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I don’t think the single marine has a chance against 10,000 guardsmen. I can’t imagine that he’d have more than 100 bolt rounds so he’d quickly run out of ammunition, and would be forced to stab 9900 armed troops. Eventually, the lasfire will eat through the armor or just get a few lucky hits through the gaps.

Anyway, it’s kind of a moot point though because marines and guard have two different roles. A marine doesn’t need to outshoot even 100 guardsmen to be more useful than they are. The marines are not competing with the guard, they are complementing the guard.

There are a plethora of soft factors that make marines way better than their actual firepower would suggest. They have excellent stamina, morale, coordination, speed, and autonomy while having very low logistical needs. Being able to move such a compact but powerful force basically anywhere can weaken the enemy suddenly and unexpectedly. For example, marines could march through toxic sludge for days and not be tired at the end. The guard can’t, no matter how many you send. This could result in destroying generators, fuel depots, rail lines, munitions stores, convoys etc… all of which makes the actual battle much easier to win. Additionally, marines could act as quick reinforcements during a battle. If some ork nobz take a valuable flank, the marines can retake it, and then the guard reinforce it. The marines could then be sent to the next weakened spot.

Finally, marines have extremely good tactical coordination. Since each company has one leader, each part can work together seamlessly. Guard regiments have to cooperate with vastly different regiments to achieve the same effect.

So, even if a marine may only be able to take on a dozen or so enemies at once, they’re actual impact on the battle could be equivalent to 10,000 guardsmen. That said, at the end of the day, the guard will have actually done the most killing, but that’s ok. Marines don’t need to have equivalent firepower to the guard in order to be useful.

Unfortunately, GW seems intent on insisting that marines do a lot of attritional warfare so eh…

Dandelion wrote:

Unfortunately, GW seems intent on insisting that marines do a lot of attritional warfare so eh…

Yeah that's definitely a problem. The better lore doesn't do that but there's a lot of pretty lousy stuff.

 Insularum wrote:
Digs a hole, buries himself and activates sus-an membrane hibernation for a hundred years or so. Awaken to glorious victory.

If a fight happens though the guard win. Over the course of an immortal-ish life one space marine probably does beat 10,000 Guard level threats, cumulative not simultaneous.

This is my new head canon.

"Brother Glorioso! I hear you single-handedly cleared a planet of Tyranids! How did you do it?"
"All I can say is..." shows off shovel and pillow "...the Codex Astares!"


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 Void__Dragon wrote:

Aren't they? The average guardsman is a poorly educated teenager to twenty something year old with minimal training who was quite possibly conscripted against their will and is sent out to die in some backwater shithole for the glory of the Emperor and is fed enough propaganda to not question it.

The vast majority of the Imperium are I would expect rather stupid. Even most Marines are honestly pretty stupid and only truly portrayed as competent at waging war.

The Imperium is not a great place for fostering intelligent thought.

I'd disagree on this. Planetary Defense Forces, yeah sure they're mostly conscripts with a professional and elite core.

But the guard have 2 things, first off they're drawn from those elites, then they're hauled halfway across the galaxy, trained and brought into line with Imperial standardization and dropped off far from home. If they're just sent to one planet to wave the flag and provide an Imperial presence to remind the locals who's boss then fine. But if they're on a campaign they'll have fought on several worlds and have far more experience (and varied experience) than any local.

Yeah on the table top IG are the cannon fodder army but in fluff they're like a WWII expeditionary force vs some National Guard reservists.


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 Insectum7 wrote:

Dandelion wrote:

Unfortunately, GW seems intent on insisting that marines do a lot of attritional warfare so eh…

Yeah that's definitely a problem. The better lore doesn't do that but there's a lot of pretty lousy stuff.

My head canon on this is you don't write diary entries about the day you woke up, went to work and went home. You write about the time you went to work, a power outage hit the entire East Coast and walked 10 miles to get home.

