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.

Let's do some roleplay: you are a Guardsman, you have been enlisted to the masses of the Astra Militarium in order to protect the Imperium from Xenos and Daemon alike. Only, you are in a rather unusual situatuion as a Guardsman: you have been given a choice.

For whatever reason the Lord Comissar has singled you out to give you a choice on your deployment (probably some kind of behavioural experiment), he tells you that you can either be deployed in the Eastern Fringe to defend the populous as they escape an unending tide of Tyranids or you can deploy with a contingency of Grey Knights on the outskirts of The Eye of Terror in order to hold back the tide on a fledgling Daemon world as Inquisition hurry to extract vital information from the archives.

Your chances of surviving are unlikely on both missions: unlikely to survive the Tyranids as they will likely swarm your possision before all of the populous have escaped and unlikely to survive the Daemon mission as your exposure to the warp will most likely win an execution.

If you are unfortunate enough to not be blown to pieces from a far then the Tyranids will eat you alive and you will die missing limbs, bleeding to death and slowly being melted by the biomorph's acid. The Daemons will do different things to you depending on their deity; Khornate Daemons will tear you apart and harvest your skull; Tzeentch Daemons will either burn you alive in warp flame or destroy your mind with their psychic abilities; Nurgle Daemons will corrupt your body with Plagues of the warp from which you may not ever know the cure of death; and Slaanesh Daemons will likely not kill you, but that is not a good thing among those beasts.

So Guardsman, what will it be? The Great Devourer or the ruinous powers? You decide.

Tyranids every day of the week.


They just kill you, Whilst Chaos will have fun with your soul for the rest of eternity.

Hm.

I'm an Imperial Guard soldier fighting off a planetary invasion. In all likelihood, either I'm going to die, or we're going to win the fight, or both.

Tyranid weapons are biological in nature, consisting of things like acid and carnivorous bugs.

Chaos weapons, depending on who exactly we're fighting, are boltguns, lasguns, or psychic powers. If we're fighting demons I'm going to be killed by the Grey Knights afterward.

I think I'll take being shot to death over being melted or eaten alive. Marginally less-painful.

Really though, there's no pleasant way to die on a battlefield.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 welshhoppo wrote:
Tyranids every day of the week.


They just kill you, Whilst Chaos will have fun with your soul for the rest of eternity.

Eldar still wear their soulstones when they're not anywhere near forces of Chaos, you know.

Your soul's getting played with by Chaos regardless of who you get killed by.

Join up "against Chaos", then blast a Grey Knight with a melta gun, swear allegiance to Slaanesh and get pooped out as a Daemon Prince. Seems the only logical choice.

 Pouncey wrote:

Chaos weapons, depending on who exactly we're fighting, are boltguns, lasguns, or psychic powers. If we're fighting demons I'm going to be killed by the Grey Knights afterward.

This is specifically fighting a Daemon incursion, not Chaos Space Marines, so no quick death by boltgun or lasgun for you, sorry.

 mrhappyface wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

Chaos weapons, depending on who exactly we're fighting, are boltguns, lasguns, or psychic powers. If we're fighting demons I'm going to be killed by the Grey Knights afterward.

This is specifically fighting a Daemon incursion, not Chaos Space Marines, so no quick death by boltgun or lasgun for you, sorry.

Oh.

Then I'm not being sent there at all, the Grey Knights are going instead and are going to close the rift before destroying the planet.

As an average guardsman I don't think you're even meant to be aware of the existence of the grey knights and if you fight with them you'll be executed afterwards as you're not valuable enough for mindwiping.

Both options are like choosing how you want to die really. However against the tyranids at least if you win and survive you'll not be executed afterwards. Also according to the primer they have stubby little claws that can't cut through flakk armour anyway and most are no bigger than a dog.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pouncey wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
Tyranids every day of the week.


They just kill you, Whilst Chaos will have fun with your soul for the rest of eternity.

