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.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I disagree!

Sarcasm?
Tsk, tsk.
Honestly, space marines aren't made to hOld places. That's why every time they try they end up getting pissed off at an army officer and throw the person in charge off of a building.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
They can't do anything against enemy leadership that a cruise missile with a tactical nuke can't do for a tiny fraction of the cost. And whether or not they can face those horrors doesn't really matter, anything touched by that corruption is going to need to be destroyed anyway, so just nuke it from orbit until nothing is left.

It's funny because I distinctly remember having a conversation with you in which I posited that the way the Imperial Guard fight is moronic because an air strike/carpet bombing would achieve in seconds what it takes them sometimes years to achieve for a fraction of the cost and time. To which your response was "b-b-but you can't just bomb everything! What about times where you want to take the base/city/location more or less intact! Then you need a surgical instrument!"

And yet... here you are...

Um. . . Strategic bombing? Removal of life? VIRAL BOMBING!

One that really confuses me. But none the less awesome was in the 13th Legion book for the last chancers.

1 Genestealer takes control of an entire imperial fortress city.

Granted it just took control of the people running it and told the rest of the city that rebel forces were seiging the city. But still I imagine genestealers dying by bolter fire all the time.

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
One that really confuses me. But none the less awesome was in the 13th Legion book for the last chancers.

1 Genestealer takes control of an entire imperial fortress city.

Granted it just took control of the people running it and told the rest of the city that rebel forces were seiging the city. But still I imagine genestealers dying by bolter fire all the time.

Based on the films that "inspired" them, Genestealers suffer from the Alien Paradox: the more monsters working together the weaker they become individually. Reversed an individual grunt can become a big bad purely by lack of allies/competition.

On this Space Marine thing. I think they're much too small, its stated there are 100,000 of them, for an entire galaxy of trillions. I totally see them as an ultra-elite strike force and that works in one off bits of fluff but things like the Armageddon and Tyrannic Wars, in both cases you're talking about 10,000 men in battles of billions. You always see Space Marines acting in small task forces but even these often equal an entire company of a chapter. The only way Space Marines could hope to impact a battle is to totally split up and for individual Marines to command Guard platoons, scaring/rallying them much better than any Commissar could.

Things like warp storms, plasma cannons, the sheer scale of 40k warfare (A Marine could defeat 50 Orks, just a shame there's 500) all mean IMO the entire Astartes could be crippled Galaxy-wide pretty sharpish. Hell give me a million SM by the galatic standards that's still bloody small and elite.

-----------------

Oh and I know its been said but the fact the most common Imperial Guard unit of reference is a regiment.

 Jape wrote:

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
One that really confuses me. But none the less awesome was in the 13th Legion book for the last chancers.

1 Genestealer takes control of an entire imperial fortress city.

Granted it just took control of the people running it and told the rest of the city that rebel forces were seiging the city. But still I imagine genestealers dying by bolter fire all the time.

Based on the films that "inspired" them, Genestealers suffer from the Alien Paradox: the more monsters working together the weaker they become individually. Reversed an individual grunt can become a big bad purely by lack of allies/competition.

On this Space Marine thing. I think they're much too small, its stated there are 100,000 of them, for an entire galaxy of trillions. I totally see them as an ultra-elite strike force and that works in one off bits of fluff but things like the Armageddon and Tyrannic Wars, in both cases you're talking about 10,000 men in battles of billions. You always see Space Marines acting in small task forces but even these often equal an entire company of a chapter. The only way Space Marines could hope to impact a battle is to totally split up and for individual Marines to command Guard platoons, scaring/rallying them much better than any Commissar could.

Things like warp storms, plasma cannons, the sheer scale of 40k warfare (A Marine could defeat 50 Orks, just a shame there's 500) all mean IMO the entire Astartes could be crippled Galaxy-wide pretty sharpish. Hell give me a million SM by the galatic standards that's still bloody small and elite.

-----------------

Oh and I know its been said but the fact the most common Imperial Guard unit of reference is a regiment.

*1,000,000

Rather than 100,000. But the point still holds.

I mean, if people wanted Marines that are not demigods of war, maybe you should take a look at Halo?

The Spartans are a lot like Space Marines, but in a setting that is sci-fi instead of fantasy, and the limits of their numbers is acknowledged (There's like a few hundred of them, which means they are not an actual army but rather leaders and operatives, despite the setting being far far smaller.)

