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"In the lore, their armor is basically like wearing a tank."

The Tau seem pretty good at melting tanks, though. Again, there's a real limit to what it could withstand, even in the lore.

Immune to lasguns? Sure. Immune to boltguns? Makes marine vs marine pretty stupid, but sure. Immune to Riptide and Stormsurge and even BIGGER guns? No way.

No matter how careful you try to be with them, things go wrong. When you are talking chapters of only 1000 guys, you just can't absorb any losses at all. And the real kicker is that for the most part, the weaponry used by the marines is no better than the guard. So that's mega lame, really. The combined devastator squads of a marine chapter are a blip in firepower of a real battle.

Using marines to go after leadership is fine until the opponent figures out that's what you are doing with them and set up some nice ambushes containing special squads of units with nothing but power armor penetrating weapons. Think of surgical strike that runs into 100 war walkers with starcannons. Your chapter is dead in a few minutes.

" Fluffy Marines would probably take less than 20 models to a 2000 point game. "

But real battles are millions of points. You still run out of movie marines super fast.

Marines don't fight pitched battles, where they can. They strike the weakest possible point. A true example would have Marines having so many more points than their opponents, because they'd go for where the enemy is weakest. If not weak already, orbital bombardment or throw guardsmen at it.
Enemies don't tend to prepare against Space Marines, because they're so rare to find. It's like preparing to fight Russian Spetsnaz in the middle of Afghanistan - it's just not likely at all, until it happens.

My idea of how a Space Marine should be is in the FFG Deathwatch books. Nigh unkillable, and an absolute monster of an enemy.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Marines don't fight pitched battles, where they can. They strike the weakest possible point. A true example would have Marines having so many more points than their opponents, because they'd go for where the enemy is weakest. If not weak already, orbital bombardment or throw guardsmen at it.
Enemies don't tend to prepare against Space Marines, because they're so rare to find. It's like preparing to fight Russian Spetsnaz in the middle of Afghanistan - it's just not likely at all, until it happens.

My idea of how a Space Marine should be is in the FFG Deathwatch books. Nigh unkillable, and an absolute monster of an enemy.

Nigh unkillable with what? A lasgun? Or an atom bomb?

Enemies would start adapting if marines keep being used the same way over and over. Also, one can predict the arrival of marines by following the movements of their capital ships. As I said, one would feign weakness to provoke a marine attack and then wipe them out, since they are so rare and so OP. Allegedly.

So you're basically saying that every 40K tabletop game that has marines running into gun lines of triple riptide never happens in the lore. This means that the lore and tabletop have literally nothing to do with each other.

Martel732 wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Marines don't fight pitched battles, where they can. They strike the weakest possible point. A true example would have Marines having so many more points than their opponents, because they'd go for where the enemy is weakest. If not weak already, orbital bombardment or throw guardsmen at it.
Enemies don't tend to prepare against Space Marines, because they're so rare to find. It's like preparing to fight Russian Spetsnaz in the middle of Afghanistan - it's just not likely at all, until it happens.

My idea of how a Space Marine should be is in the FFG Deathwatch books. Nigh unkillable, and an absolute monster of an enemy.

Nigh unkillable with what? A lasgun? Or an atom bomb?

Well, I've had characters walk away from nuclear explosions. So, yes - both.

Enemies would start adapting if marines keep being used the same way over and over. Also, one can predict the arrival of marines by following the movements of their capital ships. As I said, one would feign weakness to provoke a marine attack and then wipe them out, since they are so rare and so OP. Allegedly.

Can't adapt when you're dead.

So you're basically saying that every 40K tabletop game that has marines running into gun lines of triple riptide never happens in the lore. This means that the lore and tabletop have literally nothing to do with each other.

That's exactly what I'm saying. And what many other people have told you repeatedly.

"That's exactly what I'm saying. And what many other people have told you repeatedly."

That's very, very stupid. It's like a WWII game where nothing behaves like it did in reality.

1000 man chapters are still far too small. And there are way too many weapons in the lore that just smoke marines for them to be viable.

 adamsouza wrote:
At the casualty rates inflicted in any piece of 40K fiction, Space Marine chapters and Chaos Marines are completely unsustainable if any logic were applied. We completely hand wave this for the sake of the narrative.

