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MarsNZ wrote:

 Flanker wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

Thyhadras wrote:
Based on the fluff of what marines do though I am seeing two problems...

First most people have never even heard of a space marine and an even smaller portion have seen one.

furthermore, in the fluff a demi company can tilt the tide of battle in favor of the imperium... really this is an argument that I can see both sides and there would never be a good answer...

I don't believe a demi company changes the outcome of a large battle at all. Especially ones with orbital bombardment, titans, and mantas. The GW writers don't understand anything about military history more than likely. They are their own fanbois.

While I agree the GW authors understand very little about military history/actual combat, there are plenty of examples in history of small teams changing the tide of large battles. Also, just because you have tools like orbital bombardment and titans doesn't mean you can use them. Even using precision-guided munitions in today's war where a laser-guided bomb can accurately land within 3m of its target is tough during the heat of a firefight.
I think the closest we've seen of a top unit in action like the SM in real life is Black Hawk Down. If you see the Delta Force/Rangers as SM/Tempestus, it was 160 men against 4-6k Somalis, losing 18 and inflicting 1k+ casualties. Even though there's a massive gulf in the amount of discipline and training vs the militia (many were somewhat well-trained and veterans of combat despite the movie making them out to be a mob), I still think SM are meant to be way more elite.

The worlds most powerful military beating up a 3rd world militia isn't probably the best example of elite troops turning a battle around, in fact they didn't turn anything around, the mission went FUBAR and the Rangers/Delta were unable to turn that result into victory.

1940, Belguim, fort of Eben Emael. Around 80 elite Fallschirmjager capture a fortress garrisoned by 1200 Belgians and sustain 6 casualties in the process. This is an elite unit turning a battle around. Schwerpunkt relies on speed, and a huge fortress would have slowed the advance considerably. Germany's vaunted Panzers could have bashed their heads against this wall for weeks with no result. Both sides involved were first world nations possessing modern militaries.

Oh, I wasn't trying to use that as an example of a small force turning the tide of a big battle. That was a change of subject. I was saying that's the closest we have to what the gulf between SM and everybody else is supposed to be like. The Eben Emael assault is a great example of a small unit making a big impact in the larger battle.

" there's nothing you can do about this, and it's canon."

I can reject GW's fiction. Which I do. They have no sense of scale and it shows in the garbage they write.

" if they say SM are awesome, that's what they are"

No, because that's not how they are mathematically modeled. If the game in no way reflects the fluff, which it never has, then the fluff is useless because the math affects me way more from a purchasing standpoint, etc.

" I don't think one can link SM performance on the tabletop and what they can do in the fluff. "

But you see, the fluff doesn't save me from my buddy's Eldar. So as far as I'm concerned, all the badass stories should be about scatterbike pilots. Because marines are lambs to the slaughter for those guys. I don't care about the fluff because that's not what they've modeled. They've modeled the marines as a turkey shoot for Eldar.

"and you say SM chapters numbers are 1.000.000 or whatever. "

This is necessarily true due to how big galaxies are anyway. Hell, even 1,000,000 could get bogged down on one continent of one world of one star system of one cluster. The scale is mind-blowing.


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 Desubot wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" if we are going by TT, then you're sending like 500 points of Bugs to each of 4 continents in a 2k points game... and 500 points of Bugs is Not At All Difficult to blow off the board in a turn or two with 500 points of Astartes."

Fair enough. But it's still a galactic war. And the rate at which marines die on the tabletop would force there to be more than 1000 chapter for sure. 20 tablings X 50 marines per table = chapter eradicated. We could rate chapters in how many Wraithknights it would take to exterminate them since 90% of marine weapons are worthless against them.

You are assuming off table means dead.

I'm gonna guess a starcannon does't leave much behind.

Martel732 wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Desubot wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" if we are going by TT, then you're sending like 500 points of Bugs to each of 4 continents in a 2k points game... and 500 points of Bugs is Not At All Difficult to blow off the board in a turn or two with 500 points of Astartes."