Eldar still wear their soulstones when they're not anywhere near forces of Chaos, you know.

Your soul's getting played with by Chaos regardless of who you get killed by.

It's all got to do with your psychic presence, most non psyker humans don't actually have a soul strong enough to maintain consciousness in the warp and if they do it's moments at most.

 n0t_u wrote:
As an average guardsman I don't think you're even meant to be aware of the existence of the grey knights and if you fight with them you'll be executed afterwards as you're not valuable enough for mindwiping.

Both options are like choosing how you want to die really. However against the tyranids at least if you win and survive you'll not be executed afterwards. Also according to the primer they have stubby little claws that can't cut through flakk armour anyway and most are no bigger than a dog.

Uhh, I've seen Hormagaunt models.

Those things are so long they will pierce both sides of your armor on opposite sides of your body, when they attack you from the side.

It's all got to do with your psychic presence, most non psyker humans don't actually have a soul strong enough to maintain consciousness in the warp and if they do it's moments at most.

So what you're saying is that my soul wouldn't be played with anyways?

The Grey Knights will also mind-wipe, if not outright kill, any survivors of the demonic incursion, so there's even less incentive to choose Chaos.

Either way, we're pretty fethed.

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
The Grey Knights will also mind-wipe, if not outright kill, any survivors of the demonic incursion, so there's even less incentive to choose Chaos.

Either way, we're pretty fethed.

As an Imperial Guard soldier, I am expected to fight until I die. There is no option of retirement, and there is no going home.

Surviving a Tyranid attack just means I die later in another war on some other planet.

 Pouncey wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
As an average guardsman I don't think you're even meant to be aware of the existence of the grey knights and if you fight with them you'll be executed afterwards as you're not valuable enough for mindwiping.

Both options are like choosing how you want to die really. However against the tyranids at least if you win and survive you'll not be executed afterwards. Also according to the primer they have stubby little claws that can't cut through flakk armour anyway and most are no bigger than a dog.

Uhh, I've seen Hormagaunt models.

Those things are so long they will pierce both sides of your armor on opposite sides of your body, when they attack you from the side.

It's all got to do with your psychic presence, most non psyker humans don't actually have a soul strong enough to maintain consciousness in the warp and if they do it's moments at most.

So what you're saying is that my soul wouldn't be played with anyways?

The guardsmen are given the uplifiting infantrymen's primer, which will be most of their knowledge on a lot of the threats they're going to fight since they die so often. It's full of propaganda rather than information with stuff like Orks being afraid of melee and weak, the stubby claws and bug size thing I mentioned as well.

Your soul would still be devoured you just wouldn't be aware of it after a few seconds at most.

 n0t_u wrote:
[The guardsmen are given the uplifiting infantrymen's primer, which will be most of their knowledge on a lot of the threats they're going to fight since they die so often. It's full of propaganda rather than information with stuff like Orks being afraid of melee and weak, the stubby claws and bug size thing I mentioned as well.

If we're basing this on what Imperial Guardsmen know, then the only correct response is, "What the hell is Chaos? What are demons?"

Your soul would still be devoured you just wouldn't be aware of it after a few seconds at most.

That's not terrible then. I'm pretty sure being melted by Tyranid acid would take at least that long anyways.

 Pouncey wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
[The guardsmen are given the uplifiting infantrymen's primer, which will be most of their knowledge on a lot of the threats they're going to fight since they die so often. It's full of propaganda rather than information with stuff like Orks being afraid of melee and weak, the stubby claws and bug size thing I mentioned as well.

If we're basing this on what Imperial Guardsmen know, then the only correct response is, "What the hell is Chaos? What are demons?"

That's the impression I got from this.

 mrhappyface wrote:
Let's do some roleplay: you are a Guardsman, you have been enlisted to the masses of the Astra Militarium in order to protect the Imperium from Xenos and Daemon alike. Only, you are in a rather unusual situatuion as a Guardsman: you have been given a choice.

