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I have to say that I sympathise with guardsmen pretty much becuase they are the only sanes ones in the grimdarkness of the far future.

Emperors Faithful wrote:I have to say that I sympathise with guardsmen pretty much becuase they are the only sanes ones in the grimdarkness of the far future.

QFT. Marines might be braver, but fighting to the death even though there's a chance of getting your arse out of there is pretty damn insane. You ask me, the Guardsman has more common sense. The Marine just has more bullocks. And baldness.

And rage. And mental insecurities due to brutality as a child.

For the most part, Guardsmen are pretty brave to stand up to the freaks of 40k at all. Can you really blame them when they see a bloodthirster and decide that it's time to get the feth outta there?

marines because they are awesome
guardsmen do brave stuff because if the don't they get a hole for a face from the friendly commissar

Emperors Faithful wrote:And rage. And mental insecurities due to brutality as a child.

For the most part, Guardsmen are pretty brave to stand up to the freaks of 40k at all. Can you really blame them when they see a bloodthirster and decide that it's time to get the feth outta there?

Like I said, Guardsmen just have that thing called common sense. You're not going to beat a Bloodthirster with your flashlight, so even though you could bravely stand there and shoot at it while your chums escape, you've got a better chance of not dying a horrible, gruesome death if you can run faster than at least one them.

Sure, it makes you a coward, but then again standing there makes you stupid. Brave, but stupid.

Guardsmen get set to fight an unknown enemy so they have no idea what they're in for. By the time they find out it's too late to run and they either live or die.
Marines do know what they're up against (mostly) and go in anyway. I wouldn't get hung up on the gear and training of a marine because they get sent to fight battles that guardsmen couldn't hope to win anyway so their personal challenges are just as great.

Emperors Faithful wrote:You really think that Guardsmen stand a chance against most of the imperiums foes on thier lonesome?

tanith guardsmen rock everything, see pictures and follow at own discretion, mature word follows.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/s/i/at/2008/5/1208986387138-26000920.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y64/Paingod556/1237680860093.jpg

You might want to get rid of both of 'em, lest this thread become locked.

Hows that, does that violate?

No, it should be good. Especially since you've given a warning.

BTW, lol.

I can respect a Guardsman more, but to put it simply... A Space Marine will not falter; a Guardsman will break *eventually*, and whilst in the fluff some Space Marines break (AKA those Marines going crazy in that long Chaos tunnel in that Uriel Ventris book...), the fact remains that they've been conditioned to not even pay attention to their fear... so they are outwardly superior to Guardsmen when it comes to morale.

I don't think saying "Guardsmen are braver because they are normal men and women!" makes them braver at all... it just, like I said, makes you respect them more...

Guardsmen all the way. Bravery is overcoming fear not being fearless. If I gave any of you a torch and a sheet of plasticard how many of YOU would go Ork hunting? If I was an SM in my Power Armour with all my muscles and acidic spit the I would be raring to go. It takes real nads to be a guardsman and just anger management issues to be an SM.

What people forget is that:

1) Space Marines are not entirely fearless.
2) A brave guardsman is (comparitively) a Chicken Marine.

i cant believe the vote so far
space marines braver
esp the chaos ones
:-p

Ig for sure, but I might be bias. sm robots cant be brave or have fear.

Yeah Well Sly Marbo knows no FEAR, coincidentally there is no mercy in his dojo!

Sgt. Salt wrote:LD 7, or LD 8?
You tell me...

We'll see if that LD stays the same if space marine wears Catachan armor... ( or lack of )

That's pretty much a scout right?

Emperors Faithful wrote:That's pretty much a scout right?

Maybe! *checks scout LD lol
Bleh both LD 8

Would you look at that!
Having no power armour takes thier leadership down...1?

I'll have to say Guardsmen; Space Marines get to hide inside that huge suit of power armor. Not to mention that whenever space marines arrive on the battlefield they usually arrive with more than enough force to easily win the battle. Guardsmen however have comparatively primitive equipment, are usually outnumbered and outgunned, and well...they are guardsmen.

The fact that they don't just turn around and run puzzles me. But I suppose that's what they have Commissars for.

Dedrith wrote:
I'll have to say Guardsmen; Space Marines get to hide inside that huge suit of power armor. Not to mention that whenever space marines arrive on the battlefield they usually arrive with more than enough force to easily win the battle. Guardsmen however have comparatively primitive equipment, are usually outnumbered and outgunned, and well...they are guardsmen.

