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GW has plenty of tanks, made bigger tanks, now has Valkyries and fighters flying around, and Planetstrike soon which brings in a new flavor of warfare, and so on....I realized that the next place they'll go (in a year or two) is river warfare...beach landings, pt boats like in 'Nam, etc...

What do you think?

Beach landings in space pretty much is Planetstrike. GW never really has referred that much to any race's naval operations other than in space, so I doubt very much that this is where they would go. I would say a spaceship/station boarding action supplement would be much more likely. (Space Hulk where are you!)

Well, they are re-releasing Space Hulk. Planetstrike is landing on a planet from drop pods, and dropships, etc...So beach landings is NOT the same. GW is a company that won't go stagnent, it will keep looking for new directions to go for both 40K & Warhammer Fantasy.

Some nautical vehicles in 40k would be nice.

Fantasy Warships will be WAAAY to big, but there is Man'O War for that kind of thing.

I doubt it. With drop pods and teleporting, who needs to assault from the sea? Just drop on their head/materialize where you need to. Amphibious/surface naval warfare is a moot point when one government controls the entire planet. It has no real reason to exist except in a Coast Guard type of environment.

And how you you get your amphibious assault vehicles on planet that you could just drop the troops on the objective anyway? No, I think amphibious assaults are dead in 40K, there is no use for them.

We will probably see something more along the lines of air-to-air combat before too much longer.

Yeah I don't think 40K armies even have wet navy's any more. Boarding actions or 'Jungle Fight'.

I can't remember any references to naval warfare aside from Ghazgkull's submersibles in the Armageddon war (and I think there's an apocalypse datasheet for them?).

Aeronautica Imperialis (from Forge World, iirc?) already deals with air-to-air.

ya...
basically the closest thing youll find to beach landings in 40k is with space hulks and drop pods...
planetstrike, space hulk, gothic, AI... theres your water warfare...
why would they bother building boats when they already have spaceships?

youll have to cook up your own rules or find another system if you wanna put orks and marines on normandy beach...

krazynadechukr2 wrote:Well, they are re-releasing Space Hulk. Planetstrike is landing on a planet from drop pods, and dropships, etc...So beach landings is NOT the same. GW is a company that won't go stagnent, it will keep looking for new directions to go for both 40K & Warhammer Fantasy.

Let's draw a couple of similarities.

1) Beach Landing - Landing troops in quick, lightly armored transports onto a heavily fortified/defended enemy position to establish a beachhead.

2) Planetary Landing - Landing troops in quick, lightly armored transports onto a heavily fortified/defended enemy position to establish a beachhead.

Uhm...replace boat with droppod and beach with "Drop Zone". The enemy is trying to sink your boats/pods before they land, and the landing troops are trying to fortify and assault the defensive position/beachhead so that more allied troops can land and then push the offensive.

So really, Planetstrike is the Sci-Fi allegory to storming the beaches at Normandy. I mean hell, we even refer to spaceships as Naval Vessels.

Boats in 40k? The Imperial Guard has the Chimera and Gorgon, nothing more is needed or wanted.

water worlds. worlds with just small islands. river worlds. planets with electrical storms that don't allow for extended periods of flight. planets with air to thin for flight. etc....

6 gw 40k novels actually had story lines that had sea vessals as part of the mission some navy battles.

40k worlds are vast, some with older tech, they might still have navys. Armageddon had naval ships.....

I am not saying it is a good idea, just one NEW idea GW might come up with.

What NEW thing do you think is in the 40k future? (Not new codex, more creative than that)....


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If not naval warfare on a planet, GW might expand the concept of Space Hulk style battles for 40k scale ship-2-ship boarding actions, and smaller space craft fighting.....that'd go hand-n-hand with planetstrike.....Maybe 0 gravity fights.....................

Orks, marines, nids and necrons can probably "breathe" under water so why even bother with assault craft, they can just land anywhere and walk in. I suppose some heavy weapons and vehicles would need to be kept relatively dry which is why orks have their submersibles but a surprise attack from the water would be easy for them. You could do it with current games just by letting those races have a special rule which allows them to treat water as difficult terrain. Visually I think it would look rubbish as unless you were using actual water on your table top you'd have the stupid scenario of all your underwater troops being able to walk on water. I think it would defeat the purpose somewhat to have the water as instant death for any unit that fell into it as that's rather unrealistic.
PT boats or whatever could be open topped chimeras statswise. How would you represent if your troops were swimming (drowning's easy)or walking on the bottom though?

