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@Martel732 - In the context of my comment, I was actually referring to the MO of the Royal Marines - which is a force of elite infantry with special operations capability.

To be honest, I respect your opinion, but I do disagree. We aren't going to change each other's minds, so I'll take this opportunity to concede to your point and allow others to continue to enjoy the original intent of the thread. Arguing about whether or not 1000 Marines is acceptable isn't fun for anybody else wanting to get a word in, so respectfully I'll agree to amicably disagree.

That's cool.

Martel732 wrote:

 Warpig1815 wrote:
@Ynneadwraith - I'll agree on that point somewhat, but you do have to consider that almost all battles hinge on small units performing small tasks in concert to affect a larger operation. While I do think 1000 Astartes is an appropriate number (Just IMHO), I'm under absolutely no illusion that Marines alone are saving the Galaxy single-handed - that's just stupid. I just think that for a unit of shock troops intended to take out vital targets and redploy to the next priority, then 1000 or so isn't that bad. If anything, it's the fault of GW's fixation on plugging SMs, that make people assume that the Astartes are unkillable troops that take on whole campaigns single handed. They're more like the SAS or Royal Marines - small unit, elite troops that can take on the hardest targets, but they simply can't put down a war single handed, no matter how good they are.

Oh, and Roman Legions were about 5000-6000 in number, so I doubt GW got the 1000 from there.

EDIT: And I do agree over the suspension of disbelief point. essentially, this all boils down to (hopefully) an amicable disagreement on viewpoints. I'm alright with 1000 Marines in a Chapter, because it works out in my head. However, if you disagree, then that's fine too because it doesn't work that way in your head canon. None of us debating this is 100% right - that's just life..

The only way for Shield of Baal to make ANY sense is for Karlaen to be in charge of millions of Blood Angels. Even with that many, that hive fleet would be almost impossible to defeat.

Or for the size of Tyranid Hive Fleets to be massively blown out of proportions to make the act of defeating them that much more heroic.

Martel732 wrote:That's cool.

 Quickjager wrote:

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

 Warpig1815 wrote:


@VictorVonTzeentch -

Lexicanum wrote:Note: The Black Templars were stated to be 5,000-6,000 strong in the 4th Edition Codex. However in the 2014 Novel Eternal Crusader, they were stated to be Codex compliant, with 1,000 Battle-Brothers. Author Guy Haley went on to state on his blog that the Black Templars numbers are variable depending on the time of the setting and story requirements.

Source: Guy Haley's blog. This sucks - being huge was what made the BTs interesting :(

ADB puts their numbers at around 6,000, so I am more inclined to go with his estimates in this world of ever differing author opinions.

Did the ADB novel come out after the blog?

I dont know, but I'm sure it was mentioned in his blog. So it still comes out to what you are willing to believe about the setting and frankly the Templar being only 1,000 men is dumb, dumber than normal chapters being only 1,000 men.

Maybe, but a species that consumes the biomass of entire planets would number in the trillions in its attack wings. Planets are big. Super earths are even bigger.

Starcraft takes place on a smaller galactic scale and the casualties are in billions in that setting. The Empirum is probably taking trillions of casualties a year. Just because the authors don't say that's what's happening, doesn't mean that's not what would logically be happening.

 Warpig1815 wrote:
@Unusual Suspect - Well, again my apologies if I misunderstood Martel's point. I'd still point out that Tau armour, whilst it may have properties similar to ceramite, is not powered and does not have the same coverage as PA. It may be as durable, granted, but in terms of battlefield effectiveness that's irrelevant if the blade/bullet goes into an unprotected area.

...Huh? The Tau have absolutely developed Powered Armor, and with coverage equal to Astartes.

See the XV 15, XV 22, and XV 25 battlesuits - all of which are Powered Armor, rather than being piloted (like the XV8+ and, presumably, the XV4 series).

I wouldn't say Tau PA is better than Astartes PA, but they're certainly quite comparable - both have advanced optics, assisted movement, high mobility, etc., and both can (or always are, in the case of Tau) equipped with jet/jump packs for increased mobility.