Fair enough. But it's still a galactic war. And the rate at which marines die on the tabletop would force there to be more than 1000 chapter for sure. 20 tablings X 50 marines per table = chapter eradicated. We could rate chapters in how many Wraithknights it would take to exterminate them since 90% of marine weapons are worthless against them.

You are assuming off table means dead.

I'm gonna guess a starcannon does't leave much behind.

But not all guns are starcannons.....

I'm assuming the Eldar aren't jelloheads and use starcannons and D weapons to eradicate space marines. In real wars, armies can use intelligence services to optimize for a given foe. Especially if there were only 1000 of each flavor. The task would basically be trivial for them.

The Eldar could send a few Wraithknights to stomp out the chapters with no grav centurions.

Martel732 wrote:
I'm assuming the Eldar aren't jelloheads and use starcannons and D weapons to eradicate space marines. In real wars, armies can use intelligence services to optimize for a given foe. Especially if there were only 1000 of each flavor. The task would basically be trivial for them.

Assuming they use real war intelligence instead of there space magic. Eldar have a dumb way of not getting involved unless they need to. and will use as little force as possible to shift things into there favor. They use future sight to make decisions.

They dont use human logic in there tactics.

 Desubot wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I'm assuming the Eldar aren't jelloheads and use starcannons and D weapons to eradicate space marines. In real wars, armies can use intelligence services to optimize for a given foe. Especially if there were only 1000 of each flavor. The task would basically be trivial for them.

Assuming they use real war intelligence instead of there space magic. Eldar have a dumb way of not getting involved unless they need to. and will use as little force as possible to shift things into there favor. They use future sight to make decisions.

They dont use human logic in there tactics.

I suppose. Still, any chapter of 1K marines is likely going to be decimated after a single scrap with the Eldar. Or Tau for that matter. Yeah, the Empire is small by the fluffl, but still enormous compared to the marines at fluff numbers. 1K is an unfathomably tiny number even on a planetary scale.

Martel732 wrote:


I suppose. Still, any chapter of 1K marines is likely going to be decimated after a single scrap with the Eldar. 1K is an unfathomably tiny number even on a planetary scale.

A chapter is not really going to go full force ham and hold there own by them selves against an enemy.
The main war is fought by Guardsmen. lots of them

Space marines are only there to bolster the most critically strategic spots or destroy them to make winning easier for the guard.

Asides from the more embellished heroic stories.

It's because Space Marine are a sham. Fantasm of little boy lol.

Logically, the more a battlespace become complex and bigger, the less % of your army will be specialise, because you need to cover more ground. That has been seen many time as history unfold itself. It is usually in time of peace that you army will become more specialise, because you will have more budget for training and more time to train.

If we consider a battlespace as big as the one describe in the Warhammer universe, keeping small units of specialise units would become trivial, expansive and plainly unefficient. Mass training, mass production of equipment and vehicle and constant mobilisation of army is the only way for the imperium to actually win this war.

Cut the budget of the Space Marine, make them fall under the direction of whatever regiment and make them fight until they all die so we can stop hearing about them

Right now, if we are talking numbers, yes, there is not enough Space Marine for the Imperium, but please don't convince GW to add more lol.

 Desubot wrote:

Martel732 wrote:


I suppose. Still, any chapter of 1K marines is likely going to be decimated after a single scrap with the Eldar. 1K is an unfathomably tiny number even on a planetary scale.

A chapter is not really going to go full force ham and hold there own by them selves against an enemy.
The main war is fought by Guardsmen. lots of them

Space marines are only there to bolster the most critically strategic spots or destroy them to make winning easier for the guard.

Asides from the more embellished heroic stories.

But that assumes that the space marines are never targeted by sentient opponents. Or heck, by the tyranids for their superior biomass.

Martel732 wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

Martel732 wrote:


I suppose. Still, any chapter of 1K marines is likely going to be decimated after a single scrap with the Eldar. 1K is an unfathomably tiny number even on a planetary scale.

