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One thing I've always had doubts about is the ability of effective, but not exceedingly-strong combatants(Aspect Warriors, for instance) to reasonably engage your average Tactical Marine(loyalist or otherwise) in melee combat. Granted, the Aspect Warrior would have the advantage of agility, but even so, they would literally have to evade every.single.attack rather than evading+parrying, for the simple reason that attempting to parry against a marine in power armor's melee attack should seriously damage their musculoskeletal system, if not outright dislocate or break a few things.

Any combatant aside from those of at least "pretty damned high" strength(presumably Ork Nobs, Ogryns, and I suppose to some degree, Kroot) would logically not be able to sanely engage them in close-combat, yet Eldar/Dark Eldar in particularly are portrayed in certain novels(among other arenas) as doing just this.

Again, I'm not saying that these combatants can't win against them in close-combat, but it would be about as reasonable as Fire Warrior Shas'ui fighting in his underwear(in other words, presumably impressive damage, but one stray round, shrapnel, or well-aimed sneeze and it's over).

...or is it just me that thinks this?

Speed is a more than a match for strength. Just imagine a big hulk slowly swinging at you with a sword. All you have to do is side step him and insert your ice pick into the slots of his armor once or twice.

The Eldar are just that good that they can parry opponents who are stronger than they are. More importantly, it isn't necessary to overpower someone's strike to parry their attack, a lesser force applied at an angle works just as well to deflect it.

On the other complaint, the Eldar armor described in the most recent codex reacts to the wearer's thoughts and motions, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't also be augmenting the wearer's strength somewhat as well.

Clthomps wrote:Speed is a more than a match for strength.

I hear this a lot, but never from anyone who has actually been in a real right. The other thing is, marines are really fast. This isnt the 300 pound player at your LGS swinging on you. This is someone who is twice as fast as bruce lee, and hits 10 times as hard.

I'm not aware of any fluff establishing that their armor enhances their strength(other than perhaps Striking Scorpion armor, but I'm guessing).

The point I'm trying to make is that attempting to even redirect a blow of any committed force from a SM/CSM in power armor should dislocate joints and break bones.

There's only so much even an Aspect Warrior can dodge before they have to block or parry. In any case, I wasn't speculating--there have been instances where this has occurred, and I was wondering if I'm the only person who had "wtf?" moments then.

Marines can beat the hell out of almost anything in hand to hand. Thats why there are only a million of them. Now i know some kid who plays eldar and takes tae kwon do will talk about his instructor telling him to strike fast and what not and he will win. Ive seen this tried, it rarely works.

The other thing is the toughness of the marine. I cant see a striking scorpion getting through in one blow, and the marine could probably cause massive damage with a single blow. Banshees are a little different. I think the eldar are the only humanoids capable of taking on marines, because they have really good weapons and have event faster reflexs, but 10 banshees will rarely beat down 10 tac marines even.

Stuff like orks, itll take a huge boy to do the damage. Marines are faster then boyz by so much they can butcher them fairly easily. Now i know what you are thinking, didnt I just discount speed. Well no, not entirely. I discounted the myth that speed is better then strength. Which is generally true. However a strong+fast person is the worst kind of opponent. And marines are that.

Logically melee combat would hardly ever happen.

Logically, SMs fail on cost-benefit analysis compared to ordinary troops.

One thing I'd like to ask is how flexible is a marine. I remember a thread mentioning the solid rib cage, but even if it was designed to be flexible, the sheer size and bulk of a SM might hinder it some.

*raises hand*

Actually, I have quite a bit of experience at two-handed , armored sword combat, and strength is NOT the most important factor. Neither is speed. Experience is.

Why? Because, well, even a fairly weak or slow person can kill you with a two-hander if they know how to use it properly. If you strike correctly, you land the blow with the last foot or so of the blade, meaning that the sword effectively acts as a four-foot lever and magnifies the power of the strike. The tip is moving fast even if you aren't swinging with a great deal of force. The winner of a fight is the one who can gauge the distance correctly and place his sword properly to land that blow in the right place. Speed and strength help, of course, but I'd back a small, slow swordsmaster against a big, fast newbie. In fact, I've fought that matchup plenty of times against my little-old-lady instructor, and she wins every time.

As regards parrying; Yes, if an Eldar were to parry a SM's blow perpendicularly, like in the movies, he would break his arm. However, a skilled fighter doesn't ever parry that way. You parry at an angle, letting your opponent's blade slide off yours, and riposte before he can bring it back into line. I'm not good enough to pull that off reliably, but it makes sense that trained Eldar warriors would be.

