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We all know the common knowledge that one Space Marine is worth like 300 ordinary Humans.
But are Space Marines really that valuable?

Space marines can accomplish things that you can't send 100 guardsmen to do. They are worth their cost of creation.

ph34r wrote:Space marines can accomplish things that you can't send 100 guardsmen to do. They are worth their cost of creation.

Likewise, there are things you'd send 100 gaurdsmen to do that 1 space marine couldn't. Gaurdsmen and Space Marines are very different in their application.

Space Marines are worth about 16 points

And do they worth more than 300 Guardsman?

Brother Coa wrote:And do they worth more than 300 Guardsman?

Once again, that depends entirely on the application. One Space Marine would be the ideal choice for pin-point assaults and shock tactics, while 300 Gaurdsmen will always be superior at pure attrition and area control.

Brother Coa wrote:We all know the common knowledge that one Space Marine is worth like 300 ordinary Humans.
But are Space Marines really that valuable?

By "ordinary humans" do you mean civilians or Guardsmen? Because compared to normal human troops that ratio (given by multiple codex books since 2nd Edition) is 10 or 12 for 1, not 300 for 1.

That said, in all honesty, if you take the numbers GW gives for both the Space Marines and the Imperial Guard, the Space Marines become ridiculously irrelevant really quickly, as in their entire military value is about equal to the IG's daily recruitment rate. GW really doesn't realize what the numbers they put in their books really means.

Given that GW states there are "billions" of IG regiments ranging in size from a couple thousand to hundreds of thousands strong, taking the Cadian 8th at 8,000 strong as the average and taking plural "billions" to mean only 2 billion, that gives you, on the extreme low end, you're generally looking at about one hundred and sixty million (160,000,000, about the combined population total of Russia, Norway, Finland and Sweden) guardsmen (not including PDF, Arbites, Imperial Navy, Inquisitorial forces, Frateris Militia, Sisters, etc) available for each individual Space Marine in the Galaxy, or about twenty five times the population of earth in terms of Guardsmen for each Space Marine chapter. Being worth 10 or 12 Guardsmen per Space Marine, it means you need about 2000 regiments worth of guardsmen to equal the military might of the Astartes. Using the aforementioned "2 billion", that means about one millionth (1/1,000,000) of the standing military might of the Imperial Guard, rather irrelevant and silly even if you then exaggerate their capabilities by a hundred or a thousand fold beyond what the codex given worth of a Space Marine is.

Hence why, upon actually understanding exactly what sort of numbers that the fluff gives really means, the Space Marines become beyond irrelevant, and one must chuckle at GW not understanding their own fluff.

As said, it depends greatly on their application. Would you send 12 Guardsmen to do the job of an Astartes? No, because they would fail. However, the Imperial Guard is far more useful in it's role that an equivalent force of Space Marines could ever be. Would you send 20 Space Marines to fight a war of attrition, or would you send two regiments of Guard? I'd pick the Guard. If I wanted to crush the heavily defended leadership of a planet or capture some vital objective or object, I would send in the Astartes.

Different jobs for different chaps.
Guard hold the line.
space Marines are pin point assaults and the like.

iproxtaco wrote:As said, it depends greatly on their application. Would you send 12 Guardsmen to do the job of an Astartes? No, because they would fail...If I wanted to crush the heavily defended leadership of a planet or capture some vital objective or object, I would send in the Astartes.

I would send those 12 Guardsmen (or less) if they were the Last Chancers. They in fact did that last one, albeit with the help of an Inquisitor. So there are specialist troops even within the IG that can and do the jobs normally one would attribute to Space Marines.

Of course they did. As noted by Macharius, the most deadly weapon the Imperium is not the Astartes, but simple human courge.

Brother Coa wrote:And do they worth more than 300 Guardsman?

Why did you make up this particular number?

The ratio would be smaller than that. And it still matters how the troops are used. Guardsman can fight massive battles and send wave after wave after wave, until the objective is complete, and then send more to just hold the line. Space Marines are used for things such as pinpoint assaults or to secure some heavily-defended objective. I would consider a Space Marine better than one human, and if he is alone, he doesn't have the odds with him against a group of 'oomies When in greater numbers, they can do bigger things. A company of Marines could last against regiments of guardsman. Depends on the numbers, overall.

A Army of Chaos cultists are marching down a road when behind a dune they hear a mighty shout.

"One Space Marine is worth a 1000 men!"

The Chaos leader yells and orders 10 of his men to go over the top of the dune and deal with this warrior. So off they go and as they disappear a few shots are heard and then silence. After a pause they hear...

"One Space Marine is worth a 1000 men!"

Angered the Chaos leader orders 100 of his over the top of the dune. So off they go and as they disappear over the top the sounds of gunfire and screams are heard and then silence. After another pause they hear...

"One Space Marine is worth a 1000 men!"

Enraged the Choas leader orders a 1000 of his men over the dune, as they disappear an almight sound is heard of gunfire, screams, explosions and blood flinging into the air and then silence. After a longer pause a lone cultist, bleeding and burnt, slowly crawls over the top of the dune over to the leader and says.




(and yes i know this is an old joke, just had to adapt it for this thread )

I think some of you gents are missing the point. SM are not supposed to do the job of the IG. The best example of this is the Seige of Varks books. Kreig Guardsman did most of the fighting in those books. SM only came in for pinpoint attacks that the guardsman could not acomplish. It is not the job of the SM to hold territory or to engage in wars of attrition. It even states in thoese books that the SM were not going to get involved in Varks for thoes reasons at first. That stuff is for the Guard to handle.