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Table wrote:

craggy wrote:
An Imperial soup of dozens of guardsmen, tanks etc, and a dozen Marines leading the charge sounds pretty fluffy to me.

Not really. Marines are a rapid insertion elite force. They are used very differently tactically than guard are. In the overall battlefield yes, you can have marines and guard. But them fighting together? Not really.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Table wrote:

craggy wrote:
An Imperial soup of dozens of guardsmen, tanks etc, and a dozen Marines leading the charge sounds pretty fluffy to me.

Not really. Marines are a rapid insertion elite force. They are used very differently tactically than guard are. In the overall battlefield yes, you can have marines and guard. But them fighting together? Not really.

Its the same way that CSM will use and work with a traitor guard army but wont be on the front lines with the rabble.

While it depends on what units are being used, marines and guardsmen fitting side by side is pretty common in the background. Space marines bailing out guardsmen or vice versa is a classic 40k story.

Table wrote:

craggy wrote:
An Imperial soup of dozens of guardsmen, tanks etc, and a dozen Marines leading the charge sounds pretty fluffy to me.

Not really. Marines are a rapid insertion elite force. They are used very differently tactically than guard are. In the overall battlefield yes, you can have marines and guard. But them fighting together? Not really.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Table wrote:

craggy wrote:
An Imperial soup of dozens of guardsmen, tanks etc, and a dozen Marines leading the charge sounds pretty fluffy to me.

Not really. Marines are a rapid insertion elite force. They are used very differently tactically than guard are. In the overall battlefield yes, you can have marines and guard. But them fighting together? Not really.

Its the same way that CSM will use and work with a traitor guard army but wont be on the front lines with the rabble.

You must really hate BL fiction. Both scenarios happen a lot in the novels. It's pretty much the definition of how the Legion of the Damned works.

When you talk about "fluffy," you have to separate what is plausible, what the fiction focuses on, and what is actually most representative of the background.

Lots of stuff is plausible, in that the in universe rules don't prohibit it. If you want to run an army of Craftworlders that fell to chaos, you can do it. It's plausible. (stuff like chaos tau is currently not really plausible).

Most of what people call fluffy is similar to what happens in fiction. However, fiction focuses on what's interesting. The epic moments, the cool team ups. It's easy to assume that since the fluff focuses on such things, that armies should as well.

I argue that the most thematic and fluffy armies are those that are actually representational. Meaning, they look like common, typical fighting forces. Hell, just looking like a fighting force on it's own is a great start.

So, guard teaming up with marines? It's very plausible, and happens a bunch in the fluff. But it's not really typical or representative. And there's a difference between two squads of tactical marines joining a IG company, and a few IG squads fighting next to three SM captains, all identicly armed.

 Polonius wrote:
When you talk about "fluffy," you have to separate what is plausible, what the fiction focuses on, and what is actually most representative of the background.

Lots of stuff is plausible, in that the in universe rules don't prohibit it. If you want to run an army of Craftworlders that fell to chaos, you can do it. It's plausible. (stuff like chaos tau is currently not really plausible).

Most of what people call fluffy is similar to what happens in fiction. However, fiction focuses on what's interesting. The epic moments, the cool team ups. It's easy to assume that since the fluff focuses on such things, that armies should as well.

I argue that the most thematic and fluffy armies are those that are actually representational. Meaning, they look like common, typical fighting forces. Hell, just looking like a fighting force on it's own is a great start.

So, guard teaming up with marines? It's very plausible, and happens a bunch in the fluff. But it's not really typical or representative. And there's a difference between two squads of tactical marines joining a IG company, and a few IG squads fighting next to three SM captains, all identicly armed.

I generally draw the line at "plausible" with an added dose of "likely." For example, it's plausible that a craftworld fell to Chaos, but is unlikely. So that's less fluffy, than, say, a Craftworld that hid from Chaos in some kind of anomaly and is just now reappearing, or something.

 Polonius wrote:



So, guard teaming up with marines? It's very plausible, and happens a bunch in the fluff. But it's not really typical or representative. And there's a difference between two squads of tactical marines joining a IG company, and a few IG squads fighting next to three SM captains, all identicly armed.

The issue here is that it would be unlikely that three captains would be on the same battlefield more than anything. GW really should start putting in more 0- # restrictions on certain units.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I generally draw the line at "plausible" with an added dose of "likely." For example, it's plausible that a craftworld fell to Chaos, but is unlikely. So that's less fluffy, than, say, a Craftworld that hid from Chaos in some kind of anomaly and is just now reappearing, or something.

Well, in a damn near infinite universe, things that are plausible are likely to happen, right? I think that representation covers things that actually happen often.

 Polonius wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I generally draw the line at "plausible" with an added dose of "likely." For example, it's plausible that a craftworld fell to Chaos, but is unlikely. So that's less fluffy, than, say, a Craftworld that hid from Chaos in some kind of anomaly and is just now reappearing, or something.

Well, in a damn near infinite universe, things that are plausible are likely to happen, right? I think that representation covers things that actually happen often.

No, actually, I don't think 40k is that damn near infinite. In fact, I'd consider it pretty restrained, despite its size. The Imperium has "Millions" of worlds... each of which is divided into like 8 kinds of planets: Feral, Feudal, Death, Forge, Hive, Civilized, Agri, Shrine... I think that's it. That's hugely restrictive considering there are literally a million or more planets.

Similarly, the "dying race" of Eldar are not likely to have more than 500-1000 Craftworlds in total.

We know there aren't more than 1000 Space Marine chapters, and we know roughly where the Inquisition draws the line for Heresy.

We know exactly how many systems the Tau own.... (or at least we did last I checked).

Heck, I'd say 40k is pretty damn restrictive for its size.