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Okay, I can't believe this thread got to 7 pages. Every single one of you guys missed the mark completely.

Realistically, this is what you're going to have. Your average U.S. soldier is probably around 6", 180 lbs, that's 1.8 meters and 82 kg to you poor saps who don't live in a country with a military worth its weight in kroot patties. With around 9 weeks in basic, and anywhere from a few more months to over a year in AIT, you're obviously looking at a highly intelligent, dome-capping piece of man meat. Now, talking about hardware here, the best modern infantry weapons ever to fall into the hands of our highly trained killers here is the M16A4 and M4A1. These baddies fire a 5.56mm round that could scramble any poor fella's brain like a giant egg beater.

Now, I don't want to get to drawn out into the details. But realistically, a modern US soldier could literally crush an Imperial Guardsman without even firing a bullet. This thread really is like mashed potatoes on your head kinda stupid. Taking into the account the weight of your standard US soldier, I'd say that he could probably crush the Imperial Guardsman even after a nasty bout of dysentery. Why? Imperial Guardsman are about 1 inch tall and are made out of got-damned plastic. Well hurr durr, what about pewter you say. A damned blow torch or an Easy Bake oven could melt those fags.

Can we lock this thread now? I didn't bother reading anything anyone said, but I am dumber for having known this thread existed to begin with.

Either the Sarcasmo-tron or the Troll-detector exploded fantastically.

I don't know whether to laugh at your humorous solution to the question or facepalm.

I think he should facepalm because he is fail ha ha

Kilkrazy wrote:

Polonius wrote:That's a really great point. IG will literally keep moving and let the casualties fall. Few modern militaries would do that.

That was the Soviet method at the start of the Great Patriotic War. They did very badly using those tactics.

Here is the description and TO&E for a US Army rifle company from a light infantry division. I chose this because it has no organic vehicles.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/army/unit/toe/07017L000.htm

If you want a 100 man unit the three rifle platoons plus three platoon HQs provide a total of 81 + 15 men equipped with

Six heavy (?) machine-guns (possibly 7.62mm ?)
18 grenade launchers (40mm underslung type)
18 light machine-guns (M249)
78 assault rifles (M4)
Grenades and bayonets are also carried but not listed. Some men may have a pistol.

If weapons from the company HQ and heavy weapons platoons are to be included, then grenade MGs, 50-cal MGs, 60mm and 81mm mortars are available.

They used very bad tactics in the Winter War as well

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War#Soviet_advance_to_the_Mannerheim_Line

Apologies if this was already pointed out, but according to modern US army battle drills, the only way you will directly engage an opposing force is if you currently outnumber them 3-1. Any other situation you are advised to call support or disengage.

Haven't went through all of the pages but it's a bit funny as a european to see the faith many of you american posters have in your military given this scenario.

A lot has been said before but if I consider a cadian company against 100 US soldiers (since this seems to be the typical comparison) I think it would be a bloody mess with heavy casualties on both sides (granted that the US soldiers are forced to fight, i.e. no side retreats).

I think the US soldiers would have the initial tactical advantage and the natural reaction for the cadian officer would be to first estabilsh some battle positions and lock down the battlefield deploying heavy weaponry in strategic positions. Up until this point it's possible that a modern army would have some advantage.

Afterwards, I think the IG army would slowly grind down the modern army with use of the superior heavy and special weaponry. Both sides would probably take heavy losses. Realistically I think at some point the US infantry platoon would surrender instead of fighting to the last man something the IG forces would likely do if forced to.

If the US company should have chanses of winning I think they must be able to take out the IG officer(s) early on and then in the confusion among IG lines act quickly. Not impossible but I still consider my first scenario more likely.

Radical wrote:Okay, I can't believe this thread got to 7 pages. Every single one of you guys missed the mark completely.

Realistically, this is what you're going to have. Your average U.S. soldier is probably around 6", 180 lbs, that's 1.8 meters and 82 kg to you poor saps who don't live in a country with a military worth its weight in kroot patties. With around 9 weeks in basic, and anywhere from a few more months to over a year in AIT, you're obviously looking at a highly intelligent, dome-capping piece of man meat. Now, talking about hardware here, the best modern infantry weapons ever to fall into the hands of our highly trained killers here is the M16A4 and M4A1. These baddies fire a 5.56mm round that could scramble any poor fella's brain like a giant egg beater.

