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 Psienesis wrote:
the SM would win without putting boots on the ground

They'd never live it down. The Adeptus Astartes afraid to go & fight? Against ordinary weak humans? And people say the Guard are cowardly & run away - at least they turn up to the battlefield!

The Wolves and similarly assault-oriented Chapters would probably gripe, some of the more tactically-minded Chapters, sitting on a Battle Barge with Cyclonic Torpedoes loaded would just be "You guys, CHILL! We got this."

 Psienesis wrote:
The Wolves and similarly assault-oriented Chapters would probably gripe

Then they can have the 'honour' of being the spotters of the bombardment cannons

uk_crow wrote:
No it doesn't. The IG don't have a fleet like the SM do. SM fleet and ground forces are one and the same. They are all chapter assets. IG are merely transported to warzone in mass conveyors that belong to the IN, like a taxi service. SM own there strikes cruisers, battle barges and escorts.

The thread is titled 'Space Marines VS Imperial Guard' Not Space Marines VS The Adeptus Administratum.

Munitorum actually, but by the same token, we can make the same distinction here, Thralls are not Space Marines, and the title is Space Marines vs Imperial Guard. If we're including forces that are not composed of Space Marine but are required for their fleets to work and the get them from A to B, then doing so makes sense for the IG as well, and if we're discounting them for the IG then it makes sense to do the same for the Space Marines.

The OP has also said 'no space cruisers'.

In which case the point of cyclonic torpedoes/exterminatus/etc is moot.

 Psienesis wrote:
The OP states that the SM don't get their fleets, and the IG doesn't get the Navy:

Right, I was just addressing that if we're bringing cyclonic torpedoes and the like into it, then the IN gets to come in as well.

Emphasis mine.

Right, however such aircraft are very limited in number, each chapter having a few dozen such attack craft/dropships (you can fit an entire chapter into 34 Thunderhawks), and starships are not aircraft. An IG regiment of 8000 troops would need ~670 Valkyries/Vendettas for full air mobility, and even somehow assuming a somewhat exaggerated 10-1 kill ratio in favor of the SM's, the IG regiment would be fielding twice that.

The Space Wolves would beg to differ, having defeated an entire Inquisitorial battlefleet themselves.

An Inquisitorial attack fleet != an Imperial Navy Sector Battlegroup. This is an important distinction.

The Black Templars, of course, field several fleets, containing at least 9 Strike Cruisers or Battle Barges.

Each of which is roughly equivalent to a general chapter fleet. So, combined as one, the largest SM fleet might match an IN sector battlegroup for numbers. There are however uncountable Sector Battlegroups (given the size that BFG states for a sector, if there is only one Imperial sector battlegroup for every 1,000 possible sectors in the galaxy given that the Imperium is spread thin, we're still talking 100,000+ sector battlegroups plus Segmentum reserves, and only 1000 SM fleets, most of which are only a dozen or so vessels strong)

This is why GW's fluff when analyzed against the numbers they give, make so little sense

The Battle-Barge, probably the most iconic of a Space Marine's naval asset, is noted as being one of the most devastating ships the Imperium can field, being both heavily armed and armored, carrying bombardment cannons, lances and torpedoes.

Indeed, they are very powerful ships, the only type of SM capital ship generally able to fight against an IN vessel of similar class, Lances however are very rare armament on them.

The generic Battle Barge meant to represent the most commonly fielded classes for the vast majority of chapters in Battlefleet gothic do not have Lance weapons at all, only the BFG equivalent of "Special Character" ships get Lances amongst SM fleets, along with small escort vessels that are typically built around a single lance weapon that are common to both the IN and SM fleets (though often limited in number in SM fleets).

SM fleets are mostly composed of Strike Cruisers, which, while well armored and swift, lack the raw firepower and resiliency of Imperial Navy cruisers (hence why in BFG, a Strike Cruiser has 6 Hit Points and a speed of 25cm, an Imperial Navy cruiser has 8 Hit Points and a speed of 20cm and cost more points than SM Strike Cruisers)

... the Space Marines utterly do not require the IN for anything.

I never said they did...but at the same time, they don't generally fight large scale fleet battles on their own, SM space battles are usually fairly small affairs involving only a few vessels, where they usually attempt to get into boarding range.



Fundamentally I guess what I'm really getting at is that GW's fluff stops making any sort of sense if you really start looking at it, because if their numbers are accurate, the Astartes are so numerically insignificant that even with their superhuman powers they are too few to make an impact, and if they are as important as portrayed, the numbers are grossly incorrect.

... or they're far more badass than depicted on the table, and they really are capable of pacifying an entire world with 5 guys. I don't particularly believe that, but I can see how it could be done. If your Lord Generals and such keep getting sniped by Scouts, or teleport-Deep Striking Terminators, who teleport away before any serious response can be mounted, this is a war that could go on for a very long time.

This will, of course, depend on deployment and terrain. If the SM are able to wage a guerrilla-style campaign in terrain that favors rapid infantry movement and limits the effectiveness of air-power and artillery (such as mountains made of space-rocks that doesn't shatter easily), while maintaining well-hidden bases for resupply and stationary devices (such as teleportariums)... it might take them awhile, but they may eventually bleed the IG dry of any leadership potential, not to mention the effect such actions has on morale. Not every IG regiment is Cadian or Catachan, after all.

With the Space Wolf thing, it is noted that the Inquisition brought an entire Battlefleet. The Inquisition doesn't really build its own ships, not to that degree, it simply snaps its fingers and has the Navy ship them around somewhere (or anyone else with a ship, for that matter). Point is, we're not told, specifically, how large the fleet was supposed to be, but it is implied to be a significant show of force, as the plan was to either force the Wolves into a Penitent Crusade, or raze Fenris. Neither happened.

