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Kanluwen wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Actually, it does. Because armoured regiments aren't committed to skirmishes 'en masse'. A few squadrons are diverted, maybe a platoon if the footsloggers are really lucky.

Except fluffwise, the kind of bizarre isolated skirmishes between almost perfectly balanced forces that make up the tabletop game would be pretty rare. An artillery regiment would always be fielded together, well behind the front lines (as in, several rooms behind the table the game takes place on), while an armored regiment would operate at the lowest on a company level (which is... nine Leman Russes or three Baneblades, isn't it? I can't recall the specifics there). But this is really ignoring the actual debate, as the difference between regiments isn't "this one likes to use more terminators Leman Russes in its first company, and this one like to use scouts ratlings in its second company", it's "these regiments are trained to operate in jungles, and these are mechanized infantry (the APCs used by a regiment being part of that regiment), and these operate with only light ground vehicles and gunship support, etc".

Artillery Regiments are usually fielded alongside Armour Regiments.

Artillery sits many miles behind the front lines. Armor rolls over the front lines. They might both be present in a single theatre, but they wouldn't be deployed next to each other.

And by the way: Your Ratlings/Leman Russ example doesn't really work. Ratlings are abhuman auxiliaries which are assigned to most regiments as support staff, not combat staff.

That's completely missing the point. I was ridiculing the idea that "this chapter likes terminators more, and this chapter likes scouts!" is a bigger difference than "all these regiments follow radically different paradigms, and are equipped and trained to operate in radically different conditions."

The same issue crops up with armies like the Elysian Drop Troops(D-99 excepted); who are really a 'broad picture' kind of army that would be deployed across an entire front not one specific part.

Isn't the whole point of the Elysians that they're deployed from the air, with gunship support? So anywhere they show up, they're showing up because the only/most convenient way in was aerial deployment, which precludes non-elysian units from also showing up in that engagement.

The whole point of the Elysians is that they're airmobile. They can operate like archetypical 'airborne' forces in that they can deploy by grav-chute.

They're also, much like the aforementioned airmobile/airborne forces, used as a 'vanguard' force to take and hold objectives while the main force then breaks through to relieve and secure them.

Right, which considering the skirmish level of the game, which you yourself repeatedly pointed out in talking about just this, means you'd only see an entirely Elysian force in the game, as they are far ahead of the rest of the forces (who are maybe a few tables behind you by that point, if not further away), and by the time the rest showed up the skirmish would have been resolved. You wouldn't have a single platoon air dropped a hundred meters from a friendly tank column, because it's pointless: you already have heavier troops there, you don't need to put a handful of light paratroopers next to them.

2) The 'legions of trillions of humans from every conceivable culture' do not necessarily exist in such a way that they are all drawn upon for Imperial Guard regiments. Many worlds cannot contribute enough for a full Founding of the Imperial Guard, but instead contribute in production of arms, serve as a training ground for the Guard, etc.

Kanluwen wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:Lets face it, it's pretty silly to be arguing that half a dozen small fighting bands that specialize is shock assault, ranging in size from a battallion to a brigade/regiment in modern terms, sharing 95% of the same units & wargear, **NEED** their own books apparently to be played correctly and fluffily, apparently way more than the **millions** of divisional sized fighting groups from a huge array of cultures, organizations, technology levels and training standards that hail from hundreds of thousands of different worlds and engage in every aspect of planetary based warfare imaginable.

And again, you're assuming that every one of those cultures, organizations, and technology levels are represented.
And quite frankly, that assumption is ridiculous. Many worlds contribute in such a way that they will never actively be deployed en masse, but will instead be broken up and deployed as necessary. The Tallarn, in most cases, are not deployed 'en masse'. But they are deployed in enough strength that they can operate by themselves and they usually will have some form of specialized support(such as the Mukaali Riders or modified Sentinels for operating in the desert) operating alongside them.

As for training standards: they all have a basic training regimen set forth by the Munitorum. Anything more is learned along the way or learned as necessitated by the Munitorum.

They're recruited entirely from the local PDF, a locally trained and equipped force. Every world that maintains its own military force is obligated to regularly provide something on the order of the top ten percent of it (the codex says annually and no less than 10%, but that's a bit unworkable (so every year the PDF is increased by at least 10%, plus enough to replace those killed in training accidents or who reach retirement age, and can actually handle training and supplying all these troops?) and doesn't really mesh well with the fluff), and considering a regiment is generally placed in the low thousands of soldiers (regiments numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands are allegedly found, but that's another "really? they don't bother keeping them at reasonable logistical levels, and just fielding a few dozen of them?" sort of thing) I have a hard time seeing many planets being unable to provide at least one regiment.

This is actually wrong. Guard Regiments are founded separately from the PDF, for the most part. That 'top 10 percent' of the PDF? They will likely make it in as NCOs or commissioned officers depending on their experience levels.

Page 8 of the Guard codex. To paraphrase, "Planets are obligated to maintain a local military (a PDF), so that the Imperium doesn't have to come running to their aid every time an ork sneezes in their general direction. They're also obligated to provide at least the top ten percent of this local military force when tithed for recruits."

In regards to the Marines:
If they're actually written in a good enough manner in terms of the fluff and gameplay, you'd see a far better quality of game when it comes to the Marines and how they're played.

But let's face it: neither of those are likely to happen. Nor will the other thing that would necessitate 'balancing' the number of Marine codices which, simply put, is people actually playing armies for fluff reasons rather than playing for competitive reasons.

