can't just nip round the flank and as they had no means of air transport they couldn't just go behind enemy lines. You have one option only which is to charge into the fire and hope enough of your men have survived to bayonet the enemy into submission. It didn't solve any problems at all, just massacred several generations of men on both sides and, at the time, awoke the world to the horrors of modern warfare.

A legitimate tactic it might be, but one when all else has failed, and a smart General husbands his forces to make sure he has weapons to bring to bear on the enemy at all times because a dead army is one that can't fight anymore.

Brother Coa wrote:

No they don't. Flak Armor has in addition heat absorbers for Laser and Plasma shots witch our modern armor doesn't.
And metals put into that armor is not kevlar, but as I can remember from some book Iridium, Paladium, Platinum... And those metals are one of the toughest in known universe.

I said it behaves the same it's not made of the same materials. when you compare it to the armies they're likely to engage it's about as protective as sending americans into Veitnam against AKs. In game terms (which is more accurate honestly than the fluff since it's honest stats we can confirm mathematically, as opposed to dozens of fluff books written in the entirety of 40k all by different authors with different ideas of how things work) the standard weapons of SM, Tau, DE, Eldar, Nids, and Crons all are great at cutting strait thru the armor (not tesla carbines gauss weapons), just like bullets and flak cut strait thru old veitnam flak armor. While yes they are very effective at stopping las weapons (which according to the fluff is the equivalent of modern assault rifles, a fact I site because its the only real analog to compare them to modern armor/weapon ratios), compared to what most guardsmen must fight, they offer no protection at all

Brother Coa wrote:
Pulse Rifle is expensive to manufacture and hard to maintain, yes?
Then what would you arm your Fire Warriors with if you had them like Imperial Guardsman in numbers?
The reason every Guardsman don't have Plasma Gun or Bolter is their numbers, sometimes even Lasguns are not enough to equip every one of them.
And with facilities that manufacture those far, far away... Guardsman must learn to maintain it on the field.

As far as the Tau dex states pulse rifles are easy to make and maintain for the Tau empire, its why even shapers can take them and why they trade them to human settlements.
Also you're proving my point. they give the imperial guardsmen crap because they have to equip quadrillions of soldiers so they give them cheap reliable crap because it keeps costs down in the long run.

Imperial guardsmen are used to hold points or take vitally strategic locations, that is why battles like stalingrad and thermopolae are important comparisons. They're two armies going at it for incredably vital resources. Setting traps and remaining mobile are exactly what was employed (in both battles, though for thermoplae it was the naval portion) to ensure the invaders had to pay with dozens of bodies for every inch of ground they gave. The tactic works, and the fact that you have commanders like chenkov as idealized special characters demonstrates that such remorseless and wasteful tactics are a key componant of the Imperial Guard's beliefs (i.e, chenkov rose to such prominence DESPITE sending dozens upon dozens of battalions to their deaths BECAUSE such tactics were seen as effective and were thus added to the repetoire of the imperium). Personally I never use chenkov...he's a dick. I love air cav with plas vets more (it s more like halo) but realisticly it's far easier for humanity to just throw bodies at a problem than pay the billions of credits to produce enough valkyries and chimeras to effectively mechanize.

IG equipment is crap only in comparison to other races, and then it depends on which areas.

IG get quite a package of equipment, similer to what our modern soldiers get. Ration kit, some body armor, grenades, trenching tool, binoculars, personal vox system(for squad communications), and other little knick-knacks.

Grey Templar wrote:IG equipment is crap only in comparison to other races, and then it depends on which areas.

IG get quite a package of equipment, similer to what our modern soldiers get. Ration kit, some body armor, grenades, trenching tool, binoculars, personal vox system(for squad communications), and other little knick-knacks.