It is noted, however, that a Battlefleet is the largest operational organization that the IN has. This would suggest that it is, in fact, synonymous with a Sector Fleet.... and one Chapter, not particularly known for its fleet, fought it to a standstill. It is also noted that SM spacecraft tend to be older, and possess better equipment than more-modern Naval vessels, due to technical degradation prevalent within the IoM and the AdMech. Pre-Heresy ships being better than Post-Heresy and so forth. The Navy, of course, possesses its own relics from the Heresy, but it remains to be seen if such exist in numbers able to compete with the relics the SM possess.

Except:

A) There's more Lord-Generals than there are SM, everytime they lose a man, its a bigger blow than losing the General

B) Said Generals are likely to be in Baneblades or Ordinatuses/ii (of which there are far more than SM, again), they won't be waiting to be shot, furthermore, the IG can afford to handle a meltagun to every bodyguard protecting the Generals. Sniper shots? Blanket the area with Vortex missiles

C) No fleet means no teleportation, any base can simply be wished away by the ridiculous ordnance the IG will bring to bear

 Hunterindarkness wrote:
If we are going by the IG codex, a million to 1 in favor of the IG, is being lenient. I do not char if its a alpha level psyker, if its outnumber 20 to 1 it's dead. You simply can only hold back so much and pull out so much power, the tide the IG can throw would down the Librarians plain and simple. They simply could never, ever kill enough to even slow the IG dow before they themselves are killed.

This point of view is the product of lack of knowledge regarding the fluff, to be honest. An Alpha Plus level psyker can telepathically assert dominance over millions and more, if a telepath. But that is beside the point.

Why couldn't they? They'd possess more human psychic power concentrated in a single place than anywhere else the galaxy has ever seen, with the arguable exception of the Council of Nikaea (The Emperor, Magnus, and Malcador all in one place? Along with many Librarians, Chief Librarians, and other Primarchs in attendance? Oh my).

A kine shield powered by a number of psykers so many Librarians would be effectively impervious to Imperial Guard artillery, considering the kine shields of single sorcerers in the Battle of the Fang were able to easily soak up the punishment of the gun batteries, salvos, and Rune Priest tempests of the Space Wolves at the Fang, aka the second most well-defended fortress in the galaxy. Oh, and of course the standard city-wide Thousand Son kine shield could withstand a salvo that glassed and vaporised literally everywhere else on the surface of Prospero. No weapon fielded by the Imperial Guard, not even stuff like Deathstrike Missiles, is that powerful.

And of course, offensively, two Rune Priests were able to conjure storms that could envelop and blast the invading armies on the entire mountain in the Battle of the Fang, blasting hundreds of soldiers with single bolts, destroying armor as though it were cheese, etc. Now multiply that number of psykers by, oh, let's say five thousand or so?

A kine shield with phalanxes of Space Marines on the outer rims to meet invading Imperial Guard would be devastating. Even vastly outnumbered, the Marines would cut through the Imperial Guard like cheese in close combat. They did the same to the Orks, far more physically capable foes, at Helsreach, after all.


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 gpfunk wrote:
Back on topic. I love threads like these. They're basically fan threads or "I want to see this faction win so I am going to gerryrig a situation in which they have an unbeatable advantage." Have the fight on a single planet? IG win, without question. Have the fight over many planets in many systems requiring extensive and fluid travel between battlezones? The Space Marines wipe the floor and take it without trying.

That's the beauty of the situation. Despite the thread obviously being tailored to favor the Imperial Guard, the Space Marines can still win.

Puny guardsmen simply are not as relevant as the fans would like.


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 Billagio wrote:
Wasnt the Kine shield eventually broken by the orbital bombardment? yeah the IG dont have the navy to do that in this battle, but they have probably more baneblades than marines and more LRBTs and Artillery than marines x3

No, the kine shield was never broken, it was just dropped by the Thousand Sons when the Space Wolves began to land, it no longer serving a point.

Also, orbital bombardment is several orders of magnitude more powerful than any weapon the Imperial Guard can bring to bear.

Baneblades? LRBTs? Artillery? It would be like trying to kill Superman with a super soaker.

The IG gets psyker too, a lot more psykers, yay they get planet-devastating powers and psychic plot-shield too, the end.

 Vaktathi wrote:
In a straight up fight between the Imperial Guard and the Space Marines, the Space Marines would be obliterated in a matter of seconds.

Most codex given estimates of the power is generally 1 Space Marine for every 10-12 Guardsmen.

No, that is a quote by Dorn latched onto by IG fans in lieu of any actual evidence. The actual fluff depicts stuff like 100 Space Wolves in the Battle of the Fang slaughtering two million Spireguard, with everyone present recognising the present Thousand Sons (Numbering something like seven hundred total) being the real threat. Or the Black Templars in Helsreach butchering hundreds of times their number in Orks, mostly in close combat. That isn't even counting "hero" units, of which Space Marines have more of them, and have more powerful. Mephiston for example slaughters Carnifexes with all the ease Space Marines use to slaughter human beings.

There are one million Space Marines, equivalent to 10-12 million guardsmen.

Read above.

Now, as cited in the rulebook and IG codex, there are *billions* of IG regiments, each consisting of thousands of guardsmen. Assuming the plural "billions" only means 2 billion, and they're all say an average size equal to that of the Cadian 8th, we get 16,000,000,000,000 (sixteen trillion guardsmen), or about 16,000,000 guardsmen per Space Marine. This means that the entirety of the Adeptus Astartes is worth 1/1,333,333.33 of the Imperial Guard's fighting strength.

A hundreth? There'll be a solid 1000x more normal psyker, combine power, obtain dead SM.

Assuming 3 Librarians and 1 Chief librarian per chapter (correct me if I am wrong) that's about 4 million normal psyskers for the IG, I think that's stupidly low.

There are more ranks in the Librarius department than Librarian and Chief Librarian. There is no "standard" size.

Where are the official numbers for the Sanctioned Psykers of the Imperial Guard?

Oh, and you've entirely overlooked the chapter consisting solely of psychic super marines.

Well if we could have a number that tells us the percentage of regular psykers, we'd get a rough idea of how many of them there are.