There is absolutely no good reason for the smallest, most insignificant faction in the galaxy to make up fully half of all the codices. It could all be done with a single codex, with a handful of global variation rules. It's ridiculous that there are, I am willing to bet, many more Space Marine models than there are Space Marines in the fluff. There are less than one million of them at any point, and the differences between chapters is much, much less than the difference between even two very similar Guard regiments. So naturally they get a half dozen superfluous codices on top of the main one (which contains enough special rules to tailor it to several specific chapters already), while the Guard get a single one that entirely lacks any variant rules aside from a couple of special characters with extremely limited effects, and every other codex lacks even that.

And you're actually missing something important.

While the Imperial Guard is scattered throughout the galaxy and occasionally withdrawn from rotation to be replenished, rearmed, etc--- the Astartes are constantly at war. They don't need to rest, they don't 'muster out' like Guardsmen, and they don't know anything besides war. When it comes to the Astartes representation in warzones--it will actually be higher than Guard when it comes to the time spent active.

They're outnumbered by the Guard millions to one at the very least. There are fewer Space Marines than there are Imperial planets. There are fewer Space Marines than there are titans. Their alleged accomplishments contradict the already absurd abilities they canonically have (each one is the match for a dozen real humans, that's why ten of them can take a planet! ), and the "best" of it reads like a bad Mary Sue fanfic written by a child.

SumYungGui wrote:Hey, guys, the stop the IG hate thread is over that way ==>

We're here to complain about SPESS MUHREENS

That's about people complaining about the pro-mech metagame. This about fluff.

SumYungGui wrote:Hey, guys, the stop the IG hate thread is over that way ==>

We're here to complain about SPESS MUHREENS

Granted. However, I think Vak's above post and statements calling the Space Marines, "a non-entity in the greater 40k strategic view" and Sir Pseudonymous' catagorization of them as, "the smallest, most insignificant faction in the galaxy" are dead on the money.

Incidentally, Vak, I did my own, extremely conservative calculations on the Guard, and I came up with something like 70,000 Guardsmen per Space Marine being inducted every year, and that was with one Regiment being Founded on a world every 20 years, from the top 10% of a world that's less militarized (and populated) than Earth is today. Oh, and also figured it with half of the worlds of the Imperium tithing in material, rather than manpower.

Nevertheless, back to Vak and Sir P's comments, I agree. If the Space Marines vanished, the Imperium would just need to raise extra units of Drop Troops. If the Imperial Guard vanished, the Imperium would fall.

Edit: Sir P got another post in when I was writing the above, so all I can say is, "damn straight, Sir P!"

Edit2: I also just realized that Kan's "example" of the limited employment of specialist troops......involves some Emperor-bothering idiot. Religion will screw up anything, and all it does for your "example" is sabotage it.

Nevertheless, i have two offers for you, Kal. If you want, i can dig up some ToO&E for the various kinds of US Army infantry units at the company level, and you'll see how their equipment, and thus their tactics, will differ. I may even be able to find FMs that detail how the tactics are different. I bring this up because I ask you if the US Army can have multiple different unit types that fight in different way, but all come from the same war-fighting culture (American), then how can the Imperial Guard, which comes from millions of different war-fighting cultures, not have these different types of units that fight in different ways?

The second offer is that if you want, I can go into the First Gulf War, and how all the different types of units fought there. I offer this because its obvious that you don't really get how the capabilities of units impact their employment on the battlefield. I chose the First Gulf War because I did my thesis on it, and am most familiar with it. Somebody else is more than welcome to do World War II, though. Or the Korean War; the match-up between Chinese and North Korean light infantry against UN/US firepower-heavy infantry is actually interesting.

1. Walls of text make Frazzled cry, and weiner legions antsy...for Dachshundskrieg!
2. Modquisition on. Lets keep it polite people-Kanluwen included. Keep it polite and stick to arguing the points in a non abusive manner. Thank you citizen!

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Artillery sits many miles behind the front lines. Armor rolls over the front lines. They might both be present in a single theatre, but they wouldn't be deployed next to each other.

Where did I say they're 'deployed next to each other'?
I didn't. So please, read better.

When it comes to organization, armoured regiments are deployed alongside artillery regiments. Does that mean they go to battle together? No. But the armoured regiments are usually going to have artillery attached to them when necessary.

And by the way: Your Ratlings/Leman Russ example doesn't really work. Ratlings are abhuman auxiliaries which are assigned to most regiments as support staff, not combat staff.

That's completely missing the point. I was ridiculing the idea that "this chapter likes terminators more, and this chapter likes scouts!" is a bigger difference than "all these regiments follow radically different paradigms, and are equipped and trained to operate in radically different conditions".

It's a stupid point to begin with, since you're trying to argue that it's a "big difference".
Leman Russes are not part of the command structure of a standard or even a mechanized Guard Regiment. Armour support and artillery support is drawn up and attached as necessary.
Ratlings just plain should not considered as combat troops, since they're the bloody cooks of the regiment.

And when it comes down to it: "This Chapter fields more Terminators" is a bigger difference than "all these regiments follow radically different paradigms"(which isn't true to begin with) or "and are equipped and trained to operate in radically different conditions"(which again, isn't true. Troops are equipped and trained to operate in the environments they're being sent to. Very rarely are they ever actually used in a manner that they're really experienced in, except for a few notable cases which we've already gone over time and time again).
Why? Because the "Chapter fielding more Terminators" is going to have radically different operational and organizational methods when compared to a Chapter like the Ultramarines which fields Terminators in smaller numbers as a rule of thumb. That Chapter which "likes Scouts" is again, going to have radically different operational and organizational methods when compared to a Chapter like the Space Wolves, whose Scouts operate outside of the chain of command and are pretty much used as saboteurs behind the front lines.

The same issue crops up with armies like the Elysian Drop Troops(D-99 excepted); who are really a 'broad picture' kind of army that would be deployed across an entire front not one specific part.

