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 BaconCatBug wrote:
The entire point of the Imperial Guard is that the chains of command ARE separate. It's theoretically meant to prevent any one person being able to have a fully supported regiment that can go rogue with a chance of surviving.

That is more of a guideline, rather than a hard and fast rule. Plenty of lore examples of combined arms guard regiments.

Regiments certainly are SPECIALIZED toward a certain purpose sure, but they don't have to be TOTALLY devoted toward that purpose. For example a light infantry regiment isn't literally ALL light infantry, that would hurt their combat effectiveness too much. They probably have some mortars too. Does that make them an artillery regiment, or capable of inflicting damage like an artillery regiment? No. But it does give them an edge on the battlefield they otherwise wouldn't have without having to rely on another regiment for support. If this light infantry regiment were to turn rogue, it's not like they could bombard a hive like an artillery regiment could... So there is no reason to proscribe the regiments and fix them totally and completely within one specialization like that.

Also, it's irrelevant when you need to have infantry and armor working in close concert with each other. Armored units are temporarily seconded and parceled out to infantry commands. It wouldn't be that much of a risk, unless said infantry commander could corrupt the armored units and get them to turn traitor over the course of a single battle.

 Overread wrote:
Pretty much no army is true to fluffy in the game.

...

Plus the heroic units we use would likly only appear in the largest and most important of battles

All the games I play are the largest and most important of battles. That's why my Chapter Master is in all of them.

 Overread wrote:
Pretty much no army is true to fluffy in the game.

Marines put down way too many models for their points value; Tyranids and Guard and Orks put down far too few. Tyranids should be putting down thousands of gaunts and countless sporemines.

Plus the heroic units we use would likly only appear in the largest and most important of battles; whilst the artillery units should be a few miles back from the front lines. Your Basalisk should be on the street outside not on the other side of the table. Air units should be flying through so fast that you don't even see them on the table.

This is one of my favorite things about straight genestealer cult. No named characters, plenty of rather replaceable HQ options and fluffy as I want to be to foot slog who knows how many neophytes and ambush in an entire nother set of acolytes and other nastiness.

That said, I was wondering the other day if having an side board would benefit 40k. Effectively have a 'these guys are way behind the lines' and a variety of ways to move from the field to the side board that makes those recon troops actually do something useful other than board denial, have flyers do something other than holding patterns across the board, that kind of thing.

As other have pointed out the fluff is all over the place. Generally speaking a 40k battle is a small and probably fairly insignificant battle in a grander scheme of things. Whilst it makes no sense that a platoon, some 50 guardmsen, represent the entire regiment breaking the oposing army it does make sense for a platoon to hold a a few buildings, to secure a small piece of a road, to grab a box of something important and then retreat, to escort civilians out of a city and so on. A 40k game is a small scale engagment. If you view it from that perspective the guard makes the most sense out of most forces since their very versatile in what they're expected to do in a war.

Also since it hasn't been said already I'd like to point at the old Epic 40k game as the most fluffy 40k game to date.

I'd say the guard are fairly representative of their fluff. The same goes for orcs and tyranids. I'd say less so about eldar, deamons and tau. Astartes, necrons and knights are pretty much not representative of their fluff whatsover.

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:

That said, I was wondering the other day if having an side board would benefit 40k. Effectively have a 'these guys are way behind the lines' and a variety of ways to move from the field to the side board that makes those recon troops actually do something useful other than board denial, have flyers do something other than holding patterns across the board, that kind of thing.

EDIT: I've been thinking about similar things, with far away artillery contributing to a fight and ships bombarding from space, that sort of thing.

EDIT 2: As to the discussion of the competence of a space marines I find the deathwatch RPG by Fantasy Flight Games to be the best guidline, at least to their individual and group based capabilities.

I always imagine games of 40k as either a very small skirmish, or a small part of a gargantuan battle.

So the first would be a small spearhead force (with no unique units) sent in to blow up a communication post or something.

