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Mmmm. Another thread where people whine about the fact that Space Marines do more to help the Imperium than the Guard.

That is certainly not true, but Marines are no pushovers either.

And I can't believe people are still indulging Peregrine. el oh el.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Mmmm. Another thread where people whine about the fact that Space Marines do more to help the Imperium than the Guard.

Without the Imperial Guard, the Imperium would cease to exist. Without Space Marines, the Imperium could still survive.

Space Marines aren't vital to the survival of the Imperium like the Imperial Guard is. They're just a Nice Thing To Have.

Without Space Marines the Imperium wouldn't exist.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Without Space Marines the Imperium wouldn't exist.

This is true. While I won't dive into the argument of Guard VS SM, which one is most useful (I am staying out of that mud-filled hole, thank you very much!) fact is Imperium would not survive without either.

There is nothing the Space Marines do in M41 that the Imperial Guard/Imperial Navy could not do with more bodies or the right equipment.

What role do the Space Marines perform that the IN or IG could not possibly take over if the SM disappeared?

 ImotekhTheStormlord wrote:

 UlrikDecado wrote:
Prepare to one discussion limping step...

 Wyzilla wrote:
....why do you even frequent W40K forums instead of simply buggering off to a different, realistic wargame unlike W40K?

...and now he fell!

 Wyzilla wrote:
The majority is always right.

Sorry mate, I dont think that quarter of planet thinking that Earth is flat will make it Discworld. Although it would be cool!

Though I agree with your overall point, since when is a quarter the majority?

Well...I mean three quarters and write quarter...another day in my brain typos

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
What role do the Space Marines perform that the IN or IG could not possibly take over if the SM disappeared?

Well, considering the SM are usually brought in when the Guard simply aren't enough... I would say quite a lot. Remember, there are billions/trillions of guardsmen, but there is still a chronic manpower shortage galaxy-wide.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
What role do the Space Marines perform that the IN or IG could not possibly take over if the SM disappeared?

Well, considering the SM are usually brought in when the Guard simply aren't enough... I would say quite a lot. Remember, there are billions/trillions of guardsmen, but there is still a chronic manpower shortage galaxy-wide.

You mean the SM show up, oftentimes when they're unneeded. Marines are never "brought in" anywhere, they have their own command structure independent from the Guard. Just randomly showing up places on a whim (oftentimes for objectives independent of saving the planet in question) is hardly something the Guard couldn't take over.

Besides, the Space Marines take so many resources to create and maintain that the Guard regiments you could raise by disbanding them would more than make up for any loss of combat strength.

 Psienesis wrote:
There is nothing the Space Marines do in M41 that the Imperial Guard/Imperial Navy could not do with more bodies or the right equipment.

o rly?

How about... not take a year to reach the battlefield.

Hahaha, I win.

What I like about CSM is that generally in their stories they need to rely on humans a lot to get anything done. Which is an aspect I really like like they don't take whole planets with a squad etc. Reading some chaos novels and audio drama's its humans who make the bulk of the force of the CSM with some summoned daemons on the side. I mean abbadon uses humans a lot considering he was taking penal worlds to add them to his army.

If you guys read Wrath of Iron, i thought they did a commendable job of showing the Iron hands as elite shock troops, taking on enemies and hardpoints humans couldn't

(Attacking and opening gaps in a defensive line, using humans as a distraction to open the initial breach in a hive's defenses ect...)

The titans and humans do the majority of the major work however

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
There is nothing the Space Marines do in M41 that the Imperial Guard/Imperial Navy could not do with more bodies or the right equipment.

o rly?

How about... not take a year to reach the battlefield.

Hahaha, I win.

This is one of the better reasons for Space Marines. They don't need to wait for 6 months of paperwork before begining their attack.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
There is nothing the Space Marines do in M41 that the Imperial Guard/Imperial Navy could not do with more bodies or the right equipment.

o rly?

How about... not take a year to reach the battlefield.

Hahaha, I win.

Do the laws of physics (and the Warp) somehow change for Space Marines? No, no they do not.

Space Marines as a "rapid reaction force" only applies to those Chapters, like the Death Spectres, who are stationed *in* the sharp-end.

It takes the Space Wolves for-freaking-ever to fly from Fenris to anywhere else in the galaxy, because they live on a mid-ring iceball on the western side of the galaxy. If they wanted to go to, say, Ryza, they have a long, long way to fly.