Isn't the whole point of the Elysians that they're deployed from the air, with gunship support? So anywhere they show up, they're showing up because the only/most convenient way in was aerial deployment, which precludes non-elysian units from also showing up in that engagement.

The whole point of the Elysians is that they're airmobile. They can operate like archetypical 'airborne' forces in that they can deploy by grav-chute.

They're also, much like the aforementioned airmobile/airborne forces, used as a 'vanguard' force to take and hold objectives while the main force then breaks through to relieve and secure them.

Right, which considering the skirmish level of the game, which you yourself repeatedly pointed out in talking about just this, means you'd only see an entirely Elysian force in the game, as they are far ahead of the rest of the forces (who are maybe a few tables behind you by that point, if not further away), and by the time the rest showed up the skirmish would have been resolved. You wouldn't have a single platoon air dropped a hundred meters from a friendly tank column, because it's pointless: you already have heavier troops there, you don't need to put a handful of light paratroopers next to them.

What is your obsession with "airdrops"? Get over the idea of Elysians as "paratroopers".

That's not how the Elysians operate in most campaigns unless a mission specifically dictates that they operate that way. And for those missions, they actually don carapace armor and generally will drop Veteran Squads rather than just standard Infantry Platoons.
But, for the most part they operate like a modern military force with helicopter support does: using their transports as a means to get to, and then further take and hold set objectives, while relying on the aircraft for fire support due to having a smaller amount of heavy weapons at their immediate disposal.

2) The 'legions of trillions of humans from every conceivable culture' do not necessarily exist in such a way that they are all drawn upon for Imperial Guard regiments. Many worlds cannot contribute enough for a full Founding of the Imperial Guard, but instead contribute in production of arms, serve as a training ground for the Guard, etc.

Kanluwen wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:Lets face it, it's pretty silly to be arguing that half a dozen small fighting bands that specialize is shock assault, ranging in size from a battallion to a brigade/regiment in modern terms, sharing 95% of the same units & wargear, **NEED** their own books apparently to be played correctly and fluffily, apparently way more than the **millions** of divisional sized fighting groups from a huge array of cultures, organizations, technology levels and training standards that hail from hundreds of thousands of different worlds and engage in every aspect of planetary based warfare imaginable.

And again, you're assuming that every one of those cultures, organizations, and technology levels are represented.
And quite frankly, that assumption is ridiculous. Many worlds contribute in such a way that they will never actively be deployed en masse, but will instead be broken up and deployed as necessary. The Tallarn, in most cases, are not deployed 'en masse'. But they are deployed in enough strength that they can operate by themselves and they usually will have some form of specialized support(such as the Mukaali Riders or modified Sentinels for operating in the desert) operating alongside them.

As for training standards: they all have a basic training regimen set forth by the Munitorum. Anything more is learned along the way or learned as necessitated by the Munitorum.

They're recruited entirely from the local PDF, a locally trained and equipped force. Every world that maintains its own military force is obligated to regularly provide something on the order of the top ten percent of it (the codex says annually and no less than 10%, but that's a bit unworkable (so every year the PDF is increased by at least 10%, plus enough to replace those killed in training accidents or who reach retirement age, and can actually handle training and supplying all these troops?) and doesn't really mesh well with the fluff), and considering a regiment is generally placed in the low thousands of soldiers (regiments numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands are allegedly found, but that's another "really? they don't bother keeping them at reasonable logistical levels, and just fielding a few dozen of them?" sort of thing) I have a hard time seeing many planets being unable to provide at least one regiment.

This is actually wrong. Guard Regiments are founded separately from the PDF, for the most part. That 'top 10 percent' of the PDF? They will likely make it in as NCOs or commissioned officers depending on their experience levels.

Page 8 of the Guard codex. To paraphrase,"Planets are obligated to maintain a local military (a PDF), so that the Imperium doesn't have to come running to their aid every time an ork sneezes in their general direction. They're also obligated to provide at least the top ten percent of this local military force when tithed for recruits."

So find examples of Cadian PDF. Go on, I'll wait.

But you won't find them. You know why?
Because many planets do not have PDF, instead having Guard Regiments that are kept on the homeworld if the planet is deemed significant enough strategically.

In regards to the Marines:
If they're actually written in a good enough manner in terms of the fluff and gameplay, you'd see a far better quality of game when it comes to the Marines and how they're played.

But let's face it: neither of those are likely to happen. Nor will the other thing that would necessitate 'balancing' the number of Marine codices which, simply put, is people actually playing armies for fluff reasons rather than playing for competitive reasons.

There is absolutely no good reason for the smallest, most insignificant faction in the galaxy to make up fully half of all the codices. It could all be done with a single codex, with a handful of global variation rules. It's ridiculous that there are, I am willing to bet, many more Space Marine models than there are Space Marines in the fluff. There are less than one million of them at any point, and the differences between chapters is much, much less than the difference between even two very similar Guard regiments. So naturally they get a half dozen superfluous codices on top of the main one (which contains enough special rules to tailor it to several specific chapters already), while the Guard get a single one that entirely lacks any variant rules aside from a couple of special characters with extremely limited effects, and every other codex lacks even that.

And you're actually missing something important.

While the Imperial Guard is scattered throughout the galaxy and occasionally withdrawn from rotation to be replenished, rearmed, etc--- the Astartes are constantly at war. They don't need to rest, they don't 'muster out' like Guardsmen, and they don't know anything besides war. When it comes to the Astartes representation in warzones--it will actually be higher than Guard when it comes to the time spent active.

They're outnumbered by the Guard millions to one at the very least. There are fewer Space Marines than there are Imperial planets. There are fewer Space Marines than there are titans. Their alleged accomplishments contradict the already absurd abilities they canonically have (each one is the match for a dozen real humans, that's why ten of them can take a planet! ), and the "best" of it reads like a bad Mary Sue fanfic written by a child.

