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I'd say the Damned would be better motivated and would probably have better firearms and individual equipment, probably less fear of death because they've given up hope living and just want blood, the Guard probably have better command structure, better supplies, and more armor and air power.

To quote John Cleese: Explain the logic underlying that conclusion.

The IG fight the enemy over there, because otherwise they would have to fight them right here. "Here" being whatever homeworld they hail from. They fight because it is what the Emperor has commanded, and it is known that no man who died for the Emperor has died in vain.

The IG knows that the possibility of them ever mustering out is exceedingly unlikely, and that death will be an ever-present hazard. They are equipped with as fine a weapon that can be provided to them that functions reliably across the widest range of environments under the widest variety of conditions.

They are supported by the vast armadas of the Imperial Navy, who dominate the skies and the space around any planet the IG arrives on. They are supported by vast legions of artillery, armor and, in some cases, the fabled Legio Titanicus of the Adepts of Mars.

Are we asking if all the guard went against all the Damned? One regiment vs a warband?

But they often fight forces like the Carnibals who now the lay of the land and fight for vengence. As the Despoiler put it "we don't have to give these men a reasons to kill, theve been enslaved for swimply living, they'll die for a chance to shed blood" not an exact quote. I believe the Blood Pact and the Vraksian Militia did a number on the Imperium.

The Blood Pact originate from the Sabbat Crusade, and are basically a Chaos version of the IG. They are no better-equipped than any comparable IG Regiment, and are often much-worse-equipped (their tanks are noted for being particularly crappy).

 Psienesis wrote:
The Blood Pact originate from the Sabbat Crusade, and are basically a Chaos version of the IG. They are no better-equipped than any comparable IG Regiment, and are often much-worse-equipped (their tanks are noted for being particularly crappy).

In addition, the Blood Pact are stated to be head and shoulders above the average Chaos soldier/cultist in terms of training and equipment due to being based upon Imperial Guard methods.

Yeah, not all Guardsmen are from Cadia either.

I'd say the quality varies immensely across both factions.

Guard all the way.

The guard are a true fighting force. Unlike todays forces they have soldiers for every purpose. So whatever the renegades can throw at the imperium the guard likely have a few thousand regiments specially trained to do such a task. Both guard and renegade have huge motivation factors and training varies.

But what doesnt vary is the assumption that usually guard equipment will be better. They have direct access to munitions and replacement gear whereas renegades have to salvage, make do or attempt to use slave labor.

Imperial forces on the whole will more often than not have more co ordination and co operation between each other. Chaos however can be very split and are rarely united. Especially long term.

Renegades however have a bit more freedom in terms of gear modification, mercenaries and so on. Not being restricted by rules, laws or customs (sometimes) can sometimes make your troops more efficient.

Over all I think the guard will on average come out on top. The flexibility of regiments, replacement of gear and munitions, more readily available naval support and unification gives them the edge. Other than that they are likely on par with the renegade forces.

Of course, like everything else guard related it depends on the variables of the situation.

Sek! Sek! Sek!

It is a common misconception that the imperial guard are poorly trained, motivated, and equipped. They are in fact the best their planets have to offer, highly motivated, and equipped to the best of the IoM ability to do so when talking about the environments and number the IG engage. The IG as a general principle also want to fight for their emperor, the IoM, and to protect their home world. The famous factions all have a high level of motivation. I think that if you are going to judge the IG then you should judge them by actual studio factions as anything can be written by fans from an entire concript force to a gaunts ghosts x1000.

On the flip side the lost and the damned can be anything and everything from conscripts level soldiers up to blood pact. Though blood pact are supposed to be IG level soldiers and are noted as being extraordinarily well trained and motivated for the lost and the damned troops. Normally lost and the damned lack limited resource weapons and gear. ie lasguns and autoguns can be looted easily and are essentially an infinite resource for them. Grenades, meltaguns, plasmaguns, and vehicles are much harder to capture intact and are usually where the lost and the damned struggle. Lost and the damned are even in studio fluff a huge range of everything. Hard to say.