The codexes are ALL written to make any faction your playing seem important to the overall narrative.

Chaos Space Marines are a smaller faction than Tyranids, Necrons, and Orks. They may get more time to shine in the fiction but they were Space Marines to begin with. Space Marines were a fraction in number compared to humanity in general, and they have very little logical way to replace their losses.

You would think with 10,000 years of attrition there wouldn't be many Chaos marines left. It's not like they can draw from Imperial worlds for the small percentage of humans worthy and capable of becomeing marines. They don't have the support of the Adeptus Mechanicus for tech marines and gear.

That's complete and utter gak...

Chaos Marines for one thing, actively recruit from any world or fleet they raid. The biggest prize of all for any Chaos Lord, is to raid the Chapter worlds of Loyalist Marines, and steal their future from them.

Chaos Marines, despite a number of Loyalist players seemingly hand waving the truth away, are still Space Marines!!!
They actively reclaim the gene-seed of their own fallen, and will also actively loot the corpses of the False Emperor's pansies and steal their gene-seed.
Both the Alpha Legion and the Red Corsairs have (in)famously raided a Chapter's homeworld and made off an entire Chapter's worth of stolen gene-seed. The Iron Warriors laid waste to the gene storage facilities on Hydra Cordaitus, and claimed not only the gene-seed of an entire company of the hated Imperial Fists, but they also claimed the majority of an entire gene-seed repository! (enough gene-seed was contained within to build an entire Legion of old btw...)

Fabius Bile is constantly churning out new Chaos Marines... Larger Warbands will use foul daemonic sorcery and techno-heresy to clone and/or rapidly grow new Marines within a fraction of the time it takes an Imperial Chapter to create a single new Marine.
Those descended from the Legions of old still hold the ancient knowledge of how to rapidly clone new zygotes.

Time functions differently within the Eye as we all know.

The Chaos Gods can resurrect their followers.


Despite what some people think, Chaos Marines aren't any rarer than their Loyalist counterparts, nor are they all 10,000 year super veterans, nor do the armies of the Dark Gods have super limited resources.
The Dark Mech are everywhere. Daemon worlds are a thing. All across the Imperium there are hidden bases and/or enclaves of enemy forces that continually raid at will. Entire worlds and even whole systems are conquered by the armies of Chaos every year. Stealing is fun!

Martel732 wrote:
"That's exactly what I'm saying. And what many other people have told you repeatedly."

That's very, very stupid. It's like a WWII game where nothing behaves like it did in reality.

1000 man chapters are still far too small. And there are way too many weapons in the lore that just smoke marines for them to be viable.

Funnily enough, this is not a WW2 wargame. This is a game with no real life equivalent. The fluff is made up, and the game doesn't correlate.

The sooner you separate the two and stop dragging one into the other, the easier it would be.

Game =/= Fluff.
The only similarity is the appearance of the models, and the names of units and weapons. Everything else is practically separate.

"Chaos Marines, despite a number of Loyalist players seemingly hand waving the truth away, are still Space Marines!!! "

But there aren't enough space marines to matter. I suspect that CSM has the same problem.

To sum it all up:

Space Marines get stupidly massive buffs because their "Lore" and "Fluff" demand that they are the best, completely ignoring the fact that they are actually a tiny part of the Imperial fighting force. This translates into Marines being one of the most powerful armies with an amazing selection of troops, toys and the works as well as access to some stupidly powerful formations. Oh, and they can now out-tank the Imperial Guard because "Fluff reasons"

Eldar get the whole Special Snowflake treatment because they are this "Dying Race" and are "Incredibly skilled at their chosen path". In reality this translates into them being stupidly good and far better than everything out there for an incredulously cheap points cost.

Tau are meant to be good shooters with an incredibly mobile fighting style. This has translated into an army that can remove any other faction from the board within the space of two shooting phases whilst being able to run away from the enemy after doing said shooting and (thanks to some badly written, lore breaking, tacked on fluff) can now have giant robots. Which can shoot twice. Or target the enemies rear armour. Or come in bulk. Because reasons.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"That's exactly what I'm saying. And what many other people have told you repeatedly."