Then you're quite clearly not actually reading the "best" of it.

You're reading authors like C.S. Goto, not pieces like "The Purging of Kadillus" by Gav Thorpe.

And there are not "fewer Space Marines than there are Titans". There are hundreds of thousands of Titans, counting all the various classes of Titans(from Warhound to Emperor class). A few classes of those Titans, it may be true that there's fewer Space Marines than there are Titans.

But again, just like the Marines...Titans are going to be constantly deployed to warzones not held in reserve.
Add to it that Marines are their own effective chain of command, in most cases employing their forces and tactics as they see fit, not as some hidebound Lord General wants them to--and you get an effective, diverse force.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:1. Walls of text make Frazzled cry, and weiner legions antsy...for Dachshundskrieg!
2. Modquisition on. Lets keep it polite people-Kanluwen included. Keep it polite and stick to arguing the points in a non abusive manner. Thank you citizen!

I'm being polite!

You know, it'd actually be pretty cool if GW only released models in proportion to fluff. Most people would end up having to buy 'nids, Orks and IG, yeah, but then those that really, really want to play Space Marines or Eldar/Dark or Chaos would probably be paying through the nose to get those models, they could be more powerful per point, and it'd be a big, BIG deal if one of those players showed up. 40k would still be played easily enough by those who enjoy it just for the game, you'd get crazy variations in some of the armies (oh, and by the way, it'd be Awesome if all the Nid players traveled in a group) and 40k would become not just a little game or fancy hobby, but in some ways a mark of prestige, if you had one of the limited run models. And when Chaos appears on the battlefield, well, people'd actually start panicking.

Modquisition on. Evidently we are hard of hearing.
Warnings have now been given. The next step is suspensions. Statements like "stupid" are actionable.

Kanluwen wrote:
Ratlings just plain should not considered as combat troops, since they're the bloody cooks of the regiment.

They fire guns in combat situations. How are they not combat troops again?

And when it comes down to it: "This Chapter fields more Terminators" is a bigger difference than "all these regiments follow radically different paradigms"(which isn't true to begin with) or "and are equipped and trained to operate in radically different conditions"(which again, isn't true. Troops are equipped and trained to operate in the environments they're being sent to. Very rarely are they ever actually used in a manner that they're really experienced in, except for a few notable cases which we've already gone over time and time again).
Why? Because the "Chapter fielding more Terminators" is going to have radically different operational and organizational methods when compared to a Chapter like the Ultramarines which fields Terminators in smaller numbers as a rule of thumb. That Chapter which "likes Scouts" is again, going to have radically different operational and organizational methods when compared to a Chapter like the Space Wolves, whose Scouts operate outside of the chain of command and are pretty much used as saboteurs behind the front lines.

Um.....If "We use more Terminators" is massively different from "we like scouts," how is "We drown the enemy in bodies" somehow the same as, "We outmaneuver our enemies by virtue of our IFVs and weight of fire"?

And quite frankly, that assumption is ridiculous. Many worlds contribute in such a way that they will never actively be deployed en masse, but will instead be broken up and deployed as necessary. The Tallarn, in most cases, are not deployed 'en masse'. But they are deployed in enough strength that they can operate by themselves and they usually will have some form of specialized support(such as the Mukaali Riders or modified Sentinels for operating in the desert) operating alongside them.

Um. Cite, please? In the 'dex, on page 17, Battlegroup "Desert Fox" is composed of THREE, count it, THREE, Tallaran regiments. If three Tallaran regiments are amalgated, that kinda infers that Tallaran regiments are deployed as distinct units of action. Furthermore, if we trust Black Library stuff, one of the Ciaphus Cain books features a Tallaran regiment. Last, the Imperial Guard 'dex makes mention of multiple Catachan regiments that fight as a distinct unit of action.

So, I think its safe to say that your perception of the deployment of specialists is....problematic. If not wrong.

So find examples of Cadian PDF. Go on, I'll wait.

Easy. The Cadians that stay on Cadia. The ones who go off Cadia are Guard regiments. The ones who stay on it are PDF.

But you won't find them. You know why?
Because many planets do not have PDF, instead having Guard Regiments that are kept on the homeworld if the planet is deemed significant enough strategically.

Wrong. "All of the million worlds of the Imperium shall look to their own defence [sic]. They shall also look to the defence [sic] of the Imperium, and to the prosecution of such wars as the Emperor in his wisdom shall decree, according to such requirements as shall be imposed by the Administratum. To this end each populated planet shall rise and maintain forces for its defence [sic] and, from its ranks, shall it provide the best of its troops for recruitment into the largest of the Imperium's armies - the Imperial Guard." Codex: Imperial Guard, "Introit to the Codex Exercitus, incorporating the Amalathian Oath. Emphasis mine, of course.

Then you're quite clearly not actually reading the "best" of it.

You're reading authors like C.S. Goto, not pieces like "The Purging of Kadillus" by Gav Thorpe.

Who's CS Goto? Oh, he's written....crap I don't care about. Hell, I don't particularly care about Gav Thorpe's books on the Space Marines.

I'm curious. Have you read any Guard books? At all? I'll admit, I haven't read any Space Marines books. Except for one of the Soul Drinkers books, which was absolute drivel. I don't see how any of the other Mary, Mark, or Morgoth Sue chapters will be any different.

edit: As for why we are all being so contentious, Frazzled, its because of Rule Three Eighty-Six: http://xkcd.com/386/

edit2: Kal, I will promise to read though the Dark Angels 'dex the next time I'm at my FLGS hanging around. I mean, they're Green Power Armored Freaks and all, but I'll do it. Just for you.