They'd probably just put it as "well you could go to the eastern fringe, or you could fight along side some space marines". Either way as a guardsman you're being screwed over 99.99% of the time without being aware of it only to die on some rock and be reprimanded posthumously for failing to properly return munitorum equipment.

 Pouncey wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
Your soul would still be devoured you just wouldn't be aware of it after a few seconds at most.

That's not terrible then. I'm pretty sure being melted by Tyranid acid would take at least that long anyways.

Honestly that's the best thing they can do to you as a lot of their ammo seems to be little bugs that try to burrow into your flesh.

 n0t_u wrote:
Honestly that's the best thing they can do to you as a lot of their ammo seems to be little bugs that try to burrow into your flesh.

Yeah.

And as you recall, I went for the Chaos option.

Acid's bad enough. If they just get worse from there, that strengthens my choice.

If it were Real Life I would want to fight Tyranids so I can watch the Laws of Thermodynamics ravage their army.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
If it were Real Life I would want to fight Tyranids so I can watch the Laws of Thermodynamics ravage their army.

If it were real life, Tyranids and Chaos wouldn't exist.

Tyranids because if I survived, I wouldn't be killed by the GK.

And I'd be sure to raise a lasgun to my head before the battle ended, but dissolving in acid is a lot better than being captured by Slannesh daemons or the such.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Tyranids because if I survived, I wouldn't be killed by the GK.

And I'd be sure to raise a lasgun to my head before the battle ended, but dissolving in acid is a lot better than being captured by Slannesh daemons or the such.

You have enough control over your personal weapon that suicide is always an option over surrender or capture if you deem it necessary.

Well, not always, since you could be injured in a way that prevents you from doing it. Say if you were rendered unconscious or had a limb blown off.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Personally, if I found myself transported to the fictional universe of WH40k and found myself as an Imperial Guardsman, but with my own present knowledge of the setting, my first action in any circumstance would be to locate my Commissar, inform him that I am not going to fight in any battle, then run away from the fighting as fast as possible because there's absolutely no way he understood my 20th-century English well enough to have any idea what I just said, and talking to him at all was just to get him to pay attention to me. The natural result of that is that I would suffer a blessedly swift death from a bolt round from the Commissar's pistol. If I am extremely fortunate, it will be a headshot and I will die without having heard the gunshot. If I am less fortunate, I will be hit in the torso and suffer such intensely catastrophic trauma that the shock will prevent my brain from experiencing pain, and likely I will be unconscious until my death. The worst-case scenario is that he hits me in the arm or leg, and I bleed out extremely rapidly from the arteries in the limb having been severed, and no one would even bother to try a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

Any of those three scenarios are preferable to being an Imperial Guardsman at all.

Great devourer, easily
Tyranids CAN be easy to take out [from a distance] once the big ones have been dealt with. The ruinous powers on the other hand

 Skymate wrote:
Great devourer, easily
Tyranids CAN be easy to take out [from a distance] once the big ones have been dealt with. The ruinous powers on the other hand

Generally the human strategy for warfare and weapons since the days we first started tying rocks to sticks has been, "Stay as far away from them as you can while still being in weapons range. Then try to kill them." The stick was meant to put some distance between the mammoth and the human, because having the ability to kill something when it can't reach you is the kind of thing you do as a species as physically pathetic for combat as humans are. Literally we are the MacGuyver of Earth species, and we are god damned overpowered because of it. If Earth was a tabletop game, its species were factions, frankly, the message boards would be nothing but complaints from other factions complaining about humans being overpowered, and many of them simply quitting when their army gets squatted because humans just kinda needed stuff. Then the humans would go, "Well, just don't come onto our turf then, and we won't have a problem." and every other species goes, "Your turf covers the entire planet and keeps friggin growing, and even when we stay in our turf, like, you know, in the OCEAN, where you can't friggin live, you just find loopholes in the laws of physics to come onto our turf and kill us anyways!"