Quite right. The Imperial Guard might be inferior (somewhat) in terms of technology, but in overall reliability, they have the edge. That's why they can be compared to the Soviets.

dbsamurai wrote:
In game terms (which is more accurate honestly than the fluff since it's honest stats we can confirm mathematically, as opposed to dozens of fluff books written in the entirety of 40k all by different authors with different ideas of how things work) the standard weapons of SM, Tau, DE, Eldar, Nids, and Crons all are great at cutting strait thru the armor (not tesla carbines gauss weapons), just like bullets and flak cut strait thru old veitnam flak armor. While yes they are very effective at stopping las weapons (which according to the fluff is the equivalent of modern assault rifles, a fact I site because its the only real analog to compare them to modern armor/weapon ratios), compared to what most guardsmen must fight, they offer no protection at all

No it isn't and your the only one to think this way. All franchises that have ever been used in debates use fluff or cutscene visuals to determine their power not ingame nonsense, so just stop thinking like this please. Also codexes are written by several people too, not one person.

Hell if we go by your idea. Do you think that pivotal battle in 40k consist of 25 IG a 1 or 5 tanks or more likely full scale tank assaults consisting of 20 or even hundreds of tanks. I believe the new codexes have a situation where a Hive city was not invaded by troops and instead pounded to death. So how do we play that scenario?

Game terms are abstractions from fluff and suffer from balancing so that people can have fun and nothing more than that.

Imperial guardsmen are used to hold points or take vitally strategic locations, that is why battles like stalingrad and thermopolae are important comparisons. They're two armies going at it for incredably vital resources. Setting traps and remaining mobile are exactly what was employed (in both battles, though for thermoplae it was the naval portion) to ensure the invaders had to pay with dozens of bodies for every inch of ground they gave. The tactic works, and the fact that you have commanders like chenkov as idealized special characters demonstrates that such remorseless and wasteful tactics are a key componant of the Imperial Guard's beliefs (i.e, chenkov rose to such prominence DESPITE sending dozens upon dozens of battalions to their deaths BECAUSE such tactics were seen as effective and were thus added to the repetoire of the imperium). Personally I never use chenkov...he's a dick. I love air cav with plas vets more (it s more like halo) but realisticly it's far easier for humanity to just throw bodies at a problem than pay the billions of credits to produce enough valkyries and chimeras to effectively mechanize.

Blah blah blah.

[Sarcasm]IG can do nothing but CHARGE!! Chimera's, Tanks, Elysian droop-troops don't exist cause IG only Charge!!! Chenkov represent all IG commanders and to hell with YARRICK, GAUNT, CREED, CIAPHAS CAIN BECAUSE I SAY SO, IG can only CHARGE!!! IG snipers don't exist cause IG can only Charge!!! Air support and artillery don't exist, cause IG only CHARGE!!!


These guys below don't exist cause the Imperial Guard can only CHARGE!




[/Sarcasm]

General Krell, a Jedi General, of Star wars has a high reputation for wining battles despite the fact that the casualty rates of his clone soldier battalions are horrendous. Which he cause by ordering his soldiers into full frontal assaults for everything.

Please calm down and post in a less confrontational manner.

There's no need for you to be as rude as you've been here and earlier in the thread.

reds8n wrote:Please calm down and post in a less confrontational manner.

There's no need for you to be as rude as you've been here and earlier in the thread.

Understood and sorry about that. I sometimes get ahead of myself and get frustrated.

dbsamurai wrote:They give the imperial guardsmen crap because they have to equip quadrillions of soldiers so they give them cheap reliable crap because it keeps costs down in the long run.

Accurate Lasshot can kill Space Marine in 1 hit, Fire Warrior to ( Gaunt Ghost ). Your point is invalid. Next...

Brother Coa wrote:

dbsamurai wrote:They give the imperial guardsmen crap because they have to equip quadrillions of soldiers so they give them cheap reliable crap because it keeps costs down in the long run.

Accurate Lasshot can kill Space Marine in 1 hit, Fire Warrior to ( Gaunt Ghost ). Your point is invalid. Next...