Chaos has relatively speaking, far fewer centres of industry than the Imperium. Abaddon is as influential as he is because he has strongarmed a majority of the chaotic forgeworlds in the eye into his service. Being the champion of chaos is nice and all, but meaningless if you can't provide equipment to any of your followers. In the Sabbat world campaign, the forces of Chaos rarely fielded Leman Russes because they couldn't make enough, and had to settle for the substantially inferior reaver tanks; with even elite formations like the Blood Pact needing to use generally inferior mechanized assets. Of course, Heritor Asphodel probably hogged quite a lot of heavy industry for his big, clanking, and ultimately impractical (even by 40k standards) war machines.

Generally speaking, chaotic equipment tends to be more poorly maintained (often because the user's too crazy to fix and clean his own kit), built to lower standards, and lacking in the incremental advances made by the Imperium; which is compensated for via daemonic power and pressing onwards with an attack because they're too nutty to realize they're screwed.

The discipline and training of the bulk of chaotic forces is also quite poor, they are the forces of Chaos after all. Order is the exception not the rule.

Your usual cultist is essentially fodder for a guardsman, using worse equipment, barely trained at all, and usually has a rather tenuous grip on reality. Khornate cultists frequently forget to even fire their guns in lieu of charging headlong into kill zones to use their bayonets, dress warmly for an ice world, or take cover because the bloodlust of Khorne has blinded them to such basic considerations, and Khorne doesn't really care to make such rabble any less vulnerable to getting shot.

Traitor guard are more skilled of course, and are usually fair matches for their loyalist counterparts; but due to the aforementioned problems of logistics they are frequently less well equipped, and of course many of them are crazy. Usually not to the extent that they forget any basic tactical sense, but they often make odd choices (bringing bill hooks into a gun-fight, really Blood Pact?).

In conflict, the lost and the damned relies on mutations, chaos boons, hordes of cultist and mutant rabble, and daemons to make up for their loyalist's counterparts superior logistical support, materiel advantages, and generally training/sanity/discipline.

Also in terms of manpower, the Imperium has far more bodies to throw than the denizens of the eye and maelstrom and generally will triumph in a war of attrition if other problems aren't dividing their attention. "Billions of guardsmen"? Try quadrillions based on rather conservative estimates of the Imperial population and degree of militarization.

Throwing more guardsmen at one theater than there have ever been people on the Earth would be at most; a drop in the bucket that is the Guard's resources. The forces of the traitors can enjoy local numerical superiority by giving guns and blades to untrained rabble and throwing them at the servants of the Emperor, but on the macro-scale; the Guard probably has more tanks than the LatD has professional soldiers.

The guard has access to some crippling fire support as well, artillery, bigger artillery, air strikes with napalm, iron bombs, limited stocks of PGMs. and as I have said numerous times, they have a pretty sophisticated air defense network by 40k standards.

Its telling that the elite of the human chaos soldiers are rated "as good as guardsmen". In close environments the ferocity of blood pact/sons of sek or traitor guard will give them a slight edge, but in open battles the guard is king.

I think discipline is the key factor here. The guard have commisars and a well structured chain of command to ensure that units don't break and run when the battle goes against them.

A crazy horde of herectics might be driven forward by blasphemous sermons and the fear of their master's whips but as soon battle starts to turn against them, they are going to break and rout. Orderly retreats are difficult to oversee when half of your force is running into the guns of your enemies with wanton abandon, while the other half are bolting back towards your lines.

There are been numerous examples in the fluff and BL books where even Chaos Marines themselves are thwarted because elements of their forces withdraw without support, while others attack mindlessly with no awareness of the greater battle plan. If marines can be so badly handicapped by a lack of discipline then it's fair to assume the mortals would too.

If you are comparing soldier to soldier, I think LOTD wins

If you are comparing army to army, the LOTD have worse equipment and lack discipline, and are no match for a similar Guard force.

I will put them at the PDF´s level. They are really good at infiltrating and asymmetrical warfare though.

Also depends on the Legion they are supporting (or if they are supporting one at all)

Alpha Legion Operatives are like Jason Bourne levels of awesome, crack teams of specialists that can act alone and be trusted carry out their tasks to the letter.