So no one writes a novel about the dozen times the 4th Company dropped onto an enemy camp in the dead of night, killed everyone, got in the drop ship and moved on. You write about that one in a 100 years battle where the 4th Company must hold a pass against an unending tide of Orks and die to a man.

^Yeah that's totally fair, and it's the same sort of reasoning behind the tabletop situations which always see high casualty rates for Marines. Both casualty-high scenarios are basically outlying calamatous situations that the Marines got stuck in for some reason or another.

But every now and then you hear about some brutal multi-year campaign and it's harder to imagine how that can happen without the Marines just dying under massed artillery or something.

One thing to keep in mind is that Chapters prefer to spend decades cultivating neophites then scouts, then Marines.

But during the Heresy they'd just shove some geneseed in the nearest farmer and send him to the front. (At least Chaos did per Solar War). So it might be possible to rebuild in less than three decades if a chapter has to.

On the Lasgun, we also need to keep in mind it’s downside.

Even if it penetrates the armour (lucky shot, or sheer volume), the bolt itself is mostly heat damaged, with some impact trauma. This leaves the wound naturally cauterised. And, provided the wound doesn’t send the victim into medical shock? Far more survivable than a comparable shot from a solid projectile.

That is an advantage to the Marine. Not only are we told they’re hardened to shock (stims and that), but they heal quickly.

So even without the armour’s benefit? It’s going to take a lot of shots to kill the Marine. As as it’s basically never going to be “10,000 shots all at once”? The odds may be an awful lot better than many think.

That depends. Some books have the lasgun self cauterize wounds, others have the heat transfer from the bolt to the target result in blown off limbs. The latter could quickly become a problem, there is such a thing as enough trauma to overwhem a Marine's system

Depends on the power setting. Max power would do damage but burns the power cells out much quicker whereas a lower setting gives the Guard more ammo.

 Bobthehero wrote:
That depends. Some books have the lasgun self cauterize wounds, others have the heat transfer from the bolt to the target result in blown off limbs. The latter could quickly become a problem, there is such a thing as enough trauma to overwhem a Marine's system

Oh there absolutely is such a thing as enough trauma to overwhelm a Marine, but the core of my point is driving off or injuring the Marine is far from the same as killing him. Whereas even with bare hands, the injuries received by the Guard are going to be….complicated

Whereas a Guardsman might break another’s bone in HTH, a similar injury caused by the sheer strength of an Astartes could be need for amputation.

There’s just such a vast gulf between the injuries each side can suffer and inflict, it has to be considered.

And hey, if we’re sticking to the Forest battleground? There’s nothing to really stop an Astartes free climbing the bigger trees and getting a very literal drop on Guardsmen.

Maybe if we're talking Endor-like trees. Some of the thick forests here don't have trees that would sustain the weight of a Marine, there's some downsides to being big and clad in power armor, after all.

True. But that was my imagining.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Guardsmen aren't idiots.

Aren't they? The average guardsman is a poorly educated teenager to twenty something year old with minimal training who was quite possibly conscripted against their will and is sent out to die in some backwater shithole for the glory of the Emperor and is fed enough propaganda to not question it.

The vast majority of the Imperium are I would expect rather stupid. Even most Marines are honestly pretty stupid and only truly portrayed as competent at waging war.

The Imperium is not a great place for fostering intelligent thought.

No. First, poorly educated doesn't equal stupid/poor cognitive ability. Second, many Guard regiments come from things like deathworlds, or are recruited from the underclasses of things like Hiveworlds, I.E. gangers. They'd have considerable survival skills to start with, which are a hell of a lot more useful in a combat situation than the ability to write a thesis on the economics of the Ultima Segmentum. And finally, Guardsmen are not "minimally trained". They're professional soldiers, many with combat experience.


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 Gert wrote:
Depends on the power setting. Max power would do damage but burns the power cells out much quicker whereas a lower setting gives the Guard more ammo.

Pretty sure if a space marine is charging at you your going to crank that lasgun straight to "max".

As I mentioned earlier, the Regiment’s Homeworld is a significant factor.

