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 Formosa wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Okay, I'll give to AAA, but oin 40k and modern terms, a 20mm will do very little against a tank, likely less than a lasgun on a Marine

Nah - lasguns are basically modern Assault rifles in terms of damage. Their main advantage is they have much lighter ammunition and would be VERY accurate compared to a projectile weapon. 20mm would be devastating against a light vehical (humvie/transport vehical) and mostly infective against a medium vehical like a rhino or chimera. You put enough 20mm into armor though its gonna break through somewhere. Not suggesting that marines should be mowing down vehicles with bolters. Something like a guardsmen though should be 1 shot 1 kill 0 save though. Something like a marine will take big damage from it but a lot of shot will bounce off if it hits shoulder pad or an angled piece of armor like the sides of the leg or knee pad.

Just an idea of what a marine would be doing to guardsmen - right here.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=20Mm+Machine+Gun+German&&view=detail&mid=CA761CBAE04354EA274BCA761CBAE04354EA274B&&FORM=VRDGAR

I have seen a 5.56 round disable a foxhound.... totally random, should not have been possible and I am no engineer but lo and behold it happened and I was shown it, one of the most random things I have ever seen.

assuming somehow a round found it's way into the engine block?

 Insectum7 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:


I'd just woken up

Haha. I was like: "Davion's off his usual game today."

I dunno man sucking at math IS my useal game

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Erm, I am not sure what artillery piece you're talking about, but you're wrong.

20mm cannons are artillery...That is what I am talking about. They are typically anti air weapons or anti tank rifles. Every marine has one.

No, every marine has a low-velocity 20mm grenade launcher. That is NOT the same as a 20mm cannon, which is represented in 40k by the autocannon stat line. Caliber is not the only relevant attribute for a weapon.


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 Xenomancers wrote:
Aye stat inflation is a problem. You can't honestly hold to an argument that a human should have equal speed to a space marine....

I absolutely can. Sure, fluff-wise the marine is faster but so are Eldar. And in fact Eldar are even faster than space marines, so they need more of a buff. And Tyranids are pretty fast too. And we can't have mere running infantry being faster than jet pack Tau crisis suits, so give them a buff. And now vehicles are looking kind of slow, so we'd better buff their speed. Congratulations, now everyone but normal IG infantry is faster and positioning matters even less. And the space marine fanboys will still complain that they aren't superior enough because all of these other factions are on their level.

No, the only acceptable solution is to avoid stat inflation and just accept that space marines and regular humans are close enough in speed that the difference isn't worth representing in the tabletop rules.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Okay, I'll give to AAA, but oin 40k and modern terms, a 20mm will do very little against a tank, likely less than a lasgun on a Marine

Nah - lasguns are basically modern Assault rifles in terms of damage. Their main advantage is they have much lighter ammunition and would be VERY accurate compared to a projectile weapon. 20mm would be devastating against a light vehical (humvie/transport vehical) and mostly infective against a medium vehical like a rhino or chimera. You put enough 20mm into armor though its gonna break through somewhere. Not suggesting that marines should be mowing down vehicles with bolters. Something like a guardsmen though should be 1 shot 1 kill 0 save though. Something like a marine will take big damage from it but a lot of shot will bounce off if it hits shoulder pad or an angled piece of armor like the sides of the leg or knee pad.

Just an idea of what a marine would be doing to guardsmen - right here.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=20Mm+Machine+Gun+German&&view=detail&mid=CA761CBAE04354EA274BCA761CBAE04354EA274B&&FORM=VRDGAR

I have seen a 5.56 round disable a foxhound.... totally random, should not have been possible and I am no engineer but lo and behold it happened and I was shown it, one of the most random things I have ever seen.

assuming somehow a round found it's way into the engine block?

it somehow went under the foxhound and up into the engine I think possibly a fuel line, I cant explain it as I am not an engineer, still a strange thing to happen.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Erm, I am not sure what artillery piece you're talking about, but you're wrong.

20mm cannons are artillery...That is what I am talking about. They are typically anti air weapons or anti tank rifles. Every marine has one.