A chapter is not really going to go full force ham and hold there own by them selves against an enemy.
The main war is fought by Guardsmen. lots of them

Space marines are only there to bolster the most critically strategic spots or destroy them to make winning easier for the guard.

Asides from the more embellished heroic stories.

But that assumes that the space marines are never targeted by sentient opponents. Or heck, by the tyranids for their superior biomass.

"Superior Biomass?" Is that actually part of the fluff, because it makes little sense. Hydrocarbons are hydrocarbons, whether they come from a Space Marine or an Ork Gretchin.

Martel732 wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

Martel732 wrote:


I suppose. Still, any chapter of 1K marines is likely going to be decimated after a single scrap with the Eldar. 1K is an unfathomably tiny number even on a planetary scale.

A chapter is not really going to go full force ham and hold there own by them selves against an enemy.
The main war is fought by Guardsmen. lots of them

Space marines are only there to bolster the most critically strategic spots or destroy them to make winning easier for the guard.

Asides from the more embellished heroic stories.

But that assumes that the space marines are never targeted by sentient opponents. Or heck, by the tyranids for their superior biomass.

And them getting wiped out assumes that the enemy even has that kinda firepower and the tactical opportunity to wipe out the entire chapter outside of naval and army protection.

 asorel wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

Martel732 wrote:


I suppose. Still, any chapter of 1K marines is likely going to be decimated after a single scrap with the Eldar. 1K is an unfathomably tiny number even on a planetary scale.

A chapter is not really going to go full force ham and hold there own by them selves against an enemy.
The main war is fought by Guardsmen. lots of them

Space marines are only there to bolster the most critically strategic spots or destroy them to make winning easier for the guard.

Asides from the more embellished heroic stories.

But that assumes that the space marines are never targeted by sentient opponents. Or heck, by the tyranids for their superior biomass.

"Superior Biomass?" Is that actually part of the fluff, because it makes little sense. Hydrocarbons are hydrocarbons, whether they come from a Space Marine or an Ork Gretchin.

I don't know. It sounded GWish.


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 Desubot wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

Martel732 wrote:


I suppose. Still, any chapter of 1K marines is likely going to be decimated after a single scrap with the Eldar. 1K is an unfathomably tiny number even on a planetary scale.

A chapter is not really going to go full force ham and hold there own by them selves against an enemy.
The main war is fought by Guardsmen. lots of them

Space marines are only there to bolster the most critically strategic spots or destroy them to make winning easier for the guard.

Asides from the more embellished heroic stories.

But that assumes that the space marines are never targeted by sentient opponents. Or heck, by the tyranids for their superior biomass.

And them getting wiped out assumes that the enemy even has that kinda firepower and the tactical opportunity to wipe out the entire chapter outside of naval and army protection.

Codex Eldar makes it quite clear that they do have that kind of firepower. A few squadrons of war walkers would kill every tactical squad in a marine chapter. And that's not even getting into the nasty stuff. For DA, all they have to do is kill a rock in space.

.... unless those War-Walkers happen to run into Marines packing Meltas or Missile Launchers. Eldar space-vessels are fleet and agile... but they do not take hits at all well. If attacking The Rock, the Eldar will lose thousands of lives, and may still fail to destroy The Rock, because Eldar ships basically shatter once struck by an Imperial vessel of similar class.

The hard part, of course, is hitting them... but throw enough flak into the air, and you're going to hit *something*.

Eldar has firepower, yes-but they lack numbers.

They just can't afford direct combat with pretty much anyone else, not to mention a grind war, that's practically auto-lose for them even against someone tiny as tau.

Superior soldiers and weaponry is the ONLY thing is favor of eldar.



Back to space marines needing to be in hundreds of millions to function-you come back to the silly assumption that marines do the main fighting.
That they do the SECONDARY fighting even.

