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Centurion, vindicators', thunderfire cannons, typhons, whirlwinds, 2-3 patterns of landraider suit a seige well. Maybe 4
Crusader, flamestorm, thunderfire cannon, aires, one mounting a whirlwind launcher.

Well 5.

There well geared for siege warfare, but a special type. Not years of grinding Bombardment but a rapid strike to take out the gatehouse etc. Capture the bridge into city, etc guard do rest. A smaller, precise vital point.

 Anfauglir wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Less defended, the Guard hit the hard stuff.

Hmm. I think you're mistaken, but hey.

The Space Marines don't hit more heavily defended targets, in terms of manpower. But they definitely hit harder to crack targets that might require a larger concentration of force in a localized area.

So you're both right, technically.

The Guard will hit targets with more defenses, in terms of sheer numbers. Space Marines hit targets with more concentrated defenses where the overwhelming force of a Space Marine assault can be applied on a smaller, but more vital area.


You take a city defended by hundreds of thousands of enemies with the Imperial Guard. You take a specific, heavily defended targets in that city like a spaceport, or the governor's palace, with Space Marines.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and stuff like the Centurions and Thunderfire Cannons exist because GW needs to sell you new shinies. Not necessarily because the thing makes sense in the fluff.

That and the tabletop game really isn't supposed to represent real battles. The real battlefield rarely ever sees fights with even forces on neutral terrain. Space Marines would rarely, if ever, find themselves in a protracted conventional engagement with its enemies.

But it's just a game.

The Space Marines don't hit more heavily defended targets, in terms of manpower. But they definitely hit harder to crack targets that might require a larger concentration of force in a localized area.

So you're both right, technically.

The Guard will hit targets with more defenses, in terms of sheer numbers. Space Marines hit targets with more concentrated defenses where the overwhelming force of a Space Marine assault can be applied on a smaller, but more vital area.


You take a city defended by hundreds of thousands of enemies with the Imperial Guard. You take a specific, heavily defended targets in that city like a spaceport, or the governor's palace, with Space Marines.

Taking the example of Vraks - which is a good, well-fleshed out example - the guard deploy and form siege lines, do the week-long bombardment thing, launch mass attacks, get butchered in the thousands, etc, etc.

The marines go in on three key occasions.

1) Attacking the starport. This is an astartes-only show, using the astartes ability to be dropped en masse 'behind the lines' and move in at speed, wreck the starport (and the renegades ability to bring in reinforcements) and - in theory - allow a second front to open up. It turns into a bloody mess because it just looks lightly defended but has a nasty Alpha Legion ambush waiting which comes within a hair of killing Azrael.

2) Breaching the curtain wall. The breach was opened up by krieg engineers at significant cost, but the first two (?) assaults to try and take it were massacres costing whole companies of troops. The assault which succeeded was a combined arms assault by guard and astartes forces - an initial strike by a vanguard veteran squad, who snuck into the breach and held it just long enough for terminator veterans to teleport in, who in turn held long enough for regular astartes and massed guard grenadiers to cross no-man's land and relieve them.

3) The assault on the citadel gate. Supposed to be a repeat of (2) on the inner fortress, but the Red Hunters got the crud kicked out of them as this time the counterattack was traitor astartes and daemon engines, not renegade guardsmen, and because the citadel gate proved tougher than expected, so the reinforcements couldn't break in and relieve them, and nor could they retreat.

locarno24 wrote:

The Space Marines don't hit more heavily defended targets, in terms of manpower. But they definitely hit harder to crack targets that might require a larger concentration of force in a localized area.

So you're both right, technically.

The Guard will hit targets with more defenses, in terms of sheer numbers. Space Marines hit targets with more concentrated defenses where the overwhelming force of a Space Marine assault can be applied on a smaller, but more vital area.


You take a city defended by hundreds of thousands of enemies with the Imperial Guard. You take a specific, heavily defended targets in that city like a spaceport, or the governor's palace, with Space Marines.

Taking the example of Vraks - which is a good, well-fleshed out example - the guard deploy and form siege lines, do the week-long bombardment thing, launch mass attacks, get butchered in the thousands, etc, etc.

The marines go in on three key occasions.

1) Attacking the starport. This is an astartes-only show, using the astartes ability to be dropped en masse 'behind the lines' and move in at speed, wreck the starport (and the renegades ability to bring in reinforcements) and - in theory - allow a second front to open up. It turns into a bloody mess because it just looks lightly defended but has a nasty Alpha Legion ambush waiting which comes within a hair of killing Azrael.

2) Breaching the curtain wall. The breach was opened up by krieg engineers at significant cost, but the first two (?) assaults to try and take it were massacres costing whole companies of troops. The assault which succeeded was a combined arms assault by guard and astartes forces - an initial strike by a vanguard veteran squad, who snuck into the breach and held it just long enough for terminator veterans to teleport in, who in turn held long enough for regular astartes and massed guard grenadiers to cross no-man's land and relieve them.

