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beigeknight wrote:If they happen to need a Whirlwind or Predator, it's probably relativly easy to retrofit it.

I don't think that anybody retrofits anything in the Imperium. The AdMech seems to be pretty strict at modifying stuff.

Lynata wrote:

beigeknight wrote:If they happen to need a Whirlwind or Predator, it's probably relativly easy to retrofit it.

I don't think that anybody retrofits anything in the Imperium. The AdMech seems to be pretty strict at modifying stuff.

That would be heresy and the tech marines would have to pay a steep price for getting the chapter under review from the Inquistion. At least I would think so.

IIRC Grey Knight terminators & PA Grey Knights can hitch a ride in Inquisitorial Chimeras, also IG Chimeras can carry ogryns although its rather cramped for them, so this throws the size argument out the window for the passengers. Not sure about the driver though.

The Rhino is a taxi to get Marines to battle. That's why it has four doors on it. So that Marines can come out the sides, the back, heck, even the top, in order to put the hurting on people.

The Chimera is a fighting vehicle designed to support the lesser able Guardsmen. A Space Marine tactical squad carries as much, if not more, firepower than a Chimera.



Plus, again, people are confusing game rules and plastic models with the fluff. In the fluff, the Rhino is designed to carry ten fully armored Space Marines. The Chimera is designed to carry 10 regular sized human soldiers. It's pretty obvious that the Rhino is likely much more powerful, with a lot more torque, and a lot higher max load. The Chimera is also probably smaller than a Rhino, inside and out. AFVs aren't designed with a ton of extra room in them. So while an Ogryn can be stuffed into the Chimera, it's probably not very comfortable. And while a Space Marine and a Guardsman take up the same amount of space in the game rules, that's for simplicity, and it's obvious that that would not be the case in the fluff.

Never take the game rules seriously. They are, quite admittedly by the designers, designed for balanced game play and selling plastic model kits, and not simulation. There's a reason why Space Marines are relatively fragile on the table top, but have always been extremely durable in the fluff (except when amateur writers need to kill a bunch of them off as a plot device). It's because if a single squad of Marines were an army unto themselves, you'd only need ten figures for an army.

well rules as i had seen them they were ok
i mean the points of a tactical SM is 90 points.Same as 8,5 FW. You may think that SM can hold much , but that uu hear is from glorious victories of SM
and of course they arent 100% true , but they are ok.
but wait: when we say that a SM and a Guardman take same place, we forget that they got diferent codexes.so we cant judge that.
In my opinion, the problem is on the Allies chart , because its says that SM can get in IG ACP.........( if they cant sry, i didnt took the new rulebook,i had odered )

Very specifically there are rules for vehicles which state Space Marines take up 1 passenger space, while things like Terminators, Ogryns, and Dreadnoughts take up two or more.

Thus, in game rules, Space Marines and Guardsmen are the "same size".

Again though, this is why you can't use the rules to discuss fluff a lot of the time. The rules are designed to be simple and playable. Nobody wants to be doing compound fractions to figure out how many models go into this vehicle or that.

I've been using the fluff. Oygren in fluff are huge, almost tda sized. And they can fit in chimeras, plus the hapless guy with a trusting face who lured them in there. Chimeras hulls are more versatile then the rhino, need artillery, take your pick. Need a missile launcher, chimera hull. Need a flame tank, chimera hull. Need a mini predator that can still transport passengers. Chimera hull.

However I will agree that the marines need more doors to exit from, and tradition.

As for size, again I'm sure that since the chimera is bigger that it could carry 10 marines.

ObliviousBlueCaboose wrote:As for size, again I'm sure that since the chimera is bigger that it could carry 10 marines.

The Rhino has a height of 3.6 meters, whereas the Chimaera is 3.72 metres. Of course both measurements include the pintle-mounted storm bolter / the multilaser turret, so there is some variance.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:There's a reason why Space Marines are relatively fragile on the table top, but have always been extremely durable in the fluff

The reason being that novel writers naturally profit from pandering to the Marine fanbase. Any protagonist is somehow better than usual 99% in the fluff, regardless of whether it's an Astartes or not. Of course, since most novels are about Space Marines, this may twist public perception in their favour. I found that the studio material generally presents a much more "grounded" impression of their capabilities, though. A lot of people either don't know or conveniently ignore that the Marines' resilience against a lasgun's attack in the TT is actually equal with the protective capabilities of Astartes power armour as explained in the Codex Angels of Death.

Lynata wrote:

Veteran Sergeant wrote:There's a reason why Space Marines are relatively fragile on the table top, but have always been extremely durable in the fluff

The reason being that novel writers naturally profit from pandering to the Marine fanbase. Any protagonist is somehow better than usual 99% in the fluff, regardless of whether it's an Astartes or not. Of course, since most novels are about Space Marines, this may twist public perception in their favour. I found that the studio material generally presents a much more "grounded" impression of their capabilities, though. A lot of people either don't know or conveniently ignore that the Marines' resilience against a lasgun's attack in the TT is actually equal with the protective capabilities of Astartes power armour as explained in the Codex Angels of Death.

You always say this but you never provide any evidence of it.