No, every marine has a low-velocity 20mm grenade launcher. That is NOT the same as a 20mm cannon, which is represented in 40k by the autocannon stat line. Caliber is not the only relevant attribute for a weapon.


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 Xenomancers wrote:
Aye stat inflation is a problem. You can't honestly hold to an argument that a human should have equal speed to a space marine....

I absolutely can. Sure, fluff-wise the marine is faster but so are Eldar. And in fact Eldar are even faster than space marines, so they need more of a buff. And Tyranids are pretty fast too. And we can't have mere running infantry being faster than jet pack Tau crisis suits, so give them a buff. And now vehicles are looking kind of slow, so we'd better buff their speed. Congratulations, now everyone but normal IG infantry is faster and positioning matters even less. And the space marine fanboys will still complain that they aren't superior enough because all of these other factions are on their level.

No, the only acceptable solution is to avoid stat inflation and just accept that space marines and regular humans are close enough in speed that the difference isn't worth representing in the tabletop rules.

Low velocity? It has a friggen rocket motor to make up for the short barrel.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Low velocity? It has a friggen rocket motor to make up for the short barrel.

It's not a supersonic round and since a bolt is still rather small, it can't propel itself very fast or very far. A bolter doesn't have more range then a standard rifle. That makes it a low velocity projectile. It probably isn't faster then a normal bullet. In fact, it might actually be slower.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Low velocity? It has a friggen rocket motor to make up for the short barrel.

An RPG has a rocket motor and is still a fairly low velocity weapon that relies on its explosive charge to do damage rather than kinetic energy alone like a 20mm cannon. A bolter is much more comparable to a 40mm grenade launcher than a 20mm cannon.

A bolter has a casing though...so it gains initial velocity in the same way a bullet does. An RPG doesn't do that.


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epronovost wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Low velocity? It has a friggen rocket motor to make up for the short barrel.

It's not a supersonic round and since a bolt is still rather small, it can't propel itself very fast or very far. A bolter doesn't have more range then a standard rifle. That makes it a low velocity projectile. It probably isn't faster then a normal bullet. In fact, it might actually be slower.

How could you possibly know the round is not supersonic?

 Xenomancers wrote:

How could you possibly know the round is not supersonic?

The description of the weapon never makes mention of supersonic speed and its range are indicator that it has a low velocity.

 Xenomancers wrote:
A bolter has a casing though...so it gains initial velocity in the same way a bullet does. An RPG doesn't do that.

Sure, they aren't exactly comparable because nobody in the real world is foolish enough to make an exact bolter equivalent (real-world experiments with the concept failed badly). But the point remains that "rocket" and "high-velocity shot doing damage through kinetic impact alone" are not the same thing. A bolter is fired as a bullet, much like a 40mm grenade launcher and its low-velocity grenades, to get the shell started and deal with the otherwise-crippling issue of the rocket having a minimum effective range due to acceleration distance. But it still relies on its explosive charge and blast/shrapnel effects to deal damage, it isn't like a 20mm cannon that can cause massive damage through kinetic impact alone.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Power armor as it currently stands has a 33% chance of saving vs an anti-tank missile. That's pretty good.

STOP... USING... TABLETOP... RULES... TO... MAKE... ARGUMENTS. THEY... HAVE... NOTHING... TO... DO... WITH... THE... LORE.

I have repeated myself three times, what part of that don't you understand?

 Insectum7 wrote:
Oh, ok. So you actually know that this is all your headcannon and just not consistent with the lore. Got it.

No, my headcanon is consistent with a minority of the lore that portrays marines as actually superhuman walking tanks instead of stormtroopers with slightly better armor.

 Insectum7 wrote:
You say it only makes sense if they're invulnerable. I say it only makes sense if they're smart and used correctly. I prefer my version. Not only because it paints a more sophisticated picture of marines, but because it's more consistent with what we know.

No, I'm not saying that marines need to be invulnerable to make sense. I'm saying marines need to be a lot stronger that what the majority of the lore portrays them as to make sense. Marines can be "smart" as you say and still be walking tanks that shrug off lasgun fire like a tank would shrug off AK rounds.