Put a Necromundan on a Jungle World and a Catachan in an Underhive, and you’re going to get completely different results than if the deployments were switched.




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Power setting? Before or after you’ve wet yourself due to the mind breaking sight of the Marine in action, closing the ground far faster than your brain will allow such a creature to move.

I mean, The Astartes film is canon btw. An entire ship of prepared ambushers with heavy weapons didn't actually kill a single Space Marine. It took a Mcguffin and two highly powerful psykers (Possibly xeno or heretic) to even slow them down. And they really only lived for a few seconds longer than anyone else. Point being, if 5 can storm and kill 100% of the prepared ambushers on a ship, 1 can certainly hold his own against well over a thousand lightly armed and unprepared guardsmen, who would likely suffer intense combat shock when their friends start exploding from mass reactive bolts.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Power setting? Before or after you’ve wet yourself due to the mind breaking sight of the Marine in action, closing the ground far faster than your brain will allow such a creature to move.

Source. . . Guardsmen have been gunning down CSM for decades, not to mention even bigger and faster things. Guardsmen will be trained to fire regardless, and knowing they're fighting such a foe their Lasgun will already be on max.


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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I mean, The Astartes film is canon btw. An entire ship of prepared ambushers with heavy weapons didn't actually kill a single Space Marine.

Intelligently, those Marines only fight a few GEQ at a time beyond their initial breach.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
And finally, Guardsmen are not "minimally trained". They're professional soldiers, many with combat experience.

Exactly. Imperial Guardsmen are the best soldiers of their homeworld. The soldiers who are just average are still serving in the PDF or in some sub-planetary armies (e.g. hive-city enforcers). From the book Traitor's Rock, it appears that even Cadian whiteshields (conscripts, in tabletop terms) have already undergone grueling training that makes the first half of Full Metal Jacket look like summer camp.

Ferrying soldiers to warzones many lightyears away has to be extremely costly. There's no room on Imperial Navy transport ships for barely-trained amateurs.


Re: close quarters: Even a Marine can only butcher enemies with his combat knife for so long before his power armor's batteries run out of juice.

Also, if there's only one Marine against countless guardsmen, it's a safe bet that the guardsmen can accomplish their actual battlefield objectives simply by going around the Marine. Even if one Marine could theoretically kill, say, 100 guardsmen, he cannot keep all 100 of them busy at the same time.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Power setting? Before or after you’ve wet yourself due to the mind breaking sight of the Marine in action, closing the ground far faster than your brain will allow such a creature to move.

lol are you kidding me? "Can't adjust power setting bc enemy is too scawy"? They're soldiers. The whole point of endless military drills is so that you can act with a cool head and steady hands under circumstances that would make the average person freeze in terror.

.

Used to be that Astartes were legendary and or mythological to a lot of the Imperium.

Now, every f'kn platoon of hive rats has a Power Armoured shaped kill marking on their standard Issue flashlight.

10k Guardsmen just yawn down their sights when yet another Angel crosses their path.

Sauce for the Sauce Throne

Age of Darkness wrote: Transhuman dread. Aximand had heard iterators talk of the condition. He’d heard descriptions of it from regular Army officers too. The sight of an Adeptus Astartes was one thing: taller and broader than a man could ever be, armoured like a demigod. The singularity of purpose was self-evident. An Adeptus Astartes was designed to fight and kill anything that didn’t annihilate it first. If you saw an Adeptus Astartes, you knew you were in trouble. The appearance alone cowed you with fear.
But to see one move. Apparently that was the real thing. Nothing human-shaped should be so fast, so lithe, so powerful, especially not anything in excess of two metres tall and carrying more armour than four normal men could lift. The sight of an Adeptus Astartes was one thing, but the moving fact of one was quite another. The psychologists called it transhuman dread. It froze a man, stuck him to the ground, caused his mind to lock up, made him lose control of bladder and bowel. Something huge and warlike gave pause: something huge and warlike and moving with the speed of a striking snake, that was when you knew that gods moved amongst men, and that there existed a scale of strength and speed beyond anything mortal, and that you were about to die and, if you were really lucking, there might be just enough time to piss yourself first.

