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Basically as in the title, i'm curious to see if a literary precedent exists

We've all heard of the single god-like OP space marine demolishing everyone, but i'm drawing a blank where the opposite happens, ie, its a SM 'having some difficulty' 1v1ing a Ork Slugga Boy or some such.

Ie, is there a book where the SM depicted are either;

1. mass-produced low-end thin-blooded astartes from some bio-vat somewhere and chucked into the fray (think of something like Bodt, but extra cheap)

or

2. non-overpowered Space Marines who whilst still being capable of 1v1 a Ork Slugga, aren't 1v1 a Chaos Terminator or Meganob

these are essentially what the Inductii were during the Heresy isn't it? Rushed through recruitment to put bodies on the battlefield quickly.

Same with the Daemonculaba, that was an attempt to fast-track the implantation/growth process

As far as modern, loyalist astartes? I don't think so, especially since the Primaris marines reinforced existing chapters with massive numbers of new marines

In some of the various books featuring Night Lords they disparage the last set of recruits from the home world. Regarded as pretty bad though still obviously have the astartes training and biology.

That was to do with Nostramo sending the Legion the dregs and criminals of the world instead of its best and brightest like it was supposed to.

It was psychological not physical.

Kind of?

It’s a long road from Smelly Hooman, via Aspirant, to full Battle Brother.

First, you need to pass the tests, which of course vary Chapter to Chapter, but are always rigorous.

Next, once you’ve cut that mustard? There’s a lengthy conversion process. You can be the highest scoring recruit they’ve ever seen ever - but if your body can’t adapt to the implants at any stage? You’re probably gonna die.

But let’s say you survive into the Scout Company? It’s still possible some kind of skill deficiency will see you dead before you become a full Battle Brother.

However? The exacting nature of the recruitment process offers the Chapter insulation. If your mind isn’t suited to the various forms of indoctrination, or you’ve some kind of previously undiagnosed genetic flaw? That process weeds you out before the implantation process, helping to reduce the chance of a No-Hoper wasting precious Geneseed reserves.

The Beast series features loads of Marines dying like chumps to Orks, including the entirety of a first founding chapter, twice...

Right but that's in the context of those Orks being much more dangerous on average and it's not like they're having controlled duels between single opponents.

The biggest war the Imperium had fought since the Heresy and the Orks are regularly using gravity weapons that toss Land Raiders like pebbles.

Some of them are, some of them are just normal orks and they manage to take down plenty of Marines 1v1 in melee. And plenty more die to conventional weaponry as well as to Ad Mech forces.

The Space Marines lowering their standards in order to increase their numbers would probably be beneficial for the Imperium, because let's face it, the #1 aspirant of a crop of 100 recruits is not that much better than the #2 or #3 aspirants (and hell, even the #20 aspirant is likely still in the same ballpark). Also, the limited size of a chapter means that an aspirant who otherwise meets the standards might be rejected solely because an even better aspirant took the one available spot.

But I think Space Marines are too constrained by tradition to significantly increase their numbers at the expense of individual ability. Even non-Codex-compliant chapters like the Black Templars, who can have as many brothers as they choose, still have their pride and would not want to be known as "the chapter with 'good enough' Marines".

Chaos Space Marines would have presented a good opportunity for GW to give us quantity-over-quality Marines, but I think I read somewhere that their recruitment process is even more unforgiving. Or perhaps that's just a Fabius Bile thing, and not all traitor chapters are beholden to him. In any case, this could be justified both by Chaos' social-darwinist nature and by their dearth of gene-seed to create new marines and/or equipment to outfit them.

.

This is 100% the lore of Inductii, which makes up the backbone of the later half of the new Horus Heresy lore. Every legion was churning out marines as fast as they could, with some taking bigger shortcuts than others. It's actually part of the explanation for why we'd often see modern M41 marines killing ten times their number of CSM as well as why the Imperial Fists are missing two organs.

jareddm wrote:
It's actually part of the explanation for why we'd often see modern M41 marines killing ten times their number of CSM

So are the traitor chapters still making Inductii, then? Because I have trouble believing that very many of the Heresy-era Inductii would have survived 10,000 years of warfare.

-Guardsman- wrote:

jareddm wrote:
It's actually part of the explanation for why we'd often see modern M41 marines killing ten times their number of CSM

So are the traitor chapters still making Inductii, then? Because I have trouble believing that very many of the Heresy-era Inductii would have survived 10,000 years of warfare.

A combination of things, yes.
First, the time dilating effects of the Eye means for many CSM, it hasn't even been close for 10,000 years. A week, a year, a century or two. And for others it's been far more. Second, the legions at the Siege were massive compared to any 100k number you might see thrown around. Given the descriptions presented in the SoT books of endless masses of marines for each legion, I wouldn't be surprised if each traitor legion, especially the SoH, WE, and DG, were 200, 300, or even 400k legionnaires each considering the amount of mass recruitment all were doing in the lead-up to the Siege. Third, we see in "It Bleeds" that World Eater warbands are still producing plenty of shoddy marines with fake memories of being at the Siege, despite being less than a century old.