 Psienesis wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
There is nothing the Space Marines do in M41 that the Imperial Guard/Imperial Navy could not do with more bodies or the right equipment.

o rly?

How about... not take a year to reach the battlefield.

Hahaha, I win.

Do the laws of physics (and the Warp) somehow change for Space Marines? No, no they do not.

Space Marines as a "rapid reaction force" only applies to those Chapters, like the Death Spectres, who are stationed *in* the sharp-end.

It takes the Space Wolves for-freaking-ever to fly from Fenris to anywhere else in the galaxy, because they live on a mid-ring iceball on the western side of the galaxy. If they wanted to go to, say, Ryza, they have a long, long way to fly.

That is true, but Guardsmen have that issue as well as awful awful administration.

Was there not a regiment in the IG codex that was wiped out, ordered to a new warzone, and then declared renegade when they never appeared in this warzone?

That's a problem of the Administratum, not the IG.

The space-marine chapters having their own command structure independent of the administratum is a double-edged sword.

On one hand, you get faster reaction times.

On the other, you get the wipeout of an entire regiment of guard by the Iron Hands by accident, and the Dark Angels running off randomly to chase a single man on some other planet, and the Black Templars crusading off into the Ghoul Stars to wipe out dead worlds with no occupants...

... or a bunch of Space Wolves joining the Tyrant of Badab because his guys looked scary.

 Psienesis wrote:

Do the laws of physics (and the Warp) somehow change for Space Marines?

Actually, yeah. Grey Knights, for example, are specifically noted to have warp travel technology that allows them to travel through the warp faster than the rest of the Imperium. Bwahaha.

Blaming the Adminstratum for the Guard's incompetence is like blaming the Imperium for the Astartes' lack of numbers. The Guard are slaves of the adminsitratum, so you have to take the bureaucratic inefficiency of it into account when regarding the Guard's limitations.

The only thing that frames a Chapter's response time to a planet in-distress is how long it takes to get there. A guardsman regiment will get there when the administratum realizes a planet is in distress first, sends the request for aid through all the proper channels, assesses the threat-level versus strategic worth of the planet, assembles the agreed upon size of regiment(s) needed, and then sends them to the planet. Each one of those steps can take multiple months.

Hence why it's not at all uncommon for a Guard taskforce to reach a besieged only to find that everything on it has been dead for months.

The Guard are basically the absolute worst defense force in the entire Galaxy.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:

Do the laws of physics (and the Warp) somehow change for Space Marines?

Actually, yeah. Grey Knights, for example, are specifically noted to have warp travel technology that allows them to travel through the warp faster than the rest of the Imperium. Bwahaha.

Blaming the Adminstratum for the Guard's incompetence is like blaming the Imperium for the Astartes' lack of numbers. The Guard are slaves of the adminsitratum, so you have to take the bureaucratic inefficiency of it into account when regarding the Guard's limitations.

The only thing that frames a Chapter's response time to a planet in-distress is how long it takes to get there. A guardsman regiment will get there when the administratum realizes a planet is in distress first, sends the request for aid through all the proper channels, assesses the threat-level versus strategic worth of the planet, assembles the agreed upon size of regiment(s) needed, and then sends them to the planet. Each one of those steps can take multiple months.

Hence why it's not at all uncommon for a Guard taskforce to reach a besieged only to find that everything on it has been dead for months.

The Guard are basically the absolute worst defense force in the entire Galaxy.

You can tell because the Imperial Guard have never successfully defended any planet in any fluff ever.

Marines are necessary alright, the Imperium would be finished without them.

It's a Codex, it's propaganda.

 Psienesis wrote:
It's a Codex, it's propaganda.

Rule book, actually. But where would you consider propaganda to end? You can call that on anything if you feel like it.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
What role do the Space Marines perform that the IN or IG could not possibly take over if the SM disappeared?

Well, considering the SM are usually brought in when the Guard simply aren't enough... I would say quite a lot. Remember, there are billions/trillions of guardsmen, but there is still a chronic manpower shortage galaxy-wide.

You mean the SM show up, oftentimes when they're unneeded. Marines are never "brought in" anywhere, they have their own command structure independent from the Guard. Just randomly showing up places on a whim (oftentimes for objectives independent of saving the planet in question) is hardly something the Guard couldn't take over.