What? can you rephrase your post cause I don't get it except things here and there.

I believe he's saying that an accurate lasgun shot can kill a Marine in one hit, as has been proven from Fire Warrior all the way up through Gaunt's Ghosts.

It's at least partially correct; an insanely accurate/very lucky lasgun shot into the soft armor of the throat or the grille of the helmet could kill a Space Marine.

It could also not.

Even if it punches through the armor's weak point, if it hits a bionic or the space marine's hardened body absorbs it, then the marine won't die.

Tadashi wrote:Even if it punches through the armor's weak point, if it hits a bionic or the space marine's hardened body absorbs it, then the marine won't die.

It was probably on high power. Anytime a lasgun dose soothing it's not really meant to do you can blame it on the high power setting.

nomotog wrote:

Tadashi wrote:Even if it punches through the armor's weak point, if it hits a bionic or the space marine's hardened body absorbs it, then the marine won't die.

It was probably on high power. Anytime a lasgun dose soothing it's not really meant to do you can blame it on the high power setting.

Is this a problem?

PresidentOfAsia wrote:I heard that the majority of the Imperial Guard will never see a single Ork, Eldar, Space Marine, Chaos Space Marine in their entire life and that they will spend most of their time fighting rebellions; is that true?

If so, then where the hell do ideas such as "most guardsmen will not live past 3 hours on the battlefield" come from? I'm pretty sure that their 4 months of training(the USMC has the same amount of training) will fare well against a bunch of rebel militas and traitor PDFs

Also don't Guardsmen units such as the Tanith First and Only, Elysian Drop Troops and the Harkoni Warhawks value quality over quantity

I don't think they'd hardly ever see any of those things, since their 'tours' are relatively small time periods (Imagine a guardsman serves ten years. I doubt anything important happens on their planet or in their section in ten years).

Most guardsmen are well trained and would be the equivalent of rangers, I think. Valor and heroism are not rare amongst the elysians, tanith and even catachans... So that would lead me to believe that PDF regiments are somewhere between conscripts and guardsmen. Four months of training? That seems like not nearly enough.

nomotog wrote:

Tadashi wrote:Even if it punches through the armor's weak point, if it hits a bionic or the space marine's hardened body absorbs it, then the marine won't die.

It was probably on high power. Anytime a lasgun dose soothing it's not really meant to do you can blame it on the high power setting.

Not really. Even ordinary lasguns can punch through the joints of power armor, or the eye visors.

Tadashi wrote:

nomotog wrote:

Tadashi wrote:Even if it punches through the armor's weak point, if it hits a bionic or the space marine's hardened body absorbs it, then the marine won't die.

It was probably on high power. Anytime a lasgun dose soothing it's not really meant to do you can blame it on the high power setting.

Not really. Even ordinary lasguns can punch through the joints of power armor, or the eye visors.

Lasgun shot on High Power hit on soft spot can tear Astartes limb, a shot directly into the eye socket can kill him instantly.

Yes, I know, but I was referring to the post that everytime a lasgun does something unexpected, it always assumes the lasgun was firing a 'hot-shot'.

Then I will ask next question: when was the last time you saw a single Lasgun in action?
I always see at least 10 - 20 of them.

A concentrated lasgun volley will tear through anything...I get your point.

I was reading the guard codex on Friday and I came across this little tidbit for all those who seem to think that the imperium does not consider guardsmen to be completely expendable.

On page 31 under regimental advisers specifically the paragraph about the master of ordinance.

Attempts by company commanders to call down close-ranged artillery fire can result in disastrous casualties in the imperial guard. Whilst the loss of life is repeatable, the waste of ammunition is intolerable.

There you go, your average imperial guardsmen is worth less than an artillery shell in the eyes of the Munotorum.

