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Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:longbows and shortswords vs. assault rifles in CQB,

Hey, it worked for Rambo!

ChrisWWII wrote:Alright, so that's 3 rifle platoons, and one heavy weapons platoon for the US Army. According to wikipedia, each rifle platton consists of a Platoon HQ (essentially a PCS), 3 Rifle Squads, and a Heavy Weapons Squad. I personally believe something like this IG Infantry Company would be equal to that. As a more Russian style army, the IG is concentrating all its heavy weapons in squads under central command, instead of leaving them more dispersed amongst the men.

You didn't have to go to Wikipedia, you could have just asked me. Anyways, doesn't matter what armor IG brings because I'd decimate it with a Javelin as my buddies chew up guardsmen with the 240s.

Soo'Vah'Cha wrote: Ok this is getting silly , longbows and shortswords vs. assault rifles in CQB, 1shot knife kills when a .50 cal something takes 3 hits, sounds like alot of arm chair generals, and computer gamer experiance.

I am in the U.S. army and have been in real CQB against real people, and seen ( through Binos) 12.7mm hits and the purple haze that follows, and if you can show me a human that can take 3 12.7mm hits to any other parts of their bodies other than their pinkies and piggy-toes I will be shocked, also I would be overjoyed to face an 100 enemies armed with longbows anytime with a 100 of my fellow paratroopers armed with modern weapons...lol.

I carried a tomahawk for last ditch CQ but I also always made a point of putting a fresh mag in my M4 whenever I was in doubt to my rounds, and no we don't "shoot from the hip" its a tight controlled 3 round burst or semi auto double tap that gets the job done, even when your target is 10 feet away inside a dark qualot and waiting with a sks and a spike bayonet.

so shortsword vs. a locked and loaded M4 equals a dead shortswordsman, but I thought this thread was about 100 IG vs. 100 modern troops...ohwell

Yes i used that analogy to show the difference and technology, my first post aludes to that, 1000 years between longbow and assault rifle, 38000 between lasgun and assault rifle.

I to was in the army and we had old flak jackets, vietnam era, made to withstand shrapnell. I believe the armour for the guardsman is able to stop much more, after all it is capable to stop ork guns.


Ulver: ok i give, the bowman wins hands down

I think IG would win, simply because modern day militaries have never even seen a lasgun before, and that kind of firepower would be utterly demoralizing. It would quickly turn from a battle to a rout.

Goddard wrote:I think IG would win, simply because modern day militaries have never even seen a lasgun before, and that kind of firepower would be utterly demoralizing. It would quickly turn from a battle to a rout.

As well as the modern armor getting ripped to shreds by this new technology. Agreed.

Actually, all of the guardsmen would see that us modern soldiers are treated like human beings (most of the time) and see that we actually care about each other. They would just run over to our side and join us, leaving only angry commissars.

Soo'Vah'Cha wrote: Ok this is getting silly , longbows and shortswords vs. assault rifles in CQB, 1shot knife kills when a .50 cal something takes 3 hits, sounds like alot of arm chair generals, and computer gamer experiance.

That was the point I was making. He was using Call of Duty as an example of "effectiveness of body armor". They're not concerned with making it 'realistic'. They're concerned with making it 'balanced' and 'enjoyable' for the playerbase. Which means toning down the effectiveness of sniper rifles, etc.

Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
I carried a tomahawk for last ditch CQ but I also always made a point of putting a fresh mag in my M4 whenever I was in doubt to my rounds, and no we don't "shoot from the hip" its a tight controlled 3 round burst or semi auto double tap that gets the job done, even when your target is 10 feet away inside a dark qualot and waiting with a sks and a spike bayonet.
so shortsword vs. a locked and loaded M4 equals a dead shortswordsman, but I thought this thread was about 100 IG vs. 100 modern troops...ohwell

Good for you knowing how CQB works then. Surprised about the tomahawk though, couldn't find a Rambo knife?

Scythe9 wrote:They don't need to see the enemy to be effective? Ok so how do they know where to fire.

How do mortar teams know where to fire if they don't see the enemy?
Or artillery crews?
Huh. Interesting...I guess they're not effective either, right?

Scythe9 wrote:small burst fire from the hip from 50 soldiers, i'm assuming they are on open field, where the bowman were more efective, so yes 150 shots every 1 second.

Actually, longbowmen weren't most effective "on an open field". That's where heavy cavalry, aka "knights" excelled. Longbowmen excelled in prepared fields. Look at Agincourt. The British effectively slaughtered French knights on an open field, simply because they had prepared positions and elevation and a muddy stretch leading to their positions to work with.

side arms are not for CC, thats why modern rifles are shorter, i agree that longer barrels aren't good in close quarters.

Actually, that's precisely what sidearms are for. They allow you to retain the use of an 'open hand', while still being able to effectively fight back.
And "modern rifles" aren't shorter.
Carbines are shorter.