 Insectum7 wrote:

w1zard wrote:
It absolutely is not if you knew you had a 99% chance of victory if you just strolled forward and gunned them down and a 1% chance of getting moderately wounded in the process. Taking cover and trading potshots in that kind of situation is an absolute waste of time.

While your reasoning is correct, you're operating on pure headcannon, as we know marines are not immune to lasfire.

Again, debatable, some OFFICIAL LORE portrays marines as ALMOST totally immune to lasfire.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Headcannon, headcannon, headcannon... Your headcannon is the epitome of the meme "SSHPEESH MAHREEEENNS!!!"

If marines truly are more akin to your version of "slightly better stormtroopers" instead of my version of "walking tanks with twice the speed and ten times the reflexes of a regular human", then I am forced to agree with Peregrine that marines as a concept are utterly stupid and without military significance. Totally breaks my immersion. So instead of calling my interpretation of marines "wrong" you need to look at yourself and realizing you are advocating for your own interpretation of marines that is equally "wrong" to many fans of 40k, myself included.

 Peregrine wrote:
I absolutely can. Sure, fluff-wise the marine is faster but so are Eldar. And in fact Eldar are even faster than space marines, so they need more of a buff. And Tyranids are pretty fast too. And we can't have mere running infantry being faster than jet pack Tau crisis suits, so give them a buff. And now vehicles are looking kind of slow, so we'd better buff their speed. Congratulations, now everyone but normal IG infantry is faster and positioning matters even less. And the space marine fanboys will still complain that they aren't superior enough because all of these other factions are on their level.

I don't think anyone is advocating that the tabletop game should be a 1:1 representation of the lore. It would be utterly imbalanced (even more than it is now) and would be a horrible game to play.

On the same note, using the tabletop rules to extrapolate what something is capable of in the lore is equally stupid.

epronovost wrote:
The only thing that would make Space Marine logically consistent within the univers of 40K would be if htey were an order of magnitude stronger than anything else in the galaxy which they were never described as such OR if they were basically a hundred time more numerous and fighting in much larger forces.

ABSOLUTELY AGREED!

This is the point I was trying to make! And instead of going your route of justifying it in your head with chapter serfs, I prefer to go the route of clinging to the minority of the lore that portrays marines much stronger then they are usually portrayed, plus dismissing the majority of the lore that portrays marines dropping like guardsmen to something as mundane as lasfire and attributing that to mediocre authors who have zero sense of scale and no idea what constitutes a viable military force.

To each his own.

w1zard wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Power armor as it currently stands has a 33% chance of saving vs an anti-tank missile. That's pretty good.

STOP... USING... TABLETOP... RULES... TO... MAKE... ARGUMENTS. THEY... HAVE... NOTHING... TO... DO... WITH... THE... LORE.

The tabletop rules have more to do with the lore than the fanfiction you keep citing.

 Peregrine wrote:
The tabletop rules have more to do with the lore than the fanfiction you keep citing.

Right... So in the lore a flak jacket has a 33% chance of stopping a bolt round, an imperial guard officer can take a meltagun blast to the face without dying, and a leman russ battle tank takes an average of 216 lasgun shots before exploding into a fireball? Get real, the game is an abstraction, and trying to extrapolate lore from the tabletop rules is absolutely remedial.

w1zard wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
The tabletop rules have more to do with the lore than the fanfiction you keep citing.

Right... So in the lore a flak jacket has a 33% chance of stopping a bolt round, an imperial guard officer can take a meltagun blast to the face without dying, and a leman russ battle tank takes an average of 216 lasgun shots before exploding into a fireball? Get real, the game is an abstraction, and trying to extrapolate lore from the tabletop rules is absolutely remedial.

It's noted that your own interpretation of the lore is faulty, amounting 1 marine to 50 GEQ in an open firefight, using fan animation as a resourse, and then even getting those numbers wrong. (Citing "dozens" when there are less than 20 GEQ)

 Xenomancers wrote:
Low velocity? It has a friggen rocket motor to make up for the short barrel.

Just to clarify, do you mean that bolter rounds are fired like normal bullets (using an explosive charge) but then each individual bullet also has a built-in rocket motor?

 vipoid wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Low velocity? It has a friggen rocket motor to make up for the short barrel.

