Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Endriu Death Coy wrote:
That's not realistic then. I can see the guard getting no orbital as the navy is a separate force, but the Marines orbital is integral

No, in any large invasion the Guards get more ship support then the SM, the navy is a fair size larger. If the Marines have orbital, so do the Guard. The OP took it out.

Also, On spykers...nope IG has 10'000 times more psykers , at lest. they may be weaker one on one...but they simply out power the SM psykers as a group many times over.

I think that the SM would win. First of the IG player would have a lot of clutter on his side of the table, and every time he moves a guy he'll knock another one over and snap of a limb, while some would ignore this and continue playing, but the IG player is one of those people who can't stand broken models on the board, so soon the IG's army would slowly fall apart. I assure you this is true.

If space marine librarians are allowed to the fight then I vote space marines. Unless the guard somehow manages to bring some alpha level psyker that manages to kill the marines without blowing up the entire planet.

Quality over quantity. The space marines have better generals, better tactics, better equipment. They are almost all battle hardened by centuries of service. This isn't gun line warfare here...the marines wouldn't just stand still and go headlong into the guard lines if they were so vastly outnumbered,

This is all assuming adequate supplies for the astartes

 Endriu Death Coy wrote:
That's not realistic then. I can see the guard getting no orbital as the navy is a separate force, but the Marines orbital is integral



Automatically Appended Next Post:
But the Librarians would screw the Guard over big time anyway, so bye bye guard.

There are billions to trillions of Guard. They are literally uncountable in size.

So I highly doubt even the few thousand Librarians could /really/ affect them before an actual rain of artillery fire reduces their hemisphere to dust.

But yeah, I also have to agree with Bludbaff, there is really no contest.

 Hunterindarkness wrote:
Also, On spykers...nope IG has 10'000 times more psykers , at lest. they may be weaker one on one...but they simply out power the SM psykers as a group many times over.

What do you base this on?

We don't know how many Sanctioned Psykers the Imperial Guard have, and almost all are far less than a Librarian.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Hunterindarkness wrote:
Also, On spykers...nope IG has 10'000 times more psykers , at lest. they may be weaker one on one...but they simply out power the SM psykers as a group many times over.

What do you base this on?

We don't know how many Sanctioned Psykers the Imperial Guard have, and almost all are far less than a Librarian.

They are rare, like Vanquishers and Plasma Guns. Even if one in 100,000 Imperial Guard regiments had one.... we are talking about at least a million of them, probably a lot more. I don't think you understand just how much firepower the entire Imperial Guard can muster. It's enough to make all those chief librarians look insignificant.

Marines would be squished like a bug. No drop pods, no deep striking terminators, no orbital bombardments, outnumbered by millions to one. The guard might take some casualties, but when you have trillions upon trillions of guard, the 10-100 million guardsmen you would lose taking out the marines is a small price to pay.

On a more realistic note though. the single thing that makes the space marines so effective is that they have their own dedicated fleet so they can redeploy their entire strength very easily. The imperial guard, due to a small thing called the Horus Heresy have to wait for the imperial navy, who are never on time.

Even if the space marines had their ships, there are these things caled planetary defences, and of course, the imperial navy. and while the imperial navy might not outnumber the space marine fleet quite so steeply as the guard outnumber the marines. you are still looking at the prospect of a very short, one sided battle that sees the space marines annihilated.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

They are rare, like Vanquishers and Plasma Guns. Even if one in 100,000 Imperial Guard regiments had one.... we are talking about at least a million of them, probably a lot more. I don't think you understand just how much firepower the entire Imperial Guard can muster. It's enough to make all those chief librarians look insignificant.

I don't think you understand how powerful a Kine Shield powered by every Chief Librarian in existence would be.

The routine Thousand Sons-powered shield over Tizca withstood a full Space Wolf orbital bombardment.

Terrestrial weaponry does not quite match up to that.

