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I learned one thing from that book. If your commanders and/ or commissars hate you YOU WILL DIE!

Blatant lies about the enemy and silliness about holding your breath in the vacuum of space aside, some parts (basic squad level tactics) didn't seem too dissimilar from the battle drills I did in College ROTC.

I have it and love it. In Dark Heresy it's actually part of the starting equipment for characters with an Imperial Guard background.

My sister spilled pop on my copy so it looks like it has a big bloodstain on it. Extra authentic!

Because of this thread I have decided to grab a copy read the free excerpt on black library it was hilarious.

I enjoyed it as much as most here, my favourite bit was: "the tau are not only filthy aliens, they are filthy aliens who consort with other filthy aliens". Although after reading it, it made me want to write a more "accurate" guide which actually helped the guardsmen by telling them the genuine strengths and weaknesses of the xenos and how to use this to their advantage.

If you told a fresh Guardsman what they would face I can see it devastating moral and lots of desertions.

VI th legion wrote:I learned one thing from that book. If your commanders and/ or commissars hate you YOU WILL DIE!

You must admit, that's a valuable lesson.

Nicholas wrote:If you told a fresh Guardsman what they would face I can see it devastating moral and lots of desertions.

Its all about clever wording not just bluntly saying "your up against 8ft green gorilla's which are supernaturally tough and can rip your head off with one hand". You have to constantly assure them that they are better tactically and can bring them down easily by calmly aiming for the face and carefully avoiding close combat. Shove a few more "humans are better in every way" and "the emperor protects" quotes and your good to go.

vodo40k wrote:

Nicholas wrote:If you told a fresh Guardsman what they would face I can see it devastating moral and lots of desertions.

Its all about clever wording not just bluntly saying "your up against 8ft green gorilla's which are supernaturally tough and can rip your head off with one hand". You have to constantly assure them that they are better tactically and can bring them down easily by calmly aiming for the face and carefully avoiding close combat. Shove a few more "humans are better in every way" and "the emperor protects" quotes and your good to go.

And never mention that the battle plan calls for 80% casualties and clogging tanks with the bodies of the dead.

Ugh.

The overwhelming majority, IE >95%, of Imperial Battle plans do not call for such.

Melissia wrote:Ugh.

The overwhelming majority, IE >95%, of Imperial Battle plans do not call for such.

Ugh.

Next thing you know, you will be telling me that the Lasgun is a masterwork weapon of war and the IoM is full of competent and caring people. You are taking all the fun about of the IG.

nomotog wrote:Next thing you know, you will be telling me that the Lasgun is a masterwork weapon of war

Logistically speaking, it is.

nomotog wrote: and the IoM is full of competent and caring people.

It is.

But just because someone is competent and caring doesn't mean that they avoid making hard decisions. Then they'd not be competent.

The lasgun is a masterwork weapon of war.

Throughout history, the victorious armies have been the ones who had the best grasp of logistics.

The lasgun is a logistic dream. You can quite literally recharge it by putting it in the sun. No need for ammo supply lines, or at least big ones. Imagine if the German Army in WWII could have replaced their infantry bullets in the trucks with fuel and food. We'd be speaking German right now.

Ok the Important part of my last post was the last part. The IG is not fun when people try to describe them as competent or as a nice place to be.

That said, Someone should do a thread talking about logistics. That would be fun to geek out with.

The incompetent generals depicted in the IG novels and such are back-handed references to certain real-life generals, most of them British, from the World War periods.

Quite so. I think the rule that a human life is cheap is a pretty important aspect of the setting's background, and I have to admit I cringe a little inside every time an attempt is made to force modern western world real life standards into 40k - or most other fantasy / sci-fi settings, for that matter.

IG Regiments are created from PDF units, which in turn are raised on worlds governed by a feudal hierarchy and a strict division between social classes. The Munitorum's officer corps is made up largely of indoctrinated orphans from the Schola and the upstart scions of Imperial Nobility, who give a grot's ass on how well some common soldier under their command fares. It is not inconceivable that many of them fall prey to the lure of glory, carelessly risking their men's lives, because they are raised in an environment where this is quite simply considered normal - with the usual exceptions such as Cadia, where officers indeed seem to be promoted "through the ranks", possibly making this world one of the very few examples for a certain degree of equality amongst the Imperial populace.