Just to clarify, do you mean that bolter rounds are fired like normal bullets (using an explosive charge) but then each individual bullet also has a built-in rocket motor?

this does seem to be the case yeah.

I always thought of marine armor as secondary to their survivability to implants. Regular human dies to anything, a single cut and bacteria can do it, bleeding, shock trauma, and so on. The marine implants give a feeling that anything but penetrating hit directly to the brain can be saved against by one of the 19 super enhancements marine has.

BrianDavion wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Low velocity? It has a friggen rocket motor to make up for the short barrel.

Just to clarify, do you mean that bolter rounds are fired like normal bullets (using an explosive charge) but then each individual bullet also has a built-in rocket motor?

this does seem to be the case yeah.

That seems a very odd mechanism to me, though I'll freely admit to being far from an expert when it comes to firearms.

 Shadenuat wrote:
I always thought of marine armor as secondary to their survivability to implants. Regular human dies to anything, a single cut and bacteria can do it, bleeding, shock trauma, and so on. The marine implants give a feeling that anything but penetrating hit directly to the brain can be saved against by one of the 19 super enhancements marine has.

True, but those implants brin their own sets of problem in terms of neuro-chemical unbalancement for example.

 Insectum7 wrote:
It's noted that your own interpretation of the lore is faulty, amounting 1 marine to 50 GEQ in an open firefight, using fan animation as a resourse, and then even getting those numbers wrong. (Citing "dozens" when there are less than 20 GEQ)

How is my interpretation of the lore any more "faulty" than yours? I merely stated that I think marines should be more often portrayed along the lines of the animation because that is the only way that they are anywhere close to logically consistent within the universe of 40k which is a fact, not an opinion. Like it or not, people like Peregrine have a point about your "barely better than stormtroopers" version of marines.

I'm not the one who paused a video and counted little red dots in a pedantic attempt to one-up someone in an internet argument over imaginary soldiers. Please explain to me how the marines striding through the autogun/lasgun fire of 17 soldiers rather than 24 somehow undermines my argument?

I also never claimed that the fan animation is how marines are, in fact I have made it very clear that the majority of the lore portrays them as weaker. What I am trying to argue is that how they are portrayed in that animation is the way they SHOULD be portrayed. You can agree or disagree as you want, but using the tabletop game to make a lore argument or claiming that somehow that would make them too "OP" as if such a thing exists when talking about genetically modified super-soldiers with tank armor who wield .75 caliber automatic grenade launchers as rifles is laughable.

Key word: should. Your fanfiction is not canon no matter how much you want it to be.

 Peregrine wrote:
Key word: should. Your fanfiction is not canon no matter how much you want it to be.

Neither are the rules.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Key word: should. Your fanfiction is not canon no matter how much you want it to be.

Neither are the rules.

The rules are official material published by GW, and even if they aren't exactly accurate they give insight into how GW views their world. The fanfic, on the other hand, is just some random person masturbating over how powerful they wish space marines could be.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Key word: should. Your fanfiction is not canon no matter how much you want it to be.

Neither are the rules.

The rules are official material published by GW, and even if they aren't exactly accurate they give insight into how GW views their world. The fanfic, on the other hand, is just some random person masturbating over how powerful they wish space marines could be.

The rules are official material with which to play a board game, not official material as to how their fictional universe works.

GW's made it very clear that they view their world in two distinct and separate ways, judging from how the Black Library team aren't also the rules team as well.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
A bolter has a casing though...so it gains initial velocity in the same way a bullet does. An RPG doesn't do that.

Sure, they aren't exactly comparable because nobody in the real world is foolish enough to make an exact bolter equivalent (real-world experiments with the concept failed badly). But the point remains that "rocket" and "high-velocity shot doing damage through kinetic impact alone" are not the same thing. A bolter is fired as a bullet, much like a 40mm grenade launcher and its low-velocity grenades, to get the shell started and deal with the otherwise-crippling issue of the rocket having a minimum effective range due to acceleration distance. But it still relies on its explosive charge and blast/shrapnel effects to deal damage, it isn't like a 20mm cannon that can cause massive damage through kinetic impact alone.

