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.

One thing that has always irked me is when people talk about Imperial Guard, they always say that the Imperial Guard is nothing more then a future ww1 unit that does nothing but charge and die and then send in the next wave

In the books, they do use tactics and they do do what many modern day armies do today, of course there are going to be some differences with the doctrine

While this may be true for some specific regiments(anything under Commander Chenkov's command, though the writers that made him up are a bunch of 40 year old men with the mind of a 13 year old writing a LOTR fanfiction)

Casualties may be high, but high causalities does not mean millions of men lost in a single minute; for example, the Elysian Drop Troops lost 2000 men in Kastorel Novem, though that is high, its far from the billions that people keep putting out. Also high casualties does not mean incompetent either

Would you say the high number of army rangers killed on D-Day make them or their commanders incompetent?


Just think about, if the Imperial Guard loses millions of men PER battle, that must mean they brought 10s,100s, if not billions more guardsmen per battle; if that was true, imagine how much of a logistical clusterfeth that would be

Remember that the biggest ship can carry only about 500,000 at most and they aren't exactly the most plentiful either

Also, just because you're in the regular non superhuman military, doesn't mean you're a puny human

just watch this video to see what infantry men have to go through in real life



Cadians have to do that for their entire lives!


You gotta remember that its the Imperial Guard thats doing the majority of the work in the Imperium

Compared to almost every other faction in the universe, which features massive Xeno brutes, massive dudes in power armor tearing tanks apart with their bare hands, Nightmares From Beyond, or Massive Robo-Death Machines...

... they are just puny humans. Yeah, Infantry School is tough... it's nothing compared to being a member of the Adeptus Sororitas or the Adeptus Astartes. Or an Ork. Or a member of a Chaos Warband.

Being a member of the Astartes is going through Infantry School at the age of ten. Being a member of the Sororitas is going through Infantry School at the age of 14 while someone is beating you with a stick.

Your failure in logic is that you're trying to equate 40K to real life. Don't. It doesn't work.
In the fantasy that is the year 40,000 humans are innumerable and expendable en mass. They are based on WW1 with slow infantry, tractor like tanks and inaccurate artillery. If you want an army that's more like today's infantry, the space marines are just that.

I guess people also forget that the imperial armor also has the biggest tanks in the game.

You're thinking of the Necrons.

The Monolith dwarfs a Land Raider, and a Megalith is bigger than an Imperator Titan. And a single one has destroyed three regiments of Catachans and a force of Imperial Fists. In one battle.

Because boot camp doesn't quite help you when the enemy vomits a womb that regurgitates a twelve foot tall psychic death machine with scythes for arms in your face.

So what's the point of comparing RL army training to anything in 40k? Really, what is its purpose at all other than to get all military boner-ed?

Put the average real world army in say; the battle of Iyanden or the first war of armageddon, and it'd be obliterated in moments clawing it's eyes out screaming in terror before messily dying. Comparing the IG to real world militaries is useless.

I was still thinking of IG armor cause the artillery has range to spare and a bane blade or a leman Russ squadron on the battle field are nasty.

They... ARE a bunch of puny humans. If they weren't human I'd probably not be as interested in them as I am.

And humans in 40k are puny.

But that's okay, we have lots of big guns and tanks, and in the end that's what really matters.

 Griddlelol wrote:
Your failure in logic is that you're trying to equate 40K to real life. Don't. It doesn't work.
In the fantasy that is the year 40,000 humans are innumerable and expendable en mass. They are based on WW1 with slow infantry, tractor like tanks and inaccurate artillery. If you want an army that's more like today's infantry, the space marines are just that.

Real life soldiers dont drop in with only a single squad and engage the enemy with chainswords

Remember that ig regiments hail from the best of the pdf regiments

Seriously im fething tired of this space marines aré the only competent force crap

I agree that 40k isnt real life, but the ig regiments are based on real life armies

Drakka77 wrote:
I was still thinking of IG armor cause the artillery has range to spare and a bane blade or a leman Russ squadron on the battle field are nasty.

And then a Carnifex drops from DEEP SPEHSS and eats your tanks and picks it's adamantium tusks with your bones.