DickBandit wrote:Actually, all of the guardsmen would see that us modern soldiers are treated like human beings (most of the time) and see that we actually care about each other. They would just run over to our side and join us, leaving only angry commissars.

You know, IG fluff isn't all it's cracked up to be - in the regiments, they care for each other. Read Abnett's stuff - specifically Gaunt's Ghosts.

well 40k stats say otherwise a lasgun is str 3 ap- a autogun ( basically a battlerifle/ assault rifle is str 3 ap- if i remember correctly) and I don't really see trained soldiers panic just because a battle buddy is hit with a pencil thin ray of light that causes a wound simiular to a rifle wound, maybe a momentary " holy #@$ whats that...ok base of fire ..Move!" at best

Now a casualty caused my a mass reactive .68 cal bolt round might be something different, but in combat you see all kinds of horrible things to think a army of modern troops would rout just because the enemy had lasers is kinda silly, it may be surprising but not terrifying, unless the weapons were like the ones the prawns had in district 9...now those were horrible!

But I am sensing a possible bit of trolling going on so I will pop smoke and call for retrieval...I have alot of Tau/orks to paint.

SCYTHE9: I understood your example but I think a few of the subsquent posters just kinda ran with the longbow thing, and its good to see the oldtimer military playing this game too. , our interceptor armor is actually pretty hard to penetrate not to mention just finding a good place to stab a modern US soldier that is not covered in Molle gear and mags and kit etc., makes you feel like a turtle. lol

mrsmith wrote:Well laser weapons in most scifi settings are pretty inferior to a modern day assault rifle in most ways (star trek, starwars) so...

Emphasis on laswer weapons from other series. Do 40k Guardsmen have blasters or phasers? No, they have lasguns. The other series mean nothing.

...ANd how the hell did we go to talking about longbowmen versus modern soldiers? When did this thread get moved to the fantasy forum? But yeah, SCYTHE9, do a quick google search. A swordsman may not be better than a modern rifleman, but if someone stabs you with a knife while you're wearing a bullet proof vest, unless the blade hits one of the ceramic trauma plates inside the vest itself. Ballistic vests are made out of fabric that diffues the impact of the bullet, and prevents it from penetrating, but it does knock the wind out of your cause you still take the kinetic energy. A knife is going to go right through that vest. And please, PLEASE do not cite CoD again. CoD may be fun and awesome game, but it is not realistic in the slightest.

A bullet proof vest is just that, bullet proof. Not knife proof.

Now can we go back to talking about 40k versus a modern army? I like this thread, and would prefer to not see it get locked.


Edit: Yeah, I doubt that it's going to be the fire from the Imperial Guardsmen that causes morale to break. If anything it's going to be the fact that they are such determinators that they keep coming no matter what gets thrown at them that would break morale. That and orbital bombardment and the like.

ANd DickBandit, yeah a Javelin would probably knock out a Leman Russ, the question is, can you take out all the Leman Russes before they overun your position? The answer in that case is 'no'. More importantly, Guardsmen are not idiots. Dogmatic, but not idiots. They will not be charging you so that you can mow them down with rifles. They will be acting like a modern military and digging in, while trying to get something that can kill the guys opposite them for them. You make it seem like it's going to be an action movie, with US Army soldiers gunning down Guardsmen left and right while the bodies pile up....it's not.

I was not using cod as a reference i use it when people start saying that a knife could defeat body armour.

Rifles have become shorter, bullpup design helps reducing average lenght.

i just put a link giving the ranks of body armour.

and i used long bow to compare the massive disparity of technology. Its an example.

Thans soo, again i used the long bow as a difference between tecnologies spanning 100 years, imagine 38000.

Its called spotters and the ranges are quite different but now i agree with the preapring field thing, even to protect them from charges .

SCYTHE9 wrote:I was not using cod as a reference i use it when people start saying that a knife could defeat body armour.

And has been mentioned repeatedly...they can. Trauma plates are not necessarily all over the Interceptor vests.

Rifles have become shorter, bullpup design helps reducing average lenght.

But not the awkwardness of handling

A knife could defeat body armor. Unless it hits a trauma plate, a knife will cut through a bullet proof vest, like it would a thick jacket.

If the rifle is shorter is easy to move around, there is retractable rifle butts, i believe its calle like that in english, make it easier to move indoors. Just look at the P90, i know its not an assault rifle but its easier to use.


Again i posted a link with the strenghts of the different body armour types. You actually believe a vest designed to stop a bullet isn't capable to stop a knife, the sheer speed of the bullet....but this is way OT.

I'm, sorry, i made my piont , you disagree, let's not ruin the thread

So can we just agree that the IG have a slight advantage given the nature of lasguns and willingness to fight on regardless of heavy casualties?