 Swastakowey wrote:
So I keep reading about 40k having a horrible sense of scale (and I agree). But there isnt a big list of failures in this regard I could find out there. For example C.S Gotto has a big list of things wrong with his books out there, movies have cinema sins on you tube and the list goes on.

So maybe a Tally of 40k sins could be a fun list to make (background only, not in game stuff).

So if we could back it up with sources etc I think it could be a fun discussion.

So things like numbers of Space Marines or the sizes of battles etc as easy ones to get out of the way. So nitpick at the silly little things and back them up with sources or info.

This is a thread for nitpicking.

I am very interested to see what comes up.



Quick list:

Siege of Vraks = 8 Million Casualties. WW1 = 10 Million dead alone. Missing and wounded number in the 25 million mark. Fail

50k ish Sisters of Battle? Fail

The siege of vraks was done on a span of 20ish years. So the casualties are quite low for a ww1esque war

 Ashiraya wrote:
I mean, if people wanted Marines that are not demigods of war, maybe you should take a look at Halo?

The Spartans are a lot like Space Marines, but in a setting that is sci-fi instead of fantasy, and the limits of their numbers is acknowledged (There's like a few hundred of them, which means they are not an actual army but rather leaders and operatives, despite the setting being far far smaller.)

But Halo doesn't have the rest of the 40k setting. And low-end space marines fit the setting perfectly once you remember that the Imperium is not a rational empire that always uses the most efficient tools they can get. They're an insane and sadistic theocracy that often seems to exist for the sole purpose of extending the misery and suffering of humanity for as long as possible before a final, merciful death. They build giant cathedral-ships to worship their corpse god, they sacrifice millions of lives (along with vast amounts of weapons) to protect irrelevant religious shrines, they ban science and engineering as unforgivable heresy in favor of tank designs that a 1920s army would consider obsolete garbage, etc. Space marines are just one more part of that trend. They're an obscene waste of resources while simultaneously being too rare to matter 99.999% of the time, but god says to build space marines! Welcome to life in a dystopia.

 Jape wrote:

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
One that really confuses me. But none the less awesome was in the 13th Legion book for the last chancers.

1 Genestealer takes control of an entire imperial fortress city.

Granted it just took control of the people running it and told the rest of the city that rebel forces were seiging the city. But still I imagine genestealers dying by bolter fire all the time.

Based on the films that "inspired" them, Genestealers suffer from the Alien Paradox: the more monsters working together the weaker they become individually. Reversed an individual grunt can become a big bad purely by lack of allies/competition.

On this Space Marine thing. I think they're much too small, its stated there are 100,000 of them, for an entire galaxy of trillions. I totally see them as an ultra-elite strike force and that works in one off bits of fluff but things like the Armageddon and Tyrannic Wars, in both cases you're talking about 10,000 men in battles of billions. You always see Space Marines acting in small task forces but even these often equal an entire company of a chapter. The only way Space Marines could hope to impact a battle is to totally split up and for individual Marines to command Guard platoons, scaring/rallying them much better than any Commissar could.

Things like warp storms, plasma cannons, the sheer scale of 40k warfare (A Marine could defeat 50 Orks, just a shame there's 500) all mean IMO the entire Astartes could be crippled Galaxy-wide pretty sharpish. Hell give me a million SM by the galatic standards that's still bloody small and elite.

-----------------

Oh and I know its been said but the fact the most common Imperial Guard unit of reference is a regiment.

One million. One million Space Marines. One Thousand Chapters of One Thousand Marines each.

Obviously, that is just the averages (BT have like 6K Marines, SW have like 2K Marines... some Chapters have 50 guys left), but that's GW's quote. "An Imperium of a million worlds"... and one Space Marine per world.

Of course, one million Space Marines are still too few to really accomplish anything...

... but, on the other hand... maybe we've been looking at it all wrong all this time? Maybe the battles of M41 really aren't all that big? Maybe it really is like 200 guys on a side, fighting in a space the size of a Wal-Mart parking lot with very slow-moving bullets and very short-ranged tanks?

 Psienesis wrote:

 Jape wrote:

DontEatRawHagis wrote:
One that really confuses me. But none the less awesome was in the 13th Legion book for the last chancers.

1 Genestealer takes control of an entire imperial fortress city.

Granted it just took control of the people running it and told the rest of the city that rebel forces were seiging the city. But still I imagine genestealers dying by bolter fire all the time.