Word Bearers on the other hand, treat humanity as dogs, worth less than nothing. In Dark Apostle, they basically just chained a bunch of people together and put them in front of the Chaos marines to let them die in droves, with poor or zero weaprony to fight back.

Some, like the Nightlords will train and equip the humans that serve them but aren't exactly concerned if they survive aside from the inconvenience of training new ones.

A traitor guard regiment with it's original commanders might actually `show more concern for his men and attempt to keep them in some sort of semblance of a fighting structure, whereas another might be a power crazed sorceror, willing to sacrifice as many of his own to attain Daemonhood.

Definitely though, I would rate LATD stronger on a one on one basic. It's the same principle as Orks, in a straight fight, an ork can tear a man apart, but a disciplined plattoon can hold off thousands of screaming Xenos if needs be.

The Blood pact was considered special and game changing in the Sabbat world crusades despite only numbering 750,000 or so because it could fight on par with the guard.

This 750,000 man force was considered more valuable then much larger forces of cultists because it actually had discipline and tactical sense whereas the other billion or so chaos aligned troops involved had a concept of warfare starting at hollywood tactics and only getting worse from there. And also the Blood Pact actually had training and some ability to maintain their own equipment and logistical support.

The vast bulk of the forces of Chaos present weren't a match for the Guard unit to unit, and even the Blood Pact needed to trade several tanks just to bring down single Leman Russes (to be fair though, the tanks Chaos had in the sabbat crusade were gak). To be more fair, they were going up against the Tanith. And even a fireteam Chaos Space Marines went down to a single squad of guardsmen and some primitives with blackpowder guns, and blowdarts without killing a single member of the Tanith so it's not like it's easy to avoid being reduced to cannon fodder for Gaunt and co to mow down.

Of the legions, only the Alpha Legion and Iron Warriors care enough to really bother taking the time to train their troops with decent tactics. Though the Iron Warriors still see those they train as expendable to a T.

Most other legions vary from the night lords who will train troops when it's convenient but not really put any value into them, to the Word Bearers who see being merely human as being unworthy of having anything nice in life. This including training, gear that isn't likely to jam or explode in your face, armor they didn't just find lying around, or basic compassion. But the Word Bearers are especially evil and dickish in one of the most evil and dickish factions in the game and extend their attitudes towards all the other legions and generally anything but themselves and the chaos gods.

Feth the word bearers.

As for the other legions; The Black Legion is mostly indifferent. Any training or logistical support is entirely up to you to acquire. They won't stop you, but they won't explicitly help you out. From what we see, the Black legion's hierarchy is rather abusive to those below them; there's very little kindness or camaraderie among them. They just hate each other a bit less than they hate everyone else and fear the guys above them. So they're unlikely to be very nice to their cultists and may do harm to you out of boredom/frustration, but it's mostly standard evil overlord fare.

The World Eaters are the legion most strongly afflicted with a case of Hollywood tactics and probably don't care who you are or what you're doing as long as you worship khorne and can charge in the same direction they're going. Just don't get in the way.

The Deathguard is probably avuncular to it's cultists, but the Deathguard has a very dire materiel situation because their kit is constantly falling apart. They'll take good care of their cultists, but your autogun may just crumble in your hands after firing for too long and your vehicle's engine is probably on it's last legs. But at least you won't feel the pain when your plasma gun explodes in your face.

The Emperor's Children probably rape, mutilate, murder, torture, have orgies with, do drugs with (only what gets them high kills you dead in a millisecond), their cultists and use them as fodder for anything to get the adrenaline pumping. If you're lucky, they may let you in on the fun. If not, you are the fun. Probably one of the worst legions to hang around with in terms of minion abuse.

The Thousand Sons use other followers of Tzeentch as pawns in their master plans and will only treasure something as far as it's useful to them, but they don't seem to abuse for the sake of absuing. Callous yes, but not actively cruel. How well they equip and train you probably depends entirely on what the Sorcerer believes is most efficient for the task at hand.

Chaos renegades all vary, but the Red Corsairs at least seem to recognize the usefulness of numerous and well armed meat-shields loyal to them.