They do not "fight" the enemy. they make surgical strikes. they don't take a front, they take care of a single operation in the larger war.
They dont get "bogged down in continents" because they at no point bother with taking over landmass-they take that one important building. they don't destroy enemy regiments in droves, they take out a single command center.

As others said, and you ignore-you don't need many marines because you got so many other guys around to do the main fighting job.
You got the cadians, catachans, iron guard, steel legion, death korps, elysian, the scions, the sisters, skitari, legio cybernetica, PDFs, titan legions, knight houses, ect,
They have so many seperate fighting forces that none of them has any need to ever be self-sufficient, none of them need to be able to wage a full planetary war in itself, and yet multiple of them CAN, multiple of them are big enough to fight across entire sectors on their own.
And none of them is EVER alone.

Seriously, Martel... are you just a troll or something? I have not seen a single positive post from you, and god help some one if they disagree with you.

Seriously, why are you here? You think warp travel is feasible? Hell, almost nothing in the 41st millenium is feasible by todays standards....

So basically you HATE the fluff, you HATE your army, you HATE GW... anything else? Do us all a favor and go play warmachine or something.

A space marine is a special forces unit with a very tight target and mission, there a scalpal you use to cut a vital point.

A chapter may only destroy a single target but change the outcome of a entire war.

If you want Marines solo campaigns on grand scale, try 30k.

Furthermore, as far as marines being effective, they very much are, because if you look at the fluff, there are entire systems that go for centuries and never see conflict, and there may be a hundred years between major conflicts, granted there are some that are shorter (GW fluff writers do fail at timeline writing)

But for the most part there is not only war, just the constant threat of war. Furthermore, 2 space marine companies held off an entire tyranid hive fleet once on the planet. Further, in the ultramarine books uriel ventris and a squad of death watch changed the course of an entire planet wide battle field.

Space marines do not wage war, they go on missions the same as special forces do. Also, if you look at the casualty rate from OIF/OEF American soldiers were working on a kill ratio of something like 4000/1 (with a large number of our dead being from suicide). So the idea that a space marine being able to handle a few thousand or more is not completely ludicrous.

Also if you really wanted to play this game in a realistic setting then every army would be a scout squad a land speeder and a nuke... that would be it... would not make for a fun game. Seriously if you do not enjoy a single aspect of the game then why play?

Hell I will even make you a one time offer to buy your armies off of you so you can cut your losses and move onto a different game set in a more realistic setting like flames of war or bolt action

Thyhadras wrote:
Furthermore, as far as marines being effective, they very much are, because if you look at the fluff, there are entire systems that go for centuries and never see conflict, and there may be a hundred years between major conflicts, granted there are some that are shorter (GW fluff writers do fail at timeline writing)

But for the most part there is not only war, just the constant threat of war. Furthermore, 2 space marine companies held off an entire tyranid hive fleet once on the planet. Further, in the ultramarine books uriel ventris and a squad of death watch changed the course of an entire planet wide battle field.

Except that if you read the fluff, Space Marines do very often wage full-scale war, lay siege to enemy fortifications or hold a defensive line rather than go on a specific strike mission.
40k writers truly have no sense of scale. Going of the numbers in Codex: Armageddon for example, the war on Armageddon, one of the biggest conflicts in the recent history of the Imperium, would be a minor skirmish on the Eastern Front of WW2. The Soviet Union lost 28 million in WW2, which would amount to 2800 IG regiments (going of the size of 10.000, which is relatively large for an IG regiment), over 10 times more than deployed in all three wars for Armageddon together. 40k writers seem to handle IG regiments like they are huge armies, while in truth they are just small divisions compared to rl formations. If one single planet in rl can raise more armies than the entire galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man, you know there is something seriously wrong with the writer's sense of scale.
And as the OP states, one million Space Marines for the entire galaxy should be completely insignificant, even if one Marine is worth ten lesser warriors as is often stated.

"A chapter may only destroy a single target but change the outcome of a entire war. "

War doesn't work like that. Only in anime and GW fluff.


