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w1zard wrote:
50 guardsman per 1 marine, not 500.

In reality it's more like 500,000,000 guardsmen per 1 marine because GW has no sense of scale.

The first thing that would happen would be the marine unloading his bolter full-auto and every bolt scoring a kill.

Except that's not what we see in the fluff. Marines are accurate, they don't have cheat codes enabled and headshot a perfectly chosen target with every shot even in full auto.

(in my headcanon)

Well, at least you're honest enough to admit that you're not talking about the 40k universe. But why are you in this thread?

epronovost wrote:
Navy SEALS, Rangers and various other elite forces within the US army all have different roles and specialisations.

But all are special forces that are capable of asymmetric warfare. In the same way that Stormtroopers, Marines, and Assassins are all special forces troops that primarily operate by rapid deployment by orbital insertion and then wrecking hell on anything in their way. They are all just different flavors of it.

 Peregrine wrote:
Well, at least you're honest enough to admit that you're not talking about the 40k universe...

It is the only real way it makes sense... and there are a small minority of stories in the 40k lore that do portray marines in a way more along the lines of my headcanon. I do agree that the most of the lore surrounding marines is horribly written, but the small number of total marines is FAR from the biggest issue. Again, look at the example of the assassins who have far fewer numbers than marines and yet still have a pronounced effect on the state of the galaxy.

w1zard wrote:
It is the only real way it makes sense... and there are a small minority of authors who do portray marines that way.

There's a better way for it to make sense: space marines are legendary heroes and their deeds are wildly exaggerated just like any other legendary hero. We should treat statements about a squad of marines conquering a planet like we treat statements about Jesus feeding a crowd with a couple loaves of bread, or of Zeus turning himself into a swan and coming down to every woman in Greece. They're neat stories, but they're obvious fiction and anyone outside the religion knows it. The average Imperial citizen believes that a space marine is capable of gunning down a squad of heretics with cheat code level perfection while laughing off any return fire, the average Tau commander knows a space marine is essentially a crisis suit that can't fly and tells the pathfinder squad to hit it with the laser pointers and call in a seeker missile strike.

Alternatively, you can treat space marines as having roughly their tabletop performance and just add a few orders of magnitude to the number of space marines in the Imperium.

w1zard wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Conflicts are so dependent on context I think statements like that are inherently non-useful. In any more open environment 500 Guard ought to just pulverize the Marine.

50 guardsman per 1 marine, not 500.

The first thing that would happen would be the marine unloading his bolter full-auto and every bolt scoring a kill. So 20-30 guardsmen are pretty much instantly dead. That and lasguns are about as effective against power armor as an AK is against tank armor (in my headcanon). Does that sound too ridiculous to you? Not to me... A space marine is literally orders of magnitude faster and more accurate with a weapon than a regular human could ever hope to be.

Yeah. . .I just can't.

I do think they have sweet targeting systems/visors that allow them great accuracy in otherwise harsh conditions. But every bolt a headshot "instantly"? That's too immersion breaking for me, and goes hard against every rule set the game has produced. Space Marines fire and fail to inflict a casualty all the time.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Yeah. . .I just can't.

Why not? Aren't marines supposed to be many times better than a normal humans? There are un-augmented humans IRL in the modern day that can hit 30 targets in 30 seconds at about 200ft on a shooting range, why wouldn't a marine (a genetically enhanced killing machine with abilities many times greater than a normal human) be able to do that in 5-10 seconds?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMGRa4_UjE4

I absolutely love this miniseries on youtube that actually portarys the marines close to how I think they should be. Imagine every shot that the marines make is a kill, and that they only rarely miss. This gives you some idea of how terrifying having to fight even a single marine would be.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I do think they have sweet targeting systems/visors that allow them great accuracy in otherwise harsh conditions. But every bolt a headshot "instantly"? That's too immersion breaking for me, and goes hard against every rule set the game has produced. Space Marines fire and fail to inflict a casualty all the time.