The equipment and training the guard receives is the very carefully balanced cost vs effectiveness ratio calculated by the administratium to ensure that they get the absolute best bang for buck. Of course this means that the guard get what is essentially the bare minimum and sent to die, because that is the most cost effective.

(Interesting note on Guard flack armor, It actually can stop rounds from ork sluggas and shootas. Not saying their armor is good, its more a case of how bad Ork guns are, of course in comparison even the paltry 6+ armor save of the orks is enough to block a las rifle. )

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:
There you go, your average imperial guardsmen is worth less than an artillery shell in the eyes of the Munotorum.

So?
What is the cost to train one Navy SEAL and what is the cost of one F-22 Raptor?
What is the cost to train one US Marine and what si the cost to build one M1 Abrams?
What is the cost of training 1000 US army men and what is the cost of one Nuclear Missile?

Of course gear and ammo will be always be more worth then infantry. But that doesn't mean that infantry is bad quality compared to it. ( realistically, every solder on foot can destroy a tank if he get to close ).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:I was reading the guard codex on Friday and I came across this little tidbit for all those who seem to think that the imperium does not consider Guardsmen to be completely expendable.

They are not and here is why: Imperium will see that Guardsman win one campaign so that they can send them immediately to the next front. They can't send force that they lost so they tell their commanders to "look out for his men" because they will need them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:
(Interesting note on Guard flack armor, It actually can stop rounds from ork sluggas and shootas. Not saying their armor is good, its more a case of how bad Ork guns are, of course in comparison even the paltry 6+ armor save of the orks is enough to block a las rifle. )

Tell that to Daemon Prince that got killed by volley of Las fire.

Brother Coa wrote:
Tell that to Daemon Prince that got killed by volley of Las fire.

The galaxy has been at unending, constant war for 10,000 years in 40K.

That means the probability that a kitten has killed a Bloodthirster at some point is nearly 1.

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:I was reading the guard codex on Friday and I came across this little tidbit for all those who seem to think that the imperium does not consider guardsmen to be completely expendable.

On page 31 under regimental advisers specifically the paragraph about the master of ordinance.

Attempts by company commanders to call down close-ranged artillery fire can result in disastrous casualties in the imperial guard. Whilst the loss of life is repeatable, the waste of ammunition is intolerable.

There you go, your average imperial guardsmen is worth less than an artillery shell in the eyes of the Munotorum.

The equipment and training the guard receives is the very carefully balanced cost vs effectiveness ratio calculated by the administratium to ensure that they get the absolute best bang for buck. Of course this means that the guard get what is essentially the bare minimum and sent to die, because that is the most cost effective.

(Interesting note on Guard flack armor, It actually can stop rounds from ork sluggas and shootas. Not saying their armor is good, its more a case of how bad Ork guns are, of course in comparison even the paltry 6+ armor save of the orks is enough to block a las rifle. )

And so what? Your post doesn't give us some great revelation that we don't already know. Read this very carefully: Just because the Munitorum say something doesn't mean its always followed. The live of one guardsmen is irrelevant but wasting their lives to achieve nothing is a waste. The Guard are not send of to die, they are sent of to fight, they die cause its war and people die in war.

Really, lets see you try and arm uncounted trillions of IG and other IG units with all the best equipment without going bankrupt.

And so what if one Ork has a 6+ armor save? In the 40k fluff Lasguns are fired alongside other weapons cause IG are a combined arms force. Flak armor is good enough for its job and its not like the IG don't add to that armor with whatever they can get.

Of course gear and ammo will be always be more worth then infantry. But that doesn't mean that infantry is bad quality compared to it. ( realistically, every solder on foot can destroy a tank if he get to close ).

Once-upon-a-time, perhaps, but modern battletanks now mount anti-personnel mines to their hulls for the event that infantry gets "too close". They then get a Claymore mine to the face for getting "too close".