Read 'Fulgrim' were some Emperor's Children Captains, were struggling against some Banshee's.

There Captains and The Emperor's Children are meant to be some of the fastest, most skilled astartes in combat.

Ronin-Sage wrote:One thing I've always had doubts about is the ability of effective, but not exceedingly-strong combatants(Aspect Warriors, for instance) to reasonably engage your average Tactical Marine(loyalist or otherwise) in melee combat. Granted, the Aspect Warrior would have the advantage of agility, but even so, they would literally have to evade every.single.attack rather than evading+parrying, for the simple reason that attempting to parry against a marine in power armor's melee attack should seriously damage their musculoskeletal system, if not outright dislocate or break a few things.

Any combatant aside from those of at least "pretty damned high" strength(presumably Ork Nobs, Ogryns, and I suppose to some degree, Kroot) would logically not be able to sanely engage them in close-combat, yet Eldar/Dark Eldar in particularly are portrayed in certain novels(among other arenas) as doing just this.

Again, I'm not saying that these combatants can't win against them in close-combat, but it would be about as reasonable as Fire Warrior Shas'ui fighting in his underwear(in other words, presumably impressive damage, but one stray round, shrapnel, or well-aimed sneeze and it's over).

...or is it just me that thinks this?

You don't have to parry or dodge anything if the Monkeigh's stuck on the end of your power sword first. I mean come on, they move as fast as an ork against one of The People. You can poke them two or three times before they've even started their swing or realized they're already dead. True, your average aspect warrior might have to put down his glass of vintage cabernet to put paid to the monkeigh, but it shouldn't be an issue.

Pistols are great equalizers, I always imagine those sorts of fights are short range quickdraws. A bigger man is a bigger target.

"God created man, Col. Colt made them equal..."

I hear this a lot, but never from anyone who has actually been in a real right.

Then you have only ever been privy to drunken bar fights. In a knife fight, or any other fight with weapons for that matter, the faster person will win 90% of the time.

The other thing is, marines are really fast. This isnt the 300 pound player at your LGS swinging on you. This is someone who is twice as fast as bruce lee, and hits 10 times as hard.

Guardsmen have a initiative of 3, Marines have an initiative 5, (Dark) Eldar have an initiative of 5 or 6, therefore by your logic one point Higher initiative is equal to double the level below it. So even the worst dark eldar warrior is twice as fast as a marine.

Lets see orks-the most popular sentient species in the galaxy-they're juts fine.
Eldar faster and much less stupid.
Nids. Seem to do well against even terminators.
Necrons. Yep. then they get back up. Then you die.
Tau. Whats HTH?
Demon mantra "Marines, crunchy on the outside, delicious on the inside"
Guard. Yep Missed the guy standing next to you with the flamethrower though. This is not going to be pretty in three...two...one...

I may be fast myself, but I would never pick a fight with someone bigger than me on the fact that if I screw up once and he gets a hold of me, the fight is just about over.

Its propaganda Marines are S4

While marines might be fast and strong, if 12 eldar, 20 boyz, or 40 guardsmen pile onto you and your four mates you are going to lose, even if you are all Bruce Lee.

Not to draw out the jerks, but if you want to see this in action the opening movie for DoW2 shows just this sort of thing happening.

GO BANSHEES!

I really think people should separate their enjoyment of the fluff from the game as it is played.

The game on the tabletop needs to be fun and balanced.

If you want to read about mighty Spase Mariens (Hurr!) just read the novels.

KK's right. I've heard it said more than once that on the table SM are ok at everything but great at nothing. Doesn't measure up to the books but then neither do any of them. The game just isn't as romantic as the novels unless of course you have a really awesome imagination, a la WD battle reports.

I'll go out on a limb and say, I think SMs are great at everything.

Ya the reason most Eldar and such can fight Marines in CC is because of speed and not hey I'm fast at striking like Bruce Lee or something. There fast as in Matrix Agent fast dodging bullet fast in Banshee Harlequin cases.

Guardsmen and the like stand no chance even in numbers. Think of the Avg Marine of a giant 8-10 foot man in full armor that is impervious to small arms fire carrying a chain sword, and either a Automatic grenade launcher or a smaller handheld semiauto matic nade launcher (bolter bolt pistol) now give them the best conditioning possible and somewhere between 200-400 years of battle experience on avg along side the greatest training possible.