Next someone wants to tell me the Imperial Navy doesn't flog or space its press-ganged voidsmen due to some human rights regulation...

nomotog wrote:Ok the Important part of my last post was the last part. The IG is not fun when people try to describe them as competent

The Imperial Guard isn't fun when people try to describe them as utterly incompetent.

The IG is not a nice place to be, true. But people like Chenkov who throw away lives wastefully (and live to tell about it) are the exception, not the rule.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the uplifting primer. It's befitting for Imperium propaganda machine. IMO, one of GW's best publications.

Melissia wrote:But people like Chenkov who throw away lives wastefully (and live to tell about it) are the exception, not the rule.

Chenkov is a very drastic example - but whilst I too would say that few Imperial Commanders send their infantry running over a field to clear mines for their tanks, I think that bloody bayonet charges straight into the mouths of waiting guns are pretty popular if whoever is in charge thinks he can get a victory out of it, regardless of how many thousand bodies get left on the fields of war. I do not believe for one second that Imperial Commanders would face a tribunal over exorbitant losses or a careless waste of life, except if they lead to the Imperium loosing a war. iirc, he fluff for Penal Battalions even includes a passage about high losses being deemed desirable.

I actually like the comparison to WW1, that just "feels" like it would fit!

I agree with Lynata. Melissia you do come up with a lot of good points about the IG but they aren't as caring as you try to paint them as. I can only see IG commanders being punished for high casulties if the deaths are affecting the war. If the IoM is winning it doesn't matter if there are massive casulties. Winning the battle is more important than the lives of the people fighting. The setting is very different to ours. If we suffered such high casulties the government would lose support and people would refuse to fight- this doesn't happen to the IG. The only reason to keep IG alive is so they can continue to fight. If sacrificing all those guardsmen is more useful than keeping them alive they are going to be killed.

The reason it doesn't happen to the IG is that the "people back home" do not have a 24/7 news cycle that does nothing but tell them what's going on in the latest war-front with everyone trying to "support the troops" while also looking to win a Pulitzer for uncovering some human rights abuse or POW scandal or some similar thing or another.

The Imperium has the Administratum to tell them the news, and the news is almost always good. Imperial Forces never suffer losses, casualties are always minimal, the enemy is always in disarray and about to be routed and/or exterminated, and today, they have increased the Chocolate Ration from 1.5 grams to 1.7 grams, so go out and celebrate with a mocha, Citizens! (even though, yesterday decreased the Chocolate Ration from 5 grams to 1.5 grams).

The IG might have commanders who call upon their men to affix bayonets and charge the enemies guns en mass and screaming. However, sometimes, this is the only option they have to secure victory. Weather conditions prevent air support, the landscape (or the toll of war) prevents artillery support, the ships in orbit cannot get close enough to provide orbital support (due to mines, enemy picket ships, ship models, whatever)... and so the infantry must rush the guns, because otherwise they're just stuck there, until the enemy brings up more troops, armored units, whatever, and crushes the Guard utterly.

A good commander knows not to waste the lives of his men, but also knows that victory will require a necessary cost in lives. If a commander agonizes over every decision, afraid that some of his soldiers might get killed, then he is lost, and his efforts doomed to failure.

4M2A wrote:If the IoM is winning it doesn't matter if there are massive casulties.

Yes it does, because it takes time and resources to transport, equip, and train new soldiers-- even if the recruits themselves are abundant and cheap in the eyes of the Imperium, replacing them en masse after every single minor engagement is not so cheap.

Not just the battle, not just the war, but the entire crusade must be thought of.

Melissia wrote:

VI th legion wrote:I learned one thing from that book. If your commanders and/ or commissars hate you YOU WILL DIE!

You must admit, that's a valuable lesson.