 Kain wrote:

Drakka77 wrote:
I was still thinking of IG armor cause the artillery has range to spare and a bane blade or a leman Russ squadron on the battle field are nasty.

And then a Carnifex drops from DEEP SPEHSS and eats your tanks and picks it's adamantium tusks with your bones.

And it dies before it hits the ground thanks to Hydras

The Imperial Guard may be the best of the best (Of standard human infantry anyway) but they are only huma and Games Workshop has gone out it's way to show that being a human in the Warhammer universe is like being a grot amongst Nobz.

Thankfully, they have big guns. They also have the support of a space navy with even bigger guns. There isn't a single thing in the 40k universe that can't be destroyed without the application of enough force (If it has yet to be destroyed despite several tries, that means no one has tried hard enough yet!).

Compared to a lot of the monstrous units on the battlefield, and the enormous size of a standard infantry unit from certain other armies - humans are puny.

The armies have an attitude that can match the toughest, biggest baddies in the galaxy though, that's all that matters ha ha.

PresidentOfAsia wrote:
Seriously im fething tired of this space marines aré the only competent force crap

I agree that 40k isnt real life, but the ig regiments are based on real life armies

Nobody says the IG is incompetent, it's just that every other faction is either a) heckuva lot more technologically advanced, b) bioengineered killing machines, c) supernatural daemonic entities, or a combination of all three. It's hard to look very threatening when you look at the alternatives.

PresidentOfAsia wrote:

 Griddlelol wrote:
Your failure in logic is that you're trying to equate 40K to real life. Don't. It doesn't work.
In the fantasy that is the year 40,000 humans are innumerable and expendable en mass. They are based on WW1 with slow infantry, tractor like tanks and inaccurate artillery. If you want an army that's more like today's infantry, the space marines are just that.

Real life soldiers dont drop in with only a single squad and engage the enemy with chainswords

Remember that ig regiments hail from the best of the pdf regiments

Seriously im fething tired of this space marines aré the only competent force crap

I agree that 40k isnt real life, but the ig regiments are based on real life armies

They are still only human. They may be the "best" but when put up against giant monstrous creatures breed only for war; massive, genetically altered, chaos afflicted, power armor wearing beasts of a man; humanoid fungi that only love to kill and the more you kill them the more appear; etc etc. the humans are just puny. Seriously. They are supposed to be the puny, weak force that relies on numbers and superior firepower to overwhelm the enemy. I don't know where you get the "Seriously im fething tired of this space marines aré the only competent force crap" from, because that's total BS. Anyone can admit that the IG are a force to be reckoned with because we can pound pretty much any enemy force to death with more artillery guns than they have soldiers.

"Humans aren't the top of the food chain because we are the strongest, because we are the fastest, or because we are the stealthiest. We are the top of the food chain because we are very good at coming up with weapons to kill things easier."

War changes a lot in 38k years, stop trying to make the IG act like modern armies do on the battlefield because they kind of tactics are going to get them slaughtered because they are up against things that are just flat out better than them at it in a 1 on 1 engagement. Fortunately, it's very rarely a 1 on 1 battle with the IG

Hospy wrote:

PresidentOfAsia wrote:
Seriously im fething tired of this space marines aré the only competent force crap

I agree that 40k isnt real life, but the ig regiments are based on real life armies

Nobody says the IG is incompetent, it's just that every other faction is either a) heckuva lot more technologically advanced, b) bioengineered killing machines, c) supernatural daemonic entities, or a combination of all three. It's hard to look very threatening when you look at the alternatives.

QFT

PresidentOfAsia wrote:
One thing that has always irked me is when people talk about Imperial Guard, they always say that the Imperial Guard is nothing more then a future ww1 unit that does nothing but charge and die and then send in the next wave

In the books, they do use tactics and they do do what many modern day armies do today, of course there are going to be some differences with the doctrine

While this may be true for some specific regiments(anything under Commander Chenkov's command, though the writers that made him up are a bunch of 40 year old men with the mind of a 13 year old writing a LOTR fanfiction)

Casualties may be high, but high causalities does not mean millions of men lost in a single minute; for example, the Elysian Drop Troops lost 2000 men in Kastorel Novem, though that is high, its far from the billions that people keep putting out. Also high casualties does not mean incompetent either

Would you say the high number of army rangers killed on D-Day make them or their commanders incompetent?