Studio Fluff puts Marines at a 10-1 ratio. Mainly due to their surgical nature. Take that away and it becomes a conventional war, and which organization does the IoM use for conventional warfare? The Imperial Fething Guard. Now back to that 10-1, that is the offical ratio, but lets make it bigger, every the marines are worth 100-1. Now total marines is about a million. (1.000x1.000= 1.000.000) Which mean that the Marines kill 100 Million guardsman. Pretty high number right? Not for the guard, you may be killed 0.01% of the total available guardsmen. That is assuming that the marines are 1. Movie Marines, and 2. Able to deep strike and use drop pods.

TLR Space Marines kill 0.01% of the Guardsmen and then get slaughtered.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

They are rare, like Vanquishers and Plasma Guns. Even if one in 100,000 Imperial Guard regiments had one.... we are talking about at least a million of them, probably a lot more. I don't think you understand just how much firepower the entire Imperial Guard can muster. It's enough to make all those chief librarians look insignificant.

I don't think you understand how powerful a Kine Shield powered by every Chief Librarian in existence would be.

The routine Thousand Sons-powered shield over Tizca withstood a full Space Wolf orbital bombardment.

Terrestrial weaponry does not quite match up to that.

Okay, so, if 1000 chief librarians is better than the Imperial Guard in it's entirety why don't they forgoe the guard and astartes and just train an army of chief librarian? Why don't they gather 100,000 Chief Librarians and have them exterminate the Tau and the Orks? Hell, using all those Librarians we'd be safe from the Tyranids too! Trillions of Lifeforms? No problem! A Kine Shield would mean Keine Problem!

Because psykers are incredibly rare, psykers with that potential are even more rare, psykers of that potential who can become Marines are rarer still, and even if all those prequisites are met, it takes many years of battle experience to reach that level.

Kine shields also would not keep the Orks or Tyranids from physically entering.

Also, this being a single planet makes the concentration of Librarians far more potent.

If I remember right. there are tank shells and artillary shells ment to scramble the brains of psykers. I think either the entire warhead has some psyker crystal in it or some sort of systems that severly interfere with psyker energy.

They are given on special notice and are extreamly rare. but only to select units. but I would imagine in a battle of such scale, they would say feth it all and see the librarian and load all rounds and turn the libriarians brains to jelly with a single earth shattering salvo.

plus "rare" in the IG means theres a couple million plus of them. Baneblades may be "rare" but there are more Baneblades then there are Space Marines.

If we allow orbital weaponry for the Space Marines, I have a question: Would the Guard have access to Surface to Orbit weaponry? Aren't Imperator Titans able to pull that duty?

There's a million guardsmen to every space marine, so unless every space marine in that army has a million bolter rounds and a million to one kill/death ratio, then those SMs are SCREWED, especially considering the superior armour that is available to the IG..

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
If we allow orbital weaponry for the Space Marines, I have a question: Would the Guard have access to Surface to Orbit weaponry? Aren't Imperator Titans able to pull that duty?

Only if it was already installed on the planet I would think but I could be wrong. If I recall correctly there's a passage somewhere that says Imperator Titans can trade fire with ships in orbit or some such, but they're unlikely to be capable of repelling Battle Barges and the like. Aside from that Imperator Titans belong to the Adeptus Mechanicus not the Imperial Guard.

Also I now keep on wondering how 100,000 Chief Librarians would indeed stack up against the Tau considering they have no Psychic defences.

Titans are not involved in this fight. I've figured out a more reasonable argument, SM can use all CODEX units. Only units from codex SM, BT, GK, BA, DA, and SW. They can have support by drop pods, but the battlecruisers in the sky can have no other role in the battle other than to launch drop pods and thunderhawks. (so basically the pods and ships come from nowhereness in the sky)
No forge world units are allowed, but the apocalypse units (for each seperate faction, no complete IOM units) can be used.

On the other hand, the Guard will get all the apocalypse units as well, but no navy battlecruisers or ships like that, only aircraft.

This is not a space battle and also no orbital bombardments can be shot, so no exterminatus.

We're just assuming this battle takes place on a never ending plain (maybe a chaos dimension), but anyhow, a planet so large it can hold the whole IG.