It would be disingenuous to compare Astartes PA with Fire Warrior Combat Armor - the Combat Armor's parallel is Flak and/or Carapace, with only Carapace being reasonably comparable.

As for strategic weapons - I guess that's a matter of scale. I assume that like all other weapons, 'Nukes' are more potent in 40k than now, even if they function the same way (Which is a big If, I know).

Potency (in terms of destructive power) and resulting uninhabitability (due to the lingering effects of the weapon's use - in the case of Nukes, the radioactivity/fallout) are distinguishable characteristics.

But as Melissa points out, Nukes are sometimes still used - the Death Korps of Krieg are a testament to that. My issue is that they aren't the only option we should presume are available in the 41st millenium.

It's also worth pointing out that the United States used conventional weaponry (Firebombing) to nearly the same effect against the Japanese during WWII, in terms of casualties inflicted, without leaving a radioactive wasteland. Nukes are convenient, but they aren't the only option.

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe, but a species that consumes the biomass of entire planets would number in the trillions in its attack wings. Planets are big. Super earths are even bigger.

Or part of the Fleet moves on before the rest has finished consuming the mass of the planet.

Starcraft takes place on a smaller galactic scale and the casualties are in billions in that setting. The Empirum is probably taking trillions of casualties a year. Just because the authors don't say that's what's happening, doesn't mean that's not what would logically be happening.

I wouldnt think they would need to say that's whats happening, it seems apparent from the whole "Endless War" thing they say in the intros.

Thermobaric weapons have the same yield as small fission devices. Plenty good for taking out annoying supremacy suits and Wraithknights with air power before sending in the hapless BA. Yet, it never happens. Plenty of 40K units have passed the Ogre limit.

I guess only Xenos get to nuke their opponent before they can do anything. And they get to do it with jetbikes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
"Or part of the Fleet moves on before the rest has finished consuming the mass of the planet. "

So that's merely tens of billions, then? Okay. We're still talking one million BA here to have a chance.

Well how many Successors do the BA have? Cause if I recall right, every single one of them returned to Baal.

Also for an example of good Warhammer WMDs, I give you Phospex. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Phosphex_Weapon

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
Well how many Successors do the BA have? Cause if I recall right, every single one of them returned to Baal.

Also for an example of good Warhammer WMDs, I give you Phospex. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Phosphex_Weapon

Not nearly enough. There aren't enough marines in the entire IoM to stop even a fraction of a hive fleet. Unless Karlaen had a million guys and was sent many thousands more by the successor chapters. Planets are big.

The writers are dumb. I'd use that phosphex gak all the time vs Tau and Eldar. It's the only hope the IoM has vs them. You'd think they'd figure that out after they lost a chapter or two to WKs shrugging off all conventional marine weapons.

 Warpig1815 wrote:
@Ynneadwraith - I'll agree on that point somewhat, but you do have to consider that almost all battles hinge on small units performing small tasks in concert to affect a larger operation. While I do think 1000 Astartes is an appropriate number (Just IMHO), I'm under absolutely no illusion that Marines alone are saving the Galaxy single-handed - that's just stupid. I just think that for a unit of shock troops intended to take out vital targets and redploy to the next priority, then 1000 or so isn't that bad. If anything, it's the fault of GW's fixation on plugging SMs, that make people assume that the Astartes are unkillable troops that take on whole campaigns single handed. They're more like the SAS or Royal Marines - small unit, elite troops that can take on the hardest targets, but they simply can't put down a war single handed, no matter how good they are.

Oh, and Roman Legions were about 5000-6000 in number, so I doubt GW got the 1000 from there.

EDIT: And I do agree over the suspension of disbelief point. essentially, this all boils down to (hopefully) an amicable disagreement on viewpoints. I'm alright with 1000 Marines in a Chapter, because it works out in my head. However, if you disagree, then that's fine too because it doesn't work that way in your head canon. None of us debating this is 100% right - that's just life..