Just think about, if the Imperial Guard loses millions of men PER battle, that must mean they brought 10s,100s, if not billions more guardsmen per battle; if that was true, imagine how much of a logistical clusterfeth that would be

Remember that the biggest ship can carry only about 500,000 at most and they aren't exactly the most plentiful either

Also, just because you're in the regular non superhuman military, doesn't mean you're a puny human

just watch this video to see what infantry men have to go through in real life



Cadians have to do that for their entire lives!


You gotta remember that its the Imperial Guard thats doing the majority of the work in the Imperium

Regardless of how much you train, you are still a puny human in a galaxy filled with Orks, Eldar, Tyranids, Daemons, and countless other hostile races.

And a ship not being plentiful is only relative. There will still be thousands and thousands of them.

Nobody is equating high casualties with incompetence. High casualties is merely a by product of one Imperial tactic, which is to throw the most plentiful resource the Imperium has(human life) at a problem till it goes away.

Training is all well and good, but the best trained an unaugmented human can get in 40k is WS4 BS4 while still being Str3 and T3. WS4 and BS4 would be something like a Navy SEAL or Green Beret level of training. It still can't compare to alien life, or a human that's been turned into a super human soldier with technology and science bordering on magical.

Hospy wrote:
Nobody says the IG is incompetent, it's just that every other faction is either a) heckuva lot more technologically advanced, b) bioengineered killing machines, c) supernatural daemonic entities, or a combination of all three. It's hard to look very threatening when you look at the alternatives

It may be hard for an individual Guardsman to look threatening but that's probably due to it being hard to see them behind their colossal steel balls.

I suppose it comes down to 'humans are boring' when compared to all of the other species/races in 40k, whilst I personally find the opposite to be true. Humans in 40k are fascinating and contribute 95% of my interest in the background. The enormous range of emotions humans have compared to other races/species, what drives them on, that they stand up and fight against species/races/armies that consist of your worst nightmares and they hold the line and prevail, is all of great interest. Yes, yes Space Marines are super-awesome soldiers being super-strong, super-tough etc, etc, but they lack the full set of human emotions (notably fear) and are, well, boring. They can be epic, I'll grant you, but my interest in them waxes and wanes very easily. Xenos have never been my sort of thing and whilst I can get into Chaos, through Slaanesh, it's about the regular humans who turn to Chaos rather than the daemons & Chaos Marines that grab my interest.

In order to make the other races/species sound even more awesome people have applied a stigma to the Guard that they're useless and only get anything done by having lots of soldiers. Whilst this is true to an extent, the number of soldiers thing, our ingenuity & brilliance as a species makes us incredibly dangerous. Do people -really- think that Guard commanders are willing to throw away large parts of their forces by getting them to advance against the enemy willy-nilly, lose the battle or achieve victory at a great cost and then have few forces to fight the next battle? The role of an officer is not just to use their unit(s) as a weapon, but to keep their soldiers alive - a dead soldier kills no-one. The Tactica Imperium, the tome stuffed full of advice & wisdom for officers, says the following;

"Do not throw your forces blindly into battle. Before committing your forces, examine the situation. Review your own strength, and that of your enemy. Remember your own objectives, and try to anticipate those of your opponent. Then select those of your troops best suited to the task in hand. "

Anyway, whilst there'll be people out there who will look down on the Guard with a sneer, there'll be those of us who know who the real defenders of the Imperium are and how capable/competent they are as a fighting force.

I'll just finish off with another excerpt from the Tactica Imperium for those who believe the Guard just throw men into battle willy-nilly;
"Preservation of life for its own sake is not to be commended where sacrifice offers a reasonable chance of gain. None the less, the purposeless waste of life is equally to be avoided. The loss of trained personnel implies the loss of resources, equipment and knowledge. A true warrior does not belittle his value as a resource. The duty of the commander is to judge what means should be undertaken to achieve each objective. He must be aware of what is to be gained and what may be lost. A commander who places his troops in a position where he may likely lose more than he may likely gain risks more than the lives of his men. He risks far more: he risks failure. Loss is acceptable, failure is not. Imperial record COM 07/580.f402.P6

PresidentOfAsia wrote:


Real life soldiers dont drop in with only a single squad and engage the enemy with chainswords

Nor do they throw wave after wave of people at an enemy. Nor do they have tanks that look like they'd topple over if they shot. Nor do they have aircraft that couldn't take off. They also don't use gun lines or plasma weapons or commissars that kill troops who are too scared to fight.