Essentially, their presence is so unnatural, the brain struggles to process. And in this example? The Marine is coming for you.

This is a factor people don’t seem to include that often.

Lasgun power settings also aren’t available on all makes and models. Citation for the Citation God, the Inquisitor Rulebook, which first presented variant Lasguns.

And keep in mind Astartes are stupendously rare. The staggering majority of Guardsmen will have never seen one, let alone fought one.

As for their training? I strongly encourage you to track down and enjoy a copy of The Imperial Infantryman’s uplifting primer to get an actual insight into standard Guard training. Here are some select images.



https://ibb.co/X364nH7

That is how well prepared Guardsmen are for war.

As for

Re: close quarters: Even a Marine can only butcher enemies with his combat knife for so long before his power armor's batteries run out of juice.

The backpack has a sub-atomic micro fusion reactor. And Solar cell backup. That’s….not running out of juice anytime soon.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Essentially, their presence is so unnatural, the brain struggles to process. And in this example? The Marine is coming for you.

I mean yeah, if he were coming for me personally, I might crap myself. But there are hundreds of us. We can surround him from all directions and still be several ranks deep. He can't be coming for all of us at the same time.

As for their training? I strongly encourage you to track down and enjoy a copy of The Imperial Infantryman’s uplifting primer to get an actual insight into standard Guard training. Here are some select images.

Isn't it canon that the Primer is considered something of a joke even by the Imperial Guard?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The backpack has a sub-atomic micro fusion reactor. And Solar cell backup. That’s….not running out of juice anytime soon.

Can I get a source on this? Because in Dark Heresy, a power armor runs out of juice after 1d5 hours. Granted, that's the "civilian" model.

.

Remember the battlefield we’re currently describing. You simply can’t organise the Guard the way you described in such an environment.

The Primer remains The Primer - the first gleaming most Guardsmen will have that Xenos even exist in the first place.


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Source for Power Armour coming right up.

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Power_Armour#Sources

Not ideal, as it doesn’t say which of its cited source gives that info - but for what it’s worth it’s not a controversial or disputed fact.

-Guardsman- wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Essentially, their presence is so unnatural, the brain struggles to process. And in this example? The Marine is coming for you.

I mean yeah, if he were coming for me personally, I might crap myself. But there are hundreds of us. We can surround him from all directions and still be several ranks deep. He can't be coming for all of us at the same time.

As for their training? I strongly encourage you to track down and enjoy a copy of The Imperial Infantryman’s uplifting primer to get an actual insight into standard Guard training. Here are some select images.

Isn't it canon that the Primer is considered something of a joke even by the Imperial Guard?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The backpack has a sub-atomic micro fusion reactor. And Solar cell backup. That’s….not running out of juice anytime soon.

Can I get a source on this? Because in Dark Heresy, a power armor runs out of juice after 1d5 hours. Granted, that's the "civilian" model.

.

Stop "citation please" arguing. There are countless examples of Power armor lasting weeks, even months, before needing a recharge. Primaris Marines can go even longer. Just to point to a few examples, Dante, Siege of Baal, Hellsreach, Brothers of the Snake, Many of the Cain Books, and the Reagent's Shadow. Also, on the topic of inability to sustain constant unending melee combat, please reference the same books, where entire Ork Waaaahhhs are held off by space marines fighting off entire hordes of orks with just their fists at times.

You also seem to be under the mis-apprehension that melee gives the edge to the Guardsmen. I don't know what you've gotten into, but Melee goes to the 7' super human with near inexhaustible strength, every time. Again, Helbrecht and several of his Retinue, including a Champion in waiting, are able to engage in literal melee battle with a green tide, for WEEKS. Slaughtering thousands each. A single swing of a SM fist is enough to decapitate a row of base humans. And they don't often miss in the thick of it.

Citations are good, and rarely much bother to provide.