Regardless, I am not conviced about all that shielding shenanigans, if anyone knows about it, why aren't they using it in 40k, why is it only a Legion that turned traitor that uses it. If anything the knowledge of it is lost for the Loyalist.

Edit: how many ships/how long was the orbital bombardement? You said a salvo? Because I am pretty sure all those Ordance weapons are going to do far more damage than just a salvo, we're talking about billions of shells/nuclear missiles/vortex missiles/missiles etc etc

 Void__Dragon wrote:
[
This point of view is the product of lack of knowledge regarding the fluff, to be honest. An Alpha Plus level psyker can telepathically assert dominance over millions and more, if a telepath. But that is beside the point.

.

This is a damned stupid thing to say in 40k as Fluff changes by book and writer. One an Alpha level may do that in another it can't. What we do know is SM total number, they simply can not have a large number of psykers , where the IG can. even if your alphas's can control a million... big freaking deal. A million isn't even a drop in the bucket and even less when countermanded by the millions of IG psykers.

We know from the BL book five Beta level pykers can kill an alpha and five much lower levels can kill a beta. NUmbers always matter,

Void__Dragon wrote:
No, that is a quote by Dorn latched onto by IG fans in lieu of any actual evidence.

It's a quote by Dorn that's been in the game loooooong before Abnett started writing space marines like gak. Ward's codex also references 1-12 ratio, not far off. It's a direct quote from a Space Marine primarch on the capabilities of his troops, unless you've got something to refute it, it seems pretty solid.

The actual fluff depicts stuff like 100 Space Wolves in the Battle of the Fang slaughtering two million Spireguard with everyone present recognising the present Thousand Sons (Numbering something like seven hundred total) being the real threat.

We're referencing the Abnett book here right, the same guy who writes about how a Guardsmen blows open Dreadnoughts with overcharged lasgun power packs, has a few guardsmen with a commissar and some tribesmen with blowdarts wipe out a squad of Chaos Space Marines, and a single Tac squad of Space Marines successfully slaughter thousands of Dark Eldar at close quarters? You'll excuse me if I don't take references to his work at face value.

Or the Black Templars in Helsreach butchering hundreds of times their number in Orks, mostly in close combat.

The same Helsreach where there were thousands of Steel Legion and 19 Titans present?

That isn't even counting "hero" units, of which Space Marines have more of them, and have more powerful. Mephiston for example slaughters Carnifexes with all the ease Space Marines use to slaughter human beings.

Fluff reference here or tabletop? Because tabletop the damn guy's got exaggerated stats near to a Primarch.

Once more, only if your entire argument hinges on a fallible statement by a fallible character who is also a raging psychotic clown car of a man.

Dorn? since when?

Actually the Librarians basically sweep the field. They raze the planet to ash. So, I'd say some Space Marines are the equivalent of, say, eight billion guardsmen.

Huh? Methinks we're drinking a bit much of the SPess Muhreen awesome juju-juice here. Pretty much no Librarians are that powerful, especially not on their own (I certainly can't think of or find any fluff to support that sort of power), and it's not like the Imperial Guard doesn't have psykers of their own. Plus, long range artillery with ranges measured in dozens of miles rather makes a mockery of most psykers.

On top of that, Space Marine psykers are even rarer than normal psykers, given the high rate of failure in training.

They have psykers that can create hurricanes that cover huge mountain ranges on a planet that is nothing but mountain ranges. That's fairly decent as far as long range artillery goes.

And if the Space Marines have them, the IG do too. There's nothing anywhere that says SM psykers are more powerful than those found outside the Space Marines, at least in terms of psychic ability. The IG will however utilize psykers that wouldn't make it through SM training.

You sure do love repeating that in basically every thread you post in.

And until you can find some basis for refuting it, the point stands I showed the basis for such a conclusion and spelled it out fairly clearly, the math is all there. Aside from "zomg psykers just go and kill 'em all" you haven't offered any counter-point.

You didn't write the fluff, and 40k isn't written from a realistic perspective, and never has been.

It's obvious I've touched a nerve here and you're taking my posts personally. I never claimed either of these things, rather I was bringing particular attention to the latter half and how 40k is Space Fantasy where everything is Just Because.

Now you just need to provide evidence of Imperial Guard Sanctioned Psykers being even a hundredth of the level of some of the Space Marine psykers.

Provide evidence that Space Marine psykers are notably more powerful than IG psykers...

I'll let big red do the talking for me:


"We often say that the mind of man is his greatest weapon. Think how much greater then the mind of a Space Marine must be?"
- Magnus the Red

And feel free to find where in any SM fluff it shows that Space Marines how Space Marines are made more intelligent and/or psychically powerful than their normal human counterparts. I've never found it, because the Space Marine conversion process doesn't touch *any of that stuff.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
There are more ranks in the Librarius department than Librarian and Chief Librarian. There is no "standard" size.

Regardless, they're rare and many chapters have no Librarians at all.

Where are the official numbers for the Sanctioned Psykers of the Imperial Guard?

There aren't any. There isn't an exact number of Regiments either. However we are told that there is usually ~1 psyker per 10,000 humans, most of which meet bad fates, assuming 1 in 1,000 of those one-in-ten thousand (in other words, one in a million people) are usable as battlefield psykers, going back to my previous math and assuming an average population of 7 billion (modern day earth's population) on each of the Imperium's ~1 million worlds, that gives us 700,000,000 (yes, seven hundred million) battlefield psykers. So...lets assume *very* generously that each SM chapter has 4 Librarians, beating out the above odds by several orders of magnitude. That means roughly, 4,000 Space Marine Librarians and nearly 200,000 IG battle psykers per Space Marine Librarian

Oh, and you've entirely overlooked the chapter consisting solely of psychic super marines.

And nowhere in *any* of their fluff are they portrayed as being as even a tiny fraction powerful as you're making out Librarians to be, especially the non-Librarian rank and file.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Well if we could have a number that tells us the percentage of regular psykers, we'd get a rough idea of how many of them there are.

There is none, to my recollection.