Manchu wrote:KK's right. I've heard it said more than once that on the table SM are ok at everything but great at nothing. Doesn't measure up to the books but then neither do any of them. The game just isn't as romantic as the novels unless of course you have a really awesome imagination, a la WD battle reports.

So what we're saying here is that GW started writing "stories" about their miniatures and games setting, and....well....just got carried away

Thats kinda like the way I see it anyway. I mean, has anyone ever thought, why do Space Marines have to be sooo much bigger than a standard human? Why do they have to be worth 20 gazillion "normal" warriors?....and why the frak is it so hard for GW to reign it all in and bring the literature in line with the gaming experience?

As far as Eldar being able to beat Space Marines in close combat......it makes me wonder why you would really ask this question? we're talking about a game setting where these beings (Eldar) can cross the Galaxy using a "web-way", have really awesome psychic powers, and have anti grav technology......in other words, theres really alot of other weirder stuff going on that require "questions"

Coming from a martial arts background, speed is nothing without power in hand to hand. In a weapons scenario well then speed is really everything, that and the quality of your weapon vs the quality of the armour! If we take this back to the realm of fantasy, then Banshees are tooting some serious power weaponage...couple that with speed, and it doesn't take much to make a Space Marine Big Mac!

Why do the marines die so fast in DOW1 intro against some 40 orks?Whole tactical squad 10 marines and dreadnought killed by some orks.Da beakies ar beter than us boyz.

As multiple people already noted, you’re already swallowing camels by accepting many premises of the 40k universe anyway, so why strain at gnats?

Answer: Because it’s fun, and because it helps you make little pictures in your head of the cool things that are happening. So, the following is intended in that spirit.

Size makes a big difference in physical combat. That's why weight classes are so fine-grained in boxing, wrestling, etc.

That said, as soon as weapons get involved, size becomes MUCH less important (though reach still really helps with melee weapons). Human beings (or close analogues) are not physically designed to sustain impacts from sharp pieces of metal, or from any kind of object (small or large) traveling at supersonic speeds. Speed and skill matter much more with weapons. Even space marines and Eldar are close enough to the human form for this to remain true.

Certainly it makes no sense for a creature the size of a normal human or Eldar to block a blow from a creature with the size and strength of a power-armored marine. So you have to assume that they dodge, deflect, or poke the marine first. If they win. If the eldar loses, feel free to assume he failed to get enough of an angle to deflect the marine's blow, and the chainsword crashed right through his block and smashed right into his weedy xenos head.

Mannahnin wrote:That said, as soon as weapons get involved, size becomes MUCH less important (though reach still really helps with melee weapons). Human beings (or close analogues) are not physically designed to sustain impacts from sharp pieces of metal, or from any kind of object (small or large) traveling at supersonic speeds.

Speed and skill matter much more with weapons. Even space marines and Eldar are close enough to the human form for this to remain true.

I don't think that's entirely accurate. We're talking about magnitudes of strength and resilience that equal the difference between a punch and a hit from a shotgun. Power weapons rely heavily on the strength of the wielder for their effectiveness. They don't have inherent cutting power, like a lightsaber or something. I mean, obviously strength is making less of a difference than it would in a wrestling match, but it's still a huge factor, because the gaps in possible strength and toughness are so large.

Space Marines aren't close analogues of humans, they just look similar. They're encased in completely layers of the hardest materials in existence. They can breathe poisonous atmosphere, eat memories, and spit acid. They can't bleed out because their blood is as thick as maple syrup. They have two hearts and three lungs. They have a super-dense bone structure and musculature. They literally were "physically designed to sustain impacts from sharp pieces of metal, or from any kind of object (small or large) traveling at supersonic speeds".

(Of course, it's worth noting that the Eldar themselves are quite a bit stronger and more resilient than humans. They're not frail D&D elves, even if they don't match Space Marines. And then, Eldar have ridiculous speed and experience apart from that.)

Right. Eldar are Tolkien-type elves, i.e., far superior to (normal) humans in every way--except that they are xenos scum, of course.

And they accidently Slaanesh.

And doesn't afraid of anything.

starbomber109 wrote:While marines might be fast and strong, if 12 eldar, 20 boyz, or 40 guardsmen pile onto you and your four mates you are going to lose, even if you are all Bruce Lee.

It'd be close though.

Seriously though, If it was hand-to-hand, barefist wrestling, then the SM will win hands down. ALWAYS. However, in the Grimdark world of 40k pointy sticks are very pointy. And very killy.

A slash across the throat can quickly put the banshee on the winning side.