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, if you think that heavily-armed and armored melee troops will wipe out a well-organized, much-smaller group of ranged troops with few, if any, melee troops of their own, there's this one historical battle I've heard of that put that idea to the ultimate test, extremely famous because of the result. It's called Agincourt.

As a guardsman with this much knowledge, I choose the only viable option. I step forward proudly, look the comissar in the eye, and ask him extremely loudly if he believes that love can bloom on the battlefield.

Suicide by Comissariat: the only death you can trust in.

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
As a guardsman with this much knowledge, I choose the only viable option. I step forward proudly, look the comissar in the eye, and ask him extremely loudly if he believes that love can bloom on the battlefield.

Suicide by Comissariat: the only death you can trust in.

Yeah, I already came to that conclusion. I just didn't assume that the Imperium would kill me for propositioning stuff, nor that he would understand my 20th century English and turns of phrase, so I also started running away from the battle, because running away from a battle is something Commissars understand means "Kill me!" in EVERY language.

I'd pick Chaos.

I can deal with the concept of chaos. They hate the imperium because their "ideology" conflicts with the imperium. They just want me dead because they hate me.

Tyranids are like a force of nature. It doesn't want me dead, they don't think of me as an enemy. I'm just there and if I happen to be where they are I'm fethed. Tyranids, more than any other race, are numberless. They throw millions of organisms at a single purpose without concern for their lives.

They're the worst kind of enemy, the one that doesn't care about it's own well-being. Daemons are at the very least reluctant to get cut up because it sends them back to the warp.

Tyranids. There's a hope of victory that doesn't result in my death, and my death would more likely than not be swift. Heck, I might just walk off the ship and asphyxiate if I'm really lucky. Against Daemons, I'm literally facing my nightmares, and death isn't the end of my suffering. And no, can't just pop a grey knight and call it a day of daemon princedom. Chances are the Grey Knight senses my heresy and kills me first, or I shoot and the attack does nothing to it, or I kill it and my reward is death anyways because lulz, or I kill it and AM rewarded... with Spawndom.

I think your soul's alright as far as you're concerned. Fairly certain human souls are torn apart in tye warp so you wouldn't be conscious. That's part of why it's so horrific what Slaanesh does to eldar, as their souls retqin cohesion and consciousness after death.

As for whether i'd prefer to die to the Tyranids or die to Chaos (i'm a Guardsman...i'm going to die) i feel like the Tyranids would be a really horrible way to die.

Saying that, i feel like Chaos could be really creative if they wanted...

Some daemons do accept deals right ?
I vote daemons.

 oldzoggy wrote:
Some daemons do accept deals right ?
I vote daemons.

What deal could you offer a daemon that it would consider beneficial, as a guardsman?

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:

 oldzoggy wrote:
Some daemons do accept deals right ?
I vote daemons.

What deal could you offer a daemon that it would consider beneficial, as a guardsman?

Have you heard of Heretic Guard and/or Cultists?

Well... at least fighting Tyranids, I'd be fighting something that can in fact be killed.

Not like Chaos demons where merely looking at them is enough to drive you to the point of ripping yourself and everyone around you apart... (can't remember which 40k rule book that was from, but that did happen for at least one Guard outpost.)

 Cothonian wrote:
Well... at least fighting Tyranids, I'd be fighting something that can in fact be killed.

Not like Chaos demons where merely looking at them is enough to drive you to the point of ripping yourself and everyone around you apart... (can't remember which 40k rule book that was from, but that did happen for at least one Guard outpost.)

So you're saying a single Chaos Daemon is sufficient to defeat any number of Imperial Guardsmen who simply verify its presence visually?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wouldn't they just, like, issue you a blindfold of some sort and tell you to walk toward the noise of battle and shoot randomly in the general direction of anything that didn't sound like a human?

And then watch their army dissipate and just call in the Grey Knights who can look at demons without committing fratricide?