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Thyhadras wrote:
Seriously, Martel... are you just a troll or something? I have not seen a single positive post from you, and god help some one if they disagree with you.

Seriously, why are you here? You think warp travel is feasible? Hell, almost nothing in the 41st millenium is feasible by todays standards....

So basically you HATE the fluff, you HATE your army, you HATE GW... anything else? Do us all a favor and go play warmachine or something.

The GTFO argument. I guess it has to come up once in a while...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Thyhadras wrote:
Furthermore, as far as marines being effective, they very much are, because if you look at the fluff, there are entire systems that go for centuries and never see conflict, and there may be a hundred years between major conflicts, granted there are some that are shorter (GW fluff writers do fail at timeline writing)

But for the most part there is not only war, just the constant threat of war. Furthermore, 2 space marine companies held off an entire tyranid hive fleet once on the planet. Further, in the ultramarine books uriel ventris and a squad of death watch changed the course of an entire planet wide battle field.

Except that if you read the fluff, Space Marines do very often wage full-scale war, lay siege to enemy fortifications or hold a defensive line rather than go on a specific strike mission.
40k writers truly have no sense of scale. Going of the numbers in Codex: Armageddon for example, the war on Armageddon, one of the biggest conflicts in the recent history of the Imperium, would be a minor skirmish on the Eastern Front of WW2. The Soviet Union lost 28 million in WW2, which would amount to 2800 IG regiments (going of the size of 10.000, which is relatively large for an IG regiment), over 10 times more than deployed in all three wars for Armageddon together. 40k writers seem to handle IG regiments like they are huge armies, while in truth they are just small divisions compared to rl formations. If one single planet in rl can raise more armies than the entire galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man, you know there is something seriously wrong with the writer's sense of scale.
And as the OP states, one million Space Marines for the entire galaxy should be completely insignificant, even if one Marine is worth ten lesser warriors as is often stated.

This.

No not the gtfo argument it is a real assessment of you do nothing but whine and complain and I am offering you an out. ..

Thyhadras wrote:
No not the gtfo argument it is a real assessment of you do nothing but whine and complain and I am offering you an out. ..

I would appreciate it if you would stick to the argument and keep sophomoric insults to yourself. If you have an issue with Martel, then PM him about how negative his posts are, don't waste all of our time with petty insults.

BoomWolf wrote:Eldar has firepower, yes-but they lack numbers.

They just can't afford direct combat with pretty much anyone else, not to mention a grind war, that's practically auto-lose for them even against someone tiny as tau.

Superior soldiers and weaponry is the ONLY thing is favor of eldar.



Back to space marines needing to be in hundreds of millions to function-you come back to the silly assumption that marines do the main fighting.
That they do the SECONDARY fighting even.

They do not "fight" the enemy. they make surgical strikes. they don't take a front, they take care of a single operation in the larger war.
They dont get "bogged down in continents" because they at no point bother with taking over landmass-they take that one important building. they don't destroy enemy regiments in droves, they take out a single command center.

As others said, and you ignore-you don't need many marines because you got so many other guys around to do the main fighting job.
You got the cadians, catachans, iron guard, steel legion, death korps, elysian, the scions, the sisters, skitari, legio cybernetica, PDFs, titan legions, knight houses, ect,
They have so many seperate fighting forces that none of them has any need to ever be self-sufficient, none of them need to be able to wage a full planetary war in itself, and yet multiple of them CAN, multiple of them are big enough to fight across entire sectors on their own.
And none of them is EVER alone.

jhe90 wrote:A space marine is a special forces unit with a very tight target and mission, there a scalpal you use to cut a vital point.

A chapter may only destroy a single target but change the outcome of a entire war.

If you want Marines solo campaigns on grand scale, try 30k.