You cannot use tabletop rules to make a statement about lore. The tabletop game is completely separate from the lore has to be in order to be balanced.

Then what's the point of the lore? Power fantasy wish fulfillment?

Why are tabletop marines uncompatible with the lore in their own army codex? Forget the terrible novels for a second.

Why would i want to read fiction that doesnt describe my week in week out experiences on the tabletop?

Martel732 wrote:
Then what's the point of the lore? Power fantasy wish fulfillment?

Why are tabletop marines uncompatible with the lore in their own army codex? Forget the terrible novels for a second.

Why would i want to read fiction that doesnt describe my week in week out experiences on the tabletop?

Its enjoyable.

Right so you want lore that matches the tabletop? So you're fine with me getting a rule saying that before we deploy I roll a dice and on a 2+ I win or me getting to outright control your models? That would match the lore much better. Sounds awful but there you go.

Or maybe get that out of the lore.

I guess im too much of a historicals gamer. They might as well change all the names for the tabletop game.

It also doesnt help that the more gw plays it straight, the dumber they look.

pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Then what's the point of the lore? Power fantasy wish fulfillment?

Why are tabletop marines uncompatible with the lore in their own army codex? Forget the terrible novels for a second.

Why would i want to read fiction that doesnt describe my week in week out experiences on the tabletop?

Its enjoyable.

Right so you want lore that matches the tabletop? So you're fine with me getting a rule saying that before we deploy I roll a dice and on a 2+ I win or me getting to outright control your models? That would match the lore much better. Sounds awful but there you go.

Or instead of matching the game to space marine fanboy fluff we could match the fluff to the current tabletop game, where marines are strong but not gods.

 Peregrine wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Then what's the point of the lore? Power fantasy wish fulfillment?

Why are tabletop marines uncompatible with the lore in their own army codex? Forget the terrible novels for a second.

Why would i want to read fiction that doesnt describe my week in week out experiences on the tabletop?

Its enjoyable.

Right so you want lore that matches the tabletop? So you're fine with me getting a rule saying that before we deploy I roll a dice and on a 2+ I win or me getting to outright control your models? That would match the lore much better. Sounds awful but there you go.

Or instead of matching the game to space marine fanboy fluff we could match the fluff to the current tabletop game, where marines are strong but not gods.

To be fair, in the current tabletop, Marines aren't very strong, competitively speaking.

It would be nice to see them buffed to be better, and the top dogs nerfed to be a more middle ground, though.

Martel732 wrote:
Or maybe get that out of the lore.

I guess im too much of a historicals gamer. They might as well change all the names for the tabletop game.

It also doesnt help that the more gw plays it straight, the dumber they look.

Well the use of foresight is a pretty key part of Eldar lore so getting rid of it just to explain its absence on the tabletop is pretty dumb.

It doesn't help that you hate every aspect of the game but still play it.

Not every aspect. Mostly the lore and gw's balancing paradigm.

Jeeze! And people were giving me grief for questioning an Ork Warboss firing two sluggas while equipped with a PK and yet here y'all are... Arguing about cheese marines...

Just...

the lore is pretty clear on the matter, when someone asks a lore question about marines, it is answered and people start using the table top to say the lore is wrong, there's a word for that./ Stupid.
Grey Knights are the IoMs best weapon agaisnt deamons. that is the lore, just because their table top rules are horriable and don't reflect that this ediution doesn't magicly change the lore

I guess my point is that the lore is very small comfort. I can't get rerolls from lore, or bonus strength, or anything.The lore may state that gk are good vs demons, but talk is cheap. If they suck vs demons in practice, the lore is of no help.

Maybe it comes down to time invested in each aspect. If i spend more time playing, the lore is wrong. If i spend more time reading, the game is wrong.

Quoting lore feels akin to sports fans crowing about 50 year old championships.

Martel732 wrote:
I guess my point is that the lore is very small comfort. I can't get rerolls from lore, or bonus strength, or anything.The lore may state that gk are good vs demons, but talk is cheap. If they suck vs demons in practice, the lore is of no help.