Also, in the black templar codex, it does say their numbers are have been counted and estimated past 10,000 and they do not adhere to the codex astartes.

Last but not least, lets not forget, the grey knights (and ghost knights too) and the legion of the damned are fighting in this battle.

There are around 1 million space marines, some chapters are over their established strength, some are under. thats 1 space marine per planet in the imperium. assuming that the imperial guard numbers 1 regiment per planet, which is vastly understating their strength, then they have 1 million regiments, which is, at 5000 men per regiment, a low ball figure of 5 billion guardsmen. lets say half are infantry regiments, thats a mere 2.5 billion guardsmen, meaning in infantry alone they have a numerical advantage of 2500:1 in infantry.

The imperial guard will also have tens of thousands of regiments of tanks, so certainly they have more Leman russ tanks than the marines have marines, and probably the guard have more superheavies than the marines have marines.

What the Space marines will be able to achieve is superior force concentration, with a fluffwise advantage of 10-100 times greater force concentration due to equipment, they will have the striking power of 10-100 million guardsmen, which is to say a marine will on average kill 10-100 guardsmen before he is himself killed. if we take the higher figure of 100, that means the space marines will kill 100 million guardsmen. which leaves the imperial guard with: 2.4 billion guardsmen, and the same proportion of their armoured strength, and artillery intact. or to put it bluntly:

Space marines suffer 100% casualties, imperial guard suffer 4% casualties.

Taking the marines vaunted air power into consideration, the imperial guard certainly has access to more than a million aircraft from the navy. has entire regiments (probably thousands of them) of hydra flak tanks, thats death to thunderhawks, and drop pods

Space marines have the force concentration to knock out isolated units, i would bet on a chapter versus an IG regiment. but in this scenario, each marine would have to take out a whole regiment to win the battle. Space marines dont have the numbers of men or material, or the ability to replace their losses fast enough to realistically threaten the imperial guard.

There is a reason the imperial guard is the main fighting force of the imperium, after all

There's more Baneblade (and variants) than there are marines.

My vote is for IG

I want to say that the IG would win, but it would be a close run. Teleporters such as terminators and drop pod dreads could kill artillery, and SM can thunderfire cannon spam. IG would only win through numbers

The thing is that the arty gun would probably have more lascannon guarding them than there are marines avaibable, its that ridiculous.

Yeah but the Librarians could destroy millions of Imperial Guardsmen on their own, combining their power, they raze the planet to the ground.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Yeah but the Librarians could destroy millions of Imperial Guardsmen on their own, combining their power, they raze the planet to the ground.

I think you vastly overestimate the sheer power of a thousand Librarians compared to trillions of Guard and millions of tanks.

Millions of Guard on their own? That's just nuts. Not every Librarian is a Chief Librarian, and the odds that a single Psyker can kill a million men is before being shot is dang near impossible. They aren't gods.

Even if they combine their power, what are the odds that trillions of weaponry can't bring them down? Again, they aren't gods. They can do a lot of damage, but they can't do that much.

Plus, even if each Librarian could kill a million Guardsmen... there's still untold billions possible trillions left. And by the time he has finished with those guardsmen it'll be literally raining artillery shells on them.

My vote goes for IG.

You can say quality over quantity, but then I'd say you underestimate the quantity at hand. Vastly more guard than bolt shells, hugely more IG tanks than SM ones, and trillions more guard than marines. The librarians would eventually starve, sleep or be destroyed by a rain of shells and their shields fall before a fraction of the guard would be gone, the Space marines would be obliterated into dust and pulp by artillery.

The IG are infintely better than SMs any day of the week

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Yeah but the Librarians could destroy millions of Imperial Guardsmen on their own, combining their power, they raze the planet to the ground.

