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So one of my long term ambitions in the hobby is a dedicated board themed around a Mechanicus dock with half the board being the deck of an aircraft carrier, but you never really hear much about the Imperial Guard having sea faring vessels, at least none for military use. The Imperium is such an archaic institution I find it hard to believe that if rough riders run around on horses they would have some kind of traditional navy.

Anyone who reads more BL novels than me have any recollection of them being mentioned before?

Not as Guard, no.

PDF would be potentially done as such though.

IIRC at least one of the now OOP / banned Henry Zou authored books had a wet navy - including a carrier.

The Imperium has ships because the planets it owns have water but considering the AM have access to Navy fighters, gunships, and transports there isn't really a need for boats.
In one of the Ghosts novels the AM attack an island fortress with dropships that totally mess up and end up dropping hundreds of troops and vehicles into the sea.

At least one of the short stories contained battleships and one carrier but it was owned by the PDF.

As mentioned, nearly every wet-navy is going to be PDF.

There's a book where a sea navy is a big part of things. Forget the title, I have it somewhere. Basically they use battleships to periodically assault a massive coastal/support gun and then later the MC and regiment assault said ships. Was a good book, just can't remember the name and author.

Transporting ships off-world would be a lot of effort; any decent-sized ship would need some specialized shuttles to get into orbit and then take a lot of cargo space in spaceships, but I guess if the admech can move titan legions, they could move a navy...

I suppose it's not impossible that there are guard regiments dedicated to naval warfare. That's a bit of a niche role considering how and where the Imperium usually fights, but a proper navy could be useful in some theaters. At least, I'd say a whole fleet being lowered from orbit into the ocean sounds crazy enough for 40k.

I agree with others, probably infinitely more likely to be PDF vessels rather than AM ones.

However the 40k universe is huge, so I wouldn't say it's impossible to have naval AM assets. After all, Chimeras are amphibious!

However the 40k universe is huge, so I wouldn't say it's impossible to have naval AM assets. After all, Chimeras are amphibious!

I'm surprised we've never seen a D Day style novel with Chimeras spearheading an amphibious landing. Couple those Chimeras with hundreds of amphibious Gorgon's and we have ourselves a flashback to the start of Saving Private Ryan.

In terms of true waterborn navies, I definitely think those would be majority controlled PDF assets. With weapons ranging from Earthshaker equivalents in single, double, or triple mounts. To even macro batteries on the largest vessels (which makes me want to see a traitor sea navy try and duel a the space born Imperial navy with macro fire).

Though as others said, there problem is a minority of Guard regiments specialised in sea naval combat. With special dropships that go to water level and drop true naval vessels. It's crazy enough to be true in 40k.

Honestly I reckon Admech would be the ones to really have such a vessel. And to my mind they would go one of two routes. A big ass hovercraft, or more likely, the Cybran route from supcom2. Deployable spiderlegs so they can move their battleships on land.

Actually kinda curious there isn't a faction that does that in 40K at the moment. Offical model wise at least.

I think the assault on Phantine domes in Guns of Tanith is meant to reflect the d-day style forced invasion of heavily fortified “coastline”, although from the airborne assault side of things.

If memory serves, naval warfare was a major part of the Helsreach campaign during the 3rd War for Armageddon (albeit with the Imperium on the defending side of the equation).

The book Fire Warrior (which *almost* features no tau at all) takes place on a water world and features an imperial aquatic battleship. It's not hugely important to the plot, but it exists and (iirc) was either a guard or navy asset. It serves as the base of operations for a relatively minor character.

Given what a pain they presumably are to pick up and set down, I imagine that such assets are either built on the planet they're meant to be used on or else only get deployed once; probably to water worlds where you can expect them to be useful basically anywhere on the planet. I picture aquatic imperial guard forces basically being a mass of chimeras supported by aircraft and the occassional battle boat. Unless you're on a full on water world, you're really only using those vehicles to get onto the next chunk of ground and to support conflicts relatively close to shore.

The bridge map sounds really cool. A couple considerations:
* Maybe units with the Fly and Amphibious keywords (you'd have to assign Amphibious at your discretion) can stand off of the bridge?
* A 2,000 point 40k army is pretty small, all things considered. There are probably plenty of bridges in 40k that are easily wide enough to for an entire gaming table to fit on them several times over. So a bridge that's small enough to visibly be a bridge on your gaming table is probably a relatively small one.

Ciaphas Cain and a few other books for sure referenced seagoing ships existing, but they’ve all been commercial stuff like cargo boats or dredgers. That said I’m sure a blue water fleet exists in the imperium somewhere and that’d for sure fit the setting. Sounds like an awesome idea


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sterling191 wrote:
If memory serves, naval warfare was a major part of the Helsreach campaign during the 3rd War for Armageddon (albeit with the Imperium on the defending side of the equation).

You’re correct, the orks had submarines

I could totally see the Mechanicus and/or the logistical wing of the Navy having some ability to drop prefabricated floating platforms, so they can have things like temporary landing platforms, or a "pioneer" station for further construction and/or resource extraction on worlds where landmasses are few or inconvenient.

The Necron takeover of Damnos involved them opening an extra-dimensional sinkhole to drain Damnos' ocean and beach the Damnosin navy.

In one of the early War Of The Beast novels there's a wet navy, but it's PDF operated not Guard.