To be fair we don't know the ballistics of the weapon. You seem heavily inclined to assume things about it though. We know a few things. The projectile is massive and has an attached rocket motor and it can and does penetrate power armor (which appears to be several inches thick in some places). It doesn't have to make sense. It is a fantasy setting. Having failed in concept in the real world doesn't mean in this fantasy land that rocket motors on projectiles aren't effective. Perhaps it is their to maintain velocity because the initial velocity is enough to penetrate anything it needs to.


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 vipoid wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Low velocity? It has a friggen rocket motor to make up for the short barrel.

Just to clarify, do you mean that bolter rounds are fired like normal bullets (using an explosive charge) but then each individual bullet also has a built-in rocket motor?

this does seem to be the case yeah.

That seems a very odd mechanism to me, though I'll freely admit to being far from an expert when it comes to firearms.

AS peregrine will point out. It is a fail concept.

For something like a bolter to work (massive projectile - small barrel) You need to carry a big explosive charge.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=automatic+grenade+launcher+explosions&&view=detail&mid=EB6626FC8FE42AC74585EB6626FC8FE42AC74585&&FORM=VRDGAR
This is basically a modern heavy bolter right here. This is fantasy land however. Eldar for example shoot ninja stars out of catapults (basically repeater crossbows) and orks use magic to make trash cans into machineguns. This is the land of fantasy.

w1zard wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
It's noted that your own interpretation of the lore is faulty, amounting 1 marine to 50 GEQ in an open firefight, using fan animation as a resourse, and then even getting those numbers wrong. (Citing "dozens" when there are less than 20 GEQ)

How is my interpretation of the lore any more "faulty" than yours?

Because my interpretation of the lore is more consistent with the entire body of the lore. I'm not going down some rabbit-hole of picking my lore and then further misinterpreting it, I'm trying to keep it consistent with as much of the established lore as possible.

w1zard wrote:

I merely stated that I think marines should be more often portrayed along the lines of the animation because that is the only way that they are anywhere close to logically consistent within the universe of 40k which is a fact, not an opinion. Like it or not, people like Peregrine have a point about your "barely better than stormtroopers" version of marines.

You interpret that animation far differently than I interpret that animation. And if you like that animation you can also like my interpretation of marines. The marines are moving fast and engaging only a few hostiles at a time, scattering defenses and retaining momentum. They're not "Ramboing" anything. The largest group they encounter is the first one which barely has time to get into position, and the Marines are not even outnumbered 4-1.

You however, are looking for scenarios of 30-1 or even 50-1 with some heavy weapons, and saying that the marine will kill 30 guardsmen in under 10 seconds. It's off the deep end interpretation/fantasy-fulfillment.

w1zard wrote:

I'm not the one who paused a video and counted little red dots in a pedantic attempt to one-up someone in an internet argument over imaginary soldiers. Please explain to me how the marines striding through the autogun/lasgun fire of 17 soldiers rather than 24 somehow undermines my argument?

You're attempting to downplay the argument quite a bit for someone who's prone to posting in all caps.

As above, you've been trying to make an argument for marines fighting an open battle at numbers of 20-1 and greater ratios, but your own source that you say "portrays them how they should be" isn't even close to that.

I'd like to see if you can post some actual lore that starts to come close to your 50-1 ratios.

I'm trying to show how marines can be "worth 1000" normal troops, while keeping faith to the lore and game mechanics. And while lore =/= game mechanics, there is still a relationship between them that should be respected.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Key word: should. Your fanfiction is not canon no matter how much you want it to be.

Neither are the rules.

The rules are official material published by GW, and even if they aren't exactly accurate they give insight into how GW views their world. The fanfic, on the other hand, is just some random person masturbating over how powerful they wish space marines could be.

The rules are official material with which to play a board game, not official material as to how their fictional universe works.

GW's made it very clear that they view their world in two distinct and separate ways, judging from how the Black Library team aren't also the rules team as well.