We're talking about official fluff, not Black Library novels. It's consistent. Arguing against easily demonstrated fact, and basic commercial philosophy is rather pointless. Unless you'd like to offer some examples of this "grounded" fluff. Space Marines routinely do with hundreds what tens of thousands of Guardsmen fail to. The Ultramarines and their attendant PDF ground down an entire Hive Fleet. A few hundred years later, they did it a second time. A single chapter wiped out an entire Eldar Craftworld. One company holds off an entire planet full of Necrons in time for the civilian population to be evacuated. A single Chapter destroys the near-unstoppable World Engine. Stories constantly refer to heavily wounded Space Marines getting back up, and after action reports nearly always speak of how only handfuls of Marines are unwounded, but the unit is still functional. A Sergeant killing a dozen Aspect Warriors in the defense of a position while taking grievous wounds. A Wolf Guard being cleaved by a bone sword, the wound closing up on its own and him getting back up to fight. Even in the stories where they are defeated, the Space Marines are consistently described as absurdly tough, and extremely resilient, and able to recover from grievous wounds. Codex: Dark Eldar, for example: "their power armor was holding proof against the splinter weapons of their foes. Even those Space Marines who took direct hits gritted their teeth and fought through the pain". 500 Space Marines murderized most of the city of Commoraugh. This is in the Dark Eldar book, lol. But I'm sure that fluff was just written by some kind of Space Marine fanboy who was pandering. The arrival of three Space Marine Chapters halted an entire Waaaaagh. Certainly the writers of Codex: Orks were pandering when they wrote "Such was the fury of the Blood angels that they slew nearly half the Ork army invading Tartarus." What we know is that sometimes the writers of other armies' fluff pander to their audience by allowing them to win handily against Space Marines who should have been smarter, or tougher, had they been written consistent to the fluff. People recognize the Space Marines as being awesome, for the exact reason that they are nearly always portrayed as awesome. It isn't that people expect them to be awesome, so the writers write them that way, lol. The fluff came before the perception. That's why the perception exists in the first place.

What we know is that the Space Marines have incredibly durable armor that, in the official fluff, is proof against las fire, shuriken catapults, splinter cannons, etc. Marines taking direct hits from these weapons and the armor stopping the damage. That, or even it penetrating, and the Marine simply shrugging it off and carrying on. We know that the Space Marines win epic battles, repeatedly, with incredibly inferior numbers, both through sheer durability of both armor and body, and vastly superior fighting ability. While you might argue that to an extent the table top rules echo this by their high strength and excellent armor save. But nowhere do we see the Marines throwing off armies that outnumber them by many multiples, which we see all the time in the fluff. And why is that? Because that game is no fun, lol. No player is going to buy hundreds of Imperial Guard, Dark Eldar or Tyranid models if his opponent shows up with 20 Space Marines, wipes the table, and calls it a day. So the Marines take a hit in the table top rules so that A: Games Workshop can sell more models (from both Marine Armies, and make it fiscally sound for a sane person to collect any army other than Space Marines), and B: make them fun to play against.

Is "because they do" an answer?

Saying that along the same, vein, always bugged me about the lack of dedicated tanks. IG has the chimera variants, and the Russ, which is its main tank. doesnt take troops, but is a dedicated armoured weapons platform. The marines get what, more rhino variants? Even the landraider is still just a better armoured IFV. Or would this be down to things needing to pull double duty with the SM? Cus im failing to see it as a weight issue for transporting them from thunderhawk with how much a crusader must weigh compared to a chimera or a rhino, but they still manage to drop them off.

ObliviousBlueCaboose wrote:So I was looking at IA1 and saw the specs from the Chimera, and as it did before got te to thinking. Why don't the Space Marines use the Chimera?
I'll list the Pros and Cons
PROS
1. Its Amphibious. Self explanatory there.
2. Its bigger, more room for the gear.
3. It can carry Terminators (I will admit this one is purely pulled from the rules on how Rhinos CAN"T carry Termies and Chimera can)
4. Its better armed. (You can put Autocannons on it and still carry 12 guys. Makes the razorback obsolete.)
5. It has better front armor.
6. Its easier to manufacture.
7. More firing points.

Cons.
1. Less Side Armor
2. No side hatches.

Anyone else have an opinion?

1) Marines don't need an amphibious transport. They are in sealed suits. Guardsmen on the other hand would have a much harder time forging a river.
2) Bigger transport = bigger profile = bigger target. If you look at the orginial model side by side with a chimmera, you'll see that the rhino was much easier to hide.
3) Originally, terminators could ride in rhinos.
4) Better armed is nice, but marines can pack their own firepower. Devistators in a rhino pack more firepower than a weapon team in a chimmera.
5) Better front armor, and worse side armor, as you pointed out. As a battle taxi that is going to dump troops into the fray, you need that side armor. You don't want those renegades to wax your transport with a heavy stubber.
6) Ease of production isn't as critical considering the scale involved. A full chapter numbers around 1,000 marines. It would only take 100 rhinos to transport them all. Compare that to say, chimmeras needed for cadians.
7) More firing ports is nice, but the task at hand is mobility, not park and shoot. Older rules had 2 marines shooting out of a rhino, and just 6 lasguns out of the chimmera. If they opened the top hatch to fire out, it made the chimmera opened topped and much more vulnerable.

