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So I was sitting here pondering and wondering. With the Space Marines being superior in every way shape and form, and if wanted to we could force more second, or third if you will, foundings, and each space marine is worth 1,000 men( come one now, we all know its way more than that) then why do they even exist? To give biomass to tyranids? To allow orks to rip their heads off as trophies? To become eventual chaos cultists or join the Tau? To be utterly tortured by the dark eldar or just obliterated by daemons, chaos space marines, or eldar? Or to become eventual slaves to necrons? I mean, let's be honest. Imperial guardsman are so weak, frail, and all in all are worthless flesh that just gets in the way. Hell, the people made to protect them (space marines) find them so annoying and would gladly kill them if given the order. So it pulls at my mind to ask the question, why even exist in 40k? To give people that underdog hope feeling that even a simple man can make a difference or something?

They Exist Because the Imperioum is still exist. With out the Guard, the Empire falls.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oavMtUWDBTM

 kinratha wrote:
They Exist Because the Imperioum is still exist. With out the Guard, the Empire falls.

This is false, as I've stated they could just expand the amount of space marines to easily cover the loss of the guard.

Because there are nowhere near enough space marines to protect the entire Imperium, this is an empire with countless stars. Besides if a guard regiment turns traitor you get a few traitor guardsmen with poor logistics and will probably kill each other off or get eaten by nids anyway. Now if a chapter of space marines turns traitor, which they have done many times, look at the Horus Heresy. That was when space marines DID do the job the guard do now. Sure it was efficient but when half turned traitor the Imperium was royally frakked.

Lshowell wrote:

 kinratha wrote:
They Exist Because the Imperioum is still exist. With out the Guard, the Empire falls.

This is false, as I've stated they could just expand the amount of space marines to easily cover the loss of the guard.

And then waste resources while Space Marines try and hold ground which they can't do as well as guard because they aren't meant for holding ground.
Guard can last much longer with their higher numbers and tanks.

Plus it keeps populations down and gives you some way to field cheap armies.

Why do "XXX" even exist ?

Don't ask why. Ask Why not ?

( applies to both threads, the IG and the SM one )

Because to get a single standard Tactical Marine you have to kidnap one of the most powerful teenager males on a planet, fill him with drugs and body implants, have him strangle some dragons or some other beast, then he has to survive a number of years performing recce missions in a real war. For a Guardsman you just have to give a average person a gun and armour with a little training so you can get much more Guard than Marines.

Because space marines are wasted on occupation, riot control and mundane guard duty or other man power intensive tasks that the guard are just so perfect for.

Even the legions had army in support.

Two critical flaws:

Lshowell wrote:With the Space Marines being superior in every way shape and form

They're not. They are better in SOME ways, but not in ALL ways. For example, there are WAY more guardsmen than marines. As said, the imperium would instantly evaporate if it were just up to marines to defend it.

And the fact that there are so few marines points to their other problems, such as...

Lshowell wrote: and if wanted to we could force more second, or third if you will, foundings,

... this. The imperium may WANT more marines, but that doesn't mean they get them.

Space marines are incredibly difficult to create, and take a lot of resources. They take decades to train, and they absorb vast quantities of materiel what with their sacred-oils-blessed-bolters instead of infinite ammo lasguns, and the inefficiency of each chapter maintaining its own fleet and the strategic difficulties of letting them go off and pick their own objectives.

And all of it is completely wasted when you have, say, a war that just needs to be won by attrition. Guardsmen are MUCH better in that strategic role, and in many others as well (defending far-flung listening posts, acting as a local police force, etc. etc.)

Space marines are very good at what they do, and sometimes what you need is to call in the special forces for a complicated, dangerous mission where money is no object. That is far from all the time, though.

My answer,

1. Space Marine Gene seed are limited.

2. Space Marine are not built for guarding worlds, they seek active battlefields, not defend.

3. There is an abundent supply of guardmans avaliable.

4. The imperium doesn't have the support infrastructure to equip that many Space Marines, you won't want the typical space marine to fight without power armour or carry a lasgun.

It's the same reason doctors still use x-rays and clinical exams when MRIs exist.

Just because something is better, does not mean it shoudl be used in every possible application.

You would have to inflate the number of Space Marine Chapters by a hundred-fold or more to even make a dent in the numbers of the Imperial Guard and the territory required to cover. The way Gene-seed is reproduced means that would take thousands and thousands of years to come about.

Remember you have billions of Imperial Guard versus a Million Space Marines.

Also, as said before, just making a new Space Marine does not mean that you have Power Armor to put him in.

Asking why IG exist is like asking why water flows. They are the base of humanity and SM's would get theie asses whipped without them. Besides, GW portrays SM's with only 1,000,000 men and it makes zer0 sense. If I could rewrite the first founding I would make that the legions were instead shortened to 10,000 men of 50 companies comprising of 200 men each. Just my opinion of course but it would be a lot more believable than a mere 1,000 brothers. IG are very vital though. Remove them from the Imperium and watch how honourably it crumbles.

Because GW wants the money of all the confused WW1/WW2 fans who want to try laser rifles instead of bullets as well, and have some kind of weird glasses that turn everything else into either other trench warfareists or objectively poor soldiers.