Regardless, I am not conviced about all that shielding shenanigans, if anyone knows about it, why aren't they using it in 40k, why is it only a Legion that turned traitor that uses it. If anything the knowledge of it is lost for the Loyalist.

What, kine shields? That's a basic telekinetic power. The Grey Knights have also made great use of them in the First War for Armageddon, that I recall.

The difference is rarely do you see more than one or two Librarians in a single engagement. There are thousands here now.

Edit: how many ships/how long was the orbital bombardement? You said a salvo? Because I am pretty sure all those Ordance weapons are going to do far more damage than just a salvo, we're talking about billions of shells/nuclear missiles/vortex missiles/missiles etc etc

It was the entire Space Wolves Legion, backed up by the Custodes and the Sisters of Silence. So, a fleet larger than any Space Marine fleet in existence, save maybe the Black Templars.

A time frame is not given, but it is referred to as "one of the most sustained and powerful bombardments ever unleashed in the history of the Imperium.".

And yes, the bombardment did take quite a toll on the psykers powering it, but this was the city's never-lowering defense, not actively being held in combat. And it still held up against sustained fire from a force far greater than any the Imperial Guard might muster.

I don't think the marines would win in the end, but I don't think they would go down in such a whitewash. They still will hold air superiority to some extent due to the Thunderhawks not to mention if they have Storm Ravens and Stormtalons for escorts. They could to some extent swat away and in the case of Thunderhawks absorb any damage in aerial combat by the Valkyries and Vendettas (being the only air assets the guard have) at this point if the marines just keep on the move staying away from the guards artillery, the thunderhawks etc could then start bombing/strafing such artillery and on the ground air defense, they can then concentrate on the Armour and super heavies which could be under a certain amount of risk by this point of fast ground attacks by Land Raiders and Predators.

Like I said, I think at this point the marines would start to lose in a war of attrition but I don't think they would go down quietly or as fast as people are suggesting.

Of course, this is all dependent on the marines being constantly able to deploy their air power on the move, without space/air ports for resupply as lets face it, if the guard didn't just throw men and armour at such installations no matter the defenses set up their from the get go, they deserve to lose.

Lastly, the marines should have their fleets in this debate really, if you want to stop their power though, just ban them from performing exterminatus. I'm sure the guard would have some sort of portable anti-orbital defense in their whacky armories. Some tech priest at some point must have built a super heavy able to power a defense array of some sort.

 Vaktathi wrote:
It's a quote by Dorn that's been in the game loooooong before Abnett started writing space marines like gak. Ward's codex also references 1-12 ratio, not far off. It's a direct quote from a Space Marine primarch on the capabilities of his troops, unless you've got something to refute it, it seems pretty solid.

The fluff where the Space Marines operate with far greater efficiency than 1:12 refutes it actually.

Like that time 700 Marines managed to fight through and defeat "tens of thousands of Necrons" (A serious lowball estimate, that would make the corridors of the World Engine fething barren, which is nonsense considering the amount of fighting the Astral Knights are said to have endured) and blew up the World Engine.

The lowliest Necron is far more formidable than the average Imperial Guardsman.

We're referencing the Abnett book here right, the same guy who writes about how a Guardsmen blows open Dreadnoughts with overcharged lasgun power packs, has a few guardsmen with a commissar and some tribesmen with blowdarts wipe out a squad of Chaos Space Marines, and a single Tac squad of Space Marines successfully slaughter thousands of Dark Eldar at close quarters? You'll excuse me if I don't take references to his work at face value.

Your arrogance is made all the more amusing by the fact that Abnett did not write Battle of the Fang. Though he did write Bjorn romping an army that could "conquer nations". Oh, and the Thousand Sons attacking the Space Wolves with a vastly larger force including many mortal soldiers (Their "levies") harkens back to 2e.

The same Helsreach where there were thousands of Steel Legion and 19 Titans present?

So I don't think you really read what I wrote.

What the Steel Legion and Titans did is irrelevant. What is relevant is that Black Templars were romping through the Orks by the hundreds. What is relevant is that after five days of the siege, after countless Ork and IG casualties, only then did a Black Templar fall.

Fluff reference here or tabletop? Because tabletop the damn guy's got exaggerated stats near to a Primarch.

There really isn't a difference though.

In the fluff, he has torn Carnifexes to pieces with his bare hands.

No really:



Mat Ward all up in this bitch.

Dorn? since when?

The man's a lunatic, albeit I am pretty sure he was not intended to be written as one.

But stuff like the Iron Cage, his treatment of his chapter's Librarians (Locking them all in a basement on the Phalanx), his whining about having to make the Imperial Palace ugly to make it a defensible position (Srsly, lol), he's... Much more subtly mentally ill than some of his brothers.

Huh? Methinks we're drinking a bit much of the SPess Muhreen awesome juju-juice here. Pretty much no Librarians are that powerful, especially not on their own (I certainly can't think of or find any fluff to support that sort of power), and it's not like the Imperial Guard doesn't have psykers of their own. Plus, long range artillery with ranges measured in dozens of miles rather makes a mockery of most psykers.

Tell that to the Thousand Sons and their kine shields which withstood ordinance that can destroy a planet from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.

In the Dark Angels codex, a single Salamander Librarian does this:

"Librarian Hestion summoned a storm of his own, a raging inferno in the shape of a flaming drake that tore the Ravagers out of the sky one by one. The Forgehammer had suffered terribly, but it was free from the Dark City's bonds once more. With a great shuddering roar, the strike cruiser began its ascent to freedom."

Fairly impressive, no?

Also, that very battle is also an example of Space Marines proving capable of holding off against a vastly numerically superior foe. And of course, Dark Eldar are more formidable one on one than Guardsmen as well.

On top of that, Space Marine psykers are even rarer than normal psykers, given the high rate of failure in training.

Perhaps, does the Imperial Guard have cited numbers for their Sanctioned Psykers?

And if the Space Marines have them, the IG do too. There's nothing anywhere that says SM psykers are more powerful than those found outside the Space Marines, at least in terms of psychic ability. The IG will however utilize psykers that wouldn't make it through SM training.