Excellent outlook, and some good points too not quite enough to bridge my particular suspension of disbelief but it might be for others which is valuable

On the Roman Legion front, early Legions were that size but by the late stages (when the rot was setting in) they were closer to 1000 men strong, or at least their principle large organisational blocks were. I suspect that in part that's where they got the idea of Legions->Chapters from.

Thats the table top effect coming back into play though. WK dont stomp absolutely everything in the fluff.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
Thats the table top effect coming back into play though. WK dont stomp absolutely everything in the fluff.

I should still have the opportunity to drop a gak load of strategic bombs all over them since they have clearly crossed the Ogre limit. As it stands, I drop that phosphex crap all over a city to avoid dealing with Windriders.

Also, I don't have the option to play the novels, do I?

Martel732 wrote:

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
Thats the table top effect coming back into play though. WK dont stomp absolutely everything in the fluff.

I should still have the opportunity to drop a gak load of strategic bombs all over them since they have clearly crossed the Ogre limit.

Also, I don't have the option to play the novels, do I?

No, you don't. But yeah I certainly agree that you should be able to use some more of the weapons that Chapters have available to them in the background material, like since the Marines are supposed to be shock assault often from orbit, they should get more (and perhaps better) Orbital Strikes.

The cognitive dissonance, especially for BA, is just too much to choke down. The heroic BA that get intercepted off the table by the Tau before they even get a shot off. The BA can not replicate a SINGLE fluff victory on the table. Bikes are better than jump packers in every way and a murderpack of Wulfen can destroy an entire BA demi-company. And Eldar can destroy everything in the BA inventory before we get within bolter range. There has to millions of BA, because we lose 50 guys just entering the battle vs Tau.

The thing with Shield of Baal I haven't read all of the fluff..

But the Imperial Navy does hold back the majority of the fleet from what I understand, they also released a mobile game to that effect (actually really enjoyable and accurate to BFG)

And Hivefleets have been defeated before Behemoth on Macrage (only 3 Companies of Ultramarines were present), Kraken on Ichar IV (cant remember the numbers there) and then as a splinter fleet on Iyanden (single craft world)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
The cognitive dissonance, especially for BA, is just too much to choke down. The heroic BA that get intercepted off the table by the Tau before they even get a shot off. The BA can not replicate a SINGLE fluff victory on the table. Bikes are better than jump packers in every way and a murderpack of Wulfen can destroy an entire BA demi-company. And Eldar can destroy everything in the BA inventory before we get within bolter range. There has to millions of BA, because we lose 50 guys just entering the battle vs Tau.

Fluff =/= gameplay

Yeah, I just said there was cognitive dissonance about that.

Back to the topic..

The biggest Fluff thing I hated was the Necron rewrite. made me so angry

That and the novel Inquisition War

GodDamUser wrote:
Back to the topic..

The biggest Fluff thing I hated was the Necron rewrite. made me so angry

This.

I've said it earlier in this thread. It's not necessarily that the newer stuff is bad, or that it doesn't have its good points, but the Oldcron fluff was a genuine bonafide masterclass in cosmic terror.

It's like replacing the Juan Diaz Daemonettes. Even if the newer ones weren't androgenous crab people, it'd still be an impossible act to follow.

1000 space marines couldn't even conquer modern day Earth, and we don't have plasma gun and melta gun equivalents. Who cares if it takes a tank round to take them out? I'm sure we can make more than 1000 tanks.

Now, if you picture the space marines as the special ops guys, like Navy Seals or Delta Force, where a handful of them go on very specialized missions where a few can make a big difference and be in and out quickly without taking many casualties, and the Imperial Guard is always used in concert with them to fight actual battles, then it kind of makes a lot of sense.

Of course, that isn't at all how they are portrayed in the fiction. So I guess take your pick. Either the 1000 marines per chapter is a bad piece of background, or just about every other piece of space marine fiction is bad because they are doing things it makes no sense for them to be doing.

