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Does the Imperium ever have wargames?

Or is there really no time for such things, they train you and ship you?

IIRC, wargames were one of the scenarios given in the Witch Hunter codex as to why two Imperial forces would be fighting against each other.

Would that be to the death? Or were they using actual flashlights to fight?

In the grim dark future of the 41st millennium no one has time for games!

I believe you are confusing wargames with a crusade, I don't think they really have time as a few weeks of training is perfectly fine to tell a man to point and shoot his flashlight at something till it dies or he does. I am sure the PDF do since they are the best a planet has to offer, but I doubt Guardsmen do.

Space Wolves do wargames all the time, in the nude.

I can't see any reason not to have wargames. True, for every one professional Guard regiment, you have ten that are lead by General Melchett types, but units trained in certain types of combat would certainly need to keep up their regimens in order to stay in top condition.

I'd like to see Vendettas/Valkyries duke out like top gun. Or watch Ordnance Batteries try to see who's a better shot.

The 5 main Imperial military forces (Guard, Navy, Astartes, SoB, Titans) all train, but the Imperial is very rigidly segregated bureaucratically and not much joint training/exercises are done. Space Marines in particularly would probably be too busy to "waste" their time having wargames with Guard regiments.

In the military a Wargame is a theoretical exercise conducted around a table to discuss the pros and cons of a plan in order to find it's weaknesses and adapt it before putting it into action.

I think you're talking about exercises...

Hmm, mainly the whole wargames/exercises is for helping me determine fluff, so when I have skirmishes with my brothers army (also IG) I can go about a Battle Report as if it were Non-lethal practice.

Transport ships contain training fields so regiments can practice while in transit. The Imperium does train its soldiers, contrary to popular stupidity.

Given warp travel can take weeks or sometimes months they have plenty of time to train. A few weeks is actually comperable to basic training for most modern military forces.

Personally, I do not think that the Imperial Guard as a whole would regularly employ the concept of war games. Regiments are raised, shipped to the battlezone, fight, and then immediately travel to the next one. Only when a Veteran Regiment becomes a garrison force could I imagine them actually having the time for such intricate maneuvers. And whilst it is true that, as Grey Templar noted, the IG does a sort of flash-training for the duration of a ship's passage to the Warp, I doubt that the cargo hold of your average Navy transport would lend itself well for full-scale battle simulation. Rather, the time will be used for basic training, learning lasgun operation and military discipline as well as the chain of command. War games are, in my opinion, just a whole different level requiring many kilometers of available space for proper maneuvering, as well as suitable terrain and environmental conditions that actually resemble an average battle. How many times are your Imperial Guardsmen going to fight in the corridors of a starship?

Planetary Defence Forces, however, are a different thing. In the time they spend as PDF on their own world, before they are tithed to the Munitorum, a regiment would have all the time and the landscape they need for some proper simulations, should their commanders feel so inclined (some nobles might feel parades are more important, and let's not even discuss feral worlders). I vaguely even recall this being mentioned for the Cadian Interior Guard (or rather the planet in general), although I'd have to re-read the Codex EoT to be sure.

All of the above is merely extrapolation from GW's own material, though, not including any of the licensed fiction. In this regard, the scope of the setting is vast enough that minor deviancies from the standard could easily be accomodated even without turning into notable contradictions. For example, if you really do want to hold a war game, perhaps your regiment actually does have some "downtime" after culmination of a major campaign as new orders have not arrived yet (interstellar communications can be a bit unreliable), so instead of having their troopers lie around and do nothing, the commanders of two allied regiments decide they'll stage a sim for good sport. Perhaps they were fighting alongside each other and are on good terms. Or perhaps there's a bit of competition going on between their leaders, spilling over into the lower ranks. Sounds good?

Coolyo294 wrote:IIRC, wargames were one of the scenarios given in the Witch Hunter codex as to why two Imperial forces would be fighting against each other.

No, every scenario there was about the Ordo Hereticus / Sisters of Battle purging the other faction for treason, insubordination, genetic deviancies, heresy, or just to make sure.

It's something Andy Hoare even commented on in the Designer's Notes that were published in the White Dwarf.

Harriticus wrote:Space Marines in particularly would probably be too busy to "waste" their time having wargames with Guard regiments.

Unless it's the Mentor Legion - if one would still believe in their old fluff. Sadly there does seem to be some discrepancy in newer material.

Cadia and the DKoK do conduct wargames on their home planets. And they do it with live rounds. Yes, people die during them.

Obligatory.

(that's something I would find far more believable on a starship, too, by the way - some sort of obstacle course exercise rather than full-out war games)

Picture is broken, I am sad

Dammit, why are people so unsocial about sharing their hotlinked images?