II might be wrong but I always figured that the treatment given to the mortal chaos followers differed according to when they turned to Chaos. Imperial POW''s seem to be pretty low on the list. In Dark Apostle I think they showed respect for one Imperial pow who was blessed somehow by choas, a Bezerker even gave him somesort of warrior salute.

Chaos renegades all vary, but the Red Corsairs at least seem to recognize the usefulness of numerous and well armed meat-shields loyal to them.

Variel seems to have nothing but contempt for all mortals while the Night Lords seem to show a certain basic respect for officers and skilled serfs.

This is a faction that openly admits that it's motivation is to "Do evil for evil's sake".

Some may have more complex motivations, but others will do bad and wrong things precisely because they are bad and wrong.

Like a more graphically violent snidely whiplash.

I expect flagrant abuse to be the norm and kindness to be the exception.

Some seem to have noble intentions. Even the villainous Honsou said that only with Chaos could humanity defeat the Tyranids and Necrons. Long term survival of the human species does'nt seem to be that bad of a goal.

Ironclad Warlord wrote:
Some seem to have noble intentions. Even the villainous Honsou said that only with Chaos could humanity defeat the Tyranids and Necrons. Long term survival of the human species does'nt seem to be that bad of a goal.

On the other hand you have

"If a man dedicates his life to good deeds and the welfare of others, he will die unthanked and unremembered. If he exercises his genius bringing misery and death to billions, his name will echo through the millennia for a hundred lifetimes. Infamy is always more preferable to ignominy." -Fabius Bile.

"Destroy, for the sake of Destruction
Kill, for the sake of Killing"

Let no good deed go unpunished.
Let no evil deed go unrewarded."

The forces of chaos are psychopaths one and all, and the chaos space marines are the worst out of a bad lot. Altruism is for the weak.

Talos: This is more than revenge this is redemption.

Sins of the father, my fathers sins are that of great heresy, my fathers fathers sins are his first acts of Godhood.

It was an honor to serve adept.

He like the man, cowardice had no place on the bridge.

Lorgar: my son you may have saved the human race.

Angron: You blue clad wretches have don't know courage or honor. Courage is fighting those who enslave you, honor is fighting them no matter that they outnumber 100 to 1 while everyone else grows fat on hypocrisy.

I am no mans lord.

My brothers my sister I should have died with you....

Argel Tal: YOU KILLED CYRENE.

Only through Chaos can mankind survive: said by many a chaos lord.

 Kain wrote:

Ironclad Warlord wrote:
Some seem to have noble intentions. Even the villainous Honsou said that only with Chaos could humanity defeat the Tyranids and Necrons. Long term survival of the human species does'nt seem to be that bad of a goal.

On the other hand you have

"If a man dedicates his life to good deeds and the welfare of others, he will die unthanked and unremembered. If he exercises his genius bringing misery and death to billions, his name will echo through the millennia for a hundred lifetimes. Infamy is always more preferable to ignominy." -Fabius Bile.

"Destroy, for the sake of Destruction
Kill, for the sake of Killing"

Let no good deed go unpunished.
Let no evil deed go unrewarded."

The forces of chaos are psychopaths one and all, and the chaos space marines are the worst out of a bad lot. Altruism is for the weak.

That´s the mattwardsque approach to Chaos: evil guys fighting the good guys (loyal marines). It is like saying: "the background about chaos looks like something written by a 12 year old boy who has never been near a school". Sadly, you are partly right. It stinks. And it is going worse and worse with every release.

But there is still lots of well written stuff out there. Ironclad Warlord quoted you some . The Codexes/Codices of past editions, many Black Library novels, background books such as the Index Astartes or the Liber Chaotica, Forgeworld stuff... Not all chaos´ background is childish and worthy of contempt. The drop in quality is there, but you can ignore it.

Actually, after 25+ years, there is a LOT of good stuff about Chaos. Just ignore any Codex written after 2010.

(The Fabius quote is still OK, though; he is supposed to be evil... but he has his motivations).

 da001 wrote:

 Kain wrote:

Ironclad Warlord wrote:
Some seem to have noble intentions. Even the villainous Honsou said that only with Chaos could humanity defeat the Tyranids and Necrons. Long term survival of the human species does'nt seem to be that bad of a goal.

