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 Overread wrote:
Another point to consider is the size of a planet, or even just one battlefield on a planet. They are big.


A handful of Space Marines can destroy powerful targets and take on armies, but only if those armies are funnelled into a chokepoint like how the famous 300 Spartans held off a whole army.

If instead you've got a huge battlefield with long front lines, you are going to need way more troops to secure that. Otherwise a smart commander would just run around and away from the Marines.



Then you've occupation and defence. You can't just destroy and army and that's it, you've got to secure and manage key infrastructure points; manage the remaining population; protect key points and more. Long term you also have to defend huge areas.




The guard are essential for so much of the war machine to function.

As said above the Space Marines are a surgical tool. They are fantastic at what they do, but they have their limits and where those limits are is where the guard steps in.



Not to mention, again as noted above, many worlds and wars will never see a Space Marine. We see them a lot in stories and on the table; but in the reality of the setting just seeing a Marine would be an amazing thing for most people; let alone seeing a company of them in battle.

I fully agree but in reverse. The guard (alongside imperial navy) does literally almost ALL the job of conquering and fighting major battles across the galaxy.

If you need just a relatively peaceful planet be garrisoned, you have PDF.

If you need extra punch to help the guard in a major conflict, you normally call Sororitas, Adeptus Mechanicus or perhaps a full space marine chapter or two.

But normally, space marines are just to go into a conflict, do specific objectives and move one to other conflict. They'll never win wars by themselves, thats what guard/navy is for. Marines being written as they are is just pure combination of propaganda, plot armor and literature licenses. In reality, a regular space marine will have a hard time dealing with elite xenos units like aeldari aspect warriors, necron Skorpekh Destroyers, ork nobz, genestealers... only these guys are usually VASTLY more numerous than space marines.

Not only that, even at doing what space marines excel, as an scalpel to take out a leader, its not a certainty enemy faction will simply crumble. 40k morale is not like Fantasy undead, where you take the necromancer leader and the whole army crumbles in dust. Thats just not how it works. There's a high chance that even if space marines succeed at their objective, its just barely meaningless unless you have a guardsmen regiment to punch hard and fast right next to them.