Why not compare a chimmera to a land raider? They both transport. The reason you don't, is that they fill totally different rolls. Just like the rhino, and the chimmera fill different rolls; just like the Imperial Guard and the Space Marines fill different rolls.

If you just want hands down best transport, I'll put my money on Space Marine Strike Cruiser. It solves so many of the Xenos problems all in once vehicle.

-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:

ObliviousBlueCaboose wrote:I said some stuff

1) Marines don't need an amphibious transport. They are in sealed suits. Guardsmen on the other hand would have a much harder time forging a river.
2) Bigger transport = bigger profile = bigger target. If you look at the orginial model side by side with a chimmera, you'll see that the rhino was much easier to hide.
3) Originally, terminators could ride in rhinos.
4) Better armed is nice, but marines can pack their own firepower. Devistators in a rhino pack more firepower than a weapon team in a chimmera.
5) Better front armor, and worse side armor, as you pointed out. As a battle taxi that is going to dump troops into the fray, you need that side armor. You don't want those renegades to wax your transport with a heavy stubber.
6) Ease of production isn't as critical considering the scale involved. A full chapter numbers around 1,000 marines. It would only take 100 rhinos to transport them all. Compare that to say, chimmeras needed for cadians.
7) More firing ports is nice, but the task at hand is mobility, not park and shoot. Older rules had 2 marines shooting out of a rhino, and just 6 lasguns out of the chimmera. If they opened the top hatch to fire out, it made the chimmera opened topped and much more vulnerable.

Why not compare a chimmera to a land raider? They both transport. The reason you don't, is that they fill totally different rolls. Just like the rhino, and the chimmera fill different rolls; just like the Imperial Guard and the Space Marines fill different rolls.

If you just want hands down best transport, I'll put my money on Space Marine Strike Cruiser. It solves so many of the Xenos problems all in once vehicle.

-Matt

Thanks Matt, I see your point on all of them except for point 1) That would have either the marines needing to ride the rhino to the river, hop out, then cross the river (I guess they walk on the bottom since the suits look to heavy to swim) and them either wait around for the Rhino to find a ford/bridge, or continue on foot at a slower pace. I know in the tabbletop its not important, but on a real battlefield it would make a difference.

Also I know the Land Raider can go under water and fight, but I've never seen anything that says the Rhino is waterproof.

Its because SM players don't want to use anything associated with anybody else. They are ELITE and get their own gear.

Also it would be cheaper for a player with IG and SM so GW makes a seperate model to force you to buy MORE.

shocking I know!

Could be why the SoB seem to be getting pushed away.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:You always say this but you never provide any evidence of it.

What evidence would you like? I have posted a number of quotes in the past - I think most people around here know by now that I usually back up my claims with various quotes.
Not everybody does, sadly.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:We're talking about official fluff, not Black Library novels.

All fluff is "official", it comes down to individual visions, or "alternate realities" if you will.
But thanks for clarifying (or rather declaring) what "we" are talking about, for nobody in this thread has done that so far. Makes a debate much more easier.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Space Marines routinely do with hundreds what tens of thousands of Guardsmen fail to.

And Guard regiments routinely do what Space Marines fail to. Both organisations have their modus operandi - the Astartes are the shock troops, useful for when you need to focus as much power as possible onto a very small spot, whereas the Imperial Guard gets called in when the enemy becomes too much for the Marines to handle.

"Often a conflict will be simply too large, the enemy too powerful, too numerous, or too well entrenched for local forces, ships, or Space Marines to defeat. In such a case mobility counts for very little. In conflicts such as this, the really huge invasions, the wars that spread across whole star systems and decades of warp space, only the grinding steamroller of the Imperial Guard can hope to crush the foe. The ultimate fighting machine, its task is to hold a front line that stretches across the stars, to wage war for decades or centuries if need be, to act as the bastion of the Imperium against the massed hordes arrayed against Mankind."
- 2E C:IG, p4

And then of course we have this saying from Primarch Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists:
"Give me a hundred space marines, or failing that, give me a thousand other troops."
- 4E C:SM

With this ratio alone, your claim pretty much lost all its weight. I trust a Primarch to know the capabilities of his Space Marines better than you.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:What we know is that sometimes the writers of other armies' fluff pander to their audience by allowing them to win handily against Space Marines who should have been smarter, or tougher, had they been written consistent to the fluff.

Of course when the Marines get owned it's a mistake, but when the Marines own someone else that's consistency. Riiiiiight.

I recommend you discard the Astartes Goggles, for unless we accept all sources as equal there's quite simply no point to the discussion since you are obviously cherrypicking what suits your claim best.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:The fluff came before the perception. That's why the perception exists in the first place.

Right, that must be why every second Marine fanboy thinks the Astartes are 9 feet high...

You know what came first? The game. These days, people's perception is formed 90% by outsourced publications, as outlets such as Black Library offer far more "fluff food" for the fans to digest.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:What we know is that the Space Marines have incredibly durable armor that, in the official fluff, is proof against las fire, shuriken catapults, splinter cannons, etc.