Maybe it comes down to time invested in each aspect.

Quoting lore feels akin to sports fans crowing about 50 year old championships.

Mayber you should take a look at the section of the forums you're on mate. the fact is Lore is lore is lore. plenty of people like the lore even without ever playing the game. remember some of the HH novels where on the NYT bestseller list. I sincerly doubt everyone of those people who bought those novels played 40k. Warhammer is more then just a table top minis game. and has been for some time.

w1zard wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Yeah. . .I just can't.

Why not? Aren't marines supposed to be many times better than a normal humans? There are un-augmented humans IRL in the modern day that can hit 30 targets in 30 seconds at about 200ft on a shooting range, why wouldn't a marine (a genetically enhanced killing machine with abilities many times greater than a normal human) be able to do that in 5-10 seconds?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMGRa4_UjE4

I absolutely love this miniseries on youtube that actually portarys the marines close to how I think they should be. Imagine every shot that the marines make is a kill, and that they only rarely miss. This gives you some idea of how terrifying having to fight even a single marine would be.

Yeah I've seen that animation, and it's pretty cool. However here's your depiction "The first thing that would happen would be the marine unloading his bolter full-auto and every bolt scoring a kill. So 20-30 guardsmen are pretty much instantly dead.". Your depiction and what the animation depicts are two very different things. In the animation the marines aren't firing full auto, they're working as a squad, using cover and using their auto-senses to see through smoke. The animation depicts them as accurate, coordinated, fast and efficient. What you seem to be suggesting is some invulnerable Rambo marine shrugging off incoming fire (your "AK vs tank armor) and blazing away with every shot a kill.

A marksman (standing still in the open and shooting at unmoving targets) might even get 30 hits in 30 seconds, but full auto rifles fire off a full clip in a fraction of that time. Having a marine kill 20-30 men "instantly" is just stupid. A marine being up against 50 guardsmen in a straight shootout should be spending his first actions on finding cover and minimizing the number of guardsmen who can track him at any given time, then taking them piecemeal. The way marines deal with larger numbers is that a squad of five marines efficiently kills five GEQ types quickly and brutally. Then they engage the next five and kill them. Then the next five. Then the next. And the next. And so on. That's what the animated boarding action is. Marines bring huge force concentration to each small firefight, win it easily, and proceed to the next small firefight. And they don't tire, so as long as they can keep being supplied with ammunition (or use enemy guns) they just keep at it and destroy many times their number.

w1zard wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I do think they have sweet targeting systems/visors that allow them great accuracy in otherwise harsh conditions. But every bolt a headshot "instantly"? That's too immersion breaking for me, and goes hard against every rule set the game has produced. Space Marines fire and fail to inflict a casualty all the time.

You cannot use tabletop rules to make a statement about lore. The tabletop game is completely separate from the lore has to be in order to be balanced.

The lore doesn't directly correlate to the tabletop, but they should certainly inform each other. They can't be too different.

Also, the scenarios in the lore rarely appear to match a tabletop game anyways, and the context of a battle is incredibly important to how that battle plays out. In the game itself we often have a pitched battle between half a company of marines against an armored section of IG over relatively open ground, and in the lore as well as the game I'd expect that to be a strategic catastrophe for the marines. The marines just shouldn't be in that position in the first place, imo.

But if you ran a game with a more narrative mission, I'd say you could still wind up with the types of stories we can read about in the lore, while not changing unit-to-unit statistics. And it's also important to remember that dice are involved, and when the author of a story wants a character to roll straight 6's, he can just make that happen. The stories told are often the stories that aren't "rolling average".

BrianDavion wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I guess my point is that the lore is very small comfort. I can't get rerolls from lore, or bonus strength, or anything.The lore may state that gk are good vs demons, but talk is cheap. If they suck vs demons in practice, the lore is of no help.

Maybe it comes down to time invested in each aspect.

