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Your all thinking too small, Space Marines have tactics specifically designed to combat nid infestations and necron tomb worlds.

I believe they refer to it as "Orbital Lance Strikes, hooray for Orbital Lance Strikes" for when surgical application of force fails and only wholesale application of ungodly firepower will do.

In all seriousness the hardest foe for Space Marines are usually chaos cults, whereas space marines are trained in light infantry tactics, guerrilla warfare and infiltration, they still aren't ideally suited tot he task, and lets not forget most cultists, especially higher up, have taken serious measure to protect themselves from even being discovered.

The moral of the story, you cannot claim military superiority over a force that's more than willing to annihilate the planet your standing on, you can however send them away, thinking your dead and the threat is over.

Other that cultists I'd say the biggest foe to Astartes is the administratum.

 Surtur wrote:

danp164 wrote:
Your all thinking too small, Space Marines have tactics specifically designed to combat nid infestations and necron tomb worlds.

I believe they refer to it as "Orbital Lance Strikes, hooray for Orbital Lance Strikes" for when surgical application of force fails and only wholesale application of ungodly firepower will do.

In all seriousness the hardest foe for Space Marines are usually chaos cults, whereas space marines are trained in light infantry tactics, guerrilla warfare and infiltration, they still aren't ideally suited tot he task, and lets not forget most cultists, especially higher up, have taken serious measure to protect themselves from even being discovered.

The moral of the story, you cannot claim military superiority over a force that's more than willing to annihilate the planet your standing on, you can however send them away, thinking your dead and the threat is over.

Other that cultists I'd say the biggest foe to Astartes is the administratum.

A Space Marine chapter does not have enough ships to combat a hive fleet. Necrons have surface to space capabilities with it's pylons. To destroy a tombworld a chapter sacrificed itself while several others helped in the fight.

Cultists usually aren't a Space Marine problem. Rooting out cultists is Arbite territory. A Space Marine wandering around a planet is usually a waste of resources. When a cultist uprising happens, then all bets are off. Space Marines tear through cultists like butter though a turbine. A librarian would figure out whats up in a matter of seconds if a cult tried to hide in front of him.

Ok, your changing the original point away from ground combat to space combat to suit a point of view, fair enough.

No a single SM chapter does not have enough fire support to take on a full sized hive fleet. They never deploy a single chapter to take on a full fleet unless its a delaying tactic, they deploy entire BATTLEGROUPS of imperial navy with space marine support from MULTIPLE chapters. Necrons vary from tombworld to tombworld when it comes to strength and disposition of forces. But again this is a threat generally assigned to a combined FLEET with assigned Astartes ground assets. The point I'm trying to make here is space marines don't generally do space fighting that doesn't involve boarding actions, that;s why they have the imperial navy... that's kind of the point of the imperial navy.

So if were done attempting to fire space marines out of cannons at enemy space ships, lets get back to what their normally deployed to. Fast response take and hold ground missions, Both Necrons and tyranids react PHENOMENALLY slowly to space marine incursions. Space marines deployed in such a way either attack a central tomb nexus directly (Necrons) or target large synapse structures (Tyranids) to send the hive into dissaray. In either case once that has been accomplished their job is done, the clean up jobs its a guardsmen job.

Planetary insurection IS something Marines are deployed to deal with, and they are crap at it. organised chaos cults, the higher ranks are never on show, so after the jobs done the infestation can reoccur, Disorganised cults have no centeralised command structure to target , leaving space marines ground pounding till the jobs done, which they can;t guarantee.

And no, a Librarian cannot simply "Sense a disturbance in the force" when he;s on a planet and immediately know where the enemy is and more importantly WHO and HOW MANY it is. Its not an all purpose "Reveal All Chaos" button.