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We all know that there are ~1000 chapters with ~1000 men per chapter. Given that they are the Imperium's most powerful force in the lore, how do we reconcile the in-game power of the marines, who are basically above average troops, with the fact that for every marine in the universe there are millions of enemies with guns in their hands?

By not assuming that marines fight in the same way on the table as in the lore.

On the table, space marines fight more or less out in the open in pitched battles against opponents of equal strength without any ability for deception or for tactics to have really any meaning.

In the fluff, they set up ambushes, practice local force superiority, and use other tools like negotiation and prolonged orbital bombardments and wave after wave of guardsmen.

Space marines excel in the tactical environment in the fluff because they excel in the strategic, something that he tabletop game doesn't get across very well.

Because if Space Marines were as strong on the table as they are in the fluff, you would only need to buy a very small army of them to get a lot of points, which costs GW profit.

That is all there is to it.

...

If you only needed three marines to make an army, then they'd charge $140 apiece, just like they do knight titans.

Nah, a conspiracy theory is more likely.

It's tabletop. It requires things called game mechanics to ensure one side isn't horribly overpowered so everyone can have a good, fun time.

Of course, that's the theory. In practice with W40K it never really seems to work.

Just remember that table top is a game first and that the situation that most battles are in aka pitched fights against equal forces is not very common. Take Dark Eldar for example most of the time they are tearing into a PDF force, take slaves, loot etc and are gone long before imperial reinforcements arrive.

Impossible. Fluffy marines are varied. In one book 1 guy could slaughter 100000 of any enemy including CSM. In another, a single las shot will fell them.

This is why I loved the old Daemonhunters codex; Grey Knights were WS5 BS5 fearless and awesome! Sure you started with maybe 20 of them, but they could hold off an entire army.

 Jadenim wrote:
This is why I loved the old Daemonhunters codex; Grey Knights were WS5 BS5 fearless and awesome! Sure you started with maybe 20 of them, but they could hold off an entire army.

Well, they were a bit crap and got swept like leaves really.

my friends and I have started playing 40k using the Tomorrow's War rules from Ambush Alley. This allows you to build your forces off of story lines and fluff so we can use fluffy marines to our heart's content. This far we've only run SMs vs Aspect Warriors which gives them a bit more run for their money but now that we have some of the mechanics down will be trying Orks or 'Nids vs SM and IG.

The titan legions are the most powerful land forces though, and the imperial navy is the most important.

Aren't all the armies in the fluff the most awesome, strongest force the galaxy has ever seen and could easily stomp over the all the other races if only ___ happened?

It helps sell models but it doesn't make for a very balanced or fun game. I believe Tyranids are the only race that actually have defeats documented in their own codex. The closest thing Space Marines have to defeats are Pyrrhic victories.

 Cirronimbus wrote:
I believe Tyranids are the only race that actually have defeats documented in their own code

Orks.

Of course Orks are never defeated so it's more like temporary setbacks.

The Marines in the lore are just the Imperial Propaganda machine playing them up as invincible gods and the ones we see on the table top are the real deal? Game play and story segregation? Honestly, there is no wrong answer here.

I would suggest you reconcile by not focusing on the "herpderp muhreenz R the betsets mots unbeetinal rmee evar" mary sue nonsense of some of the lore and accepting that the worst offenders of the lore are propaganda.

 Melissia wrote:
I would suggest you reconcile by not focusing on the "herpderp muhreenz R the betsets mots unbeetinal rmee evar" mary sue nonsense of some of the lore and accepting that the worst offenders of the lore are propaganda.

Yes, passive-aggressive strawmen has always made things better. (?)

There are no in-universe stories told "as it happens", they are myths, legends, half-truths, propaganda projects and half-remembered reports told by someone half a galaxy away from the site of the events they're reporting on.

This goes for all of the factions, so none of them are as good, or as bad, as the Codices make them out to be.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
The Marines in the lore are just the Imperial Propaganda machine playing them up as invincible gods and the ones we see on the table top are the real deal?

