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If it was about securing the port for more landings then they failed, didn't they? They destroyed the port.
Also, their action was ultimately futile as Vraks is now a dead planet. So they lost one fifth of their chapter and accomplished nothing.
Isn't that kinda the whole theme of 40k though?
It's WWI in space: the never-ending conflict where you lose a billion soldiers to barely move the frontline and conquer an objective of dubious strategic importance, then lose it again in the next battle. Rinse and repeat until everything has been destroyed so thoroughly that victory is meaningless.
Certainly. And that is why the answer to "Why Do Marines Matter?" is "They don't." The strategic goal of the Imperium is doomed to fail, it is one of the central pillars of the setting.
Not if you read the bolter porn.
Not if you look at the new fluff either. Primarchs are back, Chaos still can't conquer anything unless the moon is blue and the Imperiums finding new hoards of super super soldiers and resources.
I think sir you should sit down and re-read the new fluff.Ok first of all no they didn't conquer Cadia but they DESTROYED IT. that should suffice for Abaddon's goals yeah?
and let's take a look through the new background info in the core book.
page 51 Dark Imperium.
Now that messages could once again be sent through the Warp, Terra received such a backlog of shrieks that half the astropathic choir where driven insane. The survivors where appalled to discover how many planets, even on the terran side of the rift did not respond.
Now you're going to dismiss this as meaningless but they knew the situation would be bad given the astronomicon had stopped working for a bit and deamons had assaulted terra, but they where still shocked at how many worlds failed to respond and may have been lost. And it continues...
Slightly less then half of the one thousand space marine chapters remained unaccounted for, and no less then 12 Space Marine chapter planets where reported as destroyed during the Noctis Aeterina and the bitter campaigned that followed. Some Chapters like the White Consuls escaped the destruction of their fortress worlds. Others died to a man, as did the Sky Sentinals when their homeworld of Pranagar was overrun by none other then Magnus the Red
Yeah anyone claiming the great rift's formation was pointless needs to read that. It's formation dealt the Imperium a body blow, it likely oblitated a good 30-45% of the space marine chapters in existance. That's insane loses
Yes Gulliman's crusade liberated some of these worlds etc, but I garetee you it wasn't eneugh by far.
then let's move forward to page 53.
So did systems fall, creating the scourge systems. this trio of sickly systems had fallen to Nurgle
ohh look... CHAOS HAS CONQUERED SOMETHING. and It's worth noting this is actually a newish development. generally chaos goes in wrecks a world and retreats back into the Eye. we're actually seeing chaos seizing worlds.
Anyway I'm not going to go further. I've cited eneugh, there are more examples,
Chaos currently splits the entire Galaxy in half. Nothing stands able to stop Chaos just taking whatever they want wherever they want by numbers alone. So either they're incompetent, uninterested in conquest or just blind. The Great Rift is a bad joke.
Abbadon is lame but that's because he's a victim of GW's writing more than actual failings. Like the Primarchs.
and in many cases they did take teritory, (seriously you think the Scourge stars are alone?) but in many cases yes chaos IS unintreasted in taking territory.
Yet they spend so much time trying to take it. The situation Chaos is in simply doesn't match what they do.
tremere47-fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate, leads to triple riptide spam
"Chaos attacks a planet" =/ "chaos is trying to TAKE the planet" in a vast majority of the times we see chaos win they sacrifice the planets population, finish their mcguffin hunt, or whatever, and then leave the world alone, ashes in it's wake
Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two
BrianDavion wrote: "Chaos attacks a planet" =/ "chaos is trying to TAKE the planet" in a vast majority of the times we see chaos win they sacrifice the planets population, finish their mcguffin hunt, or whatever, and then leave the world alone, ashes in it's wake
You can just swap words around in that case. Most of the planets are fine and aren't that effected by the Rift because half the galaxy being unreachable is largely the same as before. There's no new massive swathes of devastation just a weird rift that they could have made better honestly.
tremere47-fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate, leads to triple riptide spam
A Town Called Malus wrote: Wyzilla, they may be shipping trillions of tons of stuff. That doesn't mean it is going where it is actually needed because somewhere down the line someone put a decimal in the wrong place and nobody ever questions it because to question the bureaucracy is heresy.
You are ignoring one of the core themes of the Imperium, that its bureaucracy is inflexible, slow and opaque and regularly results in mistakes (such as sending the imperial guard and navy to the wrong planetary systems in response to calls for help) in order to argue that the Imperium actually works.
The Imperium doesn't work. That is the point of the setting.
No the issue is that you are incapable of using logical thought lol, nevermind that those shipments do get to where they're supposed to be per author.