I'm not disputing that Marines are used primarily as elite shock troops. But, because the Imperium is so fething huge (1 million worlds, with a population of 50 quadrillion, spanning 67% of the Milky Way), even the best of the best of the best are going to be high in number. My numbers assumed Astartes were a thousand times rarer than Storm Troopers. That's pretty damn rare. Even if it was a hundred thousand, the number of Astartes would be well into the billions. I'm not saying they should be a main fighting force, but they still need to be more numerous even to fulfill their ostensive role.

In the third ed Eldar codex the iyanden craft world was decimated after losing a few thousand Eldar to the hive fleet. .. this gives the allusion that there but 10-20 thousand Eldar per craft world. ... I will say I do not think the game is representative of the fluff and the fact remains that because a model is wounded dies not mean it is dead just that they were put out of the fight.

So it would be reasonable to think that when gw places number of humans at trillions per hive it would be an exaggeration. Further more the only time that marines take part of major offensives they number as a chapter which legals means that in normal conflicts the armies we use are probably too large compared to whay marines are bringing

Also often times in the fluff s marine strike force will be no more than a couple squads. .. I do not think they are an effective fighting force but I also think there main reason is to fight chaos which should have roughly the same numbers

Thyhadras wrote:
In the third ed Eldar codex the iyanden craft world was decimated after losing a few thousand Eldar to the hive fleet. .. this gives the allusion that there but 10-20 thousand Eldar per craft world. ... I will say I do not think the game is representative of the fluff and the fact remains that because a model is wounded dies not mean it is dead just that they were put out of the fight.

If I recall correctly that was changed to billions in the Iyanden supplement.

Very well could be I have not read the new supplements


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Of course could you imagine billions of wraith guard. .. they could very well cause an extinction level event

 BoomWolf wrote:
Eldar has firepower, yes-but they lack numbers.

They just can't afford direct combat with pretty much anyone else, not to mention a grind war, that's practically auto-lose for them even against someone tiny as tau.

Superior soldiers and weaponry is the ONLY thing is favor of eldar.



Back to space marines needing to be in hundreds of millions to function-you come back to the silly assumption that marines do the main fighting.
That they do the SECONDARY fighting even.

They do not "fight" the enemy. they make surgical strikes. they don't take a front, they take care of a single operation in the larger war.
They dont get "bogged down in continents" because they at no point bother with taking over landmass-they take that one important building. they don't destroy enemy regiments in droves, they take out a single command center.

As others said, and you ignore-you don't need many marines because you got so many other guys around to do the main fighting job.
You got the cadians, catachans, iron guard, steel legion, death korps, elysian, the scions, the sisters, skitari, legio cybernetica, PDFs, titan legions, knight houses, ect,
They have so many seperate fighting forces that none of them has any need to ever be self-sufficient, none of them need to be able to wage a full planetary war in itself, and yet multiple of them CAN, multiple of them are big enough to fight across entire sectors on their own.
And none of them is EVER alone.

Actually Eldar are perfectly fine when it comes to numbers. There's trillions of Dark Eldar going by the size of the Dark City and the fact that it's occupied, and each Craftworld contains populations in the billions.

The thing about the 40k universe though is that the fiction displayed on the tabletop is likely only a very tiny slice of the fiction in the universe. It's a skirmish game in a galaxy of colossal battles.

Space Marine forces are relatively small, because they likely get relatively little use compared to other forces. The majority of battles will be fought and won by the Imperial Guard, The Imperial Navy and the Titan Legions. The Space Marines will be in constant action, but only because in a universe of quadrillions, even their rare need will be constant, but the VAST majority of wars and battles will be fought and won in space or via orbital bombardment and the deployment of millions of guardsmen.

Comparing Space Marines to actual Marines used in WW2 is incorrect. WW2 was a largely symmetrical conflict of conquest and occupation. Space Marines are an asymmetrical force of annihilation. They're not like a WW2 platoon (who are more analogous to the Imperial Guard), they're like the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. They don't fight wars, they end them. Often in a matter of days, if not hours, then move on.

