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 Grey Templar wrote:

Tiberius Atellus wrote:
I was reading the Grey Knight Omnibus and in the first few chapters they sent 300 Grey Knights to attack a planet infested by chaos, i think they had less than 30% casualties.

It was 100% casualities actually.

Damn, definitely misread that then, thanks for the correction!

Grey Knights are, however, often well above the capabilities of a normal Marine.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Tiberius Atellus wrote:
I was reading the Grey Knight Omnibus and in the first few chapters they sent 300 Grey Knights to attack a planet infested by chaos, i think they had less than 30% casualties.

It was 100% casualities actually.

*Bam!*

ansacs wrote:Now that we are talking about it space marines are the perfect force to send against orks as it seems more and more like a war of attrition against a seeded world would be a loosing war. The dispersement of the waagh due to removal of leadership seems like the only way to win.

Hmmh, I think you'd really be best served with a mixture there - Space Marines (or other mobile elite forces with shock capabilities) to take out the leaders and thus create confusion in the ranks, and masses of Guard for clean-up. Lots of flame throwers, tanks and promethium bombing runs, not only to actually fight the Orks but also cleanse the area of spores.

In many cases, dispersement alone only creates a permanent infestation of Feral Orks somewhere on the planet that will continue to cause trouble every time their population grows big enough. Like in the jungles on Armageddon, where there's a holdover from the Second War that local forces never really managed to purge completely.

Selym wrote:Generally speaking, you would need to look at what any given space marine is supposedly capable of doing. For example, Chapter Masters are considered to be pretty much a god on the battlefield, but the average space marine is often shown to be capable of slaughtering a normal human, stand well against a pair of strong orks, but get smashed into the ground by almost any given MC. So, against human-strength opponents, the space marines would need to be facing apocalyptic numbers to really give a damn about it (Unless something goes badly for the chapter), against orks, you would be looking at a system-scale Waaagh (A good few million orks), [...]

That sounds like numbers out of a bolter-porn novel.

At least in GW's material, friggin' lasguns can put down a Marine with just a few shots. I think Rogal Dorn said it best when he proclaimed: "give me a hundred Space Marines, or failing that give me a thousand other troops".
The 1:10 ratio is still very circumstantial (as even a single trooper with a plasma gun or a heavy weapons team may throw off these numbers, just like Marine deployment, mobility and shock tactics can for the other side), but I for one think it's the best point of reference so far - a sort of compromise between the worst case scenario and the legendary victories.

I also agree on the 1:10 ratio. The big advantage of marines isn't that they are godlike, it's that their capability is rapidly focused (at least when they're written by someone who is competent, IE, not most BL writers).

 Lynata wrote:

ansacs wrote:Now that we are talking about it space marines are the perfect force to send against orks as it seems more and more like a war of attrition against a seeded world would be a loosing war. The dispersement of the waagh due to removal of leadership seems like the only way to win.

Hmmh, I think you'd really be best served with a mixture there - Space Marines (or other mobile elite forces with shock capabilities) to take out the leaders and thus create confusion in the ranks, and masses of Guard for clean-up. Lots of flame throwers, tanks and promethium bombing runs, not only to actually fight the Orks but also cleanse the area of spores.

In many cases, dispersement alone only creates a permanent infestation of Feral Orks somewhere on the planet that will continue to cause trouble every time their population grows big enough. Like in the jungles on Armageddon, where there's a holdover from the Second War that local forces never really managed to purge completely.

Selym wrote:Generally speaking, you would need to look at what any given space marine is supposedly capable of doing. For example, Chapter Masters are considered to be pretty much a god on the battlefield, but the average space marine is often shown to be capable of slaughtering a normal human, stand well against a pair of strong orks, but get smashed into the ground by almost any given MC. So, against human-strength opponents, the space marines would need to be facing apocalyptic numbers to really give a damn about it (Unless something goes badly for the chapter), against orks, you would be looking at a system-scale Waaagh (A good few million orks), [...]

That sounds like numbers out of a bolter-porn novel.

At least in GW's material, friggin' lasguns can put down a Marine with just a few shots. I think Rogal Dorn said it best when he proclaimed: "give me a hundred Space Marines, or failing that give me a thousand other troops".
The 1:10 ratio is still very circumstantial (as even a single trooper with a plasma gun or a heavy weapons team may throw off these numbers, just like Marine deployment, mobility and shock tactics can for the other side), but I for one think it's the best point of reference so far - a sort of compromise between the worst case scenario and the legendary victories.

I was thinking of the numbers you would be facing in overlarge apocalypse games, such as 10,000 pts, but I didn't make that clear, so that's my fault.
As for the orks, the numbers come from before the orks have even made planetfall. On a well-defended Imperial world, there wouldn't be much trouble knocking out a large chunk of their fleet, and any landing craft gets shot at by AA defences, and after that, there needs to still be enough troops to make a good assault on the chapter.
But again, I left out a detail, so the lack of clarity is my fault.