"The Imperium doesn't work" is a false statement as it cannot coexist with the fact "the Imperium has stood for ten thousand and two hundred years". If the Imperium were incapable of working it wouldn't last longer than all of recorded human history, but has however, and even has a better track record than every single modern civilization. If the Imperium was a "bad" civilization or an "incompetent" one, that would mean every single civilization ever erected by humankind from the Han Dynasty to the modern Anglosphere is a drooling invalid woefully inferior in comparison considering neither have existed anywhere close to the same period of time, scale, or endured similar amounts of suffering while shrugging it off with indifference. I would suggest you cease taking memes as facts and for all future posts post actual quotes backing up your absurd ideas. Because I would quite like to see this evidence where most imperial shipments don't make it on time, even though were this to happen the Imperium would literally die in months from starvation. This is the background section after all. It helps to have an actual grasp of the background by reading the Black Library and supplemental material en masse.
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“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
The IOM stands despite itself is a core theme of the setting. Like almost any fictional setting trying to use real world logic will make the setting fail apart rather quickly. We have numerous examples of the Imperial bureaucrats screwing up badly, hell the inquisition have a whole Ordo dedicated to trying to reduce/catch those F ups. Marines are more or less free from all that nonsense. A chapter can move at lighting speed compared to the sprawling (by design) mess that is the Admin state.
Lets look at this from a best case scenario. A random planet is attacked by X force or has suffered a rebellion. They try to contain it themselves but the Governor and PDF leaders are competent and realistic in how the battle is going. They jointly agree they will need help. They use an Astropath to send a message to the larger IOM, which gets through with completely accurately with no distortion or interference.
The receiving end moves quickly to rally the relevant forces needed to help said planet. They send out further messages to rally both a force of IG and IN which are under separate commands and are not supposed to coordinate to closely due to post heresy doctrines. This goes well and the needed forces are mustered quickly and efficiently and the ships take off into the warp. That trip goes smoothly, no ships are lost and they arrive at the right coordinates with no time nonsense that can happen during a warp jump. They begin to take the needed steps to save this world.
Alternatively, The governor and the PDF leaders are vain and incompetent and wait far to long to send out a call for help. Said message ends up going out distorted to a far flung world and the receiving end has to work to figure out exactly what it says. This leads to delays on mustering forces and makes rallying the proper forces take far longer than it otherwise would. Said forces think they are given the correct coordinates but do to warp storms loss much of their number and ultimately end up in the wrong system due to a clerical error because a low level adept dropped some papers and the wrong coordinates ended up in an admirals hand. As an added bonus they end up popping out of the warp 10 years before they left which now has the added bonus of causing a time F up for the Inquisition to sort out.
The general IOM response is some were between those two scenarios and that's were Marines come in. They can cut out most of the bureaucratic nightmare that is such a big empire and move quickly to help sure up the gaps. The first DOW and Space Marine cover this perfectly, when you need speed you need marines.
They can't apply enough force as individual chapters. A good gsc uprising would wipe out multiple groups of 1k marines. Gws scale is unbelievable even if they brute it with author fiat. We dont even need to get into rock saws being better than marine melee weapons.
Martel732 wrote: They can't apply enough force as individual chapters. A good gsc uprising would wipe out multiple groups of 1k marines. Gws scale is unbelievable even if they brute it with author fiat. We dont even need to get into rock saws being better than marine melee weapons.
One I'll concede that GW sucks at numbers, but stop trying to port table top rules into background arguments, especially when table top numbers and abilities are driven just as much by sales needs as background.
I agree the two have a gulf between them but that is largely down to GW knowing that if I can sell you five space marines or you can run a GSC/Ork/IG army that will need hundreds of models then they won't last long as a company.
Again I don't get why you play this game or continue to interact with this setting. You claim to have played for a long while but don't seem to like any aspect of it or enjoy your own army.
I used to. It was less aggravating in the 90s. The more detail gw has filled in, the dumber the setting has gotten. Underscored by marines being a poor list in the game, which is functionally far more important than bolter porn.
I don't get why bladestorm exists but bolters get nothing. It's the polar reverse of the bolter porn: total neutering.
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Martel732 wrote: I used to. It was less aggravating in the 90s. The more detail gw has filled in, the dumber the setting has gotten. Underscored by marines being a poor list in the game, which is functionally far more important than bolter porn.
I don't get why bladestorm exists but bolters get nothing. It's the polar reverse of the bolter porn: total neutering.
I agree that bolters need some kind of AP ability or plus damage back. While I like the changes to the AP system over all they really stress how limited the D6 system is. I'm hoping that the new Apoc using a d10 might be a sign that GW might switch over to that over an even higher dice.
Thats just the tip. BA are poor at cc in 8th ed, ig have tanks that shoot better than marine tanks as well as a virtual monopoly on indirect, there is no effective way to kill chaff, etc. S5 -1 ap high rof is better at than a lascannon most of the time.
Looking at units like grotesques, bullgryns, wraiths, etc there is no difference between a marine and a guardsmen. Marines do nothing well except die and stand in bubbles. Maybe the fluff is updated, but i dont recall bubbles or being little bitches anywhere in marine lore. And yet, my one wound dc guy is a little bitch. These other units arent little bitches. They have chosen specifically marines to not just be a bit toned down, but be an embarassment.