If that were true then why haven't the Grey Knights single handedly annihilated every threat to the IoM? You are greatly over estimating the power of SM LIbrarians. You also keep ignoring me when I ask what happens when one Librarian's head explodes from prolonged Warp exposure whilst all these psykers are in communion. The Warp would literally be flowing out of the Librarians and all sanctioned pyskers on the planet with that kind of mass channeling.
I'd also like to see the ensuing infighting too. There would be civil war between the marines once the Black Templars started to bitch about the use of psykers, and other chapters start to take sides.

"However, when they do take part in a battle, it is a glorious and terrifying sight to behold as, with the power of their mind, they level fortresses, reduce entire armies to rivers of molten flesh, and split the very sky with fire and lightning."
- Deathwatch core rulebook, page 183, on the power Chief Librarians wield

A thousand battlefields, torn to pieces by the Chief Librarians.

More quotes to come at my next convenience.

A Thousand Sons proves that a few hundred telekines can create a kine shield that can withstand orbital bombardment that turned the rest of Prospero into a wasteland. The Imperial Guard has no ordinance near that level. Just like how firing a trillion bullets will not harm Superman, firing a trillion lasguns will not penetrate a kine shield of that strength. Even with sustained Deathstrike Missile bombardment, it is unlikely to rupture.

As for the Grey Knights: Most Grey Knights explicitly are not, in fact, on the level of a Librarian. Fewer still comparable to a Chief Librarian.

As for prolonged Warp exposure, I did acknowledge that. At worst that provides a mutual kill.

I'd say IG would win. Repeating what has already been said, trillions of Guards vs 1 million Space Marines? Even with all the powerful Psykers that the SM have, that'd do it.

The fluff is still a bit ambiguous about psychers though.

Librarians aside the guard would piss it, with the librarians, who knows.

I suppose the questions a bit silly really, aren't there literally like thousands of billions of guardsmen?

If one hive world has 300 billion on, and there are a hundred thousand planets in the imperium, won't there in actual fact be tens of thousands of billions of guardsmen?

40k numbers have always confused me...

 Void__Dragon wrote:
"However, when they do take part in a battle, it is a glorious and terrifying sight to behold as, with the power of their mind, they level fortresses, reduce entire armies to rivers of molten flesh, and split the very sky with fire and lightning."
- Deathwatch core rulebook, page 183, on the power Chief Librarians wield

A thousand battlefields, torn to pieces by the Chief Librarians.

More quotes to come at my next convenience.

A Thousand Sons proves that a few hundred telekines can create a kine shield that can withstand orbital bombardment that turned the rest of Prospero into a wasteland. The Imperial Guard has no ordinance near that level. Just like how firing a trillion bullets will not harm Superman, firing a trillion lasguns will not penetrate a kine shield of that strength. Even with sustained Deathstrike Missile bombardment, it is unlikely to rupture.

As for the Grey Knights: Most Grey Knights explicitly are not, in fact, on the level of a Librarian. Fewer still comparable to a Chief Librarian.

As for prolonged Warp exposure, I did acknowledge that. At worst that provides a mutual kill.

You do realize that even Kine shields at that level aren't invulnerable right? They're very draining on the psykers, with the damage inflicted on the shield taking a toll, even inflicting fatalities on those casting it. Nevermind that the city was still completed wrecked by a frontal assault, despite the shield.

They might be able to "wipe out entire armies", but you forget that this army is literally uncountable. I don't care how many fortresses they level, eventually the numbers will roll over them.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
"However, when they do take part in a battle, it is a glorious and terrifying sight to behold as, with the power of their mind, they level fortresses, reduce entire armies to rivers of molten flesh, and split the very sky with fire and lightning."
- Deathwatch core rulebook, page 183, on the power Chief Librarians wield

I always take the class descriptions with a pinch of salt as obviously they have to sell each and every class to the players so they make them all sound epic. They wouldn't have a class which read that they were a bit on the duff side of things, not that great really compared to all the other classes...

Even though it's a question we've had before several times, and it's rather silly, I'm routing for the Guard. No matter how many they killed, the Guard would still end up stomping the Marines through sheer weight of numbers, their armoured vehicles, their artillery and phenomenal numbers of heavy & special weapons.