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K lets all take a vow to be honest, now the discussion.

a Fully geared Astartes vs x # of imperial guardsmen. How many do you think he can kill before he is slain?

secondly, what if they had no armor or weapons, how many then?

Just so you know, I dont play the boardgame!!

Also,The SM gets the jump on the IG because its 1 vs many

We talking fluff or tabletop?

Fluff, anywhere between dozens and hundreds. Calgar, Mephiston, Shrike, etc. would be on the high end, Tac marines and scouts on the low end.

Not sure about how they'd fare without equipment.

YMMV

Brother Thomas wrote:K lets all take a vow to be honest, now the discussion.

a Fully geared Astartes vs x # of imperial guardsmen. How many do you think he can kill before he is slain?

secondly, what if they had no armor or weapons, how many then?

With Lasguns vs a Marine with his standard Bolter....I would probably say in the lore that you are looking at 200-300 Guardsmen? If the Imperial Guard literally had NO support, they would have to wait until the Space Marine ran out of ammo (quickly) than steam....

No armor you are looking at a different story. I think it would be maybe 100-150 Guardsmen then, as eventually they would poke his eyes out, ripoff skin and other things while they are getting massacred.

Fluff is all in wich fluff, who wrote it and which group was the star.


It really comes down to preparedness. If the Guardmens knew the SM was coming and could et any gear they needed to deal with it, a single squad would toast him. However it goes the other way as well, if the single SM had surprise and the Guards where ill-prepared then he could kill whole companies. It is all in the details, a single sniper could do the job or maybe a whole company can not.


Honestly i say a trained squad could take them on...do not let them close and your golden, close range favored the person with better reach and better gear.

Un armored, in close range it would take a few, as the SM has size, reach and power on them and he would be a god of war, a pure beast. Unarmed at more then 10 or 15 feet the SM is dead.

Hunterindarkness wrote:Fluff is all in wich fluff, who wrote it and which group was the star.


It really comes down to preparedness. If the Guardmens knew the SM was coming and could et any gear they needed to deal with it, a single squad would toast him. However it goes the other way as well, if the single SM had surprise and the Guards where ill-prepared then he could kill whole companies. It is all in the details, a single sniper could do the job or maybe a whole company can not.


Honestly i say a trained squad could take them on...do not let them close and your golden, close range favored the person with better reach and better gear.

Un armored, in close range it would take a few, as the SM has size, reach and power on them and he would be a god of war, a pure beast. Unarmed at more then 10 or 15 feet the SM is dead.

Both sides are suppose to be Unarmed for the second scenario, as per the OPs post.

@Farseer

LMFAO, This was the most I laughed all day.

If both sides are unarmed, the IG better bring either very, very,very killed unarmed fighters or numbers. Both would be best. assuming the SM had above average unarmed skills anyhow. The Guard could take him, but not without numbers. They are simply to large, to powerful , to resistant and to skilled to not at lest take 5-12 men and rush them.


One on one, three on one and maybe five on one . I would put my money on the Sm. Larger numbers however, I would go more toward the Guard.

Well in this scenario the space marine is going to die eventually, but i'm talking about how many he can take out before hand

Id say about 20 guard to rush the unarmed marine,

Anywhere inbetween zero and twenty, though on average the Marine could probably get seven before one of the Guardsmen got a good shot in.

Brother Thomas wrote:Well in this scenario the space marine is going to die eventually, but i'm talking about how many he can take out before hand

Armed it really does depend upon the set up. The ground type, the Guard weapons load and so forth. if the guards have heavy weapons or snipers he could go down damned fast, if the Sm gets into close range and surprised them he could kill a damned lot however. There simply is not universal answer that allpies to most Sm vs Ig fights

Dayvuni wrote:Id say about 20 guard to rush the unarmed marine,

Only 20?! There are people IRL that can kill 20 unarmed men, and those are just Humans with battle training. Guardsmen aren't even trained as well as some of our troops today, when Space Marines are raised from birth killing machines. Than they get super pumped with extra organs and the ability to last through horrific injuries. I just feel like 20 might not be giving these super humans some credit ;P

Maybe my expectations are too high, but I'm pulling my guesses from the information I read in the Siege of Vraks book. They had Red Scorpions take a gate...and the amount of Lasgun fire they withstood in power armor basically meant that it it was a very laborious process to even damage a marine in the smallest amount.