Kanluwen wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
Artillery sits many miles behind the front lines. Armor rolls over the front lines. They might both be present in a single theatre, but they wouldn't be deployed next to each other.

Where did I say they're 'deployed next to each other'?
I didn't. So please, read better.

When it comes to organization, armoured regiments are deployed alongside artillery regiments. Does that mean they go to battle together? No. But the armoured regiments are usually going to have artillery attached to them when necessary.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here. "Of course they won't be fielded next to each other, they'll just be attached to them"?

And by the way: Your Ratlings/Leman Russ example doesn't really work. Ratlings are abhuman auxiliaries which are assigned to most regiments as support staff, not combat staff.

That's completely missing the point. I was ridiculing the idea that "this chapter likes terminators more, and this chapter likes scouts!" is a bigger difference than "all these regiments follow radically different paradigms, and are equipped and trained to operate in radically different conditions".

It's a stupid point to begin with, since you're trying to argue that it's a "big difference".
Leman Russes are not part of the command structure of a standard or even a mechanized Guard Regiment. Armour support and artillery support is drawn up and attached as necessary.
Ratlings just plain should not considered as combat troops, since they're the bloody cooks of the regiment.

Right, it was meant to *mock* the differences between Space Marine chapters. Which means it was intentionally ridiculous.

And when it comes down to it: "This Chapter fields more Terminators" is a bigger difference than "all these regiments follow radically different paradigms"(which isn't true to begin with) or "and are equipped and trained to operate in radically different conditions"(which again, isn't true. Troops are equipped and trained to operate in the environments they're being sent to. Very rarely are they ever actually used in a manner that they're really experienced in, except for a few notable cases which we've already gone over time and time again).
Why? Because the "Chapter fielding more Terminators" is going to have radically different operational and organizational methods when compared to a Chapter like the Ultramarines which fields Terminators in smaller numbers as a rule of thumb. That Chapter which "likes Scouts" is again, going to have radically different operational and organizational methods when compared to a Chapter like the Space Wolves, whose Scouts operate outside of the chain of command and are pretty much used as saboteurs behind the front lines.

The difference between a Space Marine in power armor and a Space Marine in terminator armor is less than the difference between a guardsman in flak and a guardsman in carapace, except the terminator suit cost more to build than a baneblade, if the comparative numbers are anything to go by.

What is your obsession with "airdrops"? Get over the idea of Elysians as "paratroopers".

That's not how the Elysians operate in most campaigns unless a mission specifically dictates that they operate that way. And for those missions, they actually don carapace armor and generally will drop Veteran Squads rather than just standard Infantry Platoons.
But, for the most part they operate like a modern military force with helicopter support does: using their transports as a means to get to, and then further take and hold set objectives, while relying on the aircraft for fire support due to having a smaller amount of heavy weapons at their immediate disposal.

Which really has nothing to do with my argument. They're more mobile, with lighter ground support and a greater variety of gunships and air transports. They're still not getting put next to a tank column, because that defeats the entire purpose of their added mobility.

So find examples of Cadian PDF. Go on, I'll wait.

But you won't find them. You know why?
Because many planets do not have PDF, instead having Guard Regiments that are kept on the homeworld if the planet is deemed significant enough strategically.

Page 8. Imperial Guard Codex. The column directly next to what I paraphrased, "On the Chaos-plagued world of Cadia every man, woman and, child is expected to serve in the Cadian Defense Force and, by extension, the Imperial Guard." Return to the start of the page for "Every Imperial Commander ... is responsible for the defense of their world. This is crucial as a planet may need to defend itself ... for many months, or even years, before reinforcements arrive. To this end, they are duty bound to recruit, equip, train and maintain a fighting force."

Then you're quite clearly not actually reading the "best" of it.

You're reading authors like C.S. Goto, not pieces like "The Purging of Kadillus" by Gav Thorpe.

The only CS Goto I've ever read was something about Eldar, and after reading only the first page the unadulterated terrible compelled me to stop. Pretty much the same situation I run into when trying to read the Space Marine codex. The sickening mary sue tone of it all makes me gag until I close it again.

Ok, perhaps I shouldn't have said "the best of it reads like a Mary Sue fanfic written by a child," just "most of it." The best manages to reach the "peak" of low-grade sci-fi fare.

And there are not "fewer Space Marines than there are Titans". There are hundreds of thousands of Titans, counting all the various classes of Titans(from Warhound to Emperor class). A few classes of those Titans, it may be true that there's fewer Space Marines than there are Titans.
But again, just like the Marines...Titans are going to be constantly deployed to warzones not held in reserve.

The point is to illustrate that Space Marines are individually rarer than the giant "God-Machines", the smallest of which packs more firepower than an entire company of marines, if not an entire chapter.

Also, the vast majority of the Titan legions just sit on forgeworlds. Something like half of them are on Mars alone.

Add to it that Marines are their own effective chain of command, in most cases employing their forces and tactics as they see fit, not as some hidebound Lord General wants them to--and you get an effective, diverse force.

The Space Marines still see a rhino with a slightly different gun, that's been around for thousands of years, as dangerously new and untested. That's not "diverse and flexible," that's "set in the ways they've followed for ten thousand years."

Anvildude wrote:You know, it'd actually be pretty cool if GW only released models in proportion to fluff. Most people would end up having to buy 'nids, Orks and IG, yeah, but then those that really, really want to play Space Marines or Eldar/Dark or Chaos would probably be paying through the nose to get those models, they could be more powerful per point, and it'd be a big, BIG deal if one of those players showed up. 40k would still be played easily enough by those who enjoy it just for the game, you'd get crazy variations in some of the armies (oh, and by the way, it'd be Awesome if all the Nid players traveled in a group) and 40k would become not just a little game or fancy hobby, but in some ways a mark of prestige, if you had one of the limited run models. And when Chaos appears on the battlefield, well, people'd actually start panicking.