Magnus the Red seems to disagree with you. I'd like to believe the Primarch who founded and created the Librarius Department has some idea of the ability of a Space Marine psyker.

Also:

"In all of the Imperium there are few greater warrior-mystics, combining the prowess of the Adeptus Astartes with the steel discipline needed to contain and control their powers."
- Space Marine 5e codex, page 56

That seems to possibly imply that they are indeed a cut above the majority of the Imperium's psykers.

Oh, and actually, the 4e codex does state that many chapters delegate the "weaker psykers" in the Imperium (Explicitly noted not to be Space Marines) for "more mundane" tasks.

The Deathwatch core rulebook is even more explicit. On page 182, it is explicitly stated that of the psykers in the Imperium, none demonstrate the force of will or raw ability as the Librarians. While probably an exagerration IMO, this still fits under your criteria.

And until you can find some basis for refuting it, the point stands I showed the basis for such a conclusion and spelled it out fairly clearly, the math is all there. Aside from "zomg psykers just go and kill 'em all" you haven't offered any counter-point.

Well I have actually. I have cited several battles where the Space Marines did, in fact, operate far more efficiently than being the equal of "10-12 Imperial guardsmen".

You didn't write the fluff, and 40k isn't written from a realistic perspective, and never has been.

It's obvious I've touched a nerve here and you're taking my posts personally. I never claimed either of these things, rather I was bringing particular attention to the latter half and how 40k is Space Fantasy where everything is Just Because.

Provide evidence that Space Marine psykers are notably more powerful than IG psykers...

Read above my friend.

I could also point out the vast disparity in their feats of psychic prowess, but that might be a tad bit unfair, considering the relatively less exposure Sanctioned psykers have.

And feel free to find where in any SM fluff it shows that Space Marines how Space Marines are made more intelligent and/or psychically powerful than their normal human counterparts. I've never found it, because the Space Marine conversion process doesn't touch *any of that stuff.

Doesn't it?

They are trained to have forces of will greater than the vast majority of mortal men, which directly influences psychic ability.

They are also tutored and their minds molded by some of the finest training the Imperium has to offer.

It isn't a physical implant like the Larraman's gland or whatever, but they are designed to be better than mortals in every way, to varying extents.

Which is not to say that every Space Marine is a better psyker or more intelligent than every mortal, but we are speaking of averages.


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 Vaktathi wrote:
Regardless, they're rare and many chapters have no Librarians at all.

I can think of exactly one. The Black Templars. Any others?

There aren't any. There isn't an exact number of Regiments either. However we are told that there is usually ~1 psyker per 10,000 humans, most of which meet bad fates, assuming 1 in 1,000 of those one-in-ten thousand (in other words, one in a million people) are usable as battlefield psykers, going back to my previous math and assuming an average population of 7 billion (modern day earth's population) on each of the Imperium's ~1 million worlds, that gives us 700,000,000 (yes, seven hundred million) battlefield psykers. So...lets assume *very* generously that each SM chapter has 4 Librarians, beating out the above odds by several orders of magnitude. That means roughly, 4,000 Space Marine Librarians and nearly 200,000 IG battle psykers per Space Marine Librarian

Your analysis relies on quite a few assumptions.

The vast majority of human psykers are either fed to the Emperor or help maintain the Astronomicon, We are given no number, so no, I won't accept your blind assumption, sorry.

You also don't account for the psykers that get drafted to become Astropaths, or Inquisitors. Or Space Marines, for that matter.

And nowhere in *any* of their fluff are they portrayed as being as even a tiny fraction powerful as you're making out Librarians to be, especially the non-Librarian rank and file.

... Are you... Sure you want to make that claim?

The feats I've brought up in this thread happen to be less impressive than the feats of a single Grey Knight who I have taken pains to not mention.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hunterindarkness wrote:
This is a damned stupid thing to say in 40k as Fluff changes by book and writer. One an Alpha level may do that in another it can't. What we do know is SM total number, they simply can not have a large number of psykers , where the IG can. even if your alphas's can control a million... big freaking deal. A million isn't even a drop in the bucket and even less when countermanded by the millions of IG psykers.

We know from the BL book five Beta level pykers can kill an alpha and five much lower levels can kill a beta. NUmbers always matter,

I don't doubt that the IG have more psykers than the Space Marines. What I do find odd is people trying to "prove" how much more psykers the IG "must" have.

Also, I am pretty sure no Librarians are alpha plus level psykers. Though they might overcome an alpha plus due to their greater training and ability at refining the power they have.

You've failed to notice I was digressing to address an off-topic claim I've made. Telepathy would indeed be a poor tactic to use on the IG in the long run. Kine shields, however, don't seem to be able to be "turned off" by enemy psykers.

Which BL book is that?

Also, Beta level psykers are almost invariably driven mentally unstable by their power. The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of Sanctioned Psykers would not be that powerful.

Let's not be silly here.

It's an established fact within the mythos that by channeling their power together, psykers can force-multiply their power, which is why 6 featless World Eaters librarians were able to wound and exhaust (though ultimately lose to) Lorgar of all fething people in a psychic dual in Betrayer.

If there's 16 trillion regiments, there would be a trillion+ sanctioned psykers- and this is assuming that only 1 out of every 10 regiments used them. This is also assuming (for the sake of giving the Astartes a fighting chance), that these regiments that use psykers only use primaris psykers, not battle-psyker squads, the latter of which are stated in the Guard codex to be much more common than primaris psykers, meaning that realistically there would even more sanctioned psykers than the number I'm using here. But hey, I'm going to low-ball the number of sanctioned psykers in the guard to as low as I can to give the Space Marines a chance.

So, after all that low-balling, you're looking at ~1 trillion sanctioned psykers versus... what? 20000 librarians? Let's high-ball that number and assume that every chapter has 30 librarians, that's a fair number considering that the Ultramarines have 29, and everyone wants to be an Ultramarine. There are a few chapters that have more, but there are also a a few who have less or none at all, so let's stick to averages. So, 30 librarians times 1000 chapters equals 30,000 librarians.