Also, id like to point out that all this gak that xenos get showered with is out of their lore. But marines need toned down? No one else does?
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Martel732 wrote: But why are things above AND below both better?
Ask GW. Bring it up in another Dakka forum, if you feel you need to discuss it that badly.
Just don't bring it up in BACKGROUND forum where it has no business being.
this, please please please martel, quit talking about the rules. it might shock you but the lore and the rules are two differant subjects. I know people who read the books, follow the lore etc whom have never played 40k and never will (despite my attempts to get them into it )
Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two
Martel732 wrote: They can't apply enough force as individual chapters. A good gsc uprising would wipe out multiple groups of 1k marines. Gws scale is unbelievable even if they brute it with author fiat. We dont even need to get into rock saws being better than marine melee weapons.
Sure, but it works out when you realise protagonists roll 6s and mooks roll 1s.
Martel732 wrote: But why are things above AND below both better?
Ask GW. Bring it up in another Dakka forum, if you feel you need to discuss it that badly.
Just don't bring it up in BACKGROUND forum where it has no business being.
this, please please please martel, quit talking about the rules. it might shock you but the lore and the rules are two differant subjects. I know people who read the books, follow the lore etc whom have never played 40k and never will (despite my attempts to get them into it )
They shouldn't be. It's like assigning the incorrect firepower ratings in a wwii game because a ruleset doesnt have to follow the "lore".
Anyway in the background, common humans are able to wipe out discovered genestealer cults without taking drastic losses. They take casualties, but not like throwing rivers of guardsman meat at the problem type casualties. I'd expect that if the marines know there's a GSC they wouldn't necessarily take thousands of casualties clearing out a cult. The main advantage GSC has is surprise and the ability to hide. Once they lose that they're at a bit of a disadvantage, much like how a dark eldar strike force caught flat-footed is going to take massive losses against a similar guard or marine force.
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The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
GSCs in the codex, as I understand it, represent, for the most part, highly orginized late cycle GSCs that have suborned a sizable part of the planets populace and infanstructure.
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Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two
Right. I'm mostly arguing that that's a pretty rare occasion. And that would likely result in much more than a chapter of space marines being sent-- detachments form several chapters alongside hundred or thousands of guard regiments at the minimum!
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The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
Because in the lore they are the elite of the elite, equipped with exquisite weaponry, mentally hardened, with centuries of experience each.
A small demi-company can in theory descend on a world and turn the tide of the campaign with a mere 50 men. They can suddenly storm an enemy flagship and cut off the head of an invading snake, saving a planet long before the Imperial Fleet rumbles into town.
In lore, a pair of Marines working in tandem could hunt an entire bog standard AM regiment through a cityscape... and then in another book a squad might die to an ambush of GSC. So it's ups and downs.
If you mention second edition 40k I will find you, and I will bore you to tears talking about how "things were better in my day, let me tell ya..." Might even do it if you mention 4th/5th/6th WHFB
Martel732 wrote:It's like assigning the incorrect firepower ratings in a wwii game because a ruleset doesnt have to follow the "lore".
Yeah, that's EXACTLY what it's like.
Regardless if you think that it "shouldn't" be like that, here is still not the place to discuss it.
bouncingboredom wrote:Why do Marines matter?
Because in the lore they are the elite of the elite, equipped with exquisite weaponry, mentally hardened, with centuries of experience each.
A small demi-company can in theory descend on a world and turn the tide of the campaign with a mere 50 men. They can suddenly storm an enemy flagship and cut off the head of an invading snake, saving a planet long before the Imperial Fleet rumbles into town.
In lore, a pair of Marines working in tandem could hunt an entire bog standard AM regiment through a cityscape... and then in another book a squad might die to an ambush of GSC. So it's ups and downs.
Exactly. The lore tells us they can do these things, and therefore, they can.
Bobthehero wrote: The lore also show us they can't do that, so they can't?
No, it shows us that some marine fared well, and others fared poorly. Books tend to focus on extraordinary circumstances. In one extraordinary circumstance, they might be capable of 'X'. But that doesn't mean 'X' is expected or part of their MO. Not every ex-spec ops (or whatever) is Rambo. Rambo is Rambo, and even then he probably had a string of good luck.
Bobthehero wrote: The lore also show us they can't do that, so they can't?
Yes, it does. Marines, much like a lot of 40k lore, exists in such as way that there are two answers, and both are "correct" and "canon". You need to use mental gymnastics to basically say "Marines are simultaneously capable, and not capable, of doing these things".
However, in the grand scheme of things, it's very clear that in the majority of cases, Space Marines *do* pull of these incredible feats. It's not to say they can't fail (evidenced by their failures), but they succeed more often than not - however, in the wider scope of 40k, even their successes, which are things no other force could do to the same degree (again, not saying other forces "can't do it"), aren't enough to fight off everything else.
That's why the Marines, good as they are, need the rest of the Imperium, much like the Imperium needs them.