Now, I don't want to get to drawn out into the details. But realistically, a modern US soldier could literally crush an Imperial Guardsman without even firing a bullet. This thread really is like mashed potatoes on your head kinda stupid. Taking into the account the weight of your standard US soldier, I'd say that he could probably crush the Imperial Guardsman even after a nasty bout of dysentery. Why? Imperial Guardsman are about 1 inch tall and are made out of got-damned plastic. Well hurr durr, what about pewter you say. A damned blow torch or an Easy Bake oven could melt those fags.

Can we lock this thread now? I didn't bother reading anything anyone said, but I am dumber for having known this thread existed to begin with.

Genius!!!

I LOL'd!

Radical wrote:Okay, I can't believe this thread got to 7 pages. Every single one of you guys missed the mark completely.

Realistically, this is what you're going to have. Your average U.S. soldier is probably around 6", 180 lbs, that's 1.8 meters and 82 kg to you poor saps who don't live in a country with a military worth its weight in kroot patties. With around 9 weeks in basic, and anywhere from a few more months to over a year in AIT, you're obviously looking at a highly intelligent, dome-capping piece of man meat. Now, talking about hardware here, the best modern infantry weapons ever to fall into the hands of our highly trained killers here is the M16A4 and M4A1. These baddies fire a 5.56mm round that could scramble any poor fella's brain like a giant egg beater.

Now, I don't want to get to drawn out into the details. But realistically, a modern US soldier could literally crush an Imperial Guardsman without even firing a bullet. This thread really is like mashed potatoes on your head kinda stupid. Taking into the account the weight of your standard US soldier, I'd say that he could probably crush the Imperial Guardsman even after a nasty bout of dysentery. Why? Imperial Guardsman are about 1 inch tall and are made out of got-damned plastic. Well hurr durr, what about pewter you say. A damned blow torch or an Easy Bake oven could melt those fags.

Can we lock this thread now? I didn't bother reading anything anyone said, but I am dumber for having known this thread existed to begin with.

Scenario - Can a child take down an Imperial Fleet?

Video evidence - A 5-year old walks into his father's room, and sees 30 or so BFG ships. Over the course of about 4 minutes. He smashes every ship.

Conclusion - A child can take down an imperial fleet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ah, I have struck the killing blow to the thread.
Excellent.

So back on track, the 100 IGs would definately slowly out gun a typical 100 Marines. With the lasgun and all... Plus the damn las beam would'nt stop until it hit something and it travels in straight lines so any reasonably capable Guard could take them all out.

Snogs wrote:WoW

Its so hard to think that there is anyone that could come to think of the IG ever standing up to any modern army.

No it's not.

Take the average guardsman.

He's fought in numerous campaigns against the deadliest creatures in the galaxy. He uses superior equipment (lasgun > modern assault rifles, flak armor is MUCH better than modern body armor), is assisted by superior vehicles, calls in superior artillery, and has superior close air support (with the possible exception of the A10, but we'd have trouble maintaining air superiority enough to utilize it, if we could maintain any semblance of air superiority at all). He has space-based support, superior transport because of his space assets. He has fought far deadlier foes, and fighting humans is almost a break for him, nevermind humans whose armor can't even resist energy weapons like his lasgun, while flak armor is more than enough to protect him from most of our light infantry weapons.

Chapter Master Aeneas wrote:Im in college and I started the discussion started by maybe many IG fans is what would happen if they came here my friend says that 100 modern soilders v 100 guardsman in an open field that the imperial guard would have no significant advantage.

Open field? Guardsmen win. Without any cover to hide behind, the superior armor and firepower of the guardsmen, along with their extensive combat experience, would lead them to easy victory over their less experienced, technologically inferior foes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The_Entity wrote:So back on track, the 100 IGs would definately slowly out gun a typical 100 Marines. With the lasgun and all... Plus the damn las beam would'nt stop until it hit something and it travels in straight lines so any reasonably capable Guard could take them all out.

And our modern body armor isn't made to resist it, while flak armor is made to resist fragments and solid rounds as well as energy weapons. And it's immensely lighter than our modern body armor, affording the Guard superior endurance and mobility.

Threadnomancy!

theduncan wrote:Threadnomancy!

Not really...
Under 2 months...
More like Near Death Thread...
I wonder if it saw a bright light...

I know it was just 2 months, but by the last post the thread had really dried up and was pretty OT, so near-death is probably a better description.

theduncan wrote:I know it was just 2 months, but by the last post the thread had really dried up and was pretty OT, so near-death is probably a better description.

Not dead but worth either dropping or locking...

Just like this conersation, which is off-topic for four posts now?

Meh. I sand by what I posted; I saw the thread on the first page of the general forum and responded.

The Imperial Guard would definitely win in the situation presented.