1 trillion sanctioned-psykers versus 30,000 librarians means there are 33 million sanctioned-psykers for every one librarian.

Even if we assumed that each run-of-the-mill librarian is able to contend with a thousand sanctioned psykers in a psyker battle, the Librarians would still have no chance.

Just something to add if you were to be compairing the fleets.

As a Dark Angels player (and fluff addict) I feel obliged to tell you that an all out navy war would include "The Rock", just saying.

So what you are saying is: Six random Librarians were able to match the, oh, let's say fourth or so most powerful human psyker in history?

My Kaelis Ra, this is even worse spite on the Imperial Guard than I had ever guessed.

No but, what chapter?

BlaxicanX wrote:

1 trillion sanctioned-psykers versus 30,000 librarians means there are 33 million sanctioned-psykers for every one librarian.

Even if we assumed that each run-of-the-mill librarian is able to contend with a thousand sanctioned psykers in a psyker battle, the Librarians would still have no chance.

I know this is meant to be purely marines vs guard, but the amount of daemon attacks that would happen to the guard with that amount of psykers would make that amount null and void, whilst killing a vast majority of the guardsmen and Armour whilst they were at it..

Obviously the same can be said of having 30000 librarians in the same place, but at least their are the grey knights + other daemon specialist chapters around to keep a watchful eye over them if they start popping up in their ranks.

The guard would be better off leaving the psykers at home for this one.

I'd wager the recruitment rate of the imperial guard is higher than the death toll could be even if all the space marine legions attacked them. That is, of course, if we were imagining that all this was happening on one galaxy sized flat plane, where guardsmen were pushed into a scrum of bodies once they were recruited.


But I will say for certain, the idea that one space marine is worth millions of guardsmen, is silly. Yesa, they may be in a surgical strike situation, where they can take out the heart of a rebellion that would take foot guardsmen millions of men to reach, but if it came to a fight between one space marine, and millions of guardsmen, the space marine would just get dogpiled under several tonnes of guardsmen, or else have so many lasshot's on him, that he would resemble molten swiss cheeze no matter what armour he wore.



I liken it to a man, versus ant's The ant's are no match for a man, he can crush them without even trying. But if the ant's swarm, he wouldn't be able to bat them away fast enough, and eventually they would get a few lucky bites on him to take him down.

Power armour, isn't 100% lasgun proof. A shot to a joint, will go through. And with thousand's of shot's a minute hitting you, some of those are going to hit vital weakpoints through sheer blind luck.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:

BlaxicanX wrote:

1 trillion sanctioned-psykers versus 30,000 librarians means there are 33 million sanctioned-psykers for every one librarian.

Even if we assumed that each run-of-the-mill librarian is able to contend with a thousand sanctioned psykers in a psyker battle, the Librarians would still have no chance.

I know this is meant to be purely marines vs guard, but the amount of daemon attacks that would happen to the guard with that amount of psykers would make that amount null and void, whilst killing a vast majority of the guardsmen and Armour whilst they were at it..

Obviously the same can be said of having 30000 librarians in the same place, but at least their are the grey knights + other daemon specialist chapters around to keep a watchful eye over them if they start popping up in their ranks.

The guard would be better off leaving the psykers at home for this one.

I'm assuming that it's a given that Perils of the Warp is not in play here, or Daemon interaction at all. Because even if there were zero psykers, the amount of bloodshed and war taking place on the planet would invoke a massive daemon incursion anyway. In that scenario, neither side wins. Even the Grey Knights for all their badassery couldn't deal with the magnitude of full on incurison that would happen with trillions of soldiers simultaneously fighting and dying across the planet.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Farseer Faenyin wrote:
I say the Space Marines win because the 'Guard' has no space assets (Imperial Navy has those) and no way to really deal with the multiple chapters of warships in orbit pounding them to oblivion.

Many worlds have extensive anti-orbital defense networks able to blast ships out of the sky. The very minor depot world of Vraks was so heavily fortified that when it rebelled no Space Marine chapter would take the job, it wasn't until the IG had landed in force and besieged the planet for years that the SM's showed up, landed far away from the combat zone, and advanced on the ground to attack a spaceport many miles from the primary battle lines.

I have never seen anything saying that orbitial networks are manned by Imperial Guardsman. So for this situation, they would not apply. It is possible that they would man ground-based defense weapons and structures, but those are not enough to withstand sustained bombardment.

 Void__Dragon wrote:


Which BL book is that?

Also, Beta level psykers are almost invariably driven mentally unstable by their power. The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of Sanctioned Psykers would not be that powerful.

The Ones I recall well are the Ravonor and the Esienhorn books, both those show Psykers of those levels and how even they can be overwhelmed with Numbers of much weaker pyskers.

Void__Dragon wrote:
The fluff where the Space Marines operate with far greater efficiency than 1:12 refutes it actually.

And we've got fluff of Guardsmen doing incredible things as well, including engaging space marines, with fewer numbers than that. The only fluff sources that actually give direct comparisons note 10/12 for 1.

Like that time 700 Marines managed to fight through and defeat "tens of thousands of Necrons" (A serious lowball estimate, that would make the corridors of the World Engine fething barren, which is nonsense considering the amount of fighting the Astral Knights are said to have endured) and blew up the World Engine.

I don't recall that particular bit so I can't comment, what's it from?

Your arrogance is made all the more amusing by the fact that Abnett did not write Battle of the Fang.

Thought we were referring to the Siege of Prospero, that said, we're talking about a direct assault on a massive fortification replete with huge numbers of mortal soldiery on the side of the Space Wolves in the form of their Kaerls/Chapter Thralls. Direct assault on a fortified mountain, regardless of who is holding it, is going to result in appalling casualties. If you hollowed out Mt. Everest and fortified it over several hundred years and put a couple thousand defenders in it you could probably repel an attacking force several orders of magnitude without being genetically engineered super soldiers.

So I don't think you really read what I wrote.