Quotes or it didn't happen.
I have noticed numerous times how people claim some silly stuff when in fact the studio material tells the story a little bit differently. The only way to rule this out would be to compare sources directly. And I mean directly, book name and page number, for wikis such as Lexicanum are quite vulnerable to editor interpretation and thus personal preferences as well.

The same goes for that wall of Epic Moments™ you posted, by the way. Although I will add that it's not even worth argueing about those, since every single army has Epic Moments™ in their book. Oh, wait, I forgot you chose to discard these for your consistency. Either way, individual events do not make a standard - the likelihood for them to be exceptions from the rule is way too high, especially when they are listed under a label like "Famous Battles" (5E Codex). Want to take a guess why they are so famous?
Events like those only serve to showcase what might be possible, yet should in no way be taken for granted. For example, I don't think any Battle Sister would be able to go mano-a-mano against a Hive Tyrant and slay him in close combat just because Praxedes did, just like I don't think just anyone could strangle a Night Lords Legion Chaos Space Marine Lord just because Straken did.

Anyways, I'm sure you have seen this one before, but here's a quote from the Angels of Death Codex addressing the properties of Space Marine power armour. Not some exceptional individual event but a general description of universal validity:
"Against most small arms the armour reduces the chance of injury by between 50-85%, and it provides some form of protection against all except the most powerful weapons encountered on the battlefields of the 41st millennium."
- 2E C:AoD, p8

So, I'll be waiting on that quote about how power armour is 100% impenetrable to lasguns now.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:But nowhere do we see the Marines throwing off armies that outnumber them by many multiples, which we see all the time in the fluff.

What you fail to realize is that this goes for all the armies on the tabletop and their fluff, so the TT really is the most "narratively balanced" depiction simply because everybody gets treated the same way, for once. No faction blindness, no epic tales showing you the exception from the norm. Just cold, hard numbers.

Lynata wrote:

Veteran Sergeant wrote:But nowhere do we see the Marines throwing off armies that outnumber them by many multiples, which we see all the time in the fluff.

What you fail to realize is that this goes for all the armies on the tabletop and their fluff, so the TT really is the most "narratively balanced" depiction simply because everybody gets treated the same way, for once. No faction blindness, no epic tales showing you the exception from the norm. Just cold, hard numbers.

CSM Pg 34-35.

Milisim wrote:Its because SM players don't want to use anything associated with anybody else. They are ELITE and get their own gear.

Also it would be cheaper for a player with IG and SM so GW makes a seperate model to force you to buy MORE.

shocking I know!

Actually, Imperial Guard used to have Rhinos. Then the Chimera was "discovered"...

IIRC the Chimera is not a recovered STC it was actually invented on one of the forge worlds. (if that is the case I am as shocked as you are)

Fido198674 wrote:CSM Pg 34-35.

Raptors and Obliterators? What are you trying to say?

razor5647 wrote:IIRC the Chimera is not a recovered STC it was actually invented on one of the forge worlds. (if that is the case I am as shocked as you are)

Possible! This would explain why the Rhino was so widespread back then and not yet used in conjunction with the Chimaera.
Although it sounds weird for the AdMech to "invent" anything completely anew ... perhaps rather retro-engineered from some STC? A distant cousin of the Rhino? Was the Chimaera ever explained in as much detail as the Rhino?

Lynata wrote:

Fido198674 wrote:CSM Pg 34-35.

Raptors and Obliterators? What are you trying to say?

I meant Codex Space Marine ...I'm sorry about that.... but there are plenty of examples in there of SM chapters getting torn up (In the "Offical Fluff"). That one and the Battle for Macragge pop out the most in my head.

Fido198674 wrote:I meant Codex Space Marine ...I'm sorry about that.... but there are plenty of examples in there of SM chapters getting torn up (In the "Offical Fluff"). That one and the Battle for Macragge pop out the most im my head.

Wow, you had me all confused there.
Aye, most Chapters have some defeats or at least "expensive victories" on their scorecard - this, too, is important for a narrative balance. I think many of GW's own writers recognize the need for it in order to prevent the Space Marines from appearing too much over the top.
Now, that's just a personal opinion of course, but even the heroes need to get beaten from time to time, right?

Lynata wrote:

Fido198674 wrote:I meant Codex Space Marine ...I'm sorry about that.... but there are plenty of examples in there of SM chapters getting torn up (In the "Offical Fluff"). That one and the Battle for Macragge pop out the most im my head.

Wow, you had me all confused there.
Aye, most Chapters have some defeats or at least "expensive victories" on their scorecard - this, too, is important for a narrative balance. I think many of GW's own writers recognize the need for it in order to prevent the Space Marines from appearing too much over the top.
Now, that's just a personal opinion of course, but even the heroes need to get beaten from time to time, right?

LOL Never! Calgar shall never be defeated!

well it looks like the chimera is defiantly not an STC design as it appeared some time after the great crusade and I can find no mention of an STC which is an absolute certainty among mass produced stuff (if it is in fact STC) all I can find on its origin is that it was first produced on forgeworld Gryphonne IV and has since been redesigned to have many weapon systems (hellhound, manticore) and is produced on virtually all capable imperial worlds.

Lynata wrote:[

Veteran Sergeant wrote:We're talking about official fluff, not Black Library novels.

