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Discussions of General Winter affecting Holy Terra now on the battlefield aside, how would you think the various races fight and deal with the real world logistical, tactical, and situational issues of fighting on a snow and mud covered winter battlefield? What races do you think would have more issues with the winter and what races do you think would be just fine fighting in the winter? (The obvious of course are the Space Wolves.)

Hmm interesting question! Some races would just ignore the problem, but that's not so interesting to talk about
Eldar and Tau skimmers would be super valuable I guess, not slowed down by the snow at all!

Orks and Tyranids don't care. For the former, a fight is a fight and the latter have rapid adaptability.
Generally speaking, the various Aeldari don't do logistics in the first place because Webway, so no real problems there.
The League's military elements are built to survive hostile mining environments so they're unlikely to suffer in artic or subzero environments.
T'au would be similar to humans except they wouldn't likely suffer the effects of bogging down in poor ground because of all their floaty vehicles.

 Kroem wrote:
Hmm interesting question! Some races would just ignore the problem, but that's not so interesting to talk about
Eldar and Tau skimmers would be super valuable I guess, not slowed down by the snow at all!

That is true, now the question is battery supply of said vehicles. If the Tau have super fuel reserves that are designed to last for months or not. Mostly because due to the coldness a normal human battery can lose charge in colder temperatures. Now we could just say space magic, hyper advanced technology, or just WAAAGH power but it is interesting to theorize never the less.


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 Gert wrote:
Orks and Tyranids don't care. For the former, a fight is a fight and the latter have rapid adaptability.
Generally speaking, the various Aeldari don't do logistics in the first place because Webway, so no real problems there.
The League's military elements are built to survive hostile mining environments so they're unlikely to suffer in artic or subzero environments.
T'au would be similar to humans except they wouldn't likely suffer the effects of bogging down in poor ground because of all their floaty vehicles.

Hmm, as an Ork player I could see morale being high even in colder temperatures. However, there is the issue of their trukks and wagons getting stuck in the mud or worse in rivers and huge snowbanks.

I also would presume that while yes the Leagues have high tech vehicles, they still would have to worry about gravity and well getting stuck in the mud as well.

As for Tau skimmers, that would perhaps depend entirely on the battery life of their devices? Batteries we have now tend to do poorly in extreme colder temperatures but then this is 40k.

Orks have been known to make modifications to their vehicles, I believe it was in a white scars novel they mentioned the orks having sleds attached, or just making snow jetskis. Most likely some of them would ape imperials like usual, making squig hide copies of winter gear. The Ghazgkull novel is decent enough for an extreme winter setting, by winter I mean a sun literally dying. When in doubt, hang out around the mek forges.

Nids would likely have an adaptation that makes their bodies run hotter, perhaps that would reduce the lifespan of their smaller gribblies though. Not that the average nig buggo has a huge lifespan anyway.

I imagine necrons would find it highly distasteful, preferring dry, smooth sand over the wet, inconsistent slush. But otherwise wouldn't be too slowed down.

Tau probably would set up heat towers if they are holding ground. Or wear increased snowgear if they are on the hunt. But considering their home planet has an arid climate I imagine them taking a while to adjust, or having a snowday when time allows.

Eldar are an interesting one, with such little body fat they'd feel the cold rather intensely, but probably have the tech to get by warm water heating within their bodysuits perhaps? Or they just send wraith constructs out to do all the work.

Votann would probably just grumble a whole lot and try to ignore it. Getting a bit of frostbite in the process.

I think Orks would sturggle in cold temperatures as well, they can't fight a snowdrift after all and I bet the boyz would start grumbling in the cold!

The fiction is surprisingly light on details of the Ork logistics corps, who exactly would look after an ammo/fuel dump? The runts would go rather crispy in the cold I think.
I like to think there is a type of Ork ice road trukker that just longs for delivering cargo and the open road.

 Kroem wrote:
I think Orks would sturggle in cold temperatures as well, they can't fight a snowdrift after all and I bet the boyz would start grumbling in the cold!

The fiction is surprisingly light on details of the Ork logistics corps, who exactly would look after an ammo/fuel dump? The runts would go rather crispy in the cold I think.
I like to think there is a type of Ork ice road trukker that just longs for delivering cargo and the open road.

Yeah, that's the question on how Ork fungus would deal with such cold temperatures. Now it could be their spores just seep down into the ground and settle like normal or it could be that it is a weak point for an Ork invasion that the Imperium may actually try to use infantry to deal against with, (because lasguns can be charged in your pants from what I've read and well their vehicles will suffer all the issues our modern day ones do). But, this could be where Guardsmen and heavy weapons teams may have an advantage.

But, it also depends on the constitution of the Orkoid biology, since you need more calories in the winter and well Orks need more calories than humans due to their size and activity.