Farseer Mael Dannan wrote:

Only 20?! There are people IRL that can kill 20 unarmed men

Not at once they can not. If they can they are fething epic, I mean super human level epic. Swarm tactics are highly effective

Farseer Mael Dannan wrote:
Guardsmen aren't even trained as well as some of our troops today,

Its all in the unit, some arn't most are and some surpass standard training. Guardsmen are often the best that world can train and field

Farseer Mael Dannan wrote:
when Space Marines are raised from birth killing machines. Than they get super pumped with extra organs and the ability to last through horrific injuries. I just feel like 20 might not be giving these super humans some credit ;P

They are not trained from birth, but about age 12 , so not to much more then most Guardsmen of Average quality. 20 is a hell of an effort and would prove that was an above avg SM, sub par IG or he got the advantage or got lucky


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LoneLictor wrote:Anywhere inbetween zero and twenty, though on average the Marine could probably get seven before one of the Guardsmen got a good shot in.

That seems about right to me

Farseer Mael Dannan wrote:Only 20?! There are people IRL that can kill 20 unarmed men

Hahaha. No. And very seriously no. There was a Nepalese fellow, an ex-Ghurka, essentially the hardest & scariest buggers on this planet of ours, especially in a melee and that includes the Sikh's*, who was on a train returning to his native Nepal to see his family. The train he was on was hijacked by bandits. As they ransacked the train he sat still, didn't intefere, just let them get on with it and leave - afterall, being a battle-hardened ex-Ghurka he knew that human life is more valuable than a wallet of money. The hijackers unfortunately made the mistake of harassing a girl opposite the Ghurka. He didn't take this sitting down. Whipping out his kukri, which had been hidden because he was sat down, he then proceeded to go through the train kicking ten-shades of hell out of the hijackers until they fled. That was a 20vs1 situation with the Ghurka making use of the restriction caused by fellow passengers & fixtures (seats etc). However if he'd been against them, all at once, on his own in the open with nothing to impede his opponents, he'd have been killed easily.

As for Guard training - which planet, which regiment and what is that regiments approach to battle? Are we talking about a regiment being tithed to the Guard because the planet has to every once in a while or are we talking about somewhere like Krieg which pumps out tens of highly-trained**, highly-motivated, very physically and mentally fit soldiers whose sole purpose is to die for their God-Emperor?

An Astartes will struggle against 20 Guardsmen, especially if both sides are armed. Why? A lot of people knock lasguns as being 'weak' and like 'flashlights'. The amount of kinetic energy striking is enough to knock a man over. Imagine 20 hammering at the Astartes all at once, especially if they're ones that fire on a higher energy setting than average, such as the Lucius No. 98 or the multi-setting Triplex? What if those 20 Guardsman have 2 special weapons between them? Astartes isn't going to enjoy having krak grenades shattering his armour, knocking him about, or a plasmagun hammering large holes out of him or a meltagun turning his armour into molten slag. I left out flamers because, well, they're not that great against ceramite - it's a material that is a poor thermal conductor. It'd still cause them some discomfort, especially as it would make it a little harder for the Astartes to see with burning promethium splashing over their helm, adhesing to their armour and continuing to burn. If we throw in a heavy weapon for the two sections then the Astartes is in even greater trouble. Essentially a ten-man Guard section would have an Astartes when they all have weapons and armour if they have their special weapon & heavy weapon, in my opinion.

EDIT: We do know how many Halo Spartans it takes to kill an Astartes though

*Check the c19 for the complete badassery of the SIkh's in British service and when I say 'badass' I do mean 'badass'.
**Their training is so brutal & harsh that if you fail it you're dead.

If they were unarmed, probably none. The sheer weight of men piling on the marine would overwealm him instantly. But he'd also be pretty much impossible to kill, trying to hurt him would just break your bones.
So, a draw.

Sparks_Havelock wrote:
EDIT: We do know how many Halo Spartans it takes to kill an Astartes though

Oh that is Fantastic! I will say I kinda find Spartans a bit more bad ass on the whole then Sm, even if they are the same thing. Then again I always liked battletechs "elemental" Sm approach as well.

Fluff wise, the Marine could take on 100 to 1 or more...
But lets think it out in game terms:

Here is the set up as I see it...

1 Tactical "line" Marine...
That is to say, NOT a Sgt with 2 combat weapons one if which might be a power weapon and/or a plasma pistol etc... or not a "survivor" of a ten man squad where, for instance, he might have a special or a heavy weapon etc...

Vs. (for the sake of argument...)

1 squad of 10 IG, basic sgt, no spec or hvy wpn just lasguns, no 'blobs' and coming on to field in 'waves' of ten man squads until the Marine is dead...

Both units set up 24" apart, no cover, roll for first turn, go!

Agreed?

...barring some miraculous dice rolling, I'm thinking that Marine is toast, but not before taking out 3-6 guards maybe? Maybe not though...?