The second is when you have the battle for Macragge and you focus on the teeny bit where Calgary is punching his way through hordes of gaunts.

And of course it's a story told from the viewpoint of the winner, so the fifty guardsmen are going to brag about killing space marines to their mates, and the Imperial propaganda would love an excuse to say how a squad of guardsmen were able to easily cut down and destroy a legion of heretic space marines all thanks to their trusty lasguns and bayonets.

I'd think the tabletop battle would be any kind of decisive action where both sides have clashed head on.

You are part of the line. Not the massive battle.
Could just be a platoon strength ambush/skirmish. I think 40k trades in the grandiose, which is not really practical for a table top game.

Lists make sense size wise, a guard platoon (list wise being what 20-30 soldiers?) mirrors actual battlefield fighting strength of platoons that would usually be strengthened 40-50 personnel historically.

In this case command squads could likely be maintained (as you need to command the unit and your commander(who at this stage might just be a sergeant) still may require to be up to strength and thus draw troops from elsewhere in the platoon)

This is a push and good units you wouldn't usually see on the line would be moved up and made available (like 6pounders, shermans and churchills(and units like the Australians and New Zealanders being made available for the battle of El Alamain) Hence I'd justify having baneblades and the like. I just wouldn't buy into the whole gak about how rare they are and how long it takes to make one. they seem to be balanced enough in that they can be penetrated by lascannons and missile launchers, literally the most common AT weapons in the imperial arsenal.



I don't like the image of all guard units being seen as human waves. This basically means that most units will basically be Kreigers by evolution.
Besides considering the Tau are one tiny sorta contained group, tyranid fleets are pretty rare, Eldar are hardly expendable, chaos space marines are seemingly a rare and dying race. It sorta leaves traitors/renegades/cultists(which I must say are extremely underrepresented on the table top) and orks as common foes. It would also seem that Waaarrgghhs are also not that common (as to allow actual complacency in regard to ork populations within imperial administration and actual surprise when they start going a bit nuts).

This means that in human VS human(because orks do not seem to pose much threat outside their numbers suddenly exploding and them going all war spastic, in fact they sorta seem like vermin almost...) You could have very proficient guard units. this would also give us a baseline for when the crazy gak starts creeping into the picture.


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Also Guard units that have faced certain enemies will adapt doctrines/tactics to be effective against them. So I would not like to fight Cadians. Considering they facetanked multiple dark crusades.


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On guard regiment sizes and contents, might I remind y'all that 8 regiments is considered a pretty major deployment, the complete loss of a single regiment is considered a stunning and crippling blow. (As seen in the Tauros campaign)

Numbers given in cannon fluff reflect normal modern/ww2 regiment sizes. So even if there was a combined arms regiment, well it would not have many tanks, artillery and infantry.

So it's sorta weird considering the whole human wave thing, depictions of a field of bodies stretching to the horizon.


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Gives me the opinion that either GW has issues counting and conceptualizing big numbers in regards to space.

Or that those depictions are in world propaganda and the imperium is REALLY in a dark age. In which you have miniscule populations strung out across the galaxy, occasionally having skirmishes with likewise devastated/infant civilizations. By the time this has been written down hundreds of years later the numbers have grown tenfold. It would explain why it takes like 100 years to make a baneblade. And marines would finally logically be about as good as they are depicted.
I like this level of grim dark, so grimdark it retcons half the other grimdark into being made up because communication is so grimdark.


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On a ligther note I wonder a bout the pheasability of marines and terminators operating in an environment that is not suited to their weight.

I can see terminators falling through floors pretty easy. I can see Primaris marines (yeah I made a true scale primaris for fun is not fitting through a regular doorway) having trouble with human sized buildings, such as bunkers and stuff that they can not get inside and have issues firing into gunslits that are at ankle height.


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Normal marines hit a sweet spot size wise, I don't think bigger and heavier is greater.