Based on the films that "inspired" them, Genestealers suffer from the Alien Paradox: the more monsters working together the weaker they become individually. Reversed an individual grunt can become a big bad purely by lack of allies/competition.

On this Space Marine thing. I think they're much too small, its stated there are 100,000 of them, for an entire galaxy of trillions. I totally see them as an ultra-elite strike force and that works in one off bits of fluff but things like the Armageddon and Tyrannic Wars, in both cases you're talking about 10,000 men in battles of billions. You always see Space Marines acting in small task forces but even these often equal an entire company of a chapter. The only way Space Marines could hope to impact a battle is to totally split up and for individual Marines to command Guard platoons, scaring/rallying them much better than any Commissar could.

Things like warp storms, plasma cannons, the sheer scale of 40k warfare (A Marine could defeat 50 Orks, just a shame there's 500) all mean IMO the entire Astartes could be crippled Galaxy-wide pretty sharpish. Hell give me a million SM by the galatic standards that's still bloody small and elite.

-----------------

Oh and I know its been said but the fact the most common Imperial Guard unit of reference is a regiment.

One million. One million Space Marines. One Thousand Chapters of One Thousand Marines each.

Obviously, that is just the averages (BT have like 6K Marines, SW have like 2K Marines... some Chapters have 50 guys left), but that's GW's quote. "An Imperium of a million worlds"... and one Space Marine per world.

Of course, one million Space Marines are still too few to really accomplish anything...

... but, on the other hand... maybe we've been looking at it all wrong all this time? Maybe the battles of M41 really aren't all that big? Maybe it really is like 200 guys on a side, fighting in a space the size of a Wal-Mart parking lot with very slow-moving bullets and very short-ranged tanks?

And suddenly I want to hide in the Bloodbowl universe, where my guys punch up your guys for lunch money. Or vice versa.

Probably vice versa.

I've gone entire games without rolling a six.

... but, on the other hand... maybe we've been looking at it all wrong all this time? Maybe the battles of M41 really aren't all that big? Maybe it really is like 200 guys on a side, fighting in a space the size of a Wal-Mart parking lot with very slow-moving bullets and very short-ranged tanks?

Welcome to the greatest fiction paradigme! All complains about GW lack of sense of scale are stating that they seem to underestimate the size of planets, battles, space or even what a group of fictionnal soldiers could or couldn't do by using popular military reference from history books as proofs for exemple WW1 or WW2 numbers of soldiers in this or that battle. The problem is that these wars are very different from one another and even more different from how we would wage a war of this size today and probably even more different then how war is waged in 40k.

In the books, war seems very similar to today or in our recent past, but when you really read through these story you will notice that very little is explained about battle plans, the actual size of the ennemy forces or even their tactitcs. These things are irrelevent to a story teller. The goal is not to relate a war but to tell the story of a character stuck in that war...

Apologies about the SM number fudge.

I'm fine for the most part* with battles/wars 'only' involving millions of soldiers as its been stated in fluff most Imperial worlds are lucky to have above a million inhabitants, hive and forge worlds are relatively rare and beyond them its often single settlements on hostile planets, purely functional colonies for mining/farming and pre-industrial worlds.

Add to the that the enormity of space, even if there are trillions of Imperial Guard/Orks/Chaos supporters/Tyranids etc. most battles almost certainly only involve small forces, be they garrisons or raiding/scouting parties. Its only when a prize of sector/galactic worth like Armagedon is fought over that the huge armies are gathered

 Jape wrote:
Apologies about the SM number fudge.

I'm fine for the most part* with battles/wars 'only' involving millions of soldiers as its been stated in fluff most Imperial worlds are lucky to have above a million inhabitants, hive and forge worlds are relatively rare and beyond them its often single settlements on hostile planets, purely functional colonies for mining/farming and pre-industrial worlds.

Add to the that the enormity of space, even if there are trillions of Imperial Guard/Orks/Chaos supporters/Tyranids etc. most battles almost certainly only involve small forces, be they garrisons or raiding/scouting parties. Its only when a prize of sector/galactic worth like Armagedon is fought over that the huge armies are gathered

I thought Hive Worlds were the backbone of the IOM...

And where does anything state that Imperial worlds would be lucky to get more than a million inhabitants? The only numbers for populations I've seen are counted in the hundreds of millions or more.