Remember that ig regiments hail from the best of the pdf regiments

Remember that PDF regiments don't stand a chance against any sort of alien attack. Being the best out of the PDF isn't saying much.

Seriously im fething tired of this space marines aré the only competent force crap

Don't know where you're getting this from. No one has said imperial guard are incompetent. They win plenty in the fluff and plenty on the table top. You just seem to be highly confused between the fantasy and reality.

I agree that 40k isnt real life, but the ig regiments are based on real life armies

Lol barely. They're based on a mix of ww1 and ww2 archetypes. With a huge amount of fantastical weapons and characters throw in. I suppose they are based on real armies, if by based you mean they're humans and they use guns.

In many instances the fluff just needs a punching bag/whipping boy, and instead of the golden boy Spehse Mahreens it's the Imperial Guard. Whenever another faction needs to look "zomgamazing", they defeat some ridiculous number of completely incompetent idiot guardsmen and high-five themselves because cool factor.

Griddlelol wrote:
Nor do they throw wave after wave of people at an enemy.

Most of the time the IG don't either.

commissars that kill troops who are too scared to fight.

Commissars are generally there to enforce discipline, only in very specific circumstances are they going around executing cowards.

Remember that PDF regiments don't stand a chance against any sort of alien attack. Being the best out of the PDF isn't saying much.

That's actually their entire point, to repel alien attacks, at least until off-world forces can arrive. Many PDF's are massive military garrisons chocked full of advanced weaponry and veteran troops. Not all are weekend warriors with a stick for a weapon.

Yes, the IG is based off of modern day armies, but look at the modern day armies compared to the IG. (I'm going to use the US Army because that's what I know) How often do our troops fight in melee? Despite what CoD would have you believe, CC is used only as a last resort. Present day tanks have a range proportionally greater than a Basilisk. We also go to war with overwhelming airpower. Aircraft are starting to be integrated into 40k and they're having a powerful effect. If the US Army fought with the tactics used by IG during a 40k tabletop battle (ie only line of sight and without close air support) they would do terribly.
I don't see the IG as being weak puny humans. One on one against many other races, they're physically inferior. What they lack in physical strength they make up for in numbers and firepower. The IG is what keeps the Imperium as powerful as it is, not the SM or SoB.

 Flanker wrote:
Present day tanks have a range proportionally greater than a Basilisk.

Technically speaking, I believe that it's insinuated that the range of a basilisk is roughly equivalent to our modern arty, but it really depends on which source you're using.

 Vaktathi wrote:
In many instances the fluff just needs a punching bag/whipping boy, and instead of the golden boy Spehse Mahreens it's the Imperial Guard. Whenever another faction needs to look "zomgamazing", they defeat some ridiculous number of completely incompetent idiot guardsmen and high-five themselves because cool factor.

Griddlelol wrote:
Nor do they throw wave after wave of people at an enemy.

Most of the time the IG don't either.

commissars that kill troops who are too scared to fight.

Commissars are generally there to enforce discipline, only in very specific circumstances are they going around executing cowards.

Remember that PDF regiments don't stand a chance against any sort of alien attack. Being the best out of the PDF isn't saying much.

That's actually their entire point, to repel alien attacks, at least until off-world forces can arrive. Many PDF's are massive military garrisons chocked full of advanced weaponry and veteran troops. Not all are weekend warriors with a stick for a weapon.

Yeah, but of course we never hear about the stories where the PDF were successful in throwing back the invasion. Otherwise there would be no story to tell. No, you only ever hear about when the PDF are brutally killed to a man. Or reduced to defending the last Imperial stronghold on the planet for months before the IG and/or Space Marines show up to push the enemy back.

 Melissia wrote:

 Flanker wrote:
Present day tanks have a range proportionally greater than a Basilisk.

Technically speaking, I believe that it's insinuated that the range of a basilisk is roughly equivalent to our modern arty, but it really depends on which source you're using.