The Primer is considered a joke, any vets will tell the newbies that still believe in it to stop doing so. There's fanart of an alternative to the primer that is much, much better. Filled with propaganda, but actually teaching the user something, and I really wish GW would canonize it, but we can't have nice thing.

There's also plenty of books where transhuman dread is not a thing, people acknowledge they're an extreme threat, but it's not bolter-porn-y ''My dude is so awesome yours are unable to do anything but gak their pants/be in awe of them'' tier bad writting of power spanking. Which, imo, makes a lot of more sense in a setting where Marines are taken down by regular humans often enough.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

Again, Helbrecht and several of his Retinue, including a Champion in waiting, are able to engage in literal melee battle with a green tide, for WEEKS. Slaughtering thousands each.

Grimaldus and his retinue of 5 or 6 other Marines were in the process of being overwhelmed by roughly thirty or so Orks in Helsreach, until a platoon of militia-dudes and Andrej saved them, chalk it up to wildly fluctuating books.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Remember the battlefield we’re currently describing. You simply can’t organise the Guard the way you described in such an environment.

Fair. In a narrow set of circumstances that any competent Imperial Guard commander would avoid at all costs, it may be hard for guardsmen to bring their vastly superior numbers to bear. That's when it's time to change tactics, so as to avoid fighting the enemy on their own terms. This isn't a video game where AI enemies just keep pouring mindlessly into the kill zone.

And I'm sorry, but no matter how much canon fluff you quote, I don't believe for a second that Chaos Marines are so scary that the mere sight of one will make scores of trained soldiers simultaneously forget how to use their weapons. Not every guardsman may be Ollanius Pius, but they're still among the top one percent best and bravest of all humankind. Give humans some credit here; you're (presumably) one yourself, after all.

The Primer remains The Primer - the first gleaming most Guardsmen will have that Xenos even exist in the first place.

You mean apart from the "kill the alien" dogma that everyone gets drilled into their skulls since childhood?

Also I imagine veteran guardsmen have quite a bit of knowledge to impart to the new meat.

.

Let’s talk further on the melee.

Guardsmen have pretty basic combat skills. Little in the way of Martial Arts, mostly just massed bayonet charges.

I’m not going to pretend that’s not deadly, because it is. Bayonet charges are effective, and still used in the modern day (though seemingly not standard combat doctrine).

But an Astartes is, as ever, a terrifying foe. Their reaction time is faster than you. Their movements, even in clad in power armour, are faster than yours. Their overall strength, without or without power armour, is sufficient that should you block, you’re probably going to end up on your arse from the impact - and if you trying blocking with a limb, that’s….quite possibly the last useful thing you’ll ever do with said limb.

Yes, you can try to mob him. Of course you can. Bayonets aren’t great for that - but one could always wield the bayonet as a knife (though real world it’s my understanding they’re not terribly well balanced for that sort of combat? Happy to be corrected there)

But even then, the Marine’s reactions are just….ridiculous. Sensors in the armour can help prevent you blindsiding them. Even a casual backhand can shatter bone. Lifting you up and throwing you into your mates is no issue at all for the Marine.

How long do you think the nerve would hold in the face of such decidedly one sided violence? Because all the time he’s casually killing, his vox grill is turning his bellows into literally deafening battlecries. By no means on a Howling Banshee’s level - but still something horrific to happen during a scrap.

If your on the ground? The Marine’s weight alone is likely to squish you let, let alone a deliberate stamp on your chest, flank or spine.

And it’s happening so, so quickly.

Consider this scene, from Ip Man. I won’t embed as whilst not graphic, it’s not for kiddos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-rUiE0xfyE

See the blows there? Imagine faster, and only needing to hit you once to deliver quite likely fatal impact trauma. Certainly there’d be little need beyond really putting the wind up the remaining soldiers to do the rapid punches or repeated Noogies. Which the Marine totally would do, for exactly the reason I just gave.

And that’s without a melee weapon. Just just punches, kicks and grapples.

Going back to an earlier comment? Even if your numbers do start to tip the balance. Even if you get him surrounded? Perfectly capable of fighting his way clear, and then withdrawing, on foot, on a speed you can barely comprehend.