All fluff is "official", it comes down to individual visions, or "alternate realities" if you will.
But thanks for clarifying (or rather declaring) what "we" are talking about, for nobody in this thread has done that so far. Makes a debate much more easier.

Ahh semantics. You knew what I was talking about. But hey, disrespectfully deflecting the argument with semantics is par for the course with you.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Space Marines routinely do with hundreds what tens of thousands of Guardsmen fail to.

And Guard regiments routinely do what Space Marines fail to. Both organisations have their modus operandi - the Astartes are the shock troops, useful for when you need to focus as much power as possible onto a very small spot, whereas the Imperial Guard gets called in when the enemy becomes too much for the Marines to handle.

"Often a conflict will be simply too large, the enemy too powerful, too numerous, or too well entrenched for local forces, ships, or Space Marines to defeat. In such a case mobility counts for very little. In conflicts such as this, the really huge invasions, the wars that spread across whole star systems and decades of warp space, only the grinding steamroller of the Imperial Guard can hope to crush the foe. The ultimate fighting machine, its task is to hold a front line that stretches across the stars, to wage war for decades or centuries if need be, to act as the bastion of the Imperium against the massed hordes arrayed against Mankind."
- 2E C:IG, p4

And then of course we have this saying from Primarch Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists:
"Give me a hundred space marines, or failing that, give me a thousand other troops."
- 4E C:SM

With this ratio alone, your claim pretty much lost all its weight. I trust a Primarch to know the capabilities of his Space Marines better than you.

My claim is refuted by irrelevant evidence and an anecdotal quote?

How is the claim that there are situations that are best suited for the Imperial Guard (duh) refute the idea that there are other situations, in fact quite a few of them, documented, where a small force of Marines achieved an absurd kill ratio? I should have been more specific. You need to offer relevant quotes. Sorry. Not just any quotes. I should have been clearer.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:What we know is that sometimes the writers of other armies' fluff pander to their audience by allowing them to win handily against Space Marines who should have been smarter, or tougher, had they been written consistent to the fluff.

Of course when the Marines get owned it's a mistake,

That's not what I said, at all. You know this. But disrespectfully, and intentionally misinterpreting what I say is par for the course with you.

I recommend you discard the Astartes Goggles, f

Disrespectful personal attacks, attempting to undermine my opinion by calling me a fanboy instead of addressing my points with reasonable argument is par for the course with you.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:The fluff came before the perception. That's why the perception exists in the first place.

Right, that must be why every second Marine fanboy thinks the Astartes are 9 feet high...

Again, irrelevant. Please address the actual point, instead of deflecting. You can't refute what I said, so instead you turn it into something else. Nice. Sorta amateur, definitely disrespectful, but effective when trying to confuse other posters.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:What we know is that the Space Marines have incredibly durable armor that, in the official fluff, is proof against las fire, shuriken catapults, splinter cannons, etc.

Quotes or it didn't happen.

Gave several. Apparently you chose not to quote them and then hilariously claim they didn't exist. Now that is funny. Find any of the above references on a Lexicanum or Wiki article. They all came right out of the books. Suggesting that I didn't go first hand to the sourcebook is disrespectful, especially since you know that I have copies of all of those books and have demonstrated in in the past on multiple occasions. Asking me for page citations is usually legitimate, but dishonest in this case since we know you know better. But again, disrespect is par for the course with you.

The same goes for that wall of Epic Moments™ you posted, by the way. Although I will add that it's not even worth argueing about those, since every single army has Epic Moments™ in their book. Oh, wait, I forgot you chose to discard these for your consistency.

Why would I include them? We aren't trying to prove the fluff says something about those races. We're proving what the fluff says, consistently, about Space Marines.

Either way, individual events do not make a standard

Good thing I took them from six different Codex books from three different editions of the game. So yeah, they're pretty much standard.

especially when they are listed under a label like "Famous Battles" (5E Codex). Want to take a guess why they are so famous?

What does the fame of a battle have to do with how tough the individual Marines are listed as? I mean, okay, eliminate the Battle of Armageddon reference of the Blood Angels kill ration, and then explain how the reference to the grievous bone sword wound surviving Wolf Guard, multiple Apsect Warrior wound taking Sergeant, or heck, the reference to generic Marines taking direct hits and shrugging them off has anything to do with fame. Especially since the most important reference was from the Dark Eldar book, and not from the Space Marines book. We'll wait. I won't start the timer quite yet as a courtesy.

I don't think just anyone could strangle a Night Lords Legion Chaos Space Marine Lord just because Straken did.

That's why not just anyone did. Straken, on the other hand, has an absurdly strong cybernetic body that is reflected both in the fluff, and on the table top. That's why he can do it. Good lord that was a horrible analogy.

Anyways, I'm sure you have seen this one before, but here's a quote from the Angels of Death Codex addressing the properties of Space Marine power armour. Not some exceptional individual event but a general description of universal validity:
"Against most small arms the armour reduces the chance of injury by between 50-85%, and it provides some form of protection against all except the most powerful weapons encountered on the battlefields of the 41st millennium."
- 2E C:AoD, p8

So, I'll be waiting on that quote about how power armour is 100% impenetrable to lasguns now.

Nobody ever said that. And if they did, it wasn't me.