I would say ammo runtz are a thing with gretchin getting lost in the snow, (to comedic effect on the writer I'd suppose).

That's a possibility, they just somehow mod their trukks to be useful on ice and snow. Would fit the Mekboyz's just fine.

Logistics is something GW generally doesn't really touch much on at all in Old World nor in 40K - beyond things like raiding logistical operations.


I'd expect Tyranids to be pretty good in cold conditions to start with. However the longer the battles would go on for the more cold-suited genes would appear in the massive creation of more Tyranids. As a result their performance to the cold of a specific world would improve the longer you fight them on it. So long as they've the biomass to create more Tyranids, they'd likely keep getting better and better.

They also have a major advantage in that they don't need logistical support like other factions. Furthermore they can terraform as they invade so they could potentially increase the cold as they terraform and thus make the situation worse for opponets and better for themselves.





Skimmer heavy factions would have a bonus in being able to move around over the snow; but would have the same issues as humans when it comes to walking through the snow and dealing with the associated risks - ice, frozen lakes etc...

That said they might have other issues with skimmers. Even if you can skim over the snow and ice, when you have to land or touch ground you might find it difficult.

 Overread wrote:
Logistics is something GW generally doesn't really touch much on at all in Old World nor in 40K - beyond things like raiding logistical operations.


I'd expect Tyranids to be pretty good in cold conditions to start with. However the longer the battles would go on for the more cold-suited genes would appear in the massive creation of more Tyranids. As a result their performance to the cold of a specific world would improve the longer you fight them on it. So long as they've the biomass to create more Tyranids, they'd likely keep getting better and better.

They also have a major advantage in that they don't need logistical support like other factions. Furthermore they can terraform as they invade so they could potentially increase the cold as they terraform and thus make the situation worse for opponets and better for themselves.





Skimmer heavy factions would have a bonus in being able to move around over the snow; but would have the same issues as humans when it comes to walking through the snow and dealing with the associated risks - ice, frozen lakes etc...

That said they might have other issues with skimmers. Even if you can skim over the snow and ice, when you have to land or touch ground you might find it difficult.

That's sort of bad from GW's part, as "Amateurs talk Strategy, Professionals talk Logistics" However, it could be just all magically handwaved or left to the reader to decide. Would be cool to have scenarios where both players are somehow hampered by their rolls and movements with weather conditions in game.

Yeah, it seems Tyranids would actually come out on top in this case. I feel Orks, humans (even space marine vehicles), and perhaps even Votann would suffer here. For Tau and Eldar it would all be based upon how well their batteries for their hovering skimmers can hold a charge and not crash in the colder weather. (I presume Ork batteries would last longer to to WAAAGH! energy in this case).

Daemons probably would be fine, not being 100% physical and in Khorne's case, literally on fire.

Space Marines have their own skimmers, but may rely on infantry and even wolves like the Space Wolves of Fenris. If anyone, the Space Wolves would be the most trained for this sort of warfare.

Genestealers would just wait out the cold for Spring, they have all the time in the world...

Demons on fire - instead of getting to walk on the hard ice and make fast progress, they are instead constantly being stalled by the ice melting and turning the ground in a quagmire around them!



GW are not alone in leaving out logistics. A lot of fantasy often leaves them out. Simply because a lot of stories often revolve around the armies and the battles - the interesting action bits - and less about the support train that keeps the army going. I think GW are worse in this regard simply because they don't sell support train models* so they've no reason to focus attention on them.

Heck its a huge annoyance of mine in Age of Sigmar where GW went even further to have armies like Stormcast be able to operate without them entirely. Meanwhile other armies seem to be able to march to war with only their soldiers and no support trains. In reality you'd imagine that armies in the Mortal Realms would have huge supply lines and supply problems when you consider the vast tracks of land they have to fight over and the huge variation in different realms if they go for inter-realm war. A faction used to the realm of Beasts might find the Realm of Fire super hard to contend with supply wise and have to bring even more supplies than normal along with them and be very vulnerable to supply chain raiding.


*honestly I think you tend to only see that represented on the battlefield with model collections for historical games and even then typically in the 6-20mm scales and the odd fantasy game

Jaredthefox92 wrote:
Hmm, as an Ork player I could see morale being high even in colder temperatures. However, there is the issue of their trukks and wagons getting stuck in the mud or worse in rivers and huge snowbanks.

I also would presume that while yes the Leagues have high tech vehicles, they still would have to worry about gravity and well getting stuck in the mud as well.

As for Tau skimmers, that would perhaps depend entirely on the battery life of their devices? Batteries we have now tend to do poorly in extreme colder temperatures but then this is 40k.