This. Fluff marines are, at best, very loosely based on their real abilities. Because of their important religious role they have been wildly exaggerated to make a better story, just like the gods and heroes of real-world religions. "Real" marines are much closer to what is represented in the tabletop game: elite infantry that can beat most other infantry 1v1, but die just like any other infantry against the biggest guns.

 Peregrine wrote:
"Real" marines are much closer to what is represented in the tabletop game: elite infantry that can beat most other infantry 1v1, but die just like any other infantry against the biggest guns.

Do you have anything whatsoever backing up this rather confident claim?

 Peregrine wrote:
This. Fluff marines are, at best, very loosely based on their real abilities.

Based on?

In complete earnestness, there is only one truth of 40k. All lore is real although not all of it may be true. Those books? They might be propoganda. They also might be truth. The lore is often contradictory, with variations aplenty. The biggest reason why marines in lore won't work as a codex is much the same flaw as DE, certain IG regiments, Eldar, Tau, quite a few CSM factions, Inquisition, blah, blah, blah. That is, in reality, wars wouldn't be equal. One side would have 100 points and one side would have 1000. That's war. The big climactic battles where forces are entirely equal? Likely not nearly as many as the vastly unequal forces that smash into eachother. Its amazing to read how many super specialized drop/elite/stealthy forces there are yet they always get stuck to this. Perhaps it is in part due to the origins of 40k being a skirmish game? Who knows.

Anyways, the only real general way to make it fit the fluff is if games involved usually having an advantage for one player or the other (and keep in mind this is true for many armies. Not just SM). As per the lore version, the catch is there is no one concise representation of SM. In some, SM are the avatars of destruction. In others, most are standard but a select few, usually the main character and other significants, are gods of war, avatars of death, and virtually indestructable. Hop into a SM book and you might find them curb stomping a CSM army for no real reason, hop into the next and CSM are equal, barely beating SM, hop into the next and IG are killed by the hundreds with the slap of a SM hand, hop into the last and an IG will fell a CSM with a well placed las shot. The fluff is contradictory yet all is both true and false. It is up to the individual to determine the reality of their power level from warrior priest to super heroes to super zealot former criminals.

And that is why you shall never be able to truly reconcile marines.

Oddnerd wrote:
We all know that there are ~1000 chapters with ~1000 men per chapter. Given that they are the Imperium's most powerful force in the lore, how do we reconcile the in-game power of the marines, who are basically above average troops, with the fact that for every marine in the universe there are millions of enemies with guns in their hands?

Assume there's a gap between how the game plays, and what the fluff says. The fluff is also wildly inconsistent itself, it doesn't hurt to read much of it as though it were exaggerated propaganda, as one source will have Lasguns capable of blowing off limbs while another will treat them roughly like modern assault rifles and a Space Marine from one author may be practically a God of War and the next author will have them be just big and tough infantry.

Keep in mind that Marine fluff has also over time continually increased their perceived "power level" (It's over 9000!!!!). Originally, in Rogue Trader, Space Marines were still T3 with 4+ power armor saves (that got reduced to a 5+sv by Lasguns) and there were no Primarchs and Space Marines didn't destroy entire armies with single squads of tactical marines. 2nd ed fluff mostly portrayed them as big tough infantry with occasional bouts of insane heroics, and now by 7th edition we've got fluff that has them doing the most insane things imagineable.

 Ailaros wrote:
By not assuming that marines fight in the same way on the table as in the lore.

By the same token, few factions fight on the table as they do in the lore. Dark Eldar aren't going to engage in frontal attacks on entrenched Imperial Guard positions either, and Tau heavy weaponry or IG tanks/artillery wouldn't have been silent while the enemy force was approaching so closely, but that's how the game simply functions.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Oddnerd wrote:
We all know that there are ~1000 chapters with ~1000 men per chapter. Given that they are the Imperium's most powerful force in the lore, how do we reconcile the in-game power of the marines, who are basically above average troops, with the fact that for every marine in the universe there are millions of enemies with guns in their hands?

Assume there's a gap between how the game plays, and what the fluff says. The fluff is also wildly inconsistent itself, it doesn't hurt to read much of it as though it were exaggerated propaganda, as one source will have Lasguns capable of blowing off limbs while another will treat them roughly like modern assault rifles and a Space Marine from one author may be practically a God of War and the next author will have them be just big and tough infantry.