No, I mean brought in. While the Marines are independent, they are still brought in by the Guard/Planetary Governor/Inquisition/whathaveyou (via polite request with a pretty please and a cherry on top) when the Guard simply isn't enough to complete the task. The only Marines who really just 'show up' to do their own thing and then leave are the Dark Angels and The Unforgiven chapters.

Besides, the Space Marines take so many resources to create and maintain that the Guard regiments you could raise by disbanding them would more than make up for any loss of combat strength.

Doubt that. Consider again what I said, there are billions/trillions of guardsmen, now consider there are many more trillions/quadrillions of humans in the galaxy. Now consider there are theoretically approximately 1 million Marines. I don't remember the ratio of recruits required per marine trained, but assume its 50:1, and assume you're training 100,000 new Marines a year (number pulled out of my ass, that would represent a 10% yearly turnover, which I think is very, very high but it works for the purposes of the point I am making), you're talking about 5 million recruits. Assume we eliminate the Marines, and those 5 million recruits go into the Guard... what could 5 million additional guardsmen do in a force that is already BILLIONS or TRILLIONS strong? Remember that the Guard sees a MUCH higher turnover rate than the Marines. We're talking annual losses (and thus additional recruitment) well in excess of, and many times greater than, the entire body of Space Marines in existence, and thus you're talking about an impact that is absolutely negligible upon the Guard as a whole if you were to 'disband the Marines'. And let that help put it into perspective for you as to how capable a Marine must be, if an organization of billions or trillions requires the help of a mere 1 million to handle the toughest situations.

And again, that assumes an annual 10% turnover in Space Marines, which, again, is probably way too damned high.

Propaganda ends when it's not an in-universe explanation. When it's pure game mechanics, providing numbers, dice, tables and charts, all the things that form the "crunch" of a game.

 Psienesis wrote:
Propaganda ends when it's not an in-universe explanation. When it's pure game mechanics, providing numbers, dice, tables and charts, all the things that form the "crunch" of a game.

Well that doesn't provide a whole lot of anything. Crunch doesn't tell you how many Space Marines there are in the galaxy, or that there's actually an Emperor somewhere. Crunch would have you believe that artillery can can only shoot a few hundred meters, that a man can run about as half as fast as a motorbike and that the whole galaxy works on a ten point system.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Without Space Marines the Imperium wouldn't exist.

Entirely debatable. The Astartes Legions relied a huge deal on the efforts of the Imperial Army.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
There is nothing the Space Marines do in M41 that the Imperial Guard/Imperial Navy could not do with more bodies or the right equipment.

o rly?

How about... not take a year to reach the battlefield.

Hahaha, I win.

Well, but you show them their "chapter Achilles heel" and they will run like dogs after ball.

Case study I:
IG Guardsman A (cultist in disguise) : "Hey, Sammael, I saw some guy in hood with two guns over there, running away"
Sammy: "Brothers, regroup, disengage, follow meeeee!!!"
IG Guardsman B: "But we are slaughtered...aaaargh..."
IG Guardsman A: "Just as planned"
Sammy: "Where is he, where is he? Maybe behind that huge mountain on horizon! Forward!"

Case study II:
Guy in still wet yellow power armor: "Hey, man, did you see that awesome fortress?"
Imperial Fists assault leader: "Fortress? I dont know, we should attack the traitors' den over there..."
Guy in still wet yellow power armor: "C'mon, she has two huge bastions..."
Imperial Fists assault leader: "Oh...huge you say? And...and...moat?"
Guy in still wet yellow power armor: "Oh yes, such solid, inviting moat"
Imperial Fists assault leader: "Well, I guess traitors wont run anywhere. Hey, guys, what about some bastions!"
Completely yellow Astartes squad "YAAAAAY!"
Guy in still wet yellow power armor: "Just as planned"

Animus wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Propaganda ends when it's not an in-universe explanation. When it's pure game mechanics, providing numbers, dice, tables and charts, all the things that form the "crunch" of a game.

Well that doesn't provide a whole lot of anything. Crunch doesn't tell you how many Space Marines there are in the galaxy, or that there's actually an Emperor somewhere. Crunch would have you believe that artillery can can only shoot a few hundred meters, that a man can run about as half as fast as a motorbike and that the whole galaxy works on a ten point system.

Not if you understand that the game mechanics represent the scale of a table-top game, not a presentation of real-life. I can't believe that I have to explain this.

Propaganda: "Power Armor is unbeatable!"

Reality: "SM passes its Armor Save about 2/3s of the time"