You're right, but I'm also saying that an Abrams could move faster and shoot farther more accurately than a LR.

 Melissia wrote:

 Flanker wrote:
Present day tanks have a range proportionally greater than a Basilisk.

Technically speaking, I believe that it's insinuated that the range of a basilisk is roughly equivalent to our modern arty, but it really depends on which source you're using.

In-game ranges and distances shouldn't be used to extrapolate the actual range of the weapons fluff-wise.

In-universe, a Basilisk is a long range indirect artillery piece. A self-propelled howitzer. A long range artillery piece is represented by the absurdly long range it has.


Now, many modern day tanks do have the ability to fire over the horizon. But that is more because of having extra computers and software that can handle that sort of thing, plus a gun that can traverse to the required angles.

That extra equipment is expensive, and when you are making millions of these tanks to go across the galaxy you sometimes need to cut corners. How often are LRBTs going to operate without artillery support while also needing it? Or be required to operate as artillery support for a unit that doesn't have any?

Not very often, and as such its not worth it to toss resources at adding a feature that's only going to come up maybe once every few hundred years. The resources you saved can go into making that many more LRBTs, or artillery pieces, or whatever else you need.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Flanker wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Flanker wrote:
Present day tanks have a range proportionally greater than a Basilisk.

Technically speaking, I believe that it's insinuated that the range of a basilisk is roughly equivalent to our modern arty, but it really depends on which source you're using.

You're right, but I'm also saying that an Abrams could move faster and shoot farther more accurately than a LR.

You can't know that for sure. We don't know what in-game stats translate into in the real world.

It could be that the Abram's armor is only equivalent to armor 12. And who knows about the track system.

Accuracy is all well and good, but who knows if a 155mm shell(or SABOT) could harm AV14.

 Flanker wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Flanker wrote:
Present day tanks have a range proportionally greater than a Basilisk.

Technically speaking, I believe that it's insinuated that the range of a basilisk is roughly equivalent to our modern arty, but it really depends on which source you're using.

You're right, but I'm also saying that an Abrams could move faster and shoot farther more accurately than a LR.

And it'd also run out of fuel faster (the Abrams eats fuel faster than TFG goes through a bag of cheetos), not hit anywhere NEAR as hard, and have less armor as well, and it's one of the most expensive tanks we can put out where the LRBT is very, very cheap.

True that, you all make very good points on the technology, firepower, and mobile range of the Abrams that I didn't consider.
I'd like to rephrase then what I was thinking but not what I wrote down. I wanted to say that IG tabletop tactics are completely different from how the modern armies of today fight. We wouldn't wait until the enemy were that close before engaging them. I realize most battles in 40k tabletop gaming can represent a much smaller portion of a larger battle. People see the IG as weak because they picture the tabletop IG of a few platoon squads versus, say, some squads of big bad Orks. Yes, the Orks will chop through them in CC and lose boyz to enemy fire, but behind the first IG squads would be thousands more guardsmen and tanks. I guess think Soviet Union-style military thinking: quantity over quality. The weight of numbers wins out. I imagine the IG would commit with thousands of aircraft and artillery support that we can't see in our small picture of the current battle.

The Imperial Guard are just mere men and women this is true. and its an inescapable fact as well.

But at thier command are mechanized gods of war and untold numbers of troops, each with a standard issue wheel barrow for there giant balls of steel. Because, These mere human beings, with nothing but a flak jacket ("armor"), and a weapon that is often compared to a mere flashlight. They still fight, some fight out of fear. Others fight because they know perfectly well there going to die. others know that if they don't fight and give everything they have then everything they know will cease to exist.

Tactics in some cases are crude. Others involve tactics that would make a real general proud, flanking maneuvers that guerrilla fights would know well, tactical insertions that the best spec op teams would cringe at doing, armored blitzkriegs that would make Rommel proud and more.

Compared to what the IG fight on a daily basis, they are the most badass guys and gals in the universe, they don't need cowar armor to fight with, they don't need rocket propelled automatic grenade launchers, they don't need biological/chemical/cybernetic enhancments, They just need a T-shirt and a lasgun.

I think the phrase you're looking for is 'bunch of TASTY humans'... AM I RITE?!