Helsreach is one novel where Marines get fairly constrained. One gets ambushed by an Ork or two with a special anti-PA weapon and would've died if others hadn't found him.

The main character and his retinue of 4 or 5 Marines were about to get overwhelmed and killed by a horde of about 30 Orks before some regular humans save them

One Marine gets injured to the point where his enhanced blood can't even save him.

Now, I don't really read Marine novels, but that one seems to be one where they're shown as rather low end, compared to other stuff.

But in general, if you want to see low end Marines, you have to have them feature as antagonists, then they're dangerous, but not the lame demi-gods that they're sometimes portrayed as.

the-gentleman-ranker wrote:
Basically as in the title, i'm curious to see if a literary precedent exists

We've all heard of the single god-like OP space marine demolishing everyone, but i'm drawing a blank where the opposite happens, ie, its a SM 'having some difficulty' 1v1ing a Ork Slugga Boy or some such.

Ie, is there a book where the SM depicted are either;

1. mass-produced low-end thin-blooded astartes from some bio-vat somewhere and chucked into the fray (think of something like Bodt, but extra cheap)

or

2. non-overpowered Space Marines who whilst still being capable of 1v1 a Ork Slugga, aren't 1v1 a Chaos Terminator or Meganob

The depictions of Space Marines in the Ian Watson novels are pretty modest in comparison to the typical bolter porn later publications serve up.

Sometimes you can find snippets of stuff in the codices of other armies too. In the 2nd end Ork codex there's part of a story where some Ork Goffs charge in to meet some attacking Space Wolves and come out the end with casualties but having won the fight. The fight happens "offscreen" and there's no real details, so you don't know the numbers of anything involved, but the Orks come out on top. In the Eldar codex a Chaos Marine gets minced by a Warp Spiders monofilament Web Spinner. It's a Chaos Marine rather than a loyalist, but they're still roughly equivalent.

 Gert wrote:
The biggest war the Imperium had fought since the Heresy and the Orks are regularly using gravity weapons that toss Land Raiders like pebbles.

That's a fairly common weapon for Orks in Epic. It's called a Lifta-Droppa or a Supa-Lifta Droppa depending on the size of it. The tank-mounted ones could lift Land Raiders and toss them onto other things, iirc. The Titan mounted ones could toss Superheavies and maybe Warhound Titans around.

In 2nd ed Orks had access to a Smasha Gun, which did the same thing to infantry targets.

 Insectum7 wrote:

the-gentleman-ranker wrote:
Basically as in the title, i'm curious to see if a literary precedent exists

We've all heard of the single god-like OP space marine demolishing everyone, but i'm drawing a blank where the opposite happens, ie, its a SM 'having some difficulty' 1v1ing a Ork Slugga Boy or some such.

Ie, is there a book where the SM depicted are either;

1. mass-produced low-end thin-blooded astartes from some bio-vat somewhere and chucked into the fray (think of something like Bodt, but extra cheap)

or

2. non-overpowered Space Marines who whilst still being capable of 1v1 a Ork Slugga, aren't 1v1 a Chaos Terminator or Meganob

The depictions of Space Marines in the Ian Watson novels are pretty modest in comparison to the typical bolter porn later publications serve up.

Sometimes you can find snippets of stuff in the codices of other armies too. In the 2nd end Ork codex there's part of a story where some Ork Goffs charge in to meet some attacking Space Wolves and come out the end with casualties but having won the fight. The fight happens "offscreen" and there's no real details, so you don't know the numbers of anything involved, but the Orks come out on top. In the Eldar codex a Chaos Marine gets minced by a Warp Spiders monofilament Web Spinner. It's a Chaos Marine rather than a loyalist, but they're still roughly equivalent.
.

That's a good point. The Scion Codex had a snipper about a battle where the AAA was so thick even Drop Pods assaults failed, and instead Scions dropped from orbit in small groups, with individual Scions being too small to be tracked. They open up a crack in the AAA defense and the Flesh Tearers can then land. There's also a few more battles where Scions come out on top of CSMs

 Insectum7 wrote:
That's a fairly common weapon for Orks in Epic. It's called a Lifta-Droppa or a Supa-Lifta Droppa depending on the size of it. The tank-mounted ones could lift Land Raiders and toss them onto other things, iirc. The Titan mounted ones could toss Superheavies and maybe Warhound Titans around.

In 2nd ed Orks had access to a Smasha Gun, which did the same thing to infantry targets.

I mean they were also throwing moons and asteroids around like pebbles, maybe that would have got the point across better?

Well those are many many orders of magnitude larger than Land Raiders, so yes that's rather different.

Marines dying quickly can be taken from the Dawn of War series (games and novels/comics) and from the old Necron World Engine blurb, where all the named Space Marine chapters pull through OK....

Except for the "who are these guys?" chapter of Astral Knights, who send in every member of their order except for a Dreadnought and 31 guys.