You'll die even if your commissar loves you because he loves you so much he would rather kill you than retreat.

"He has face only a mother could love and a commissar could shoot"

Commissar Typhus wrote:"He has face only a [...] a commissar could shoot"

This can be shortened.

"He has a face."

Melissia- Thats what I was saying. When we go to war we protect our soldiers no just because we have invested money in them but because people disagree with sacrificing them. People wouldn't accept a governemnt that let it's own people die if it suited them and people would never volunteer to join an army with those tactics.

In the IoM citizens have no idea what is happening and people aren't told how bad their enemies are. While the IoM don't want IG to die it is only from the perspective of them as resources. Without the requirement to protect their own troops for moral reasons tactics which result in large casulties are much more common.

The difference is the IoM treat Guardsmen like any other resources. If they decide winning that battle is worth a lot of guardmen's lives they will happily throw them infront of the enemy. Preserving resource isn't always top priority- if they want to capture a city fast they will sacrifice IG even if they could capture it slower with less casulties.

They care a lot less about the individual human, if using waves of conscripts to wear down an enemy drastically reduces the length of a war they will do it. To the IoM massive casulties aren't a reason not to fight in the same way they are to us. While they will stop if they take massive casulties this is because they can't afford to continue rather than not wanting to sacrifice lives. This puts the level of acceptable casulties much higher than it is in modern armies.

Yes, the overall command does, but when you're commanding an army of tens if not hundreds of millions of soldiers, it's hard to care about all the officers, and impossible to care about all the individual soldiers. The officers care about the men under them, and the NCOs care about their squad, and with each one being concerned about fewer individuals they can be concerned more with said individual's health (IE a higher officer is likely to be more likely to not want to send their men into a meat grinder than the general, but less so than a lower officer who is closer to their troops because they have fewer troops to deal with in the first place).

But that doesn't mean that hey callously and wastefully throw everything away-- which was my only point, despite peoples' inane attempts to claim otherwise.

They don't just throw away guardsmen for no reason but they value life much less than we do. The fact it's a living person has no effect on their view, they treat people like any other resource and if using it in a way that will certainly result in death is most beneficial they have no problems doing it.

Yes, the lord generals up top do, but even they value their officers' lives and (usually) opinions, simply because they actually interact with said officers.

Even if for no reason other than the fact that replacing an officer is far more difficult than replacing a soldier.

Melissia wrote:The officers care about the men under them

That part is where our opinions differ. I don't buy it. A Commissar doesn't "care" about the men, so why should an NCO who went to the very same Schola Progenium as him? Or an officer from Imperial nobility who is probably used to whipping his servants for daring to look him in the eyes? Again and again the studio material provides us with descriptions about how vast the differences in wealth and living style between the social classes are, why should this be any different in the Guard?

We've seen an excessive waste of life in military warfare in the past few decades of our own history (especially both World Wars) - and given 40k's "style" of adopting the worst of real life and dialing it up to eleven, it doesn't strike me as odd if this would be standard in the IoM.

Actually, this makes me think of an old Monty Python sketch ...


SERGEANT: Sir! Sir! The attack's over, sir! The Zulus are retreating!
AINSWORTH: Oh, jolly good. Mhm.
SERGEANT: Quite a lot of casualties, though, sir.
AINSWORTH: M-hmm.
SERGEANT: 'C' Division wiped out.
AINSWORTH: Yes.
SERGEANT: Signals gone.
AINSWORTH: Yes.
SERGEANT: Thirty men killed in 'F' Section.
AINSWORTH: Yes. I see. Mmh.
SERGEANT: I should think about a hundred-- hundred and fifty men altogether, sir.
AINSWORTH: Jolly good. [sniff]
SERGEANT: I haven't got the final figures, sir, but there's a lot of seriously...
AINSWORTH: Yes.
SERGEANT: ...wounded in the compound.
AINSWORTH: Yes. Well, the thing is, Sergeant, I've got a bit of a problem here. One of the officers ... has lost a leg.
SERGEANT: Oh, no, sir!