Here's the problem with your example. A reduction of 50-85% doesn't tell us what the base chance of injury rate is, nor specifies that the chance of injury equates to an incapacitating wound. What the examples that I provided showed was that the Space Marine armor was able to stop most rounds, and then said that even the rounds that managed to penetrate were incapable of producing debilitating injuries. What we do know from multiple tabletop game book fluff stories (I specified it to save you the disrespectful semantics arguments) about Space Marines, is that they take injuries and keep going. So even if you're wounding a Space Marine, he isn't stopped most of the time. His secondary organs, or healing modifications take over and put him back into the fight with almost no stoppage. The durability of Space Marines lies not just in the power armor, but in the Marine himself in conjunction with that armor.

Of course, a smart cookie like me realizes that 50-85% is a 35% range, giving an average protection of 17.5% which is slightly higher than 4/6, which is the save possibility of Power Armor against weapons with no save modifier. A smarter cookie would realize that there's a probably a significance to the fact that while Games Workshop is notorious for lazy copy pasting of old fluff to new books, that little tidbit hasn't been repeated in any other book, ever, in almost 20 years between when that book was published, and now. But hey. I'm sure what's written in that book is incontrovertible since it supports your position, where all the other evidence is just pandering and hype. I mean, it's got math in it.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:But nowhere do we see the Marines throwing off armies that outnumber them by many multiples, which we see all the time in the fluff.

What you fail to realize is that this goes for all the armies on the tabletop and their fluff,

I'd like to see even one example where an outnumbered force of Orks did something amazing on even close to the level of the Space Marine exploits. Please. Please find me this reference.

the TT really is the most "narratively balanced" depiction simply because everybody gets treated the same way, for once. No faction blindness, no epic tales showing you the exception from the norm. Just cold, hard numbers.

However this idea is patently absurd. It's so bad, it actually made me smile at my desk. So I thank you for that. The tabletop game is actually quite ludicrous. The idea that evenly balanced forces would ever meet on neutral terrain and slug it out over randomized objectives is laughable. That never happens in real life, and it never even happens in the game's fluff. Again, the game is a game, and its rules are designed so that players have a system for creating an entertaining night of dice rolling and model moving. Heck, 6th Edition even made the implicit statement of "This is designed to play for fun" and not for competition, or realism. Everything about how the armies fight on the tabletop is wrong on every possible level according to any common sense laws of strategy and tactics. It's just an approximate set of rules to let you fight battles in a pretend universe over a reasonable duration of time and given a simple enough rule set that it can be played by relatively small children. Nobody looks at the rules for Flames of War and says "That's how WW2 actually was". It's just a way for players to take their favorite vintage tanks and tiny infantry and play some reasonable approximations of battles. And that's what the rules are for 40K. Reasonable approximations to allow people to take their favorite 40K factions and fight pretend battles. This is so overwhelmingly true about every tabletop wargame ever made, back to Checkers or Go, that it's astounding that you'd even make such a statement. Detailed wargames systems can take days to fight even small historical reenactments. 40K is balanced to be played in a couple hours. A balance that falls so horribly to pieces at higher points, that the rulebook for Apocalypse even tells you that it's gonna get stupid really fast, but hey, giant tanks and titans! "Narratively balanced". Of course it is if you're playing within the precise range it has been written with in mind. The rules are artificially balanced to make the game playable. Of course any story that you invent according to those rules will be balanced. Balanced story comes form balanced rules. What does that possibly have to do with how it relates to the fluff? Still nothing.

We're talking about official fluff, not Black Library novels.

So current codexs and 6th ed. rulebook?

That's kinda limited and boring. BL books are what make the universe more full of life.

Don't some codexs copy-paste right from BL publications?

Veteran Sergeant wrote:

Veteran Sergeant wrote:But nowhere do we see the Marines throwing off armies that outnumber them by many multiples, which we see all the time in the fluff.

What you fail to realize is that this goes for all the armies on the tabletop and their fluff,

I'd like to see even one example where an outnumbered force of Orks did something amazing on even close to the level of the Space Marine exploits. Please. Please find me this reference.

Farsight

DeffDred wrote:

We're talking about official fluff, not Black Library novels.

So current codexs and 6th ed. rulebook?

That's kinda limited and boring. BL books are what make the universe more full of life.

Don't some codexs copy-paste right from BL publications?

I only made that mention because Lynata is a painfully boring and predictable poster, and will bring up if I don't make very clear what is being talked about is solely the official fluff produced solely for the tabletop game.


Honestly, this is one of the dumber conversations I've gotten dragged into. It's such a painfully obvious situation to pretty much anyone. I only replied because Lynata likes to complain that I'm mean to her, so I just wanted to show how she is consistently disrespectful and intentionally deceptive and dishonest in her posts, so it's somewhat silly to get mad at me if I have been rude in return in the past. This time, though, I just chose to point out the rude behavior rather than just be rude in return, as little fun as that is.