Black Library aren't the sole producer of the lore of 40K. Codex and campaign books do hold an enormous amount of information about the background and there is no solid wall between the lore and the rules in the codexes. The lore is supposed to represent or illustrate the rules. That's why we can reasonnably say that lascannon are more powerful anti-tank weapons then autocannons or rocket launchers or that Space Marines are roughly equivalent to a plethora of other units in a variety of domain.

w1zard wrote:

If marines truly are more akin to your version of "slightly better stormtroopers" instead of my version of "walking tanks with twice the speed and ten times the reflexes of a regular human", then I am forced to agree with Peregrine that marines as a concept are utterly stupid and without military significance. Totally breaks my immersion. So instead of calling my interpretation of marines "wrong" you need to look at yourself and realizing you are advocating for your own interpretation of marines that is equally "wrong" to many fans of 40k, myself included.

If you're willfully misinterpreting the lore, then you are wrong, regardless of how it "breaks your immersion". All you have to do is redefine for yourself what gives a marine his worth. All they have to do is offer something of unique strategic value and that's the sort of thing that might win a war. The lore says they're great at boarding actions. Then to win a war against ground forces they simply board the orbital defenses, then turn the weapons against the ground units below. Done deal, now they have orbital superiority and can annihilate forces many times their size at will.

Say it takes only 20 marines to do the job of taking control of the defense station, but it would take 2000 Guardsmen to do the same task. That makes the marines each worth 100 normal troopers without necessitating a single marine having a 50/50 chance at winning a stand up shootout with 100 guardsmen. See what I'm saying?

Likewise, if a unit of ten marines can fight for days on end without losing effectiveness and engaging the opponent piecemeal, 10 marines might themselves kill 1000 GEQ types, they just do it over an extended period of time, rather than all at once, Rambo-style.


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 Xenomancers wrote:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=automatic+grenade+launcher+explosions&&view=detail&mid=EB6626FC8FE42AC74585EB6626FC8FE42AC74585&&FORM=VRDGAR
This is basically a modern heavy bolter right here.

I could watch that all day.

Marines work best when you turn the logical part of your mind off. I mean Boltguns are guns that fire rocket propelled armor penatrating explosive tipped rounds (just for the record I think we over play the explosive aspect of them with our auto grenade launcher comparisons, given bolters lack any AOE effect it's clear the explosive charge isn't that big) their primaris Melee weapon is a "chain saw sword" ignoring the practicalities of the weapons, they're certainly cool. understanding space marins is easy.

step 1: find a ten year old 40k fan. step 2: give him lots and lots and lots of sugar. step 3: ask him what makes space marines awesome. Step 4: turn your brain off and take his answers as workable.


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keep in mind when people make space marine to guardsmen comparisons it's based on the assumption that the most common foe for space marines are PDFs that have been declared triator

epronovost wrote:Black Library aren't the sole producer of the lore of 40K. Codex and campaign books do hold an enormous amount of information about the background and there is no solid wall between the lore and the rules in the codexes.

Yes there is. It's called "datasheets" and "everything else that isn't a datasheet".

Yes, Codexes do have some fluff, but that fluff isn't held in the datasheets. My apologies for not being accurate enough when I implied that Codexes had no fluff impact, what I meant was "the datasheets have no fluff impact".

If it's on a datasheet, it's an abstraction. If it's not, then it's lore.

The lore is supposed to represent or illustrate the rules.

Alternatively, the rules are supposed to abstractly represent the lore.

That's why we can reasonnably say that lascannon are more powerful anti-tank weapons then autocannons or rocket launchers or that Space Marines are roughly equivalent to a plethora of other units in a variety of domain.

Yes, "roughly" being the operative word. It's not perfect however, as you have Marines dying every 1/3 shots that wounds them, a wound that occurs BEFORE it even pierces their armour.

The rules are an abstraction. The fluff is, generally, more accurate to the discussions in the 40k "Background" forum, seeing as it's explicitly background, and the rules for the game are not.

BrianDavion wrote:Marines work best when you turn the logical part of your mind off.

I'd argue 40k in general works best when you turn the logical part of your mind off.
Ignore all you know about modern science, physics, chemistry, biology, all of that, and purely work on what exists and happens in the universe.

Sure, you get some wacky inconsistencies, but I personally think that's preferable than bringing up things like the square-cube law, or how much damage a Space Marine could "really" take, or how small some conflicts are. Ignore the logic of our world, and embrace the unlogic of 40k.