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Because they are ordinary men facing unfathomnable evils within and without, armed with a rifle and a prayer for the Emperor on their lips. They have no surgical enhancements, Astartes Armor, or ten-thousand years of warfare. So as mortal men they are vulnerable to fear and doubt and dread.

That's why their usually seen as incompotent, because they can be fearful, unlike the Space Marines, who had it surgically removed, or the Sisters of Battle, who believe pure faith banishes all fear. They watch men get blown apart, their orders become botched, or worse, become victims themselves.

But that's what makes them unique in a way; human perseverance. They have nothing compared to their compatriots and yet, despite setbacks, stare death in the face and blow it asunder.

And the Imperial Guard shall always be the epitome of humanity's tenacity.

Titan84 wrote:I remember reading someone on these forums say they read a passage in a book about a SM Sgt inspecting an IG major. This seems all kinds of wrong to me. In modern terms that'd be like a Delta Force SGT inspecting the quarters of a full bird col. It just shouldn't happen.

Is there any fluff backing this up? Anything that says the SM's outrank everyone in the IG no matter what rank the IG member is?

SM don't actually hold rank over anyone outside of their chapter and territory.
Though a Sergeant probably has the same tactical acumen as a IG Colonel if not more...
There have been instances of Crusade armies being under the command of a chapter master rather than a Lord General but usually that's because of the politics of a Crusade...

Since the heresy IG and space marines will never have authority over each other. Same with SM and navy. Now in a crusade a warmaster or lord solar (same thing but Lord Solar wasnt soiled by Horus) will have command over the Navy and IG during a crusade. A Guardsman is under no obligation to obey any marine even a chapter master. Though that would be scary for a newly minted guardaman to say No Sir to a chapter master.

Alexzandvar wrote:as incompetent?

It seems like in every book or game not written by Dan Abnett all the IG are good for is human shields.

Don't get me started on the Dawn of Wars, dear lord NEVER would EVERY SINGLE Guard Regiment in the subsector go to chaos like that.

While many imperial guard regiments defected to the dark gods in Aurelia, saying they all did is simply disingenuous. Merrick's vedoland regiment and others remained perfectly loyal, they were just off screen most of the time if you weren't playing as the Guard in Retribution. And to be fair to the Guard, Subsector Aurelia was a clusterfeth on a massive scale. First there was WAAAGH! Bonesmasha, which itself was frakking huge, then there was the Eldar meddling, then there was an invasion by a massive splinter fleet by Hive Fleet Leviathan.

Then an entire grand company of the black legion, that's at least one thousand chaos space marines, were vomited out from the warp along with their masses of heretics, and still most of the traitors were PDF, not Guard. And the orks, eldar, and tyranids didn't go away either, Typhon was still infested with the remnants of the Auerelian Splinter Fleet and WAAAGH! Bonesmasha. And let's not forget that there was a massive daemonic incursion that lead up to the arrival of a massively powerful Greater Daemon of Nurgle who was strong enough to turn the entire subsector into a warp rift.

And then after that the attacks by the Orks, Tyranids, Eldar, and Chaos did not stop; they got worse for ten years and kept on getting worse until Kyras didn't need to try very hard to convince the Imperium that the entire subsector was a lost cause. And of course let's not forget that the even more powerful Daemon of the Maledictum was working with Kyras to orchestrate a grand victory for chaos on a scale even Ulkair couldn't dream of. By the time the Aurelian war reached it's peak the entire subsector was quite simply a colossal warzone fought over by six major powers with each side drawing in reinforcements constantly to create a gigantic bloodbath.

As for the guard in novels, if you read it from a xenos, sisters of battle, or space marine (loyal or otherwise) perspective, the Guard is cannon fodder and the PDF is the cannon fodder for the cannon fodder. They exist largely to die in copious numbers to show how powerful the protagonist or antagonists are. Now if the writer is good (Graham McNeil and Anthony Reynolds) even if the guard isn't the focus they can still be plenty badass if mainly by virtue of numbers and raw firepower.

Without the Guard and the Tarsis Ultra PDF in warriors of Ultramar, the Mortifactors and Ultramarines would have been overrun ridiculously fast and there would be a massive splinter fleet on it's way to Terra. Two guard regiments (albeit very large ones as in warhammer regiments are ironically not very regimental in size ranging anywhere from a few hundred to tens of millions and they were backed by a massive Skitarii army) damned near broke two thousand Chaos Space Marines in the first Word Bearers novel because despite the fact that the Word Bearers were superhuman in every way, the superior numbers and firepower of the guard and skitarii was simply too much for them to hold the line.

And then there's Sandy Mitchell/Alex Stewart who shows that given a commander who understands modern tactics, the Guard can be lethally effective with combined arms tactics (despite the comedic tone of the Ciaphas Cain novels, the battle tactics used are actually quite sound by our standards) enough so to overcome a Tyranid splinter fleet, a genestealer uprising, orks, a massive invasion by khornate cultists, more orks, and a buried splinter fleet. Admittedly Cain and Jurgen (and sometimes Amberly and crew) did much to help those victories, but the fact is that Abnett is far from the only one who's working to improve the image of the guard.

But of course, for every Kasteen and Gaunt you have a Chenkov whose idea of "acceptable losses" would be unrecognizable to any present day human commander, but to be fair to Chenkov, his tactics do work...eventually...

martin74 wrote:Because the Ultramarines are the poster boy for GW. This is the directive from GW: "no matter what, make the ultramarines look as though they walk on water, can do no wrong, and, that they always piss excellence.

Except the last 4-5 books have been the exact oppisite of that by the way.....

If anything, I think they're given too much credit. How often have I seen people here posting that "IG training is the hardest gak ever possibly conceivable...wayyyy better than any modern military!"

Bull. First of all, when the life expectancy of your men is 15 minutes, it's kinda hard stacking up combat experience. It just doesn't happen when everybody dies before they can *get* combat experience. Second, the whole "They've been training their whole lives!" thing is ridiculous. If it equated to combat effectiveness, you'd see it, but training does not equate to experience. North Korean commandos train from childhood, and nobody really knows how capable they are because hardly any of them have any real operational experience. Finally, in both the novels and the tabletop game, their functionality requires that they A) know how to fire a lasgun, B) have a pair of legs to get them places, and C) occasionally figure out how to use a heavy or special weapon. Never mind that only one guy in the squad, at best, knows how to use the friggin radio. The only guy who can call in air support has to be attached to a command section!

In short, most people give Guardsmen too much credit. They're analogous to a modern well-trained conscript army with a very high rate of attrition, sparse technical know-how, and more big guns than their parents ought to let them play with. They're the Syrian army.

Not wishing to come off as dismissive,

BUT,

Nuggz

The North Korean army hasn't been proven in combat because none wants to have 7 colours of gak beaten out of them

And Its hard to call them overated purely because I doubt you've had to clamber the bodies of your platoon to face a giant killing machine wearing a tank and using a GPMG that fires RPGs and is using your best buddy as a club to beat your other friends to death. And thats just a marine, let alone the 20ft tall monster that is spitting acid, snipping men in half as well as squishing them underfoot and generally giving you a hard time...

Do we need to bring up Ollanius Pius to prove the bravery and competence of average guardsmen? Colonel Straken has enough combat readiness for every guardsmen alive anyway... Exaggerating a little, but not that much.

Squidmanlolz wrote:Do we need to bring up Ollanius Pius to prove the bravery and competence of average guardsmen? Colonel Straken has enough combat readiness for every guardsmen alive anyway... Exaggerating a little, but not that much.

Where as Yarrick actually does have enough combat experience for every Guardsman there is