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Space Marines dont train for centuries for their BS4. However they do have a gakload of implants and inhuman reflexes, allowing them to get that BS4 within only a few decades of training. If I recall Correctly, currently only Bjorn has a BS of 6 (although I think Tellon might have it too) and he was old enough to have walked under the same sky as the Emperor.

Ailaros wrote:Right, guardsmen are all the way up to BS3 BECAUSE they spend so much time training. If they didn't spend all that time training, they'd just be BS2 (cf. conscripts, which haven't had a lot of training).

Amen brutha! and even conscripts have at least seen a firing range before. If my 1000 year old Guardians who are citizen-soldiers who have been at it for centuries even if only part time only get a BS3, then your 18-21 yr old farm boys with a year or two of rigorous drilling are lucky to have even that. Orks fight all the time, even when not at war, and they don't even qualify for a 3, even the ones who fight all the time with shooty weapons instead of choppy weapons. Guardsmen are lucky they aren't statline measured up to the grunts of other armies for comparative numbers based on fluff with some other race as the 'average'.

God no, then we'd have to pay more points.

We have veterans for that.

Orks dont "train" though. Guns, to most orks, are just noisy things that get them revved up for the chopping....

Tellion has BS6, from memory.

sniperjolly wrote:Why sisters are BS4 straight out of training kinda baffles me, but so does their low LD.

Targeters built into their power armour. I'd say that helps quite a bit.

Telion does indeed have BS6. Very useful when using his special rule 'Voice of Experience'. (Just looked it up to make sure.)

Imperial Guardsmen are at the BS they should be. If anything, the limited BS range works in their favor, as they can't go too low, as they need to be kept above orks, yet GW need to keep orks able to actually hit the broad side of a barn wiith a rokkit.......sometimes. Thus, veterans are put at the same BS as the Astartes, who, at least fluff-wise, they shouldn't even be able to touch, with regular Guardsmen put just below.

Personally, I think the Guard codex is already in a very, very, very good place without giving the standard guardsman, and it appears you would like tanks as well, +1 to their BS. Fluff-wise, nope. Just put them into perspective against their enemies, and take into account the limited BS range, and you'll understand why Guardsman are where they are.

I just assume they make fewer shots with more accuracy. you know, conserving ammunition for a long campaign.

IG is a very strong army with BS3 on the core troops.

They can be upgraded to BS4 veterans easily enough.

yes i know tanks are crewed by the same guardsmen but i was just saying it kinda sucks if you run a tank army. sometimes i would like them to be more efective. i always use Pask. like i said, i agree that bs 3 is fitting but it would be cool if it was a 4. see i run an infantry heavy army. mostly consisting of conscripts. so when they suck at everything i just take 1 or 2 squadrons of leman russ'.



thanks for all your comments!

Imagine air rifling- I am a fairly decent shot, and can reliably make 4 in 5 shots in the middle half. Imagine doing so while getting shot at, running, with moving targets, explosions all round, and death screams and shouting all around. Try making every other shot. That BS3 seems pretty good, doesn't it?
welcome!

No, extra BS for Guardsmen would actually be disasterous. This is due to:

1) IG are argaubly the best codex atm anyway and giving them Space Marine shooting stats would tip them into being broken.

2) Having Space Marine shooting stats would cause GW to modify all Space Marine stats upwards accordingly which would then leave a need to modify Eldar, Dark Eldar, etc.

3) Once all that work went in to making the above happening and all armies were modified, the stats would all be relative again and you would be back where you started in terms of what you needed to roll.

hmmm... that is true

Loyal Guardsmen wrote: a BS skill of 3 is BS. it should be a 4. all of the novels and discriptions of guardsmen say that they train constantly. i remember reading a book called Cadian Blood. (very good book) it was saying how most guardsmen are punished if they miss a shot in battle. if thats the case then why do half the shots the make miss?! and i know space marines have a BS of 4 as well. the should have a 5. they train for years and years. it just seems stupid that the BS skill is so low for them. if you agree or have something to add then please post.

Asking for normal guardsman to have BS 4 is silly. Use your officers orders properly and your ranks of humble lasguns will reap death.