=Head desk= And you notice, all the rankings are about BULLETS. Bullets != Knives. A bullet proof vest will not stop a knife. That's why they make stab proof vests that CAN stop a knife, and sometimes combine the two into one vest that can stop knives and bullets.

Just do a quick googles search. Here, I'll do it for you! You will see that bullet proof vests are not proof against knives. The slower speed of the knife plus its sharp point is in fact what makes it capable, the knife travels slow enough that it pushes the kevlar fibers out of the way, and pushes through the vest in a way that a bullet can't.

ChrisWWII wrote:=Head desk= And you notice, all the rankings are about BULLETS. Bullets != Knives. A bullet proof vest will not stop a knife. That's why they make stab proof vests that CAN stop a knife, and sometimes combine the two into one vest that can stop knives and bullets.

Just do a quick googles search. Here, I'll do it for you! You will see that bullet proof vests are not proof against knives. The slower speed of the knife plus its sharp point is in fact what makes it capable, the knife travels slow enough that it pushes the kevlar fibers out of the way, and pushes through the vest in a way that a bullet can't.

This


And don't think that "bullets travel so fast blah blah" makes them more powerful than knives. A 9mm parabellum of mass 8g and travelling at 360m/s has about 518kJ of kinetic energy. A knife with a mass of 500g only needs to travel at 45.5m/s to have the same (actually a bit more) kinetic energy and that is excluding the considerable mass of the attackers arm and body, etc. Also a knife point has considerably smaller surface area than a bullet so is more likely to penetrate.

As stated, how the two different types of vests work is quite different.

Kilkrazy wrote:

jonolikespie wrote:Plus there is the whole 8 year olds stripping and re assembling lasguns and running what other regiments consider basic training.

With regard to the eight years training in stripping a lasgun.

I've been eating soup all my life. I probably had 20 years of soup eating experience before a lot of you younger users were even born, and I've gone on eating soup ever since. I've eaten gallons of different soups in a bunch of different countries, and I've used all the major and variant methods of eating soup.

My daughter, only aged 11, is already just as good at eating soup as I am.

Wha? I don't think you read that properly. I'm saying that 8 year olds can strip lasguns not that they train for 8 years in stripping them. The quote in the IG codex (and possibly BRB or last editions one) about how "any cadian who can't field strip a lasgun by age 10 was born on the wrong planet" actually seems like a rather large understatement. From what I've read a teenage cadian is comparable to a fully trained standard guardsmen from generic regiment x.

SCYTHE9 wrote:Rifles have become shorter, bullpup design helps reducing average lenght.

Bullpups are harder to operate than regular rifles. Reloading becomes more awkward because of the new position of the magazine.

SCYTHE9 wrote:If the rifle is shorter is easy to move around, there is retractable rifle butts, i believe its calle like that in english, make it easier to move indoors. Just look at the P90, i know its not an assault rifle but its easier to use.

The problem with the P90 is the magazine placement. If a bullpup was awkward to reload, having the magazine on top is even more so.

Kanluwen wrote:

side arms are not for CC, thats why modern rifles are shorter, i agree that longer barrels aren't good in close quarters.

Actually, that's precisely what sidearms are for. They allow you to retain the use of an 'open hand', while still being able to effectively fight back.
And "modern rifles" aren't shorter.
Carbines are shorter.

Actually, sidearms are mostly used as a backup for the primary weapon in case it malfunctions. They are usually issued to special units like artillery crews and paratroopers or personal defense but mostly issued to officers and NCOs as a mark of authority. They can actually be used for close combat though and the open hand should be used to stabilize the weapon and help handle recoil.

Also, random fact: Decimate means to turn into tens, not to utterly annihilate.

jonolikespie wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

jonolikespie wrote:Plus there is the whole 8 year olds stripping and re assembling lasguns and running what other regiments consider basic training.

With regard to the eight years training in stripping a lasgun.

I've been eating soup all my life. I probably had 20 years of soup eating experience before a lot of you younger users were even born, and I've gone on eating soup ever since. I've eaten gallons of different soups in a bunch of different countries, and I've used all the major and variant methods of eating soup.

My daughter, only aged 11, is already just as good at eating soup as I am.

Wha? I don't think you read that properly. I'm saying that 8 year olds can strip lasguns not that they train for 8 years in stripping them. The quote in the IG codex (and possibly BRB or last editions one) about how "any cadian who can't field strip a lasgun by age 10 was born on the wrong planet" actually seems like a rather large understatement. From what I've read a teenage cadian is comparable to a fully trained standard guardsmen from generic regiment x.

My point is that all skills have a maximum limit, and someone doesn't get better and better and better by practising more and more. The closer a person gets to the maximum possible level, the harder it is to improve any farther.

As such, this idea that unit X with four years training and experience is twice as good as unit Y with two years, isn't true.