That's very, very stupid. It's like a WWII game where nothing behaves like it did in reality.

1000 man chapters are still far too small. And there are way too many weapons in the lore that just smoke marines for them to be viable.

Funnily enough, this is not a WW2 wargame. This is a game with no real life equivalent. The fluff is made up, and the game doesn't correlate.

The sooner you separate the two and stop dragging one into the other, the easier it would be.

Game =/= Fluff.
The only similarity is the appearance of the models, and the names of units and weapons. Everything else is practically separate.

That's still incredibly stupid.

It's still a very bitter pill that the fluff in no way saves me from getting my gak beat in by the Eldar. The fluff might as well not exist. What am I supposed to do? Say "Well according to this author, this can't happen!"

"Space Marines get stupidly massive buffs because their "Lore" and "Fluff" demand that they are the best, "

But they're not even close to the best.

Martel732 wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"That's exactly what I'm saying. And what many other people have told you repeatedly."

That's very, very stupid. It's like a WWII game where nothing behaves like it did in reality.

1000 man chapters are still far too small. And there are way too many weapons in the lore that just smoke marines for them to be viable.

Funnily enough, this is not a WW2 wargame. This is a game with no real life equivalent. The fluff is made up, and the game doesn't correlate.

The sooner you separate the two and stop dragging one into the other, the easier it would be.

Game =/= Fluff.
The only similarity is the appearance of the models, and the names of units and weapons. Everything else is practically separate.

That's still incredibly stupid.

It's still a very bitter pill that the fluff in no way saves me from getting my gak beat in by the Eldar. The fluff might as well not exist.

Absolutely true. But it's either swallow that pill, or stay bitter because there is a discrepancy in fluff and crunch.

"Space Marines get stupidly massive buffs because their "Lore" and "Fluff" demand that they are the best, "

But they're not even close to the best.

In fluff, yes they are. In game - hell no.

Martel732 wrote:
"Chaos Marines, despite a number of Loyalist players seemingly hand waving the truth away, are still Space Marines!!! "

But there aren't enough space marines to matter. I suspect that CSM has the same problem.

If there weren't enough Marines to matter or make any kind of difference, then the Imperium would have fallen within a few years of the Heresy...

Or have we all forgotten about how, "There is less than one Space Marine for each world of the Imperium, yet they are still enough for the task at hand." bit already?

Besides, Marines, with their limited numbers, only need to show up in the most important crisis-level battles, where they can make the biggest impacts.

Surprise surprise, that's when the fluff has them show up most often.

Experiment 626 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"Chaos Marines, despite a number of Loyalist players seemingly hand waving the truth away, are still Space Marines!!! "

But there aren't enough space marines to matter. I suspect that CSM has the same problem.

If there weren't enough Marines to matter or make any kind of difference, then the Imperium would have fallen within a few years of the Heresy...

Or have we all forgotten about how, "There is less than one Space Marine for each world of the Imperium, yet they are still enough for the task at hand." bit already?

That's impossible for me to believe. I don't care what they claim or write.

Martel732 wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"Chaos Marines, despite a number of Loyalist players seemingly hand waving the truth away, are still Space Marines!!! "

But there aren't enough space marines to matter. I suspect that CSM has the same problem.

If there weren't enough Marines to matter or make any kind of difference, then the Imperium would have fallen within a few years of the Heresy...

Or have we all forgotten about how, "There is less than one Space Marine for each world of the Imperium, yet they are still enough for the task at hand." bit already?

That's impossible for me to believe. I don't care what they claim or write.

Your belief does not alter the fact that it's the fluff. It might not be your headcanon but headcanon doesn't matter in the discussion.

It's not headcanon. It's rejection of the absurd.

Martel732 wrote:
It's not headcanon. It's rejection of the absurd.

Okay. You can disagree and try to reject the established fluff. Here are your options: Make headcanon. Deal with it and accept that's canon when you talk about the fluff.

Martel732 wrote:
It's not headcanon. It's rejection of the absurd.

40k lore is absurd in the same sense that comic books are. 40k loves the lavishly ludicrous, painted with a veneer of grimdarkness.

In 40k. A single being can toss a titan in the air with their mind. A hundred battle sisters conquer a hundred worlds by themselves. Orks... exist.