Vehicles might suffer sure but then Orks aren't going to rely on their transports or tanks as much as Imperial forces. So what it's a bit cold? There's a big scrap coming up and that'll get the blood pumping. If you and your lads get a bit muddy then you get a bit muddy, there are 'Umies to crump over there.
With the Leagues, I was more focused on the cold. Freezing temperatures and blizzards aren't going to be an issue for a faction with equipment that's designed to work in the most inhospitable conditions out there. If they can mine asteroids in zero-G then a cold winter isn't going to be much of a concern.
With the T'au, they're far beyond what modern humanity can produce in terms of energy production. Considering they have fusion weapons in abundance it wouldn't be a leap to suggest some sort of fusion generator in T'au vehicles or something similar.

Orks would vary depending on the group. some of them make extensive use of vehicles and transports to carry them to the fight.


That said they'd likely invent some kind of massive snowplough or a huge super heated flamethrower combine harvester!

I doubt winter is an issue, many planets will have atmosphere worse than what we call winter.

I think an interesting idea is does 40K terra even have winter. Do they have technologies that control weather and seasons?

The oceans are gone so is there even any humidity in the atmosphere and with all the powered technology I except the hives pump out so much heat the planets air is hot or has to be cooled.

Also in the year 40K the moon will be noticeably closer to the earth, and the sun might be slightly cooler but with all the added mass from materials brought from other planets the earths gravity might be stronger and might have moved a bit closer to the sun

I must say I'd like to see an Ork army on Ski-squigs now. Or Squig-Skis? Squig-boards? At least riding fluffy Yeti-Squigs?

The Imperial Guard and other human factions will be the most affected. The Guard does have specialist ice world regiments like the Logres regiments or Valhallan ice warriors, but there is every chance the Departmento Munitorum sends those guys to a desert and the battle on Glacier IV receives reinforcements from a steamy jungle world. There is specific cold-weather gear for Guardsmen (see the Cadian hostile-environment gear) but it might not always get issued. Some guard will have horrific, frozen campaigns in winters with inadequate and improvised gear.

Imperial vehicles are mostly tracked so will probably be ok for the most part. They appear to retain good operability in deep cold or even vacuum. I suspect mud in climates around freezing are a bigger impediment than snow.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I must say I'd like to see an Ork army on Ski-squigs now. Or Squig-Skis? Squig-boards? At least riding fluffy Yeti-Squigs?

The abominable snow squig

mrFickle wrote:
I doubt winter is an issue, many planets will have atmosphere worse than what we call winter.

I think an interesting idea is does 40K terra even have winter. Do they have technologies that control weather and seasons?

The oceans are gone so is there even any humidity in the atmosphere and with all the powered technology I except the hives pump out so much heat the planets air is hot or has to be cooled.

Also in the year 40K the moon will be noticeably closer to the earth, and the sun might be slightly cooler but with all the added mass from materials brought from other planets the earths gravity might be stronger and might have moved a bit closer to the sun

While I agree with the first 3 point, the 4th paragraph intrigues me. The moon is gradually receding from earth, and while the suns output is variable and will gradually dwindle, 40,000 years is insignificant on the scale of either of these mechanisms.

 Kroem wrote:
I think Orks would sturggle in cold temperatures as well, they can't fight a snowdrift after all and I bet the boyz would start grumbling in the cold!

The fiction is surprisingly light on details of the Ork logistics corps, who exactly would look after an ammo/fuel dump? The runts would go rather crispy in the cold I think.
I like to think there is a type of Ork ice road trukker that just longs for delivering cargo and the open road.

Orks are mentioned to be a persistent and serious threat on Valhalla (Russia in spaaaaaaaace for the Imperium). It specifically mentions having to constantly clear out ice-caves before the orks like to group up and fortify them for subsequent attacks.

Orks, such as they are, are unlikely to find any biome an actual hinderance. All the examples we have show them to not just be extremely capable of adapting to death worlds, but also fething loving it.

The Cain book Caves of Ice also depict Orks being quite happy in extremely low temperatures, even with minimal personal attire.

mrFickle wrote:
I doubt winter is an issue, many planets will have atmosphere worse than what we call winter.

I think an interesting idea is does 40K terra even have winter. Do they have technologies that control weather and seasons?

The oceans are gone so is there even any humidity in the atmosphere and with all the powered technology I except the hives pump out so much heat the planets air is hot or has to be cooled.

Also in the year 40K the moon will be noticeably closer to the earth, and the sun might be slightly cooler but with all the added mass from materials brought from other planets the earths gravity might be stronger and might have moved a bit closer to the sun

The moon recedes from the Earth, so in 40K the moon will be slightly further away.

The Custodes novels depict the outside Terran environment to be swelteringly hot. All the heat from body heat and industry builds up. I think some people have suggest in the past that kind of heat should not be survivable as the Earth should not be able to naturally radiate enough heat away. My headcanon is that the Adeptus Mechanicus has giant radiator towers reaching from the ground to space.