Say he wins initiative, chooses to not move, takes his 24" shot, hits-wounds-and kills 1 guardsman.
The IG fire 8 shots on their turn, hit 4 times, wound twice... Pretend he makes both 3+ saves...

Next turn the Marine, shrugging off the fusilade of flashlight fire, holds his guntleted hand up and beckons "come n get it punks", firing another bolter round into the guardsmans ranks... but ooops! Lets say he misses...
The IG, having been told if they kill this marine they will get a trip to fantasy island where Rourke and Tattoo will rub their feet and bring them frou-frou drinks with little umbrellas in them, realize he can probaly pick them off one by one if they just stand there, charge 6" then run 4-6" in shooting phase...

Smriking with the confidence of his Nietzschean supersoldier complex and eager to come to grips with these puny excuses of humanity, where he can bring his superior genetics and training to bear, the Marine calmly moves his 6 inches and opens up in rapid fire range. Hits twice, wounds and kills 2 guards! IG, not known for their great cognitive skills, and desperate for that pleasure world vacation, actually listen to the Sgt. and pass their morale test...
Remaining Guardsmen advance another 6", drop into ranks and return fire at nearly point blank range with 13 rapid firing lasgun blasts. Say they only hit 6 times and only manage to wound 3... The single wound Marine still has to make 3 saves at once!

See where I'm going with this?

Put them in a pit with nothing but loin cloths and it's pretty much the same... maybe the Marine takes down 3-6 before being overwhelmed by numbers... imho!

Now, where the Marine might truly show his dominace is with his access to superior thechnology combined with his generic enhancements. A Sgt with a power weapon and maybe a combi-bolter or a plasma pistol could probably hang in longer, toe to toe with hoardes of mundane humans... kill 10-12 before they bring him down? This is definately all conjecture on my part and if you add in cover and terrain and other variables it increases the Marines survivability exponentialy of course... Fun topic, I'd like to test it out for real!

We are talking about fluff, not TT. Marines on the TT are much weaker than fluff marines.

Dagger wrote:Fluff wise, the Marine could take on 100 to 1 or more...

All in which fluff. some its 1000 to 1, some its 100 to 1 some its 5 or 3 to 1. GW is not consistent in the fluff so its all in whose fluff you are using and who is the star of said book.

Joey wrote:If they were unarmed, probably none. The sheer weight of men piling on the marine would overwealm him instantly. But he'd also be pretty much impossible to kill, trying to hurt him would just break your bones.
So, a draw.

Ok obviously its not gonna be 1 billion IG vs a single SM LMAO.

Unarmed and unarmoured a Space Marine will kill hundreds of guardsman before he goes down. With armour and weapons it depends on the location and terrain.

Hmm, lots of dissention on either side.

Armoured, I've seen descriptions of Marines weathering so much lasgun fire that their armour eventually heated up enough to scorch their skin on the inside but remaining relatively unharmed until something heavier managed to punch through/knock them down. Then again, there are descriptions of lucky lasgun shots through eyepieces that take them out in one hit. All depends on if you're reading a Gaunt's Ghosts novel or an Ultramarines novel.

As far as weaponless, the Horus Heresy novels describe Marine unarmed combat against training dummies and it's pretty impressive. Power Armour turns them into tanks, but alone they're still 8 foot, 350lb+, obscenely muscled, abnormally quick and skilled fighters. The worst part about fighting an Astartes would be that each punch or kick from him would kill a human outright or at the very least break bones/incapacitate an opponent while he would continue fighting at near-peak efficiency until severely damaged. Even after losing an arm or breaking ribs/etc (even if they punctured lungs/hearts) it would take a lot of raw power to bring him down due to their chemically stimulated endurance and hyper-aerobic physiology.

Swarm tactics may be effective but I really think it would have to be quite a few guardsmen to make a difference. The Marine could probably kill 1-2 a second just by snapping necks or crushing ribcages from the force of his strikes. What's more, he could probably use the numbers to his advantage, in a way, by throwing individuals into each other or maneuvering around the group so they become bottlenecked. Unless the guardsmen were very coordinated and skill fighters, I can't see any less than 50-60 men being required to bring an Astartes down with their bare hands. Of course, this is kind of ridiculous because unless they're in a completely spartan holodeck-esque room, there are going to be objects that can be used as weapons. Even just a rock or branch would help their chances immensely. Even though, obviously, the Marine would gain a benefit as well.

DoW

Armed, probably between 20-100 depending on the combat ground.

Unarmed probably 100. The IG'd have a hard time injuring him with just their fists.