Realistically speaking, the last thing you want to do as an infantryman is run into a tank. Aircraft you can hide from, and if it bombs your AO, you're most likely going to die anyway, so it doesn't matter. Other infantry you can kill, evade, feint, flank, whatever. Tanks? Tanks ignore your assault rifle, regardless of what you shoot at it with. Your AT-4 only has one shot, and is really a gamble as to whether or not it's going to hit in the right spot at the right angle to do any real damage to the tank other than bounce off or just eat some ablative armor. The tank has its main cannon for blowing up your tanks, bunkers and buildings from really far away, a coaxial autocannon for pissing in your Cheerios, and a pintle-mounted or sponson-mounted machine gun (or six) for rubbing salt in the wound. On top of all of that, it weighs 80+ tons and can, in a fit of pique, just run you over without even slowing down.

And if you think you're going to be a hero by jumping on the hull and throwing a grenade down the hatch or into the cannon's muzzle? They put mines on that sonofagrox that blow you to a red paste when you get too near.

Also, comparing IG to a modern military is a bit... off the mark. While a team of SEALs costs less than an F22, the American military values the lives of its soldiers rather highly. It is a fact of war that soldiers will die, but every effort is taken to ensure that these lives are not lost needlessly. The US military would rather lose the plane than lose the pilot.

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:I was reading the guard codex on Friday and I came across this little tidbit for all those who seem to think that the imperium does not consider guardsmen to be completely expendable.

On page 31 under regimental advisers specifically the paragraph about the master of ordinance.

Attempts by company commanders to call down close-ranged artillery fire can result in disastrous casualties in the imperial guard. Whilst the loss of life is repeatable, the waste of ammunition is intolerable.

There you go, your average imperial guardsmen is worth less than an artillery shell in the eyes of the Munotorum.

The equipment and training the guard receives is the very carefully balanced cost vs effectiveness ratio calculated by the administratium to ensure that they get the absolute best bang for buck. Of course this means that the guard get what is essentially the bare minimum and sent to die, because that is the most cost effective.

(Interesting note on Guard flack armor, It actually can stop rounds from ork sluggas and shootas. Not saying their armor is good, its more a case of how bad Ork guns are, of course in comparison even the paltry 6+ armor save of the orks is enough to block a las rifle. )

Well worded quite harshly. It's not too far form how things actually work. (Or use to work. We have smart bombs now.) When calling in artillery. If your not taking casualties, then your not doing it right.

Psienesis wrote:
Once-upon-a-time, perhaps, but modern battletanks now mount anti-personnel mines to their hulls for the event that infantry gets "too close". They then get a Claymore mine to the face for getting "too close".

Realistically speaking, the last thing you want to do as an infantryman is run into a tank. Aircraft you can hide from, and if it bombs your AO, you're most likely going to die anyway, so it doesn't matter. Other infantry you can kill, evade, feint, flank, whatever. Tanks? Tanks ignore your assault rifle, regardless of what you shoot at it with. Your AT-4 only has one shot, and is really a gamble as to whether or not it's going to hit in the right spot at the right angle to do any real damage to the tank other than bounce off or just eat some ablative armor. The tank has its main cannon for blowing up your tanks, bunkers and buildings from really far away, a coaxial autocannon for pissing in your Cheerios, and a pintle-mounted or sponson-mounted machine gun (or six) for rubbing salt in the wound. On top of all of that, it weighs 80+ tons and can, in a fit of pique, just run you over without even slowing down.

And if you think you're going to be a hero by jumping on the hull and throwing a grenade down the hatch or into the cannon's muzzle? They put mines on that sonofagrox that blow you to a red paste when you get too near.

Also, comparing IG to a modern military is a bit... off the mark. While a team of SEALs costs less than an F22, the American military values the lives of its soldiers rather highly. It is a fact of war that soldiers will die, but every effort is taken to ensure that these lives are not lost needlessly. The US military would rather lose the plane than lose the pilot.