On the other hand you have

"If a man dedicates his life to good deeds and the welfare of others, he will die unthanked and unremembered. If he exercises his genius bringing misery and death to billions, his name will echo through the millennia for a hundred lifetimes. Infamy is always more preferable to ignominy." -Fabius Bile.

"Destroy, for the sake of Destruction
Kill, for the sake of Killing"

Let no good deed go unpunished.
Let no evil deed go unrewarded."

The forces of chaos are psychopaths one and all, and the chaos space marines are the worst out of a bad lot. Altruism is for the weak.

That´s the mattwardsque approach to Chaos: evil guys fighting the good guys (loyal marines). It is like saying: "the background about chaos looks like something written by a 12 year old boy who has never been near a school". Sadly, you are partly right. It stinks. And it is going worse and worse with every release.

But there is still lots of well written stuff out there. Ironclad Warlord quoted you some . The Codexes/Codices of past editions, many Black Library novels, background books such as the Index Astartes or the Liber Chaotica, Forgeworld stuff... Not all chaos´ background is childish and worthy of contempt. The drop in quality is there, but you can ignore it.

Actually, after 25+ years, there is a LOT of good stuff about Chaos. Just ignore any Codex written after 2010.

(The Fabius quote is still OK, though; he is supposed to be evil... but he has his motivations).

I don't take GW's interpretation of 40k's fluff seriously if they can't even get a basic sense of scale right or populate their setting with saturday morning cartoon villains. From a writing quality standpoint, the 40k setting as presented by GW is a disjointed mess and is incredibly silly, and is even more silly for trying to present itself as serious when the Studio fluff is ridiculous.

I'm not really going to be generous enough to GW to assume that it's capable of such complex ideas as "character motivation" or "development" or "three dimensional entities" or "cohesive metaplot."

Luckily, there is no 40k canon other than what you choose to interpret so I can freely ignore all of GW's missteps and mistakes.

 Kain wrote:
(...)
I don't take GW's interpretation of 40k's fluff seriously if they can't even get a basic sense of scale right or populate their setting with saturday morning cartoon villains. From a writing quality standpoint, the 40k setting as presented by GW is a disjointed mess and is incredibly silly, and is even more silly for trying to present itself as serious when the Studio fluff is ridiculous.

I'm not really going to be generous enough to GW to assume that it's capable of such complex ideas as "character motivation" or "development" or "three dimensional entities" or "cohesive metaplot."

Luckily, there is no 40k canon other than what you choose to interpret so I can freely ignore all of GW's missteps and mistakes.

Good for you. But my point is that complex ideas such as "character motivation" or "development" or "three dimensional entities" or "cohesive metaplot" are actively present in some parts of the background, including some background about Chaos.

W40k has one of the richest and most complex background you can find. You can ignore the incredible good stuff and focus on the "Let no good deed go unpunished. rar rar so evil" ooooooorrr.... you can ignore that BS and focus of the really good stuff. Because there is good stuff.

To put it bluntly: GW actually IS capable of doing high quality fiction. But it costs money and effort, and lately they stopped it. But you can ignore the bad stuff. If you want to know about, say, the Word Bearers, read The First Heretic, the Index Astartes entry, the forgeworld HH entry and the Word Bearers trilogy. Lots of good stuff there.

In my opinion, of course. The setting is quite over-the-top to begin with, and I know many people who just find it too silly.

Blood Gorgon: pledge your loyalty
Traitor Guard commander: what no blood oath?
Blood Gorgon: we are not the barbarians your Imperium thinks we are your word as a commander of men is enough.
Guard commander: all I know is fighting
Blood Gorgon: and you will find much of it in the eastern fringe, and you will have my ships and my patronage.

Honsou in response to a Imperial aristocrats list titles: I have no such titles, I am known of halfbreed mongrel scum and yes I will cross swords with you.

An Iron Warrior prior to execution by an Ultramarine: From Iron cometh Strength. From Strength cometh Will. From Will cometh Faith. From Faith cometh Honor. From Honor cometh Iron. may it be forever so.