Orks are very hardy, but they do get impeded by environmental conditions to some extent. They can adapt very well overall but they probably don't operate at maximum efficiency in extreme environments. Of course, unaugmented humans are impaired to a greater extent.

Examples affecting Orks included the very fine particulates on Golgotha infiltrating Ork skin and making it less healthy, or the Seaon of Fire on Armageddon preventing Orks from conducting operations in the open. Particularly vicious blizzards can probably have similar effects.

Orks probably slow down when they first hit a cold environment, but likely adapt after a few days at most and get right back to krumpin.


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Iracundus wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
I doubt winter is an issue, many planets will have atmosphere worse than what we call winter.

I think an interesting idea is does 40K terra even have winter. Do they have technologies that control weather and seasons?

The oceans are gone so is there even any humidity in the atmosphere and with all the powered technology I except the hives pump out so much heat the planets air is hot or has to be cooled.

Also in the year 40K the moon will be noticeably closer to the earth, and the sun might be slightly cooler but with all the added mass from materials brought from other planets the earths gravity might be stronger and might have moved a bit closer to the sun

The moon recedes from the Earth, so in 40K the moon will be slightly further away.

The Custodes novels depict the outside Terran environment to be swelteringly hot. All the heat from body heat and industry builds up. I think some people have suggest in the past that kind of heat should not be survivable as the Earth should not be able to naturally radiate enough heat away. My headcanon is that the Adeptus Mechanicus has giant radiator towers reaching from the ground to space.

Yeah, Terra is a sweaty hellhole.

I could also imagine giant heat pumps concentrating the heat and using it to generate power of some kind, maybe for industrial processes.

As an aside, the amount of heat per second produced by a quadrillion humans is about the same order of magnitude as the total energy absorbed from the sun by earth per second (~approx 3 times larger though). Earth would also need to supply that energy to its humans daily though, so there is an interest in capturing as much as possible to recycle back into reagents that are edible or usable in industry.

I am sure it is fairly trivial for Imperial tech to handle that degree of heat excess.

I stand corrected, the moon is moving away from the earth.

But it certainly seems as there is no winter as we know it on 40K terra.

Of terra is a sweaty hell hole then i presume that power armour is air conditioning otherwise the custodes are going to have bad BO

Nah they're all good up in the Himalayas.

What about the people living at the bottom of the Mariana Trench?

mrFickle wrote:
What about the people living at the bottom of the Mariana Trench?

Mariana Valley, more like. Terra's oceans are canonically boiled away or chanelled, and the last one was literally stolen by a supervillain. The former Mariana Trench is probably the nastiest hive-sump in the galaxy or something like that

It’s an interesting point though, because if all the water is gone, unless a lot of additional atmosphere is added, then all the air will sink by several km.

Tyranids would adopt, but how. I have never seen any nids with fur, so probably not that. It would also mess with their flyer and burrower skills.

Anti freeze in the blood as some animals do? It would be beet, but many of those animals stil get frozen. (Some Turtles snap freeze and are fine afterwards.)

Increasing heat could work. It would eat up a lot of resources. But once you eat biomass post victory they would make a net positive.

Zoanthropes would probably psykick shield their brains. (Exposed brains look bad.)

How do the big void ships do it? A lot of fat, like a seal?

Thermal insulation (likely a super optimized version of blubber) and increased energy reserves.

As for void bio-ships, space is a complete different issue. Space isn't really cold, not as we understand cold, because vacuum doesn't have a temperature, and it is a pretty good insulator (the actual problem in space is the opposite, how to lose heat to not cook yourself).

Indeed. Convection is super efficient at transferring heat from objects in a fluid. Space doesn’t have that effect, it’s all radiation.

On Nids? You don’t necessarily need blubber or fur in the way regular flesh bags do.

Regular flesh bags are running the long game, focussed on surviving efficiently. Balancing calorific expenditure with the likelihood of replacing those calories through a slap up meal every now and again.

Tyranids are disposable creatures. With the fallen of both sides being recycled Time and again into new bio forms, that’s not as wasteful as it first sounds. And so for extremely cold weather? Just birth bugs with higher energy stores, and ramp up their metabolism so their exothermics take care of it.

Sure you’d want some insulation, no argument there. But being temporary beasties soon to be recycled regardless, you arguably don’t need them to survive those extremes for long.

But overall, every race now has either tech or toughness not to worry about arctic conditions too much. Indeed the humble Lasgun is an example of that. Usually cited as having No Moving Parts, they don’t have the same foibles as modern firearms when it comes to extremes of environment. Yes you’d still prefer the thing not to be overly hot or cold, but not to the degree we need to worry about it in today’s weapons.