Dark Eldar actually either outnumber or roughly match the Guard in terms of numbers. The entirety of their society is martial to some extent or another, and Commoragh dwarfs the largest of Imperial Hives, which house hundreds of billions to the low trillions of people, which puts their population at the minimum in the low trillions. Which matches with "small" raids being able to seize or kill every man, woman, and child on a planet with a population in the billions within a few hours...

Allow me to point out that in the Taros Campaign, the IG was able to fairly quickly pull up 3 Tallarn Regiments for a relatively insignificant campaign. Those 3 Tallarn Regiments were requested because the campaign would be on a dessert world, and the Tallarn are expert dessert fighters. The planners of the crusade didn't put out a call for Desert Fighter regiments...they put out a call for Tallarn Regiments. To me this implies that most IG regiments are dedicated to a single purpose.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Dark Eldar actually either outnumber or roughly match the Guard in terms of numbers. The entirety of their society is martial to some extent or another, and Commoragh dwarfs the largest of Imperial Hives, which house hundreds of billions to the low trillions of people, which puts their population at the minimum in the low trillions. Which matches with "small" raids being able to seize or kill every man, woman, and child on a planet with a population in the billions within a few hours...

Absolutely not. Imperial Hives house hundreds of millions, with hive worlds housing multiple billions, typically less than 100 billion total--and in such situations there is absolutely no domestic infrastructure to support the population without massive imports from other 'support' planets for agrarian production.

Multiple trillions of people, mathematically, would not fit onto a planet unless it was so large and its gravity so high that they would all be crushed.

Even if Commorragh dwarfs an Imperial Hive, even if it's 2x the size of the largest, and even if 99% of that population is martial (and I'd call these very specious stats), you're looking at less than 200 billion combatants, which is significant but still tiny next to the size of the IG.

If we begin to factor in that the footprint of the Eldar empire at its zenith was about equivalent or possibly slightly larger than that of the IoM, and that in the Fall a high-ninety-percentile of their citizenry was consumed by Slaanesh, and that the remaining diaspora was further divided between the Craftworld Eldar and the Dark Eldar, we inevitably end up with a fraction of a tiny fraction dwelling upon Commorragh, and DE numbers compared to IG are truly insignificant.

sourclams wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Dark Eldar actually either outnumber or roughly match the Guard in terms of numbers. The entirety of their society is martial to some extent or another, and Commoragh dwarfs the largest of Imperial Hives, which house hundreds of billions to the low trillions of people, which puts their population at the minimum in the low trillions. Which matches with "small" raids being able to seize or kill every man, woman, and child on a planet with a population in the billions within a few hours...

Absolutely not. Imperial Hives house hundreds of millions, with hive worlds housing multiple billions, typically less than 100 billion total--and in such situations there is absolutely no domestic infrastructure to support the population without massive imports from other 'support' planets for agrarian production.

Multiple trillions of people, mathematically, would not fit onto a planet unless it was so large and its gravity so high that they would all be crushed.

Even if Commorragh dwarfs an Imperial Hive, even if it's 2x the size of the largest, and even if 99% of that population is martial (and I'd call these very specious stats), you're looking at less than 200 billion combatants, which is significant but still tiny next to the size of the IG.

If we begin to factor in that the footprint of the Eldar empire at its zenith was about equivalent or possibly slightly larger than that of the IoM, and that in the Fall a high-ninety-percentile of their citizenry was consumed by Slaanesh, and that the remaining diaspora was further divided between the Craftworld Eldar and the Dark Eldar, we inevitably end up with a fraction of a tiny fraction dwelling upon Commorragh, and DE numbers compared to IG are truly insignificant.

For the 32 trillion figure given as the population for Terra, you would get a population density of 67,000 per square kilometer, in hives many miles high and deep. Tokyo has a population density of ~6000 per square kilometer, and I'd be willing to bet that's all within well under 9% of the vertical distance of at least the Terran hives. Armageddon is stated in the Guard codex to have a population in the hundreds of billions. Hiveworlds are generally described as having a significant portion of the surface area covered in miles high arcologies. For contrast, to use Tokyo again: it has a population of around eight million, on a piece of land amounting to .0015% of the surface area of the land on Earth. If only a third of the surface area of the planet (30% of the surface area of the earth is land) was covered in a comparable density city, there would be around 550 billion people in it, which ignores that Hives are multi-mile high arcologies instead of conventional cities... So yeah, hundreds of billions to the low trillions is feasible for a large hive (even if the norm is multiple smaller hives, we have at least one example of a hive taking up an entire planet in Terra).

The exact description of Commoragh from the DE codex is "Commoragh is no mere metropolis, for it is to the largest of Imperial Hives as a soaring mountain is to a mound of termites. Its dimensions would be considered impossible if they could be read by any conventional means." It should be noted that it also contains seven stars, which makes that description seem much less of an exaggeration.

Making a conservative estimate we end up with numbers comparable to the consistent Guard numbers of several trillion. The Dark Eldar started as scattered refugees with absolutely nothing; they've spent the last ten thousand years multiplying in Commoragh (and increasing its size as they go along, too), with nothing but their own internal conflicts to thin their numbers, and the entire galaxy to provide resources for them.

Eyes...bleeding (see avatar)...can't read...any...MORE! Brain throbbing at idea of people that play game, but object to Space Marines.... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

(steps backward away from thread, weapon raised in case it gives chase)

It's possible to object only to the horrible favoritism, blatantly overpowered rules and truly out-of-whack release schedule marines get. Not saying I do personally, just saying it's possible.