Fortunately, the mighty Google provides. Though it's a bit smaller now.

The Imperium definitely has wargames. It's just, in these games, they use live ammunition. And, and, they use real people. And they fight... in real cities, with real citizens in them not knowing what the feth is going on.

But no, in Malleus Eisenhorn notes at one point while on Cadia that he can hear the live-fire wargames that the Cadians are having in some snowy tundra-esque place on the planet. So yes, the Imperium does have wargames. The Ghosts also conduct live-exercises (albeit not live-fire) as well.

In Priests of Mars there are a series of very large wargames involving the IG forces, the Skitarii, and Black Templars on board the Ark Mechanicus they are traveling on/with.

In Dead Sky\Black Sun (Ultramarines Omnibus Book 3) there are wargames. In transit to Cadia, two Ultramarines were training in a hall with a Maccrage regiment. There was terrain to fight in and servitor targets popped out of doors\windows etc. Then the Gellar field failed, the ship was invaded by daemons, and the floor ate the regiment. See, you can have grimdark even when it's not a live fire exercise.

The Tau regularly engage in wargames. If you're looking for some sort of Halo 4 inspired digital wargames, you'd certainly find it among the Tau forces. As for the Imperials - not sure.

Some regiments do. The beginning of the novel Guns of Tanith is about IG troopers training for a mission that involves dropping into a city and fighting at night, so it begins with them jumping off scaffolding then fighting using dummy weapons with the lights off. I think they did that in the cargo bay of their troopship. However, that might have been a one-off due to the specialised nature of the mission in that book; I don't think it mentions whether they go in for wargames regularly.

FearTheHappyChair wrote:In Dead Sky\Black Sun (Ultramarines Omnibus Book 3) there are wargames. In transit to Cadia, two Ultramarines were training in a hall with a Maccrage regiment. There was terrain to fight in and servitor targets popped out of doors\windows etc. Then the Gellar field failed, the ship was invaded by daemons, and the floor ate the regiment. See, you can have grimdark even when it's not a live fire exercise.

I think there may be a few misconceptions here about what a war game is? From my own understanding, they would be large scale manoeuvres requiring lots of natural space and involving multiple units simulating combat against each other. Not just a couple guys getting handed a gun and shooting at targets on a range or obstacle course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_exercise

War game = simulated war. Not just an exchange of weapons fire. Unit movement, deployment, securing areas, laying bridges, requesting artillery support, engaging opposing forces, evacuating simulated casualties ... all of the stuff you'd get to see during a real full-scale battle. Hence my reservations about this stuff occurring during Warp transit.

The thing with Krieg and Cadian casualities is more to do with the fact that the US suffered far more causalities in the training leading up to the Gulf-war than any hilarious or brutal reasons the fans can give us. It's that that forms the basics of the thought.

 Lynata wrote:

FearTheHappyChair wrote:In Dead Sky\Black Sun (Ultramarines Omnibus Book 3) there are wargames. In transit to Cadia, two Ultramarines were training in a hall with a Maccrage regiment. There was terrain to fight in and servitor targets popped out of doors\windows etc. Then the Gellar field failed, the ship was invaded by daemons, and the floor ate the regiment. See, you can have grimdark even when it's not a live fire exercise.

I think there may be a few misconceptions here about what a war game is? From my own understanding, they would be large scale manoeuvres requiring lots of natural space and involving multiple units simulating combat against each other. Not just a couple guys getting handed a gun and shooting at targets on a range or obstacle course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_exercise

War game = simulated war. Not just an exchange of weapons fire. Unit movement, deployment, securing areas, laying bridges, requesting artillery support, engaging opposing forces, evacuating simulated casualties ... all of the stuff you'd get to see during a real full-scale battle. Hence my reservations about this stuff occurring during Warp transit.

Considering that the Imperium probably engages in city fights just as often as fights on natural terrain, I would think having wargames in a simulated city environment would be very useful.

And when you consider the size of imperial transport ships I could easily see them having a simulated urban training facility.

But ... just urban warfare, for all regiments? Even horse-mounted Rough Riders, armoured columns and Basilisk batteries?

I could see it for the line infantry, but still ...
Plus, you'd have to slap this on top of the many weeks of basic training. In lots of cases, the troopers would simply lack the time, unless they skip out on other valuable lessons.

Eh, interpretations, I guess. Not saying it couldn't be right, I'm just not convinced.

I doubt artillery or armor conducts any sort of life fire while aboard ship.

Those regiments are valuable enough to the Imperium to actually train them while planetside.