The two main IG forces focused on in all the fluff, the Cadians and the Catachans, are both hardened to the core. The Cadians spend literaly their entire lives training and perfecting the art of war in all of its facets. They know how to react to every situation in every enviroment with any given weapon, imagine a spartan, but replace his life long training with spears and sheilds with life long training with lasguns and auto cannons, and replace his mere human foes with Orks, Tyranids, Necrons, Chaos Marines, Eldar, Tau, and whatever else the Emperor wants him to fight. The end result is the perfect soldier by human standards, no man on earth could even try and compare them selves in martial proess to a Cadian, they would simply be overwellmed in every category possible. The Catachans are a little different but are in no way less deadly. 50% of all the babies born on Catachan die before they can walk, 50% of those babies die before they reach the age of 10. It takes a special kind of man to survive in Catachan, those that do survive are super buff, I think more buff then is physicaly possible for most on earth, extremly resourceful, quick and fast thinking survivors. They can survive on a planet where every single animal is carnivorus and every single plant is poisonus, death is litteraly around every corner, not only that, death is also the corner itself, and everything else around the corner is also death. A Catachan could break the neck of any modern day soldier using nothing but HIS OWN NECK. Given a few blades of grass and some dirt, 100 Catachans could disguise themslves AS THE OPEN FIELD!! What chance would antbody on earth have against a Catachan? None what so ever is the answer to that. A quick summary of US troops vs. Cadians, the US officers and NCOs are picked off by Cadian snipers before the US troops know the battle has even started. Confused and demoralized, the US troops tremble helplessly as the Cadians advance upon their position, picking them all off before they have gathered up enough witts to fire back, the whole engagement takes less than 30 seconds. Now for the Catachans, the US troops advance slowly across the open field, searching the area for the Catachans who were reported to be in the area. One soildier steps on a snare mine and several others rush to free him from the trap. It takes 6 men to finaly pry the snare open, which triggers the gernade attached to it, killing the injured man and all the others who had gone to his aid. The remaining soldiers continue, their nerves shaken greatly by the gruesome trap. They tread lightly now, watching each individual step they make to make sure they don't suffer the same fate. Many others fall victim to the snare mines, but their comrades now know better than to help them, the poison laced on each of the snares kills them within minutes. More still are killed by new traps which range from simple nails jutting out of the ground which penetrate through their boots, the poison they were dipped in killing them almost instantly, to land mines that detonate killing several men at a time. Less than half of the 100 soildiers remain, and their commanding officer orders a withdrawl, when his foot touches something warm. He looks down to see a pair of eyes staring right back at him. His scream is cut short by a knife plunged into the back of his neck, then the rest of the Catachans seem to rise from the ground and kill the few remaining soldiers with several well aimed shots from their lasguns. They conceal the bodies in a nearby ditch, reset their traps, and return to thier hiding places. That makes 327 kills for the day, it is 11 in the morning.

Okay maybee not brief but you get the idea. Perhaps I over did it a little to much, but the premise is still the same.

sourclams wrote:I think the 'leadership' factor is getting a bit underplayed here. I don't mean leadership in terms of who's got better sergeants, etc, but rather in terms of 'we lost 8/10 men and we're still charging with bayonets fixed'.

It's been a long, long time since two militaries of roughly equivalent technology level faced each other in open combat. By our standards, IG infantry are probably very near to fearless. Losses that we'd consider a horrific disaster (30%+) are probably within IG acceptable tolerances.

Probably? LOL, what's the average life expectancy of a guardsman again, 15 hours?

30% casualties would be a rousing success, probably too much of a success since the Administratum didn't plan on having to provide so many supplies and they all starve to death while the paperwork is being processed.

The average lifespan of a Guardsman is not fifteen hours. That novel was meant to be an example of the lifespan of a Guardsman at the absolute worst of times.

Fafnir wrote:Armour for the average gaurdsman is probably somewhat better than modern military armour. Either stronger or lighter, or a combination of both.

Better!!??

Yes. Flak armor is stronger, lighter, and covers omre of the body than modern body armor. Oh, and when I say it' slighter, I mean it's lighter even as it is covering more of the body. A full suit of flak armor (boots, greaves, front/back plate, gauntlets, pauldrons, and helmet) weighs less than the US Army's Improved Outer Tactical Vest by itself.

And it provides arguably better protection. The IOTV isn't intended to protect against lasguns for example, and flak armor is almost as good as carapace armor against shrapnel from fragmentation grenades and the like. And ontop of all of that, it's cheaper to make and easier to supply. Flak armor is pretty much flat out better than modenr body armor.