I kind of wonder what makes a guy count as a 'veteran'. I would think anyone who has survived a battle, given the ridiculously high attrition rate of the IG, their unfortunate lot in life as the Emprahs limitless horde of cannon fodder.

Even giving veterans a +1BS seems fluff-silly to me. How many Guardsmen survive enough battles to actually make that huge jump between a 3 and a 4? I read 15 hours and it seems like the number of guys who make it through their first engagement would not be many, and the Imperial standard doctrine is to throw guys into the fire, lose half, and have fresh fodder fill in the gaps between engagements. Having combat experience does not make you a better shot, it makes you a more reliable soldier with more common sense and a cool head when gak goes down.

What are the odds of NOT dying after being used as cannon fodder a few times and being the lucky survivor each time? Would be quite low if that 15 hours book is any indicator. I would prefer if the regulars were more like conscripts with better Ld and the Vets were more like regulars with better Ld, but hey that's just me. I don't like giving the IG any kind of boost at all at this point after having my arse handed to me twice since the 5th ed codex, a huge jump from the whipping boy army they used to be. They are doing just fine as it is.

Guitardian wrote:I kind of wonder what makes a guy count as a 'veteran'. I would think anyone who has survived a battle, given the ridiculously high attrition rate of the IG, their unfortunate lot in life as the Emprahs limitless horde of cannon fodder.

Even giving veterans a +1BS seems fluff-silly to me...Having combat experience does not make you a better shot, it makes you a more reliable soldier with more common sense and a cool head when goes down.

and, as I said, what would you do better at- shooting in a calm, safe environment, or in a muddy hole, rounds whizzing past you, explosions happening left, right and centre? Calm environment. A cool head means a lot when it comes to shooting. You would be significantly calmer when it comes to fighting if ou'd already survived several beforehand.

BS/WS of 2 is poorly trained, 3 is trained, 4 is skilled, 5 is expert, 6 is insane, 7+ is just godlike

I agree:
1 is eyes-closed, firing blind.
2 is poorly-trained/not trained.
3 is trained
4 is really well trained/skilled
5 is skilled compared to the skilled ones/a crack shot.
6 is very good, unnaturally good.
7 is primarch-level.
8 is emperor-level.
9 is chaos gods/c'tan level.
10 is aimbot.

/\

+1 internets for you Sir!

+1 internets? what does that mean?
if it's a good thing, thanks.
P.S: your avatar is quite hypnotic.

Loyal Guardsmen wrote:yes i know tanks are crewed by the same guardsmen but i was just saying it kinda sucks if you run a tank army. sometimes i would like them to be more efective. i always use Pask. like i said, i agree that bs 3 is fitting but it would be cool if it was a 4. see i run an infantry heavy army. mostly consisting of conscripts. so when they suck at everything i just take 1 or 2 squadrons of leman russ'.



thanks for all your comments!

I have a Tau army. I think it would be cool if they had basic BS5. After all, Fire Warriors are literally a caste bred for war, it's in their genes, not grafted on as a mid-teenage mod like with SMs. Fire Warriors spend their entire life from the cradle onwards doing nothing but shooting. No time is wasted on sword play, it is all target practice under realistic battlefield conditions.

The Tau should totally be BS5.

ya know what? I agree. (no offence, but they suck at everything but range, and at range- a lot of races could beat them. They should be BS5. That and fire warriors should have better weapons than pathfinders.

Thats fine, give you guardsmen a BS of 4, just remember to subtract your BS from 8 when figuring out what you need to hit

Nurglitch wrote:
By comparison, a GAU-8 Avenger cannon, the one mounted on the A-10 Warthog, can do 4,200 rounds per minute. According to the Wikipedia page it's typically restricted to 1-2 second bursts to avoid over-heating and preserve ammunition. In that case the high rate of fire is useful for minimizing the spread of shots from a moving shooter. That means it would be Heavy 4 following the above assumption of "turn-time" if we're going to be stupid and take the game rules as having anything to do with what they are purported to represent...

you have this backwards the A-10 is mounted to the GAU-8..