Quoting lore feels akin to sports fans crowing about 50 year old championships.

Mayber you should take a look at the section of the forums you're on mate. the fact is Lore is lore is lore. plenty of people like the lore even without ever playing the game. remember some of the HH novels where on the NYT bestseller list. I sincerly doubt everyone of those people who bought those novels played 40k. Warhammer is more then just a table top minis game. and has been for some time.

Your so right, if this was in the general section then yep, rules can be used in the discussion but this is a LORE discussion about the marines LORE, if he wants to lament about how awful the marines are compared to the fluff then its a general topic and not a 40k background one.

I think the difference is very relevant, because it directly involves the background. In fact, a primary reason I hate the lore is the divergence from GW's math on the tabletop. That and the bad D list authors.

But by all means, go back to your wish fulfillment bolter porn.

the fact is table top rules have some flaws for the point of playing the game, let's look at Marines for a moment on the table top.

nopw we know Marines wear a hyper advanced form of armor, that is, roughly as protective as tank armor. let's then look at how this works in table top.

that armor has a 50/50 chance of stopping various attacks, which sounds fair you can go "well maybe it hits a weak spot etc" but you gotta realize, this includes bs like a chaos cultists WITH A WRENCH. understandf that, in the table top, super advanced power armor is only 50% effective against a man with a wrench.

we can proably agree this is a little silly and just won't work in a novel. which is part of the issue with marines in table top vs novels, in table top their armor is only 50% effective (or less) vs ANYTHING, thus Marines can be dropped by a handfull of lasguns shots, whereas logicly theyd be much harder for guardsmen to take down.

in short the reason there is a disconnect is because the durability rules work fine in table top, but they're bs when you try to apply logic to it

Alternatively the tabletop rules are roughly correct and most of the fluff is marine fanboy masturbation.

BrianDavion wrote:
the fact is table top rules have some flaws for the point of playing the game, let's look at Marines for a moment on the table top.

nopw we know Marines wear a hyper advanced form of armor, that is, roughly as protective as tank armor. let's then look at how this works in table top.

that armor has a 50/50 chance of stopping various attacks, which sounds fair you can go "well maybe it hits a weak spot etc" but you gotta realize, this includes bs like a chaos cultists WITH A WRENCH. understandf that, in the table top, super advanced power armor is only 50% effective against a man with a wrench.

we can proably agree this is a little silly and just won't work in a novel. which is part of the issue with marines in table top vs novels, in table top their armor is only 50% effective (or less) vs ANYTHING, thus Marines can be dropped by a handfull of lasguns shots, whereas logicly theyd be much harder for guardsmen to take down.

in short the reason there is a disconnect is because the durability rules work fine in table top, but they're bs when you try to apply logic to it

Well, don't take stats literally, for one. Stats serve to give an aggregate total effectiveness. Does a bolt really only have a 66% chance of wounding a Guardsman? That doesn't hold up. The thing that matters on the tabletop is the answer to the question: "If a Space Marine shoots at a Guardsman, how likely is that to produce a casualty that takes the Guardsman out of the battle." That's the result of every stat that goes into that result. Hit, wound and armor. Stats themselves are "loose", the thing that matters is the ultimate relationship between the units. The result is that a GEQ with a wrench has a 5% chance of inflicting a meaningful casualty during close quarters battle. A Space Marine has a 29% chance of killing a Guardsman in CC. To me the thing that's off isn't the GEQ's 5%, but the Marines 30ish%. In the past that was actually reasonable because the Marines would often sweep them in the morale phase anyways, but nowadays not so much.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Your depiction and what the animation depicts are two very different things. In the animation the marines aren't firing full auto, they're working as a squad, using cover and using their auto-senses to see through smoke. The animation depicts them as accurate, coordinated, fast and efficient. What you seem to be suggesting is some invulnerable Rambo marine shrugging off incoming fire (your "AK vs tank armor) and blazing away with every shot a kill. A marksman (standing still in the open and shooting at unmoving targets) might even get 30 hits in 30 seconds, but full auto rifles fire off a full clip in a fraction of that time. Having a marine kill 20-30 men "instantly" is just stupid.