They have few problems with civillian casualties or diplomacy, and have no real rules of engagement to observe or worries about hearts and minds, leaving other forces to do the inital softening up and the occupation and rebuilding. A million marines is fine. You can't compare a grunt to a nuke.

You also forget their dwindling numbers is part of the grimdark nature too. They're difficult to produce and maintain, both in terms of geneseed and equipment. If there were billions, the galaxy would be locked down. The fact they are rare is one of the reasons the galaxy is so dangerous for mankind. Change that, and Imperium's outlook is far more optimistic.

Also, the argument that there should be more due to the size of the Imperium also makes a fundamental mistake - the Space Marines are not the police. The size of the Imperium is irrelevent, as they're very rarely fighting their own people.

" If there were billions, the galaxy would be locked down"

Hardly. Galaxies are very, very VERY big.

Marines aren't that great anyway. There's a LOT of AP 3 or better weapons out there; they'd die by the droves every time they are deployed. You'd need millions and millions to have any hope of accomplishing anything.

Martel732 wrote:
" If there were billions, the galaxy would be locked down"

Hardly. Galaxies are very, very VERY big.

The number billion is also very big.

The Imperium supposedly has a million worlds. With a million space marines, that's 1 per planet. A billion is a thousand million, so a billion Marines is an entire Chapter per planet. Billions (plural) is a minimum of TWO chapters per planet. If the Imperium is the dominant force in the Galaxy currently, regardless of size, then multiplying their elite force by a factor of a minimum of 2000 would be utterly devastating to their enemies.

And while a Galaxy is large, most of it is empty space, and with warp travel, that's irrelevent. All that matters is the number of hostile worlds, which is much, much smaller. Even the sizes of the worlds don't matter as Space Marines are a surgical force.

If a decent sized deployment of Marines currently is a company, and that's enough to get the job done, then two billion Marines means 200 million companies available for battle at any one time. Even if the Imperium was fighting 200 million battles at once (which they aren't), there would be enough Marines to go around.

If that's not your definition of lockdown, I don't know what is.

Martel732 wrote:
Marines aren't that great anyway. There's a LOT of AP 3 or better weapons out there; they'd die by the droves every time they are deployed. You'd need millions and millions to have any hope of accomplishing anything.

Crunch and fluff are not even close to being the same. This is the background forum. The values of dice rolls here are meaningless. Nobody rolls a dice in the novels, and Space Marines have been consistently portrayed as stronger in the fluff than on the table, as player balance doesn't need to be an issue in the story.

Martel732 wrote:
"A chapter may only destroy a single target but change the outcome of a entire war. "

War doesn't work like that. Only in anime and GW fluff.

Maybe not an entire war, but there are plenty of examples over history of one squad/unit changing the outcome of a battle. The German fallschirmjagers at Eben Emael as already pointed out or Viktor Leonov's many actions in WW2 are all great examples. Eben Emael was considered the strongest point for Belgian defenses and its loss was unrecoverable for the Belgians. So, one small unit taking out the fortress did change the course of the war. It ended it for the Belgians and quickened it for the Germans, allowing them to move on.

The board game is not meant to be the same as the fluff. No SM chapter would be able to stay standing for very long if they lost squads' worth of men every engagement. For example: in terms of attrition, the 8th Air Force in WW2 figured it could withstand 1-2% casualties per mission in order to keep flying (I don't have the source on me, that was a figure I remember from my WW2 airpower course). That meant in those raids where the sent ~200 bombers up, they could lose 2-4 bombers of 10 men apiece with multiple raids launched daily. Any more than that, and they wouldn't be able to replace their losses with fresh trainees fast enough. A SM chapter has far fewer men than the 8th had bombers. Since it takes much longer to recruit and build an SM than it does to train bomber aircrew, I would think that they try to avoid situation where they would take heinous casualties. Outside of the mega fluff battles like Armageddon and the Tyranids going after Ultramar or Baal, SM would avoid large-scale engagements in order to preserve numbers.