40K IG do have hand-held missile launchers and lascannons for anti-tank work and mines too. As for valuing the IG lives, you're entirely correct. The Imperium itself doesn't value the lives of the individual IG cause war is everywhere- sacrificing an entire Thunderhawk or Valkyrie for just one soldier is a waste of equipment and lives(40k armies don't take prisoners, 99% of them anyway)

trying to measure guardsmen training is pretty impossible, because on one hand you'd have to know how many guardsmen there are. we know that there are some professional soldiers in their ranks, but we dont know exactly what the distributions are. the IG runs from the high end regiments like Cadians and vostroyans and catachans and the like to conscripts and penal legions and feral world cannon fodder. You would have to establish some standards to perform a measurement and that is going to be difficult at any scale greater than say, a sector, because the Imperium simply doesn't work that way, nor does the Munitorum (they keep it simple and just hope they throw enough resources in the direction of the problem, and that the guy in charge is smart enough how to solve the problem. they pretty much outlined this in the 5th edition codex.)

How well (or poorly) they are used is entirely up to the officers in charge, and that is always a mixed bag as well. it could be a good offier, a bad officer, an unimaginative one, or a brilliant one. the quality of your officer will also by and large dictate how the troops are treated and regarded. Some will buy into the 'unlimited resources of humans' crap* and play Zapp Branigan. Others will not be quite so insane and actually try to preserve their forces. i mean hell, they even *evacuate* those worthless troops (spending the emperor's precious Fuel and risking his precious dropships in the process.)

In the end IG troops are just as much a commodity, a tool, as the weapons and armor they carry, the ammunition they use, the food they eat, and so on. it's all the same to the munitorum - they want everyone to be just like an Ogryn or a krieger, mentally at least. (But like with most things in the Imperium, theory and practice don't always match up.)

* - it's simple: a potential human soldier is an investment of close to two decades of food, water, possibly education, generally raising them so they can be trained in weeks or months as a soldier. they expend fuel to get them to where they need to be. at best they may get hours, or days, or possibly even years of use out of them. they are more inefficient than combat servitors or replicae. but they suit the imperium's goals, the propoganda, and the agenda. focusing troops on the wars keeps them from focusing on the government itself. external threats work well like that.) What's more is that you need even *more* humans in the logistics and infrastructure to build, maintain, and transport all the stuff your trooper needs, and they need food, water, training etc...

contrast this with orks. orks have their own built in mobile ecosystems (food especially). they can turn any sort of scrap or hulks into starships, vehicles, and weapons.. Their economies are based on teeth. they can literally grow new troops out of the ground, and they can be (at the right levels) be born genetically knowing what they are supposed to do. they're stronger, tougher, and generally better fighters than your average human.

contrast it with Tyranids. They create millions (billions) of troops, which they insert on planet via mycetic spores (part drop pod part orbital bombardment munition.) they are masters of biological and chemical warfare - to the point they will alter a planet's enviroment and climate to suit them and to threaten the defenders. Their troops are ultra-specailized towards combat, making them bigger, tougher, faster, and generally nastier than a human. they don't care about losses, because at the end of a conflict any surviving troops will be killed off, rendered down, and used to create the next generation of troops anyhow. They will steal your corposes and use them to build troops to send against you. They literally can replace losses faster than you can, and will send billions of gaunts against the imperium simply to exhaust its ammo, and then roll over them with millions (billions) more. the Imperium *cannot* match that in attrition warfare in any possible way. they might have a chance against Orks (if a small one) but this is a guaranteed losing proposition against the Tyranids. and the Tyranids are a much bigger threat.

Hell contrast it with the tau: The tau live what.. 40 years? they have short childhoods and short deaths comparead to humans (consuming far less resources in that process) and they have a fairly long (as long as, perhaps longer) 'useful" lifespan than humans are. They are far more driven, curious (hence their technology), and generally far more unified efficiently through the Ethereals and their caste system. They don't suffer nearly as much crime, or infighting or, any of that stuff. They know their place and don't question it. they have far better standardization of equipment and more reliable logistical trains.