Fine, maybe "full auto" was a bit of an exaggeration, but a marine downing 30 targets in like 8 seconds with a 30 round mag with single fire is close enough to full auto that you are just splitting hairs at that point and arguing semantics.

 Insectum7 wrote:
A marine being up against 50 guardsmen in a straight shootout should be spending his first actions on finding cover and minimizing the number of guardsmen who can track him at any given time, then taking them piecemeal.

No, a marine doesn't seek cover unless he feels endangered in some way, and lasguns shouldn't really do that to marine armor. Watch that miniseries, you see that marines take hits constantly and nothing seems to ever penetrate their armor. Even an autocannon shot was stopped. The marines in that miniseries only ever took cover once, and that was against a multilaser in the last episode. I agree this is often not how marines are depicted in the lore, but this is how marines SHOULD BE.

 Insectum7 wrote:
The way marines deal with larger numbers is that a squad of five marines efficiently kills five GEQ types quickly and brutally. Then they engage the next five and kill them. Then the next five. Then the next. And the next. And so on. That's what the animated boarding action is. Marines bring huge force concentration to each small firefight, win it easily, and proceed to the next small firefight. And they don't tire, so as long as they can keep being supplied with ammunition (or use enemy guns) they just keep at it and destroy many times their number.

If you seriously believe this then you don't really read the lore because there are plenty of instances of marines being outnumbered 10 or 20 to 1 in the lore and still winning, and the lore does a poor job IMO of depicted how powerful an average space marine is.

 Peregrine wrote:
Alternatively the tabletop rules are roughly correct and most of the fluff is marine fanboy masturbation.

If that is true, then marines are barely better than an average guardsman and you are correct, would be pretty much laughable on the galactic stage. But, I don't think this is the case.

There's also cases where Marines are losing 5-6 to 1 odds against Ork boys. That includes a main character and his retinue.

 Bobthehero wrote:
There's also cases where Marines are losing 5-6 to 1 odds against Ork boys. That includes a main character and his retinue.

Again, marines have a wide range of depictions across many novels and many authors... I am one of the people who has a headcanon of marines being on the stronger end of how they are usually depicted, again the "Astartes" miniseries on youtube is about dead-on for me. Anything else just doesn't make fething sense to me and pretty much breaks my suspension of disbelief.

Nothing does the old suspension of disbelief trick like getting reamed out by some rebels with improvised weapons (GSC) or space pirates with magical guns (Drukhari). Marines don't even stack up to Nobz well in 8th. Wasn't Orks someone they were "designed" to fight? Well, they can't.

w1zard wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Your depiction and what the animation depicts are two very different things. In the animation the marines aren't firing full auto, they're working as a squad, using cover and using their auto-senses to see through smoke. The animation depicts them as accurate, coordinated, fast and efficient. What you seem to be suggesting is some invulnerable Rambo marine shrugging off incoming fire (your "AK vs tank armor) and blazing away with every shot a kill. A marksman (standing still in the open and shooting at unmoving targets) might even get 30 hits in 30 seconds, but full auto rifles fire off a full clip in a fraction of that time. Having a marine kill 20-30 men "instantly" is just stupid.

Fine, maybe "full auto" was a bit of an exaggeration, but a marine downing 30 targets in like 8 seconds with a 30 round mag with single fire is close enough to full auto that you are just splitting hairs at that point and arguing semantics.

You can call it splitting hairs, full auto or not. 30 dead guard with a 30 round clip in 8 seconds regardless is the very definition of bolter porn and I can't take it seriously. That's nearly 4 kills a second. I mean if you could fire into a crowded corridor with explosive bolts, sure. . . But in a firefight against proffessional soldiers with any reasonable positioning? No thank you.

w1zard wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
A marine being up against 50 guardsmen in a straight shootout should be spending his first actions on finding cover and minimizing the number of guardsmen who can track him at any given time, then taking them piecemeal.