If modern nations could produce and use flak armor, they would in an INSTANT.

Yes, better. People forget that it's not that Guardsmen suck, Guardsmen are drawn from the elite of planets defense forces, and are relatively well equipped with a logisticians wet dream of a gun and tank, and a light, easy to manufacture, but still very strong. Guardsmen are BAMFs to a one.

The problem is, everything else they're fighting is so much more dangerous that it SEEMS like they suck.

ChrisWWII wrote:The average lifespan of a Guardsman is not fifteen hours. That novel was meant to be an example of the lifespan of a Guardsman at the absolute worst of times.

Which is pretty good. Imagine playing a FPS on its hardest difficulty and lasting 15 hours without dying? Yeah right!

15 hours was the average lifespan on that particular planet, which has been practically forgotten by everybody and gets no reinforcements aside from the company that gets dropped in thanks to a clerical error.

God, I just read through the first 2.5 pages of this thread and already my brain is fried.
Im gonna make my opinion quick.
Just like the innumerable Halo Spartan vs Space Marine threads, at the level the OP has described im gonna say it would be a 50/50 battle, for the reasons everybody else has said 5 times before.

No, it wouldn't be fifty fifty. If it was simply infantry versus infantry with no support weapons, Imperial Guard would win without a shadow of a doubt. Their training is equivalent or better, their experience is DEFINITELY better, and their equipment is indisputably better.

Training better? Harder maybe thanks to über strict instructors but maybe not better.

L_Dawg wrote:Training better? Harder maybe thanks to über strict instructors but maybe not better.

They are trained to maintain discipline in the face of an incoming charge of a veritable wall of screaming, heavily muscled greenskins aimed at killing them in a brutal, messy, and inevitably painful way. Greenskinned barbarians who take numerous shots to be killed and can even get up and continue fighting after what should be a mortal wound. Whose weapons provide tons of psychological and mental warfare, including warping a little green creature inside of someone so it has to crawl its way out of their innards, nevermind the ludicrously loud, rapid fire guns, the large quantities of explosive ordnance, and the sheer unnerving randomness of it all. And not only do they take all of this, standing and fighting with it, they do it as friggin' a day job. And, more often than not, win.

Yes, the Imperial Guard is generally trained better, and certainly more experienced, having fought and been trained to fight far tougher enemies than mere humans in inferior armor with inferior weapons.

All these talks of guns and almost no talk of armor, which to me seems to be what is the main edge the IG soldier would have.

Assuming that modern day weapon and lasguns have roughly the same stats (Str 3 AP-), the debate about which weapon is best is really just going in circle.

That being said, IG flak armor has a 5+sv. This is enough to stop lasgun fire... but it also stops those AP6 weapon and this is where things get interesting. If we look at guns that have AP6, we have pretty much all ork slugga and shoota... and I'm not a gun freak, but those guns are shooting massive bullets, the kind that RL machine gun would fire.

I would think you're looking at modern day armor having a value of sv6+ (it's certainly not at 4+ - no way modern day armor could stop bolter rounds if those actually existed) - simply put, I don't think modern day armor would do anything against orkish weaponry, will IG flak armor has been known to stop it.


This conversation is a bit frustrating mainly because well... the 40k ruleset doesn't give enough information or ruleset about different weapons. Str 3 AP- Rapid Fire is both a lasgun and a stubgun... but let's face it, in 'real world term', those guns would have different range, different rate of fire, different ammo capability, different reload time, different stopping power, etc. However, in the macro scale that 40k represent, those don't really matter.

That being said, if you breach out into the W40K RPG published by FFG (Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch) you suddenly get a lot more information. You get to see a much more 'precise' view of how good each piece of gear is.

And ironically, using those rules, than it becomes a non-contest... modern weaponry, being 38k years old, would have the Primitive rule (meaning armor value of non primitive armor is doubled against it) and modern armor would have the Primitive rule as well (Meaning armor is halved when used to absorb damage from non-primitive weapon). This is the clever way the system use to model planets that are backwater and use older make of guns (or even flat out bow and arrow) without having to print an entire book with just guns in it.

And yes, in short, the guardman's lasgun would tear through the US Soldier's primitive kevlar vest with little difficulty, while the US soldier's primitive M16 would be hard pressed to do much more than comestic damage to the IG's flak armor.

And it gets just silly if you throw in Space Marine in the mix

Lasgun would be an amazing weapon in our age, a weapon that never jams, has super high ammunition capacity (and can be recharged) and powerful.
That's before considering other infantry weapons use by the IG.