In one of the gaunt books the imperial gaurd make a massive naval landing and assault.

"Logical step",when have you ever know GW to be logical?

Why would you use a boat when everything flies.

youbedead wrote:In one of the gaunt books the imperial gaurd make a massive naval landing and assault.

From dropships...

I can't understand why people aren't saying that it isn't feasible. The 40k universe is huge and even GW say that their fluff only scrathes the surface. There could be plenty of of water worlds out there, also low-tech worlds and don't forget that there are plenty of ways to put the kybosh on normal drop pod attacks.

Naval warfare in 40K? Sure. On the tabletop? Doubt it.
I would like to see boarding actions though! Might be a nice way to give a new boost to BFG while they are at it!

Wolfstan wrote:I can't understand why people aren't saying that it isn't feasible. The 40k universe is huge and even GW say that their fluff only scrathes the surface. There could be plenty of of water worlds out there, also low-tech worlds and don't forget that there are plenty of ways to put the kybosh on normal drop pod attacks.

Sure, there's easy ways to put the kybosh on drop pod attacks.
But how are you going to get the ships, etc there to fight with to start? Are we assuming that they've built up navies on a planet together, without having known each other were there?

I mean, it becomes a logistics issue.
Tau and Eldar would be fine, as they'd just convert to using nothing but skimmers and Drones as their standard combat forces, maybe with infantry as needed for boarding actions.
Imperial Guard/Marines and their spiky counterparts would be using fliers and Chimeras, or maybe retasked PDF wet navy vessels.
Necrons and Tyranids would just keep on stompin' no matter what, maybe adapting to using Destroyers(in the case of the Necrons) and Winged beasts(in the case of the Tyranids).
Orks would come up with something completely wacky, and 100% hilarious.

Sure, you can easily say that stuff like that happens.

But why devote time and resources to invading a planet that's mostly water when you can just bombard the enemy from orbit?

Yeah cos I got so much use out of the Amphibious rule on the Chimera!

Water 40k would rock. My Eldar Pirates would love a bit of that. They can be the Somalians, and my IG opponent can be the French Navy.

Apart from I would win.

My point is that GW have released revamped vehicles over the years, vehicles refered to in stories and completely new vehicles. when questioned about it GW would say simply "it's a big universe". This means there is no resason whatsoever, that the Imperial Guard / Navy don't have waterbourne transport, it's just never talked about. I doubt however that we would see anything made by GW for this type of warfare, but no reason why someone can't do their own thing.

Just remembered Fenris, their culture is sea based, so no reason why there can't other planets out there with the same culture, but no Imperial outpost.

Orks have subs. Scratch build those.

I think I remember a WD article a while ago that had a boat in it like those beginning of saving private ryan boats made with a rhino hull that was reversed so the rear door was the front door. But really, I don't see boats being useful at all with all the things that can deep strike and fly. I mean, why would Eldar or Tau need them if they can just skimmer themselves over the water? IG might use them here and there maybe, but I couldn't see it being something every army would need.

They have city fighting, massive battles and planetary sieges done now.. i dunno what else they could do as an expansion other than small fights in close quarters and they well have space hulk for that.

Boats are a petty niche that people shouldn't apply with 20th century mindset to a 40k situation. Yes we all know Saving Private Ryan has a neat invasion intro and yes every WWII game has such a map where you start in a boat ready to rape some filthy germans or japanese but 40k isn't WWII revisited.

Guard has the Chimera and Gorgon, Nids can grow gills, Eldar, Tau and Dark Eldar just skim over it, Marines ignore rivers and drop behind them and Necrons just walk across the bottom like that Disney attraction. Orks just make do with whatever comes to hand, be it sub, raft or tying Grots together under yer boots and walking across that water feature.

No. Cause there cant be two imperial navies

I think the idea of boarding vessels would be more likely ( is that what its called? when people ride space ships and try to take over a larger ship )

I don't see much action for surface navies, seeing as anything as large as a battleship being a big target to an orbital bombardment. If you ask me the real action would be in the deep sea where you cant reach them with orbital bombardment.

Mattlov wrote:I doubt it. With drop pods and teleporting, who needs to assault from the sea?

Yup, that pretty much sums it up right there.

ya...
when interplanetary travel is possible, somtimes in days, they might just take the time to build, train personnel for, and deploy subs and blow each other out of the water...

Gah! This thread drives me crazy!

Why use the sea? For exactly the same reasons we do when we have aeroplanes.

More efficient energy and resource use to get a particular job done.