Vaktathi wrote:

In this light, it's hard to take the SM's seriously as a galactically powerful force, rather than as mythical warriors whose legend means more than their actual actions.

I love you. Like seriously, I love you. Thank you for much more eloquently stating exactly what I was thinking. I mean, doctrinal differences between two units that perform similar jobs, the USMC and the Royal Marines, are significant enough that you could easily write a book about it (and they do, field manuals and all ). That's on Earth. Methinks I agree that Catachan and Cadia are producing regiments that differ more significantly than Dark Angels from Ultramarines.

The real comparison, as alluded to above, would be if Catachans were called "Jungle Fighters" because they wore green flak and the Catachan HWT and Sentinel pattern were the only real differences in load-out. However, if I go by fluff, Cadian regiments have more mech, APC's, and specialized troops like Kasrkin, and are also cool with Commissars, while in a book like "Deathworld", the Catachans deploy sans armor in basically what would amount to Vet and SW squads, and we all know how Catachans feel about Commissars.

Space Marines are really cool. I don't believe that they warrant 60-70% of tabletop attention and 90% of fluff. If those numbers were like 40% / 50-60%, respectively, you'd have a much more balanced universe that would remind me much more of when I picked up the game during the tail end of 2E. I hate that the over-saturation of the past ten years has made me despise them, to the point that the fluff I've written for my Inq/SoB/IG system is decidedly prejudiced against them, BA in particular.

For 12 pages? No, that indicates some sort of deep mental effedupedness. This is getting like a NASCAR fan complaining about how loud the engines are.

VoidAngel wrote:Eyes...bleeding (see avatar)...can't read...any...MORE! Brain throbbing at idea of people that play game, but object to Space Marines.... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

(steps backward away from thread, weapon raised in case it gives chase)

Heh, I don't object to the idea itself, but at the end of 2E I didn't feel like the game was THE MIGHTY SPACE MARINES VERSUS THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, it was more like a wargame where you could use mighty Space Marines against the entire universe. They should definitely be present, popular, and fit in to the fluff as warriors of legend.

I would think that one's eyes might roll more heartily at the idea of a complex, imaginative game universe being dominated by a single faction within a faction because 12-year olds can collect them on the relative cheap.


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VoidAngel wrote:For 12 pages? No, that indicates some sort of deep mental effedupedness. This is getting like a NASCAR fan complaining about how loud the engines are.

As opposed to, you know, an indication that perhaps GW has gone a little far with the space paladins? I think NASCAR fans would complain about the engines if they had those ghetto-style whistle tips on them.

In 2nd edition, I think there were 37 models, total, in the catalog.

There were perhaps a 10th the number of players.

I do get it that they've gone a bit overboard. I've said multiple times I'd like to see more stuff for ALL the races (I play almost all of 'em). What I don't get is how "I want more for my favorite" becomes "I hate the very core of this game (SMs)". The two can exist apart from each other. The first is understandable. The second...well, somebody needs to climb back onto the Imperial Fists Storm Raven.

The premise of Space Marines is cool. If the entirety of their fluff was rewritten to actually make sense, and to remove the terrible Mary Sue parts, then they would be alright. I remember when I was first introduced to 40K with DoW, the Space Marines seemed pretty cool: genetically engineered supersoldiers in power armor fighting aliens, ok. The more I learned about their fluff, however, the more repellent they became, as I realized what a patently ridiculous mess their background was. To the point where I can't even read their main codex without feeling sick, to say nothing of the even more egregious superfluous ones.

SumYungGui wrote:It's possible to object only to the horrible favoritism, blatantly overpowered rules and truly out-of-whack release schedule marines get. Not saying I do personally, just saying it's possible.

Yeah, that's what I object to.

Well, that, and the nauseating Mary Sue fluff they get. And....well, theres other things, but the words don't really come to me right now.

edit:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:The premise of Space Marines is cool. If the entirety of their fluff was rewritten to actually make sense, and to remove the terrible Mary Sue parts, then they would be alright. I remember when I was first introduced to 40K with DoW, the Space Marines seemed pretty cool: genetically engineered supersoldiers in power armor fighting aliens, ok. The more I learned about their fluff, however, the more repellent they became, as I realized what a patently ridiculous mess their background was. To the point where I can't even read their main codex without feeling sick, to say nothing of the even more egregious superfluous ones.

This.

SP -

Space Marines, on an individual level, are supposed to be greater than the best regular human heroes *could* ever be.

How should *their* heroes be characterized?

I'm not saying that I agree with the latest insanity, but you joined through a videogame. You've got no sense of what this faction was like for the 15+ years prior to the current passel of codex authors.

VoidAngel wrote:SP -

Space Marines, on an individual level, are supposed to be greater than the best regular human heroes *could* ever be.

Um, where is this written? I'm pretty sure men like Macharius and Yarrick would disagree?

The premise of Space Marines is cool. If the entirety of their fluff was rewritten to actually make sense, and to remove the terrible Mary Sue parts, then they would be alright. I remember when I was first introduced to 40K with DoW, the Space Marines seemed pretty cool: genetically engineered supersoldiers in power armor fighting aliens, ok. The more I learned about their fluff, however, the more repellent they became, as I realized what a patently ridiculous mess their background was. To the point where I can't even read their main codex without feeling sick, to say nothing of the even more egregious superfluous ones.

This, a thousand times this.

The Space Marines were way more interesting when they were more "cleanse/purge/kill" and less "for the honorable glory of the gloriously honorable honor of glory!". The first Dawn of War's portrayal of them was excellent (up until later expansions, and II's was just....bad) where they certainly weren't invincible or mary sue, they weren't single handedly annihilating their foes with little or no effort like most of their fluff has them doing now, but they were certainly scary & powerful and more techy.