People getting told to hate the alien doesn't mean they know what aliens are. Dogma doesn't override base human "fight or flight" and it has been done quite a few times in recent books where human military characters have their entire worldview shattered because not only do the Xenos exist, they're far more dangerous than the sermons and training made them out to be.
If a Guardsman is lucky their officers might be off-world combat veterans or they come from a planet like Cadia or Catachan. You also have to take the Imperial propaganda machine into account when it comes to reporting on the success of soldiers in-universe. The Catachan Devil book sees a newly raised regiment get slaughtered by Orks where most of the Guardsmen barely get a shot off, run and get cut down, or just freeze and die but then are posthumously declared great heroes and their homeworld is recommended to raise many more regiments.

-Guardsman- wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Remember the battlefield we’re currently describing. You simply can’t organise the Guard the way you described in such an environment.

Fair. In a narrow set of circumstances that any competent Imperial Guard commander would avoid at all costs, it may be hard for guardsmen to bring their vastly superior numbers to bear. That's when it's time to change tactics, so as to avoid fighting the enemy on their own terms. This isn't a video game where AI enemies just keep pouring mindlessly into the kill zone.

And I'm sorry, but no matter how much canon fluff you quote, I don't believe for a second that Chaos Marines are so scary that the mere sight of one will make scores of trained soldiers simultaneously forget how to use their weapons. Not every guardsman may be Ollanius Pius, but they're still among the top one percent best and bravest of all humankind. Give humans some credit here; you're (presumably) one yourself, after all.

The Primer remains The Primer - the first gleaming most Guardsmen will have that Xenos even exist in the first place.

You mean apart from the "kill the alien" dogma that everyone gets drilled into their skulls since childhood?

Also I imagine veteran guardsmen have quite a bit of knowledge to impart to the new meat.

.

On the choosing of the ground? That’s typically the preserve and indeed much of the potency of Marines.

Rapid insertion, straight to the heart of the foe’s command. Make an almighty mess and slaughter the lot. The Imperial Guard in particular heavily rely on its command structure, for that’s how it’s organised. Disrupt that hierarchy? They become far less effective. And the Marine will know that.

The simple fact of the matter is in terms of planning and logistics? The single Astartes has the advantage. They can survive environments baseline humans can’t - even without their Power Armour’s internal air supply. Which means they can attack from locations and angles the Guard didn’t expect.

As GI Joe told us (well not me, as oddly it never aired in the U.K. to the best of my knowledge)? Knowing is Half The Battle.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Sauce for the Sauce Throne

Age of Darkness wrote: Transhuman dread. . .

They still get shot by Guardsmen.

Now something even bigger and faster is a Tyranid Warrior. Those actually caused Fear back in 2nd edition. The Marine did not bring any such psychological factor that amounted to enough of a difference on the tabletop.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Let’s talk further on the melee. . .

It's all very nice, but if the Marine is still being shot at by the other 10 Guardsmen nearby, the Marine eventually goes down.

Goes down in time? Whilst the Guardsmen are watching the Marine gut their fellow at staggering speed and with contemptuous ease?

Marines are not lumbering brutes, despite how they look. They are far faster than a baseline human. The difference in strength means no Hollywood type struggle to do anything vicious.

If you’ve seen Rambo (no, not First Blood. Rambo. The first of the latter day sequels). We see Rambo tear out a throat with his bear hands. It’s clearly an exertion, but he does it. A Marine would barely pause for such a kill.

I mean unless we're degrading the Guardsmen to Servitors, they're going to have emotions. It's not just going to be "Ok chums let's shoot a Space Marine". Fear, rage, confusion, the influence of your religion telling you how wrong it is to shoot an Emperor's Angel, not wanting to hit what is very likely your friends and comrades. It ain't going to be 10k triggers getting pulled at the same time with the exact same accuracy. Heck there's a good chance that some might even shoot other Guardsmen for daring to commit such a heinous act.