WW2 studies show that combat skills peak after about 90 days of experience, on top of the basic training which lasted six weeks or so for standard infantry. After 90 days, care had to be taken to prevent soldiers from declining ineffectiveness though combat fatigue.

Ok can we please keep this on track, this isn't about bows, arrows or bulpup designs it's about 100 Cadian's vs 100 modern day soilders And tbh the only real argument the modern day inifintry has got is the javelin which is awesome but my reply to that would be that it isn't the most subtle of projectiles so the guardsmen could issue incoming before it gets there (let's hope they roll well)

I'd say IG vs modern would be very close but the IG have a slight advantage due to technology.
Candians vs modern though would have to go to the Cadians every time.

For what it's worth, the old Codex: Wargear (from 2nd edition) gave lasguns basically the same stats as an autogun, but increased it's armor penetration. The autogun was described as similar to a modern assault rifle, only shooting caseless ammunition which increased it's rate of fire and reliability.

So, using the transitive property, a lasgun is more reliable, has a faster rate of fire, penetrates armor easier, and carries a larger amount of ammunition than a modern assault rifle. I think that backs up my earlier hypothesis that the lasgun essentially fills the roles of a light SAW or other suppression fire weapon. (Keep in mind that a heavy stubber is closer to a modern heavy machine gun, and a heavy bolter is prbably closer to the bushmaster autocannon off the bradly).

As for commissars, much like their historical analoge they fulfill a variety of functions. the Red army kept them even as it became just as elite and motivated a fighting force as the wermacht or the US army. One of the main reasons the IG uses them is to make sure that troops from a different planet from high command stay loyal, stay on task, and follow procedure.

Polonius wrote:(Keep in mind that a heavy stubber is closer to a modern heavy machine gun, and a heavy bolter is prbably closer to the bushmaster autocannon off the bradly).

Sounds about right.

One interesting piece of tech that I've not heard the IG have (I'm well versed in fluff at all) is timed detonation of 'bolts' from the M307 autocannon: find the range, set it and fire. Explosive round detonates as soon as it reaches that distance; handy for taking out soft targets behind cover.

From what I recall, the Red Army actually got rid of its Commissars rather quickly, only using them for a few years before determining that they were either detrimental or at best ineffective. I'm not sure exactly what they did though, it seems they just acted to control the military officers into serving the interests of the civilian Communist party, being given the authority to veto orders and issue them, or something like that. I can see why it was abolished, though that bears little resemblance to 40K Commissars, which appear to be a mixture of disciplinary officers and "deliberate hindrance" to the operation of the regiment they're attached to...

In the Soviet Union, the political officer (or Zampolit) was there to ensure loyalty to the party, he also served to provide education to the men about the glories of socialism. However, he did not have the authority to overule the commander of the unit he was assigned to. What he COULD do however, was go over the commanders head, and go straight to Moscow and get them to order the commander around.

The image of a political officer mowing down his own men is largely a work of fiction.

According to wikipedia, they had veto power over orders. Of course, I don't know whether they could actually exercise that in practice, the entry is extremely vague beyond that.

Wikipedia wrote:The political commissar held military rank equalling that of the unit commander to whom he was attached; moreover, the commissar also had the military authority to countermand the unit commander’s orders when required.

It depends on which era you're talking about. In the pre-WW2 and purge era Soviet Army, the Zampolits held the authority to do as you say. They could countermand orders of the commanding officer, and such. However, after WW2, during the Cold War the zampolits were primarily responsible political supervision of the units they were assigned to. They could not countermand orders, but they did have a direct line to higher authority.

wikipedia wrote:In July 1941, consequent to the Red Army’s defeats at war’s start, the political commissar reappeared. The commissar had an influential role as a "second commander" within the military units. When this proved less-than-effective, in 1942 the political officer was much more firmly subordinated to commanding officers: the commissars' work was confined to non-combat functions, the term "commissar" itself was formally abolished, and at the company- and regiment-level, the pompolit officer was replaced with the zampolit (deputy commander for political work).

Commissars had the authority to override the officer they were attached to. Later political officers were less powerful, and not called commissars.

If you want to play semantics, then yes, Commissars had the ability to veto orders, and were essentially secondary commadners. However, the political officer in the Soviet military did not have that kind of power in any time period after the end of the 2nd world war.

I personally try to avoid the word 'Commissar' when it comes to talking about the Soviet military, simply because it's such a vague word. There were political commissars, military commissars, and that's not even going into what officers with the title 'Commissar' did in other militaries.

In the sense of being a morale booster and political offcer, the 40k Commissar is rather similar to later era Soviet political officer. However, as I understand, Commissars in the IG are outside the chain of command rather than part of it. They don't tend to be placed in charge of units....that's why Gaunt had such a rare rank.