3) The assault on the citadel gate. Supposed to be a repeat of (2) on the inner fortress, but the Red Hunters got the crud kicked out of them as this time the counterattack was traitor astartes and daemon engines, not renegade guardsmen, and because the citadel gate proved tougher than expected, so the reinforcements couldn't break in and relieve them, and nor could they retreat.

So, basically, the Astartes got wrecked primarily because they were fighting other Astartes, though other factors did come into it.

Space Marines train to perform the roles of any specialized Imperial Guard Regiment, and engage in all types of warfare including sieges.

The size restrictions of 'Chapters' has limited their capabilities, so they focus on performing surgical strikes to inflict as much damage as possible. As others have said however, do not compare gameplay to fluff.

A Chapter should be self sufficient in terms of tactics. They're designed to be fast response, take all comers. If they had to wait for guard support for every deployment, they might as well just be an elite contingency of the guard.

 Bobthehero wrote:
See the Siege of Vraks, the Guard does the legwork, the SMs hit less defended targets (spaceport, and they lost 300 Marines or so), and spearhead assaults along with Grenadiers (it went poorly for the Red Hunters and much better for the Red Scorpions and the GK)

Yet it was the Angels of Absolution that captured Arkos (without Guard support), and the Grey Knights and Red Scorpions that finally took the Citadel, thus ending the siege.

 Bobthehero wrote:
The two Reds hit the breach that was previously bombed to oblivion and they were massively backed by Kriegsmen, the only time Marines acted alone was when they attacked the space port that was lightly defended and on the other side of the battlefield

At least they made it to the other side of the battlefield, while the Krieg regiments couldn't break through a few trenches for seven years (see below).The Dark Angels lost 200, not 300 marines (over 8 days in urban combat), and in an Alpha Legion ambush. And the Krieg troopers trying to relieve the Red hunters fared even worse:

However the enemy had expected such a maneuver, and the Red Hunter strike force of 150 battle brothers fell right into a trap. They were surrounded and annihilated to the man, with Krieg forces unable to aid them due to poor visibility. Several more attacks by the Krieg forces were made anyway, resulting in 2 entire Regiments being butchered. Finally the offensive on the Ravine was called off a day later.

And if the Siege of Vraks teaches us anything, it's that the Astartes and IG need each other. Just look at how the Guard were doing by themselves:

The Krieg forces took enormous casualties, entire platoons were simply wiped off the Imperial Order of Battle over the courses of hours.

After several weeks of hard fighting the Krieg forces had indeed captured a few outer trench lines, but these were negligible gains taken at great cost.

For seven years these remorseless cycles of offensive, counter-offensive, and trench warfare ground on, killing millions on both sides.

That's 7 years without major progress, and with no Chaos involvement at that point (so just fighting rebels). Without Astartes support, Guardmen get slaughtered by Chaos Marines:

The bloodthirsty killers and their orbital bombardment threw the Krieg Regiments into full-scale confusion, and the Guardsmen fell back in a full rout.

The Death Guard forces, consisting of many Plague Marines, slaughtered the 19th Krieg Regiment with their new weapon in a gleeful harvest for Nurgle.

Anyway

The Guardsmen finally achieved a major breakthrough, after nine years of constant attacks.

That's with Astartes support, while fighting Chaos SMs. And in the end millions of Guardsmen were lost, compared to merely hundreds of Astartes:

On 414830.M41, the Siege of Vraks officially ended. 14 Million Krieg Guardsmen and hundreds more Space Marines, Titan Princeps, and Inquisitors had lost their lives.

So I'd hardly call your assessment a fair one. Give credit where it's due. Of course the IG is essential, but it is a blunt tool, whereas Astartes can be surgically applied at pressure points. And what are Terminators for, if not to hit hard targets? And they come with teleporters.

Lord_Inquisitor_Doge 686449 8583178 5c191544b07cbfd9799fff4f7d026bc8.jpg] wrote:
So, basically, the Astartes got wrecked primarily because they were fighting other Astartes, though other factors did come into it.

This is pretty much the best assessment. The descriptions of Marines vs your usual Renegades and Heretics truly paint a terrifying picture; they slaughter them en mass. And why I say "en mass" I mean a 5 man terminator squad sweeping an entire district of 500+ heretics and sustaining a single loss due to a lucky shot detonating a promethium tank.

The only time in which the Astartes really suffer when not fighting Chaos Marines is when they dive into the breach (which the guard failed to take numerous times). The (5 man) assault squad that goes in first loses 4 members, and the subsequent terminator squad loses a terminator as well before reinforcements show up. But keep in mind that this is 10 marines vs a single hole in the wall which tens of thousands of guardsmen have died in over the course of a year. To say that the force-concentration they faced there was strong would be putting it mildly.