What the Steel Legion and Titans did is irrelevant. What is relevant is that Black Templars were romping through the Orks by the hundreds. What is relevant is that after five days of the siege, after countless Ork and IG casualties, only then did a Black Templar fall.

Similar situation to the above, we're talking about a gigantic metal fortress being attacked by what amounts to soccer hooligans with meat cleavers and primitive guns they don't bother to aim, probably not hard to achieve a staggering kill ratio in that situation, genetically engineered super soldier or not. Same reason a dude with a single machine gun could stop a WW1 assault by an entire company of opposing infantry.

There really isn't a difference though.

In the fluff, he has torn Carnifexes to pieces with his bare hands.

No really:

Spoiler:

Only where Mephiston fights do the forces of humanity
hold. In those two dreadful weeks, the Librarian proves his
might time and time again, never once sleeping or taking
rest, always carrying the fight to the alien invaders, though
even his Battle-Brothers are weary to the bone. His deeds are
legend. At the Chapel of the Emperor's Repose, Mephiston
tears a Carnifex to ichor-stained shreds with his bare hands.
He holds the ruined entrance to the filtration plant for six
hours without aid. And in the final hours of that terrible
invasion, he cleaves his way alone through the Hive Mind
brood that spearheads the assault, laying low the vile Hive
Tyrant and all his foul guardians before he is himself struck
down by a Trygon.

Mat Ward all up in this bitch.

Hrm, don't remember that, one, but still, far from anything resembling a normal Space Marine, he's just a hair short of a Primarch, he's a unique one-off.

But stuff like the Iron Cage, his treatment of his chapter's Librarians (Locking them all in a basement on the Phalanx), his whining about having to make the Imperial Palace ugly to make it a defensible position (Srsly, lol), he's... Much more subtly mentally ill than some of his brothers.

Pretty much all the Space Marine Primarchs get weird at some point, Corax I'm pretty sure gets weirder

Tell that to the Thousand Sons and their kine shields which withstood ordinance that can destroy a planet from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.

An abnormally large number of abnormally powerful and learned psykers operating together in a far bygone age ten thousand years before the present setting is a different situation.

The battle of Mordian was won against CSM's and Daemons by entirely human Imperial Guard after non-astartes Psykers in orbit becalmed the Warp breach without any Astartes support.

In the Dark Angels codex, a single Salamander Librarian does this:

"Librarian Hestion summoned a storm of his own, a raging inferno in the shape of a flaming drake that tore the Ravagers out of the sky one by one. The Forgehammer had suffered terribly, but it was free from the Dark City's bonds once more. With a great shuddering roar, the strike cruiser began its ascent to freedom."

Fairly impressive, no?

Sure it sounds impressive, but could very well just be like fancy talk for just picking them out of the sky with a relatively common power like Smite, where a couple Bolters may do the same job too. He's picking lightly armored troops one by one.

Also, that very battle is also an example of Space Marines proving capable of holding off against a vastly numerically superior foe. And of course, Dark Eldar are more formidable one on one than Guardsmen as well.

I don't have the book on my so I can't comment, but I'm assuming this is regarding the attack into Commoragh? Holding off an opponent from gaining entrance into a heavily armed warship with a hull several meters thick and extremely cramped interior conditions is about the best defensive situation one could ask for.

Magnus the Red seems to disagree with you.

His quote is vague in the extreme, far moreso than Dorn's.

Also:

"In all of the Imperium there are few greater warrior-mystics, combining the prowess of the Adeptus Astartes with the steel discipline needed to contain and control their powers."
- Space Marine 5e codex, page 56

Warrior-msytic is the keyword here, something impressive both martially *and* psychically. That I won't bother arguing, there aren't many psykers outside the Astartes that are impressive physical warriors *and* powerful psykers, but that doesn't mean that their psychic powers are any less formidable, it just means they aren't genetically engineered super soldiers.

Oh, and actually, the 4e codex does state that many chapters delegate the "weaker psykers" in the Imperium (Explicitly noted not to be Space Marines) for "more mundane" tasks.

They keep the best of their stock for themselves, nothing surprising there, that doesn't mean that psykers drawn from other sources can't be just as powerful.

There is absolutely nothing in the process of becoming a Space Marine that enhances intelligence or psychic potential that I can recall.

The Deathwatch core rulebook is even more explicit. On page 182, it is explicitly stated that of the psykers in the Imperium, none demonstrate the force of will or raw ability as the Librarians. While probably an exagerration IMO, this still fits under your criteria.

To be fair, Deathwatch is to 40k what 300 is to the real Battle of Thermopylae (especially where, before errata, basic Bolters were more destructive and effective against most targets than vehicle mounted heavy bolters and autocannon), and outside the RPG the Deathwatch is described as being composed of those exceptional and/or highly experienced even amongst the Space Marines, not representative of most.

And by the same token, Only War (the IG equivalent) mentions IG battle psykers razing entire armies with cascading walls of flame.

Such RPG's are intended to be about exceptional heroes above and beyond the pale of peers in the 40k universe, not representative of a typical norm (hence why even the lowliest of Inquisitorial Henchmen in Dark Heresy can miraculously survive a starship imploding or the like).

Well I have actually. I have cited several battles where the Space Marines did, in fact, operate far more efficiently than being the equal of "10-12 Imperial guardsmen".

Usually especially notable/not average battles involving sieges/entrenched positions where exceptional opposing force casualties would be expected, SM's or not.

Even then however, going back to the OP's original point, even if you assume 10-1, 100-1, 1,000-1, 10,000-1, the ratio of numbers is so skewed that unless each SM can be counted on to kill millions of guardsmen in open battle, it's not even going to be close, and in no example shown are the SM's anywhere near that powerful, and when weapons larger than small arms start coming into play, then the SM's resiliency becomes increasingly irrelevant. An SM isn't much better at surviving a Plasma gun blast than a Guardsmen, a squad of Space Marines isn't really any more resilient if hit by a heavy artillery barrage than a squad of Guardsmen are, and the guard has more artillery regiments alone than there are Space Marines.