By the end of the battle, the Astral Knights have a Dreadnought and 31 guys.

As a small addendum, it might visually interest you to flick through Rogue Trader era rulebooks and compendia. The 1st edition mother of all 40k rulebooks is full of artwork of Space Marines dying horrible deaths. Orks do come off as dangerous versus Astartes.

I sometimes joke that Rogue Trader depictions are the real ones, while everything from 2nd edition forward are glorified Imperial propaganda artworks.

Guess it depends how they’re used in a given theatre.

Ideally, in terms of say, a street brawl? They’re the poke to both eyes, boot to shin and a kick in the fork. Fast, dirty, leaving the foe open to a good kicking from everyone else, whilst they move on to the next victim, who’ll receive much of the same.

But in a protracted, mass battle? A Chapter isn’t an ideal tool. They’re tough, but not invincible. If they get bogged down and find themselves unable to really choose their targets, they can be overwhelmed. They’ll make an almighty mess of course, and might still fight their way clear. But against sheer numbers the odds are firmly against them when they’re not in a position to constantly and rapidly redeploy.

That being said, they’ve usually some form of fleet support, so if things start going rapidly sideways an orbital barrage can be called in and landing craft sent to recover, rearm and redeploy.

Also, I suppose if there’s Trench Warfare going on, and the Trenches are at least 8’ deep? Enemy numbers count for little, as one in your trench network, you’ll struggle to get enough force against them at anyone time. And traditional trench weapons, like gas, aren’t going to be much of a deterrent.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If your mind isn’t suited to the various forms of indoctrination, or you’ve some kind of previously undiagnosed genetic flaw? That process weeds you out before the implantation process, helping to reduce the chance of a No-Hoper wasting precious Geneseed reserves.

This is the simple reality. There is a finite amount of Gene-seed available to chapters. Cawl built primaris out of stocks he'd been building for millennia, and the Chaos Legions clearly have their own approaches, but for chapter recruitment the problem isn't that #1 out of a thousand is that much better than #15, but if you only have 14 sets of geneseed you're going to focus on the very best. It's very much like modern special forces: there are only so many slots regardless of how many qualified people they get.

It's also just not really the mission of Space Marines to fight in pitched battles. The lore loves to have heroes fight villains in apocalyptic battles, but if you have a million guardsmen and maybe a few companies of Marines, they just wont' be the tip of the spear.

For Traitor Forces, I’m guessing like a Deathworld or Hive World, members of a Chaos Cult tend to be pretty solid, else they just won’t last long.

Rinse and repeat a few generations, and you’ve a hardy stock to choose aspirants from.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For Traitor Forces, I’m guessing like a Deathworld or Hive World, members of a Chaos Cult tend to be pretty solid, else they just won’t last long.

Rinse and repeat a few generations, and you’ve a hardy stock to choose aspirants from.

Oh sure, I don't think the recruitment is the hard part, but rather if traitor legions maintain geneseed to create new members like loyalists. IIRC this is a very opaque aspect of the lore, as the chaos marines have swung between survivors of the HH to recent renegades and back again.

Presumably the original Legions would have some stock carried aboard ship, as Legions were expected to recruit as they conquered.

More recent turncoats it’ll depend how many. If it’s just a handful? Just what’s in them.

But they also steal Geneseed from the fallen, whether Loyalist or Traitor.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But they also steal Geneseed from the fallen, whether Loyalist or Traitor.

Interesting! I hadn't though of that, but it makes sense.

I think that Geneseed can be cloned - but please don’t quote me on that!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I think that Geneseed can be cloned - but please don’t quote me on that!

There’s the way you make new chapters by using vat clones to create new progenoids?

Takes a while because you still need to wait multiple years for them to mature, but you double your yield each ‘generation’.

Lord Zarkov wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I think that Geneseed can be cloned - but please don’t quote me on that!

There’s the way you make new chapters by using vat clones to create new progenoids?

Takes a while because you still need to wait multiple years for them to mature, but you double your yield each ‘generation’.

I think that's right, but maybe only the admech have the actual technology as a stop check on chapters?

Chaos forces are extremely varied in terms of geneseed procurement.

Apothecaries still exist but they are very rare and the price for curating stocks of untainted geneseed is extremely high. And even then, a hundred mutated monsters in patchwork power armour is better than no monsters in patchwork power armour.

The most common source is taking it from untainted sources. Ultimately, the forces of Chaos can't be picky and the perverse joy of using the geneseed of Loyalists to bring down the Imperium is something they'll always go for.

And then of course there is the off chance that a Chaos Marine has geneseed that isn't hopelessly ruined by years of Warp exposure.

Hold up, just thinking,

We know a given Marine will have two Progenoid implanted, and that at least one is harvested as soon as it matures.

And we know the matured Progenoid is used to culture a new batch of the various implant organs that make a Marine a Marine.

But, I’m not sure it’s documented that each Progenoid can only culture one of each implant? I don’t want to waffle on further here, as I may simply be misremembering or ignorant of a given source there.