There is, in no practical way, for the imperium to effectively counter that on their own terms. The Imperium's advantage is that it is a large, amorphous mass of organic matter. it tends to blend a little bit of everything that everyone has. it doesn't do it well, or efficiently. It can apply (to some extent) any possible tactic or capability and at least pull it off adequately. they are the 40k galaxy's generalists.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tadashi wrote:
Not really. Even ordinary lasguns can punch through the joints of power armor, or the eye visors.

Under what conditions? At what range? What setting? Does it require single shots or several closely space shots to drill through. Even then, where does it hit? The Salamander novel Noctrune discussed this - unless you hit a "kill shot" era (hearts, neck, or head) you probably have no guarantee of putting a Marine down. In power armor this means head or neck for a single shot, and that's a rather small target. eye visors are even more unlikely of a target unless by sheer luck.

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:
(Interesting note on Guard flack armor, It actually can stop rounds from ork sluggas and shootas. Not saying their armor is good, its more a case of how bad Ork guns are, of course in comparison even the paltry 6+ armor save of the orks is enough to block a las rifle. )

i kind of find that hard to believe, unless he's very lucky. a slugger round is going to be like a large caliber (say .50 cal or greater) round hitting the body, and even if it fails to penetrate the sheer amount of momentum will be hazardous unless he's wearing some really heavy armor.

Connor MacLeod wrote:

Tadashi wrote:
Not really. Even ordinary lasguns can punch through the joints of power armor, or the eye visors.

Under what conditions? At what range? What setting? Does it require single shots or several closely space shots to drill through. Even then, where does it hit? The Salamander novel Noctrune discussed this - unless you hit a "kill shot" era (hearts, neck, or head) you probably have no guarantee of putting a Marine down. In power armor this means head or neck for a single shot, and that's a rather small target. eye visors are even more unlikely of a target unless by sheer luck.

You should also ask which lasgun under which power setting. If it were a Mars/Necromunda pattern then it would have to be a very lucky shot. If it were a Triplex, with its variable power settings, then it's more likely. Even more so if it were the No. 98 Lucius pattern DKoK use which only fires on a very high power setting (for which it forsakes its rate of fire).

Connor MacLeod wrote:

SylvanaSekNadin wrote:
(Interesting note on Guard flack armor, It actually can stop rounds from ork sluggas and shootas. Not saying their armor is good, its more a case of how bad Ork guns are, of course in comparison even the paltry 6+ armor save of the orks is enough to block a las rifle. )

i kind of find that hard to believe, unless he's very lucky. a slugger round is going to be like a large caliber (say .50 cal or greater) round hitting the body, and even if it fails to penetrate the sheer amount of momentum will be hazardous unless he's wearing some really heavy armor.

Auto & Stub weapons fire rounds equivilant to modern .50 calibre bullets and flak armour will quite happily stop those. Those rounds are described as large, low velocity rounds and I assume they're considered low velocity due to the other, more hi-tech weaponry that exists in the universe. The person hit by the round might be shocked & bruised from having such a large lump of metal flinging itself at them at rather high speeds, but most often Flak Armour will hold out - however it can also fail if enough bullets are put into flak armour at once. It is noted as being made from layers of ablative and impact-absorbent materials, however, so I doubt that an impact from an autogun or Ork slugga would put the wearer out of action through impact alone.
Ork weapons are not really a reliable thing to judge the capability of armour by, considering that they only really work because Orks believe they will. They come in all manner of shapes and sizes with the general rule being the bigger & louder the better - doesn't mean they're more effective.

Point is against the standard weapon an Imperial can get their hands on, whether las or solid projectile, Flak Armour is very good protection. Against anything more powerful than that and it's not quite so effective, but it does do its job well.