Albino Squirrel wrote:
1000 space marines couldn't even conquer modern day Earth, and we don't have plasma gun and melta gun equivalents. Who cares if it takes a tank round to take them out? I'm sure we can make more than 1000 tanks.

Now, if you picture the space marines as the special ops guys, like Navy Seals or Delta Force, where a handful of them go on very specialized missions where a few can make a big difference and be in and out quickly without taking many casualties, and the Imperial Guard is always used in concert with them to fight actual battles, then it kind of makes a lot of sense.

Of course, that isn't at all how they are portrayed in the fiction. So I guess take your pick. Either the 1000 marines per chapter is a bad piece of background, or just about every other piece of space marine fiction is bad because the are doing things it makes no sense for them to be doing.

This is a nicer way of saying what I've been trying to say.

Ynneadwraith wrote:Yeah I'm going to have to agree with Martel here. Even if Marine physiology and armour is every bit as tough as the fluff makes out to be, 1000 bodies is an utter drop in the ocean on a galactic scale conflict.

Lets break it down really basically. Even if Marines are are tough as the books make them out to be, you have to also agree that the enemies they face possess weapons formidable enough to kill Marines in a reasonable quantity. Otherwise there'd be no story at all and the Marines would just steamroll over the galaxy.

So, we can at least say that roughly the weapons each faction possesses are near enough to equal to make them comparable on a battlefield. In the Battle of the Somme, two roughly technologically comparable forces fought each other in the sort of total-war scenario that 40k faces on a daily basis. There were 57,470 British casualties on the first day.

57,470. In a single day.

Now, before you go on saying 'but that's was just normal humans, Marines are tougher', the enemies they face are comparably worse enough to even the odds, as we've explained earlier.

Then, you consider that The Somme was a single battle, occurring on a single planet. There are multiple battles occurring daily on probably millions of different planets all across the Imperium. That is why the '1000 Marines per chapter' thing is utterly ridiculous, regardless of how tough they are. Unless you had a million different chapters, they'd be utterly insignificant. Even if they were for 'surgical strikes', the casualties they would sustain in order to make a dent on any of the galactic-scale battles occurring in 40k would wipe them out in fairly short order.

The only reason I can think of why '1000' was chosen as a number is as a historical reference to the composition of Roman Legions.

Somme? You're big counterpoint is Somme? A battle fought largely by undertrained and inexperienced British soldiers that you point too, by armies that were still struggling to actually adapt to new technologies that invalidated most of their previous tactics, with the tactics they used being completely different from how marines actually fight? With one of those technologies they also lacked being any kind of effective body armor, let alone an entire suit of tank-grade powered armor? Yeah, great comparison.

If you want to look at how well elite infantry (with or without armor and air support) operate against not-as-elite enemies, perhaps you should look at examples that actually have those elite infantry in them.

Albino Squirrel wrote:1000 space marines couldn't even conquer modern day Earth, and we don't have plasma gun and melta gun equivalents. Who cares if it takes a tank round to take them out? I'm sure we can make more than 1000 tanks.

Now, if you picture the space marines as the special ops guys, like Navy Seals or Delta Force, where a handful of them go on very specialized missions where a few can make a big difference and be in and out quickly without taking many casualties, and the Imperial Guard is always used in concert with them to fight actual battles, then it kind of makes a lot of sense.

Of course, that isn't at all how they are portrayed in the fiction. So I guess take your pick. Either the 1000 marines per chapter is a bad piece of background, or just about every other piece of space marine fiction is bad because they are doing things it makes no sense for them to be doing.

I invite you try hitting a man sized fast moving target with a tank gun, in a dense urban area with ample cover and routes to let that target or one of his dozens of buddies flank your tanks and introduce them to a lascannon.

Well if we use the numbers provided by FW, that lascannon will really struggle to do much to an Abrams.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Well if we use the numbers provided by FW, that lascannon will really struggle to do much to an Abrams.