I think there's a fluff gap between that era and now. SM's used to be more techy, more brutal looking. They had more pipes/servos/blades/bullets/etc on stuff. As poor as the rules were, I really really liked the artwork, visuals, fluff and feel of the 3rd edition stuff.

Now the Marines are more "knights in shining armor" and a *lot* less "brutal, xenocidal, fanatical genetically engineered, psycho indoctrinated, super solider warrior monks of a theocratic oppressive military state", which takes away from a lot of their character and as a result they appear far more Mary Sue, and suffer a lot more from Superman Syndrome, than they used to.

VoidAngel wrote:
SP -

Space Marines, on an individual level, are supposed to be greater than the best regular human heroes *could* ever be.

Um, where is this written? I'm pretty sure men like Macharius and Yarrick would disagree?

In the stat line.

statlines alone are not a measure of greatness, and I'm fairly certain by that standard Commissar Yarrick is significantly greater than most Space Marines save for the fighty HQ characters.

But is he greater than a Space Marine hero?

If you are looking at just his stats alone? moreso than anything short of a captain generally. In terms of abilities and backgrounds, better in a fight than some SM characters, and with army buffs. In terms of fluff, I'd say he speaks for himself.

Vaktathi wrote:
Now the Marines are more "knights in shining armor" and a *lot* less "brutal, xenocidal, fanatical genetically engineered, psycho indoctrinated, super solider warrior monks of a theocratic oppressive military state", which takes away from a lot of their character and as a result they appear far more Mary Sue, and suffer a lot more from Superman Syndrome, than they used to.

YES. It is so hard for me now to picture how so many "Mr. Smith" (of gone-to-Washington fame) types could have turned on their oh-so-benevolent Emperor. When I had the idea of more chapters being like the Flesh Tearers, the line was finer, and I could really enjoy the duality of Chaos versus normal Space Marine. Now, that has become such a dark vs. light deal, which 40k is not about. When you read some of the dark humor, especially from Rogue Trader or the 2E codex collection, you get that the intention was never to have a knight in shining armor. That is, until marketing research revealed that Space Marines were the most popular, so of course, the best business decision wasn't to reinforce the pivotal role of the Space Marines with a chapter book, but rather, to have it usurp the entirety of the story.

EDIT: Don't forget that SoB used to be faith-driven killing machines, instead of the next set of bowling pins for Dante to knock over.

IMO, the video games and such have been some of the main culprits to the devolution of the story.

VoidAngel,

I feel ya. To me, it's been a poor business decision, and a poor games decision, to focus sooo very much on Space Marines. They are some of the key protagonists, but then, anybody who has spent 400+ dollars or pounds on their force likely to think of their chosen army as the protagonist. I just think GW would be wise to remember this. Push the story via the Space Marines, but don't forget that they number one million in a universe of trillions. There's always something going on in the 40k universe, and more often than not, it has nothing to do with Marneus Calgar or the 2nd company of the Silver Skulls.

VoidAngel wrote:SP -

Space Marines, on an individual level, are supposed to be greater than the best regular human heroes *could* ever be.

I beg to differ. (To select one of the lists arbitrarily, I got the link from a TVTropes page that mentioned a specific person on that list.)

How should *their* heroes be characterized?

It depends on what you mean by "hero." If you're talking about mythical figures like Odysseus or Beowulf, who are by modern standards considered rather ridiculous and poorly crafted, hero archetypes they may be, then probably just about how they are now. Otherwise, toned down quite a bit from how they are now.

I'm not saying that I agree with the latest insanity, but you joined through a videogame. You've got no sense of what this faction was like for the 15+ years prior to the current passel of codex authors.

What it was like is kind of irrelevant when talking about how it is. I don't know the ins and outs of the old fluff, but it doesn't really matter: either it was better, in which case GW is ruining it, or it was worse, in which case they're not doing a very good job fixing it. Regardless of which it was, it is not good the way it stands now.


Edit: forgot to include this in the last post:

For the Space Marines to make sense given how they're portrayed, their numbers would have to be more on a level with the current Guard numbers, while the Guard would have to be increased to at least several dozens of trillions to match how they're portrayed. A few tens of thousands of soldiers managing to take a planet held by many millions of mutant cultists (normal situation for the guard)? Pretty heroic, and implies extremely elite and mobile troops. A few dozens of soldiers taking that same planet? That's "oh god I just threw up in my mouth at the pure inanity of that."

To compare Space Mariens with IG is like comparing a torpedo with a big pile of hand grenades.

If you take the metal and explosive out of a torpedo and use it to make hand grenades, you can probably get 10,000 hand grenades.

You can throw those hand grenades at a battleship all day, and it basically won't notice what is happening.

Hit the battleship with one torpedo, though, and it is in big trouble.

To flip the analogy, you can give the torpedo to an infantry regiment, and with a lot of hard work they might get it into position to blow up one enemy bunker. Give them 10,000 hand grenades instead, and they can attack hundreds of bunkers.

The point of all this is that Spase Marines and IG both have a valid place in 40K, and so do the other armies.

There is too much attention on Space Mairnes.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

VoidAngel wrote:SP -

Space Marines, on an individual level, are supposed to be greater than the best regular human heroes *could* ever be.

I beg to differ. (To select one of the lists arbitrarily, I got the link from a TVTropes page that mentioned a specific person on that list.)

Strawman. It's obvious I meant "in game."

What the hell happned here? This thread started as a joke/experiment. Anybody remember 'The Best thing about 40K is Space Marines" Thread made at the same time by the same guy? No? Alright, nevermind.