 Ailaros wrote:
By not assuming that marines fight in the same way on the table as in the lore.

By the same token, few factions fight on the table as they do in the lore. Dark Eldar aren't going to engage in frontal attacks on entrenched Imperial Guard positions either, and Tau heavy weaponry or IG tanks/artillery wouldn't have been silent while the enemy force was approaching so closely, but that's how the game simply functions.

And imagine how fast tanks fire in the 41st millenia! Siege weapons no matter how old or advanced and tanks fire with a wild frenzy of life! Heck, they fire as fast as a SM and only half as fast as a rapid fire marine!

Vaktathi wrote:

Ailaros wrote:By not assuming that marines fight in the same way on the table as in the lore.

By the same token, few factions fight on the table as they do in the lore. Dark Eldar aren't going to engage in frontal attacks on entrenched Imperial Guard positions either, and Tau heavy weaponry or IG tanks/artillery wouldn't have been silent while the enemy force was approaching so closely, but that's how the game simply functions.

Exactly.

I mean, one might as well ask why DE raiders are so flimsy when you almost never see them destroyed in the fluff. That's because in the fluff DE raiders don't charge head-long into a line of guard hydras or straight into missile broadsides. They're not that stupid.

Unfortunately, the rules for the game starts with the assumption that everybody is already completely committed to a fight along a line and there's nothing left but for them to just slug it out. Put another way, in the rules, everyone plays like guard or orks or tyranid. In the fluff, of course, they don't. Which is why fluff and tabletop look so much different.

it makes the most sense when you think about how different the table top and fluff is. I do see space marines as some of the best fighters in the galaxy, fluff or not, but it's kind of hard to write that in gaming terms. plus, when marines are the norm or the standard to what everything else is judged, how are they special then?

Simply put: You don't ever try to actually reconcile lore with the TT. It just doesn't work.

 Ailaros wrote:
By not assuming that marines fight in the same way on the table as in the lore.

On the table, space marines fight more or less out in the open in pitched battles against opponents of equal strength without any ability for deception or for tactics to have really any meaning.

In the fluff, they set up ambushes, practice local force superiority, and use other tools like negotiation and prolonged orbital bombardments and wave after wave of guardsmen.

Space marines excel in the tactical environment in the fluff because they excel in the strategic, something that he tabletop game doesn't get across very well.

You ruined the joke with the explanation. I guess it wasn't a joke.

Also keep in mind that the SM lore is hardly consistent, you have to reconcile the lore with itself quite frequently. Compare Brothers of the Snake with anything written by C.S. Goto, for example.

On one hand you have slow and purposeful terminators that are basically walking tanks.
On the other hand, they do backflips and have anime-like agility.
On one hand, marines are shown to be strong enough to kill hundreds of Orks with just their knives and chainswords.
On the other hand, they're capable of being overpowered by spore mines.
On one hand, they're supposedly tactical geniuses (ignoring the failures of the authors to actually show this).
On the other hand, they're depicted as forgetting they're carrying powerful heavy weapons best used to thin the enemy's ranks before close combat is joined... until the battle's almost lost.

Etc etc etc.

as others have said, rarely do equal forces clash. I mean the way space Marines fight, here's how your table top game would go.

"ok, you take your company command squad, and a handful of escorts. I'm drop podding 3 times your points value of Marines on top of you. with another 2 times your points values worth of terminators in reserve"

Ashiraya wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
"Real" marines are much closer to what is represented in the tabletop game: elite infantry that can beat most other infantry 1v1, but die just like any other infantry against the biggest guns.

Do you have anything whatsoever backing up this rather confident claim?

Void__Dragon wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
This. Fluff marines are, at best, very loosely based on their real abilities.

Based on?

Consistency.

The fact that in the last fifteen years, tabletop marines have held the same game stats through five rules changes, while in the fluff their abilities range from "Incompetent bungler" to "God of War" over a matter of days.

Therefore, every fluff representation is a statistical outlier when you plot all representations of Marine power levels on a scattergraph. By traditional statistical analysis, that means that the tabletop game is the most accurate representation.