I personally don't care about the differentiation between BL and GW fluff. It's all pretty silly. And it's all just designed to sell plastic toy soldiers. Space Marines sell lots of models because they are cool looking and described in the fluff as being awesome, all the time. The other armies sell lots of models because GW has figured out how to make them seem kinda awesome too. Now, do the Spess Mahreens always win? No. But it's just silly to pretend that they aren't enormously better in the fluff than they are on the tabletop. And it's silly to pretend that the tabletop game is supposed to be an accurate representation of the fluff. One is a series of stories told to sell plastic toy soldiers. The other is a game designed to sell plastic toy soldiers. The commonality? Selling plastic toy soldiers.

Everything in 40K exists to get blown up by Space Marines. I know this fact irritates a lot of players who don't play Space Marines. (I don't even play Space Marines anymore I just build them because it's fun converting the hell out of them. I like the Tyranids). But it's the simple truth. Complaining about it doesn't help. Pretending it isn't the truth is even less useful. However, if nobody buys anything other than Space Marines, the game is just Space Marines blowing eachother up. And despite the jokes that say that's more or less what 40K is these days anyway, GW still likes to sell all those fancy aliens and zombiebots and space elves, and the game wouldn't exist without them either. So, the Space Marines are awesome in the game, but not too awesome. Because, like I said, if the Space Marines are as awesome as they are supposed to be, then the game is no fun.

We're talking about a simplistic tabletop game. Alternating turns, very generic movement, very generic damage and save rolls, very generic combat rules using probabilities that can only be generated by rolling six sided dice. That's it, lol. This is a game designed for little kids to play after convincing their parents to buy them a bunch of plastic toy soldiers. Then, as the little kids grow up, they nostalgically buy more of those sweet ass plastic toy soldiers because GW has made new ones, and the rules have changed to make those new ones better and more desirable.

Pada wrote:

Veteran Sergeant wrote:

Veteran Sergeant wrote:But nowhere do we see the Marines throwing off armies that outnumber them by many multiples, which we see all the time in the fluff.

What you fail to realize is that this goes for all the armies on the tabletop and their fluff,

I'd like to see even one example where an outnumbered force of Orks did something amazing on even close to the level of the Space Marine exploits. Please. Please find me this reference.

Farsight

Also some things are ridiculous beyond belief, see Maugan Ra vs Tyranid Swarm

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Ahh semantics. You knew what I was talking about. But hey, disrespectfully deflecting the argument with semantics is par for the course with you.

Oh, I had a guess what you were talking about. I just consider it a "tactical advantage" pointing out negative behaviour such as, say, arrogance or obvious bias.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:How is the claim that there are situations that are best suited for the Imperial Guard (duh) refute the idea that there are other situations, in fact quite a few of them, documented, where a small force of Marines achieved an absurd kill ratio?

An "absurd kill ratio" was never put into question, was it? Their invulnerability as perceived by a certain segment of the fanbase was.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:That's not what I said, at all. You know this.

That is exactly what you said. If you don't even notice it - like you did not notice your insults in the past - there is nothing I can do about it other than pointing it out.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Disrespectful personal attacks, attempting to undermine my opinion by calling me a fanboy instead of addressing my points with reasonable argument is par for the course with you.

I did address your points. If you don't want to recognize that and sweep any rebuttal aside with a general claim about "irrelevant evidence and anecdocal quotes" then that is, again, not something I can do anything about. I'm sure any readers following the debate will be able to form their own opinion from what the two of us have presented. I do not care any longer what you think.

As for "disrespectful personal attacks", I don't see anything as disrespectful as what you have tossed at me in the past. Or now, for that matter.
Claiming I fail at reading, that I am somehow disrespectful (coming from you!), insinuating an inferior intelligence on my part, calling me an amateur and a liar ... if I'd not be convinced that your petty and unfounded stabs actually work in my favour, I suppose I could have reported some of those. At least ever since it became a habit of yours whenever our opinions clash.

I'm not quite sure what triggered this, actually. Is it because I called you out on your erroneous claims regarding SoB Acts of Faith? After all, you were still clinging to your own opinion and attempted to spread it in other threads even after I delivered those Codex quotes to you. That's about the only possible origin of this kind of hostility that springs to mind.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Gave several. Apparently you chose not to quote them and then hilariously claim they didn't exist.

The single quote actually adressing my point was about splinter weaponry only, and then basically contradicted itself when it mentioned Marines being injured by direct hits. My own statement as well as the citations I delivered to strengthen my point was that the resilience of power armour is generally overrated and, by admission of the studio fluff itself, quite in line with what we see on the tabletop, which you failed to counter so far.
I'm sorry. Maybe I should have been clearer.

For the sake of completion, perhaps it is also worth pointing out that the Salamander Space Marines you mentioned in this citation lost more than half their men - almost three companies - in that fight. And it would have been more, had Vect actually planned to kill them rather than simply using them as a tool to eliminate a political rival.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Asking me for page citations is usually legitimate, but dishonest in this case since we know you know better. But again, disrespect is par for the course with you.

Again with the "we"? Who elected you to be the arbiter of fluff and respect around here, anyways? It is also interesting how requesting a source for your claims is supposed to be "dishonest". If you expect me to believe something just because you typed it, you are mistaken. I do not consider you reliable enough for that. I'm sure the feeling is mutual, so we understand each other, yes?

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Why would I include them? We aren't trying to prove the fluff says something about those races. We're proving what the fluff says, consistently, about Space Marines.