No, a marine doesn't seek cover unless he feels endangered in some way, and lasguns shouldn't really do that to marine armor. Watch that miniseries, you see that marines take hits constantly and nothing seems to ever penetrate their armor. Even an autocannon shot was stopped. The marines in that miniseries only eveof ther took cover once, and that was against a multilaser in the last episode. I agree this is often not how marines are depicted in the lore, but this is how marines SHOULD BE.

Take note that in game, it takes an average of 20 "shots" (and each shot may represent several bursts of fire) to kill a marine. Game = lore for me in this case. Lasfire can patter off marine armor perfectly acceptably.

And a smart soldier should seek cover, unless advancement is otherwise advantageous.

w1zard wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
The way marines deal with larger numbers is that a squad of five marines efficiently kills five GEQ types quickly and brutally. Then they engage the next five and kill them. Then the next five. Then the next. And the next. And so on. That's what the animated boarding action is. Marines bring huge force concentration to each small firefight, win it easily, and proceed to the next small firefight. And they don't tire, so as long as they can keep being supplied with ammunition (or use enemy guns) they just keep at it and destroy many times their number.

If you seriously believe this then you don't really read the lore because there are plenty of instances of marines being outnumbered 10 or 20 to 1 in the lore and still winning, and the lore does a poor job IMO of depicted how powerful an average space marine is.

The issue isn't the numbers, the issue is how it's accomplished. Are the marines achieving victory through smart aggressive tactics? Or are they simply standing in the middle of a field and gunning hundreds down with impunity?

One of those scenarios is closer to how the stats compare in game. The other demands T6 marines with 2+ saves and Rapid Fire 15 weapons, etc.

 Peregrine wrote:
Alternatively the tabletop rules are roughly correct and most of the fluff is marine fanboy masturbation.

"Stop using the published background material when talking about 40k background, use the rules instead!"

 Insectum7 wrote:
You can call it splitting hairs, full auto or not. 30 dead guard with a 30 round clip in 8 seconds regardless is the very definition of bolter porn and I can't take it seriously. That's nearly 4 kills a second. I mean if you could fire into a crowded corridor with explosive bolts, sure. . . But in a firefight against proffessional soldiers with any reasonable positioning? No thank you.

Then you are conceding the point that marines are a laughably ineffective fighting force and agreeing with what everyone else is saying. In order for marines to be "worth their weight" they NEED to be several times better than an un-augmented human, otherwise their presence in the setting doesn't make sense. As long as they are just "slightly upgraded humans" in power armor instead of walking death machines with the armor of a tank people will continue to not take them seriously, evidenced by this thread.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Take note that in game, it takes an average of 20 "shots" (and each shot may represent several bursts of fire) to kill a marine. Game = lore for me in this case. Lasfire can patter off marine armor perfectly acceptably. And a smart soldier should seek cover, unless advancement is otherwise advantageous.

 Insectum7 wrote:
One of those scenarios is closer to how the stats compare in game. The other demands T6 marines with 2+ saves and Rapid Fire 15 weapons, etc.

For the last time, THE GAME HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE LORE. The game is an abstraction that exists so that we can move 40k miniatures around and roll dice and has no bearing on the actual abilities or power of what those miniatures represent in the background material.

 Insectum7 wrote:
The issue isn't the numbers, the issue is how it's accomplished. Are the marines achieving victory through smart aggressive tactics? Or are they simply standing in the middle of a field and gunning hundreds down with impunity?

Why can't it be both when it comes to fighting guardsmen equivalents?

I thought marines were meant to be tactical geniuses but now they're meant to just stand in the open and tank heavy weapons fire with their face?

It doesn't matter how good your armour is, the best way to not die is to minimise your exposure to enemy fire, which is accomplished by taking cover. This is true for tanks today, it'll be true for space marines in the future.