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Boarding torpedos. Pretty straightforward right? Big space missiles with a collection of meltas and drills on the nose, which hurtle through the void into enemy ships and offload a team of elite raiders.

So far so good.

But there are some issues. The old BFG fluff describes them as being the size of normal torpedos (which are somewhere from 70m to 200m in length!). The primary users are Space Marines. Space Marines have very limited, but elite troops- any losses to point-defense weapons on the way in are going to seriously hurt the combat efficacy of the attack if there are just a handful of torpedos with large strike teams on board. In addition, a few large torpedos will be easier to hit in the first place. Even a 70m torpedo could have a crew hold larger than a Thunderhawk- losing ~30 Marines in one hit would cripple the strength of a Company.

Further to this, the latest version of the Space Hulk boardgame has tiny boarding torpedo tiles holding 5 Terminators each- about 20m at most, not 200! These seem to be the same style used in the Space Hulk videogame, which also has small Terminator strike teams inserted by torpedo.

So, how to square this circle?

I reckon boarding torpedos use a MIRV-type system on the final approach to avoid point defenses. The large parent torpedo spits out multiple small torpedos carrying the troops, and these are what delivers the "payload" to the target. This makes it easier to avoid point defense, and reduces the likely losses on the attacking Marine strike force. In addition, a number of the mini-torpedos can be empty decoys to draw fire, including the empty husk of the parent torpedo.

This fits both descriptions of how boarding torpedos work into one weapon. I'd actually like to model one of these mini-torpedos for a Zones Mortalis board.

What do folks think of my reasoning? Plausible?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In addition, if anyone has some good pictures of 40k boarding torpedos, I'd be happy to see them!

Go look at ‘Astartes’ fan film on YouTube if you haven’t already, there is also 40k lexicanicum.

I've not seen Astartes (been meaning to watch it), but I've looked at Lexicanum extensively, dug through all the old BFG material I could, gone through the Fantasy Flight RPG books, and dug up as many images on Google search about the newest iterations of the Space Hulk board and computer games This is basically the sum total of the information that has yielded, bar some minor details that don't relate to the way these torpedos operate in a tactical sense.

I'd like to get hold of the pc game to see in more detail (and play it of course! ), but don't have the funds at present.

Really, this was intended to be a discussion of plausible ways to fill the gaps in the boarding torpedo fluff, which will be helpful for anyone trying to model them in some way!

I had recommended 'Astartes' because it showed a boarding torpedo in action; also FW had made a boarding torpedo some time back, now OOP I think, here is some images I quickly found online.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=forgeworld+boarding+torpedo&qpvt=forgeworld+boarding+torpedo&FORM=IGRE

I don't think its a boarding torpedo. It seems.to.come out of a hangar rather than a torpedo.tube. is it not a Caestus assault ram or something?

 Flinty wrote:
I don't think its a boarding torpedo. It seems.to.come out of a hangar rather than a torpedo.tube. is it not a Caestus assault ram or something?

yeah you are right, the image is the assault ram; though in the vast space, it mind as well be a boarding torpedo. I know that what we think of our modern world torpedo size isn't what they use to launch astartes to ships for boarding action, its a lot bigger.

The "boarding torpedos" from Space Hulk 4th edition seem to be similar to the Space Wolves aircraft (which themselves are basically half a Caestus).