Occasionally, these Epic Moments of other races may include the defeat of Space Marines, and as such I would have considered them a worthy addition to a debate on them.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Good thing I took them from six different Codex books from three different editions of the game. So yeah, they're pretty much standard.

If a dozen famous legends from 10.000 years of Imperial history might qualify as a "standard" to you, I suppose we will have to agree to disagree.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:What does the fame of a battle have to do with how tough the individual Marines are listed as?

That many of them became famous specifically because the Marines involved rose above expectations, be it due to circumstances or exceptional leadership. Since expectations are formed from standards, I'm sure you see where this is going.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:That's why not just anyone did. Straken, on the other hand, has an absurdly strong cybernetic body that is reflected both in the fluff, and on the table top. That's why he can do it. Good lord that was a horrible analogy.

Straken is a natural-born Catachan who simply happens to have a bionic arm. I fail to see why this is such a "horrible analogy". Give Harker a bionic arm, too, and you've got another one like him.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Nobody ever said that. And if they did, it wasn't me.

Quite a lot of people say this around here, regularly. With your claim about power armour being "las proof", you sounded a lot like them.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Here's the problem with your example. A reduction of 50-85% doesn't tell us what the base chance of injury rate is

100%? ("duh")
Unless you think that Marine skin is "las proof", too.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:So even if you're wounding a Space Marine, he isn't stopped most of the time.

See, at last we can agree on Space Marines actually getting wounded. That not every shot is an instakill is a concept which I have propagated myself in the past - the only thing left open is how many injuries a Marine will take until he is at least neutralized, if not killed. The way I see it, it could happen with the first shot (if it was a lucky hit - say, a blast to the face?), or maybe it takes two or three. Either way, if you agree that lasguns can wound Marines in the fluff, then they can potentially also kill Marines in the fluff. Exactly like they do in the TT.

This fluff was written after the rules and to reflect and accompany them, anyways, so of course it would not claim invincibility when Marines can get shot by Guardsmen in the game. That would be pretty silly and not serve any purpose other than to create confusion amongst the players.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:The durability of Space Marines lies not just in the power armor, but in the Marine himself in conjunction with that armor.

Yes, I have said that myself many times over. Of course, durability =/= invincibility. Anything that can be wielded as a weapon in the tabletop has some chance to kill a Marine, so this goes for the fluff also. At times, some players just claim it were otherwise.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:A smarter cookie would realize that there's a probably a significance to the fact that while Games Workshop is notorious for lazy copy pasting of old fluff to new books, that little tidbit hasn't been repeated in any other book, ever, in almost 20 years between when that book was published, and now. But hey. I'm sure what's written in that book is incontrovertible since it supports your position, where all the other evidence is just pandering and hype. I mean, it's got math in it.

And math is generally better than exceptional one-offs, yup.
An even smarter cookie might also realize that GW has generally scaled the amount of "hard numbers" back in recent years to allow for increased leeway in perception, possibly to accomodate for the wide range of interpretations held by fans and outsourced writers alike. Me, I'm seeing no reason to discard something just because it's old, when it has never been overridden by something newer, and still fits perfectly into the setting.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:I'd like to see even one example where an outnumbered force of Orks did something amazing on even close to the level of the Space Marine exploits. Please. Please find me this reference.

The Third War of Armageddon. Personally, I find it incredible how just 2-3 million Orks could plunge an entire sector into a war that was so horrible that they needed more than 152.000 Space Marines to help out. In addition to all the Imperial Guard regiments and Hive militias on-site. And the best thing? The war is still ongoing.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:However this idea is patently absurd. It's so bad, it actually made me smile at my desk. So I thank you for that. The tabletop game is actually quite ludicrous. The idea that evenly balanced forces would ever meet on neutral terrain and slug it out over randomized objectives is laughable.

Again you seem to have completely missed the point I was trying to make. Or you are ignoring it on purpose - the sarcasm you display does seems to hint at a self-perceived lack of compelling arguments, so you are resulting to "different ammunition".
But I shall clarify further: In this sense, I do not value the tabletop for any battles of armies whose strength is balanced towards each other using arbitrary point values, nor do I care for any objectives. I value the tabletop for giving us hard stats for the various units. Naturally, the range of abstraction makes direct insights impractical if not impossible, but what they do allow us to do is compare who is stronger than what, and who can get killed by what and how easily (or how difficult).

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Again, the game is a game, and its rules are designed so that players have a system for creating an entertaining night of dice rolling and model moving.

Correct. And the fluff is designed so that players have a narrative framework erected around the very same rules. They do not exist apart from them, they are a part of the greater whole.

From the Open Day report here on dakka:
Q: Why include so much hobby and fluff info in the rulebook?
A: All three commented on the importance of seeing the hobby as a whole. A new player to 40k would grasp the broad depth of the hobby in one mighty tome. Again, Jervis mentioned the significance of adding ‘weight’ to the game and posited that all aspects were synonymous. In the opinion of the designers, the fluff adds an important aspect to the game as it puts the whole experience into context and provides a rich narrative for the tabletop game itself.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Honestly, this is one of the dumber conversations I've gotten dragged into.

This goes for me also. I should just have ignored a post like that when it comes from you. Unfortunately, I failed to remember past experiences in time.