Because of course when a bit of in-universe info on a tank says "conventional steel" they're obviously referring to steel alloys circa 38,000 years before that point. Yeah, that makes sense.

Albino Squirrel wrote:
Now, if you picture the space marines as the special ops guys, like Navy Seals or Delta Force, where a handful of them go on very specialized missions where a few can make a big difference and be in and out quickly without taking many casualties, and the Imperial Guard is always used in concert with them to fight actual battles, then it kind of makes a lot of sense.

Of course, that isn't at all how they are portrayed in the fiction. So I guess take your pick. Either the 1000 marines per chapter is a bad piece of background, or just about every other piece of space marine fiction is bad because they are doing things it makes no sense for them to be doing.

I guess I've generally had the headcannon that they acted more like special operations, but you're right that they often don't act that way in the books.

On the other hand, in many of the cases in the books I've read when the Space Marines stand shoulder to shoulder against overwhelming odds they do end up getting largely wiped out. There's a lot of books I still haven't read, though, so I'm not claiming to know how often they suffer huge losses in the fiction.

Something I've wondered about is if the seeming disconnect between the sensible thing (acting like special operations) and how they are portrayed in the novels (acting like the Spartans from 300) has to do with the legacy of the former Legions? If it's pre-Heresy and a commander has an entire legion of ~100,000 Marines, those Marines have access to a lot more heavy support than the Marines of the 41st Millennium and they are much easier to replace than the Marines of the 41st Millennium then it suddenly makes a lot more sense to use them as normal heavy infantry. Things change really slowly in the IoM, so I can see a lot of doctrines and traditions hanging on from the times of the Legions even though they no longer make sense. Still, ten thousand years is a long time in which a chapter would probably either adapt or be wiped out for acting dumb. (I'm actually fairly sure that Space Marines act like they do because the authors think that's cool, and I'm okay with that.)

In many novels they also condense a conflict that takes years down to a handful of chapters, and they do it from the perspective of the Space Marines. That makes it easy to read like "there were a zillion aliens, and the Space Marines showed up and kicked their butts" but it's also easy to fill in that the Space Marines accomplished several critical missions (carefully choosing ones that wouldn't result in them getting wiped out) over the course of a few years, with the Imperial Guard doing most of the fighting.

I like Movie Marines, but I prefer it when they're backed up by huge numbers of Imperial Guard.

I also like Movie Spartans, Movie Ninjas, giant robot fights, and all sorts of other things that don't really make sense.

 Battlegrinder wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Well if we use the numbers provided by FW, that lascannon will really struggle to do much to an Abrams.

Because of course when a bit of in-universe info on a tank says "conventional steel" they're obviously referring to steel alloys circa 38,000 years before that point. Yeah, that makes sense.

Steel is still steel, besides with the the abudance of plasteel I fail to see why they wouldn't put plasteel there instead of steel if it was an in universe comparision. Its pretty obvious its an out of character line meant to give the read a point of reference with IRL metals.

Tau weaponry on the suits treats marines like WW I soldiers from the Somme. That's the problem. They do in the fluff and definitely the table. The only difference is that a handful of riptides wipes a chapter on the table and in the fluff the Tau have to try a bit harder to get the same result.

 Bobthehero wrote:


Steel is still steel

Some properties of steel are similar across all allows and treatments.
Strength is not one of them. It varies a lot depending what it is allowed with and how it is formed.
Types currently in common use could have an ultimate strength of 230 MPa or 2600MPa

 Bobthehero wrote:

Steel is still steel, besides with the the abudance of plasteel I fail to see why they wouldn't put plasteel there instead of steel if it was an in universe comparision.

Spoken like someone who's never seen a single bit of information on steel, or even just visited a lowes where they have a big rack of steel rods made of a zillion kinds of steel.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Its pretty obvious its an out of character line meant to give the read a point of reference with IRL metals.

Yeah. Because 40k just has lots of OoU references to the modern era littered throughout it's in universe technical documents.