The fact that they don't just turn around and run puzzles me. But I suppose that's what they have Commissars for.

are you sure you have this right?

the Space Marines are the ones to arrive with smaller numbers, lighter support and are always out numbered.

where as the IG have waves of bodies to be thrown into the meat grinder, one after right after the other, some of the heaviest tanks out there and swarms of them.

as for hiding behind/in things, the IG have one of the largest tanks known to man, the Baneblade and its variants.

the whole aurgement is it a bit much, after all you are comparing oranges to bananas, the IG is used as a hammer strike, nothing pretty. they hit their foes with hundreds of bodies, dozens of tanks, and simply over whelm their foes. Marines on the other hand are a strike force, they strike like a surgeon's knife, meant to hit in a vital place and do the most damage to the foe as a whole.

now yes Marine "Shall Know No Fear" but they didn't start off this way, they over came their fears, they learned to shove them aside, to forget about their human ties to become better.

though these are just my simply opinions, and getting late in the night it may come out blurring and unclear to others, so take all of this with a grain of salt.

Would you rather stand in front of a hive fleet with flack armour and a lasgun, or 7 and a half feet tall covered in a tonne of power armour with a machine gun that fires exploding rounds.

Being so much worse armed to undertake the same job takes more bravery imo

I would say the guard, as marines cant feel or know fear anyway, so how can they be braver if they don't have the power to feel it? hence when guardsman stand up to and army of nids, they all pooing themselves, but they still fight till their dieing breath (commissars may be a factor in this...) but a space marine would just laugh because he thinks they look funny, he might say 'thats one big bug' but he won't be scared

Ha! lol,
Space Marine 1: Hey dude, it's raining bugs!
Space Marine 2: Mmm kuntucky fried rippers for breakfast!
Space Marine 3: Another bug for my collection!

But here's what a guardsman thinks.
Imp. Guar. 1: Oh hell these 'nids are tearing us to crap!
Imp. Guar. 2: Alright flak jacket do your jo...ARRGH!!!!
Imp. Guar. 3: Oh crap Rico's dead! We gotta fall ba*BLAM*
Commisar: Don't you run away!
Imp. Guar. 4 Man, Commisar's a real dick. *Hormagaunt stabs 4's heart.

Well in a way they are both brave.
Guard gotta go up against that huge 'nid army with tanks and crappy armour, but Space Marines gotta board that hive fleet with 10 soldiers and a chaplain.
Let's just agree that if you fight for the imperium, you have balls of steel.

Case in point: Ollanius Pius.

everyone is capable to charge an Ork or a Tyranid with a power armor covering your body and with a bolter in the hands....

now do the same thing with a flak jacket and a lasgun.

Guards are braver or crazier... they deserve more respect than Marines (even if sometimes they are forced from Commisars)

I just love these highly subjective threads with no real right or wrong answers.

To me, courage is the overcoming of fear (now I sound like Bruce Wayne or something), and by that definition, the guardsman clearly wins out. I'm pretty sure it's been said before, but it is different for a super human warrior, who has been genetically, mentally, and physically conditioned to have an absence of fear to be brave, than for an ordinary human who has none of these backgrounds.

It's like the difference of pointing a gun at someone who doesn't know what it is, and someone who does. It is different for a person who has known fear and seen death throughout their entire lives to go into battle then it is for someone who doesn't even know the definition of fear, because they have never experienced it. You could argue that space marine recruits have known such emotions before they were even selected for training, but isn't the whole purpose of becoming a super human warrior is to lose the traits and weaknesses that make you human? Once that's literally ripped out of their mind, it's the same thing as starting with a clean slate. Only this time, you don't even have the most basic of all human emotions, and no references from which to learn.

I mean, it pretty much ends with Ollanius Pious. He knew from the start that if he tried to get in the way, he would most definietly die. Perhaps more importantly, he did it even though he knew it was going to be meaningless. Yet he still did it. And in the end, he basically saved the Imperium.

The humble soldier of the Imperial Guard gets my vote. There is a fundamental problem with comparing Astartes and Guardsmen. The Astartes are not technically human anymore. They are selected at a young age and subjected to intensive mental conditioning and genetic manipulation. As a result the way how a marine reacts to stimuli simply is not comparable to the way how a normal human would react. The marines have a conditioned programming and genetic enhancements that control their responses to feelings like fear, so you can not talk about "bravery" in the normal sense of the word.

Imperial Guard are by far more braver. They have a gun is more commonly know as a flashlight due to the level of destruction it causes and armour that is only there to make the look protected, but is actually cardboard .
Smurfs have the best equipment the imperium has to offer, and they both fight the same enemies.