The

Ironclad Warlord wrote:
Blood Gorgon: pledge your loyalty
Traitor Guard commander: what no blood oath?
Blood Gorgon: we are not the barbarians your Imperium thinks we are your word as a commander of men is enough.
Guard commander: all I know is fighting
Blood Gorgon: and you will find much of it in the eastern fringe, and you will have my ships and my patronage.

Honsou in response to a Imperial aristocrats list titles: I have no such titles, I am known of halfbreed mongrel scum and yes I will cross swords with you.

An Iron Warrior prior to execution by an Ultramarine: From Iron cometh Strength. From Strength cometh Will. From Will cometh Faith. From Faith cometh Honor. From Honor cometh Iron. may it be forever so.

The

This.

I'm sick of people who don't read the books who keep saying that chaos is just "Raaarrrrr kill everything we're pure evil." In the Gaunts Ghosts books the chaos human commanders are the EXACT same as the IG ones, fancy dressings and all. They don't even mention the Ruinous Powers. Sure there are truly evil chaos armies like Word Bearers but most of traitor forces aren't much different than people think they are.

This.

I'm sick of people who don't read the books who keep saying that chaos is just "Raaarrrrr kill everything we're pure evil." In the Gaunts Ghosts books the chaos human commanders are the EXACT same as the IG ones, fancy dressings and all. They don't even mention the Ruinous Powers. Sure there are truly evil chaos armies like Word Bearers but most of traitor forces aren't much different than people think they are.

At least were not on a Fallout Forum, the fans of that game seem to hallucinate things about factions they don't like when their not threatening each other over which fallout game was the best.

 KorPhaeron77 wrote:
Also depends on the Legion they are supporting (or if they are supporting one at all)

Alpha Legion Operatives are like Jason Bourne levels of awesome, crack teams of specialists that can act alone and be trusted carry out their tasks to the letter.

This is supposition, not necessarily truth. During the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy this might have been true, but post-Heresy we have seen very little about the "Alpha Legion Operatives"...which aren't really an equivalent to the Lost and the Damned anyways. The Alpha Legion encourages the creation of cults and uprisings but that's not to say that those cults are going to all be Jason Bournes or Ethan Hunts.

Word Bearers on the other hand, treat humanity as dogs, worth less than nothing. In Dark Apostle, they basically just chained a bunch of people together and put them in front of the Chaos marines to let them die in droves, with poor or zero weaprony to fight back.

Word Bearers are not alone in this. Black Legion and Night Lords have been stated to do similar. Trying to say that there is one Legion that does it like X, while another does Y is silly.

 KorPhaeron77 wrote:

Word Bearers on the other hand, treat humanity as dogs, worth less than nothing. But only if they are at open war with them. In Dark Apostle, they basically just chained a bunch of people together and put them in front of the Chaos marines to let them die in droves, with poor or zero weaprony to fight back.

Fixed!
Word Bearers believe in the "kill the weak" way of helping natural selection, and are incredibly brutal against their enemies.

But they also believe that humanity must be told the truth of Lorgar. The gods favor the strong. If you want to see what the Word Bearers think about humans, look here: they are commanded by a human, not an Astartes. Kor Phaeron was an old religious guy that didn´t turn into an Astartes. He is human. But he is strong and his faith is unyielding.

Tell me another Astartes Legion / Chapter willing to take orders (without any kind of doubt) from a mere human.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Word Bearers are not alone in this. Black Legion and Night Lords have been stated to do similar. Trying to say that there is one Legion that does it like X, while another does Y is silly.

^True.
All CSM and most SM are merciless killers. In war, they will do terrible things.

 da001 wrote:

But they also believe that humanity must be told the truth of Lorgar. The gods favor the strong. If you want to see what the Word Bearers think about humans, look here: they are commanded by a human, not an Astartes. Kor Phaeron was an old religious guy that didn´t turn into an Astartes. He is human. But he is strong and his faith is unyielding.

Tell me another Astartes Legion / Chapter willing to take orders (without any kind of doubt) from a mere human.

To be fair, the Word Bearers take orders from Kor Phaeron somewhat grudgingly. It's explicitly stated that many look down on him for only being kinda-sorta marine instead of actual marine, which IMHO is petty in a real jack ass way considering the guy is Lorgar's foster father for crying out loud.