i have never had any real problem with the standard guardsman's BS, my typical build is a platoon with 4 squads, which gives me 32 lasgun shots base. Now, if i am in rapid fire range, that brings it up to 64 shots, then if i successfully order them with "first rank fire, second rank fire" that ads an additional 32 shots. you see where thats going?? the problem i have with my guards men is that S3 lasgun, i personally think that in this case, mechanics should match fluff, and they have been ordered to set their flashlight to "kill" rather than "stun" or "blind in an annoying fashion" according to the fluff, the lasgun is variably set at different strenghts, which affects the amount of shots per battery or clip. In the big scale of things, if one guardsmen survives a 6 turn game, and fires every single turn, with Orders affecting, he has an absolute MAX number of shots of 18.. not all that high a number.

hmm. thinking about fluff- couldn't a guardsman only fire once a turn, and the shot be S4, or twice at S3?

Everybody should get out of the idea that game rules (and models for that matter) actually reflect the fluff.

For the record, Eldar Guardians may have lived several centuries, but they are conscripted militia. Even Aspect Warriors are no more than any man/woman with a hobby in the violent arts. Only Exarches are the ones who dedicate themselves to full-on training, and it shows in their BS and WS5 (even if they wont use one of the stats at all due to their profession). Guardians at BS3 is perfectly fine, they're artisans, scholars and other common folk asked to fight in a war, the fact that they're even on par with trained soldiers is pretty damn amazing.

Ensis Ferrae wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
By comparison, a GAU-8 Avenger cannon, the one mounted on the A-10 Warthog, can do 4,200 rounds per minute. According to the Wikipedia page it's typically restricted to 1-2 second bursts to avoid over-heating and preserve ammunition. In that case the high rate of fire is useful for minimizing the spread of shots from a moving shooter. That means it would be Heavy 4 following the above assumption of "turn-time" if we're going to be stupid and take the game rules as having anything to do with what they are purported to represent...

you have this backwards the A-10 is mounted to the GAU-8..

i have never had any real problem with the standard guardsman's BS, my typical build is a platoon with 4 squads, which gives me 32 lasgun shots base. Now, if i am in rapid fire range, that brings it up to 64 shots, then if i successfully order them with "first rank fire, second rank fire" that ads an additional 32 shots. you see where thats going?? the problem i have with my guards men is that S3 lasgun, i personally think that in this case, mechanics should match fluff, and they have been ordered to set their flashlight to "kill" rather than "stun" or "blind in an annoying fashion" according to the fluff, the lasgun is variably set at different strenghts, which affects the amount of shots per battery or clip. In the big scale of things, if one guardsmen survives a 6 turn game, and fires every single turn, with Orders affecting, he has an absolute MAX number of shots of 18.. not all that high a number.

That whole "variable strengths" thing is actually heavily dependant on the make and model of the lasgun. Some of them have that feature, others don't. The Str3 is meant to represent an avreage strength for the different models of weapon being used by the various regiments of the IG.

Wasn't Balistic Skill also meant to reflect the quality of weapons in use? I'm sure I remember somewhere in the rule book it saying that things like "miss-fires, gun jams, and so on" are reasons that someone might miss the shot as well.

And that makes sense, you've got billions of these lasguns being mass produced and then thrown into a war zone where the wear down and fail. And then for something for a Space Marine, would you really spend all the time and resources on power armor ((and of course they spend SO much effort making sure they retrieve EVERY fallen brother as well)) to give him a gun of lower quality? Guardsman are easy to replace so the quality of weapons can be lower with out "consequence" there.


Anyway there's all sorts of ways to represent the reasons a Guardsman misses with out having to fall back to saying they're horrible shots. BS in game is only relative to the other models in the game; not to the fluff.

If it were fluff, one space marine could take down a platoon of Guardsman with barely breaking a sweat! You know with all those stealthy skills they have in the books but not so much on the game table.

vodo40k wrote:Everybody should get out of the idea that game rules (and models for that matter) actually reflect the fluff.

Right. The fluff is so bogus that regular SM's should come with a 1+ armor save, a BS of 7, and should have A 20, W 40, and should be fearless.

The question isn't "should the guard have a higher ballistic skill?" but "should terminators have a 1++ invul save?"

Lol Codex Movie Marines. Good times.