I could also point out the vast disparity in their feats of psychic prowess, but that might be a tad bit unfair, considering the relatively less exposure Sanctioned psykers have.

I think in general that's the issue here. For instance, regarding Helsreach, we've got fluff on the SM's fighting the Orks, but how many hundreds of thousands of Orks died under the guns of the hive and the Titans? How many were slain by crew served heavy weapons and guardsmen in entrenched positions? Doesn't really get talked about.

Doesn't it?

They are trained to have forces of will greater than the vast majority of mortal men, which directly influences psychic ability.

I won't deny that, but so are most battle psykers too trained to wield a greater force of will, and naturally posses a greater force of will or they'd have ended up bound to the Astronominican or executed.

They are also tutored and their minds molded by some of the finest training the Imperium has to offer.

Agreed, but then so are most psykers sent to anything outside the astronominican or the adeptus astra telepathica, as they're the "less than 1% of the less than 1%".


Just by dint of birth and averages, the overwhelmingly vast majority of Psykers, 99.9% assuming each SM chapter holds 1 world out of a million (some more, some none, lets say a total of 1000 are under direct SM administration) are not born anywhere where they'd even have the chance to try and get anywhere near Space Marines, much less be recruited. Out of that 99.9%, surely there must be more, and more powerful psykers, than the few that manage to be born under the 0.1% under the control of the Space Marines.

I can think of exactly one. The Black Templars. Any others?

The Marines Malevolent off the top of my head.

Your analysis relies on quite a few assumptions.

The vast majority of human psykers are either fed to the Emperor or help maintain the Astronomicon, We are given no number, so no, I won't accept your blind assumption, sorry.

You also don't account for the psykers that get drafted to become Astropaths, or Inquisitors. Or Space Marines, for that matter.

Except that I did.

I already stated the assumption that only one out of every thousand human psykers is assigned as an IG battle psyker. I'm already assuming 99.9% are fed to the Emperor or diverted to things like the Adeptus Astra Telepathica or the Inquisition.

Even if we cut that down by a factor of ten again, 99.99% go somewhere else other than the IG, that's still 20,000 IG battle psykers for each space marine Librarian or about 70 per Space Marine. Another factor of ten, assuming only one in every 100,000 non-astartes psykers is used as an IG battle psyker (and meaning only 1 regiment in several *thousand* will have a single Psyker at all), you're still talking almost 2,000 battle psykers per Space Marine Librarian, or about 7 IG battle Psykers per Space Marine

... Are you... Sure you want to make that claim?

The feats I've brought up in this thread happen to be less impressive than the feats of a single Grey Knight who I have taken pains to not mention.

The big guy who smashes things with his sword? He's shown no such psychic potential as to be able to raze mortal armies with his psychic powers, his feats are largely martial. And certainly the vast majority of GK's show no such psychic might.

Farseer Faenyin wrote:

I have never seen anything saying that orbitial networks are manned by Imperial Guardsman. So for this situation, they would not apply.

Sure they do, and not all anti-starship defenses are in space. Cadia for example has lots of orbital and ground based anti-orbital defenses manned by IG and PDF troops

My, it's a little warm in here. On the surface of things, the IG is the obvious choice of victor due to sheer numbers. However, there are other matters to consider. If all these forces are simply dropped onto a planet and maybe given a few days to prep and are given no further help, I'd say the IG would struggle to win. Why?

They would starve themselves out long before they could finish off the space marines. The logistics of supporting so many billions of troops much less maneuvering them into combat would be virtually impossible to manage. Only a tiny percentage of IG at any time would be able to bear its weight on the battle, while the space marines could conceivably bring their entire force to bear. In a straight up war of attrition the IG couldn't lose…except the clock is ticking more quickly for them. Cutting off the umbilical cord of off world support cripples the IG in the long run, not the space marines. Ironically, the IG is known for its sieges and long drawn campaigns while the space marines are noted for their short but intense conflicts, but forcing the ENTIRE IG on to ONE planet will eventually destroy them under their own weight.

 amanita wrote:
My, it's a little warm in here. On the surface of things, the IG is the obvious choice of victor due to sheer numbers. However, there are other matters to consider. If all these forces are simply dropped onto a planet and maybe given a few days to prep and are given no further help, I'd say the IG would struggle to win. Why?

They would starve themselves out long before they could finish off the space marines. The logistics of supporting so many billions of troops much less maneuvering them into combat would be virtually impossible to manage. Only a tiny percentage of IG at any time would be able to bear its weight on the battle, while the space marines could conceivably bring their entire force to bear. In a straight up war of attrition the IG couldn't lose…except the clock is ticking more quickly for them. Cutting off the umbilical cord of off world support cripples the IG in the long run, not the space marines. Ironically, the IG is known for its sieges and long drawn campaigns while the space marines are noted for their short but intense conflicts, but forcing the ENTIRE IG on to ONE planet will eventually destroy them under their own weight.

While I won't argue that, the logistics of course would be just the issue you describe, assuming everyone started on the planet already, SM's likely wouldn't long enough for supply to become an issue. The raw amount of long range heavy artillery and stratgic weapons like Deathstrike missiles would likely annihilate whatever patch of ground the SM's are on in very short order.

True, unless they could find reasonable shelter the space marines would be at risk for sure. It's an interesting debate, so kudos to the OP.

There is no reasonable shelter against several trillion artillery pieces. The number of death-strike launchers and other explosive weapons being fired in this scenario would basically raze the planet.

I'm against trying to argue the nitty gritty of a fight such as the logistics. Why? Because this entire scenario is impossible logistically. If you're going to question things like "where are you going to get food for 16 trillion people", then you'll also have to question "well how did those 16 trillion people get there in the first place?" Are we going to assume that neither side wins because logistically it would take literally centuries for either side to land all their troops on the planet? Not really, no. Are we going to question that trillions of psykers using their powers and trillions of people fighting and dying would weaken the veil and allow massive daemon incursions? No. Etc.