Plus, they felt the setting was not self-contradicting enough without having trench warfare and psykers slicing starships in half in the same faction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oavMtUWDBTM

Lshowell wrote:
So I was sitting here pondering and wondering. With the Space Marines being superior in every way shape and form, and if wanted to we could force more second, or third if you will, foundings, and each space marine is worth 1,000 men( come one now, we all know its way more than that) then why do they even exist? To give biomass to tyranids? To allow orks to rip their heads off as trophies? To become eventual chaos cultists or join the Tau? To be utterly tortured by the dark eldar or just obliterated by daemons, chaos space marines, or eldar? Or to become eventual slaves to necrons? I mean, let's be honest. Imperial guardsman are so weak, frail, and all in all are worthless flesh that just gets in the way. Hell, the people made to protect them (space marines) find them so annoying and would gladly kill them if given the order. So it pulls at my mind to ask the question, why even exist in 40k? To give people that underdog hope feeling that even a simple man can make a difference or something?

Toll topic is troll-ey, but I'll bite anyway.

With how long it takes to make a Space Marine, the rate at which their equipment can be produced, the amount of geneseed that can be produced, and the notorious independence of the Space Marines, it makes expanding them difficult.

Meanwhile, each SM is not worth 1000 men or "way more than that", you put a thousand guardsmen against a Space Marine and the SM is going to be toast, you put ten thousand against a Tac squad and the tac squad is toast, etc. But even if that were true, there's hundreds of millions of human soldiers for each Space Marine, millions of regiments for each chapter, so many more such that even at such absurd value ratios there's just so many more basic humans that the SM's become irrelevant very quickly, and the normal human forces can be raised and expended and recovered much easier and much faster and with much more control.

Besides, an Guardsmen may be weak, but not so much when backed up by dozens of heavy weapons, inummerable tanks, and legions of artillery. Artillery and crew served weapons are what inflict the vast majority of casualties in conventional conflicts in the real world, not infantry with rifles, and such is true of the Imperial Guard as well.

To put it one way, space marines are a scalpal, they exacute exact missions and goals with small numbers of elite troops.

Guard is a sledgehammer, much slower but will obliterate opersition by sheer numbers or shells.

Lshowell wrote:
So I was sitting here pondering and wondering. With the Space Marines being superior in every way shape and form, and if wanted to we could force more second, or third if you will, foundings, and each space marine is worth 1,000 men( come one now, we all know its way more than that) then why do they even exist? To give biomass to tyranids? To allow orks to rip their heads off as trophies? To become eventual chaos cultists or join the Tau? To be utterly tortured by the dark eldar or just obliterated by daemons, chaos space marines, or eldar? Or to become eventual slaves to necrons? I mean, let's be honest. Imperial guardsman are so weak, frail, and all in all are worthless flesh that just gets in the way. Hell, the people made to protect them (space marines) find them so annoying and would gladly kill them if given the order. So it pulls at my mind to ask the question, why even exist in 40k? To give people that underdog hope feeling that even a simple man can make a difference or something?

I think it is because without the guard to keep them in check, all marines will instantly turn traitor. They all already are in their heart. But they know if they show it, the guard and the navy will blow them in piece small enough to fit between the mustache of a troll .

Because Space Marines wish they were Imperial Guard...lets face it the IG are better in EVERY way

Lshowell wrote:
So I was sitting here pondering and wondering. With the Space Marines being superior in every way shape and form, and if wanted to we could force more second, or third if you will, foundings, and each space marine is worth 1,000 men( come one now, we all know its way more than that) then why do they even exist? To give biomass to tyranids? To allow orks to rip their heads off as trophies? To become eventual chaos cultists or join the Tau? To be utterly tortured by the dark eldar or just obliterated by daemons, chaos space marines, or eldar? Or to become eventual slaves to necrons? I mean, let's be honest. Imperial guardsman are so weak, frail, and all in all are worthless flesh that just gets in the way. Hell, the people made to protect them (space marines) find them so annoying and would gladly kill them if given the order. So it pulls at my mind to ask the question, why even exist in 40k? To give people that underdog hope feeling that even a simple man can make a difference or something?

For the same reason not everyone in the UK's armed forces aren't part of the SAS.
The training alone would be death to most people, and the numbers of people that would survive and actually do well in the job are so few and far between that it would be a massive waste of resources and manpower to try to convert them all. Not to mention the IOM's vast genetic incompatibility with geneseeds. Even viable candidates get scrapped because their biology just won't accept the mutations.

Space Marines are equipped with a mindset of "Kill now. Keep moving. Must fight everything.", the IG are fare more capable on a psychological level to sit in a trench for months, waiting for an enemy to appear (and would be glad of the peace). Space Marines would start to get antsy, and probably more than a little stressed out. Which can result in Heresy .

The Imperium can sometimes have trouble building and supplying Lasguns and flak armor to the masses, and now they should be building power armor and bolters at the same rate?

Hehehehe. Excellent satire, OP.

Because its impossible to create enough space marines to do the job. plain and simple.

The Imperial Army was formed during the crusade for the same reason.
There simply were not enough marines to go around and eventually 90%+ of conquering was being done by the Army with Space Marines being a Vangaurd force that smash defenses and things before moving on for the Steam Roller army to crush.

I'm gonna note that it's worth remembering that in the 40k universe, life itself is pretty cheap. Space Marines aren't

Guardsman are much easier to produce. That's really all it comes down to.

Why do Necron Warriors even exist?

Alcibiades wrote:
Why do Necron Warriors even exist?

Terminator. IN SPAAAAAAACCCEEE!

Because clever troll thread thinks he's clever.

XD surprised it went on this long.

Cadia nuff said. Also as the drawing pool for the guard is larger increasing the probability of tactical geniuses like creed to show up.