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 Nurglitch wrote:
There's some stuff in a novel about the World Eaters where the World Eaters present all wear their helmets with the notion that taking off your helmet is something only Space Wolves and other idiots would do.

LOL I absolutely love it. My respect for the world eaters went up a notch.

epronovost wrote:
A thing I find absolutly ridiculous is the idea that a single Space Marine can duel and kill a Hive Tyrant or even the Swarmlord, a hive tyrant who is basically the equivalent of what Abbadon or Calgar are to Space Marines. Many people are arms up in the air at the idea that an heroic human can duel and kill a Space Marine, let alone an heroic one, and win (or at least put up a good fight). While this is indeed something exceptional, the gap in power between a Space Marine and a Hive Tyrant is immense compared to the gap in power between a human and a Space Marine. It's about as believable as a gretchin killing a Space Marine in duel. A Hive Tyrant is a 20-30 feet tall monster evolved to be the pinnacle of killing organism, constantly improved by the genes and tactics learned over the eons of the Tyranid race destroying civilisation. Plus, Hive Tyrants are all powerful psykers who operate in a theatre where the enemy's psyker, which are weaker most of the time in the first place are weakenned further or even driven to insanity. Seriously, a Hive Tyrant, let alone the Swrmlord should only be defeated by groups of Space Marines or others. The only thing that could challenge them in duel, and even then not guarantied a victory, would be Greater Daemon, Daemon Prince, Avatars and maybe ancient dreadnaught, wraithlord, etc.

A space marine vs a normal human in a 1v1 melee duel? The normal human stands absolutely no chance unless the marine is wounded or something. Ciaphas Cain was an extremely skilled human swordsman (by both an inquisitor's and a space marine's judgement on separate occasions) and the best he could do was stalemate a khorne beserker for a few blows. By his own admission the beserker was too strong and fast, and he knew he was going to lose in short order. On a separate occasion he sparred with a tech marine (one of the weakest melee combatants in a chapter of space marines) and managed to land a blow because the tech marine was taking it easy on him. The tech marine proceeded to stop taking it easy and Cain never managed to hit him again no matter how hard he tried.

By the same token, I can see a Space Marine being able to kill a hive tyrant in a 1v1 melee duel only if the hive tyrant was wounded or something. Otherwise I think you are correct in stating the gap between something like the swarmlord and a space marine is as big as the gap between a space marine and a normal human. However, space marines rarely fight with melee weapons only. One good grenade launcher shot to the face, or plasma burst at point-blank range will really ruin even a hive tyrant's day.

The bigger issue is that GW writers fundamentally don't understand how melee works in addition to not comprehending warfare. Now as one dabbled in (rapier) fencing, strength doesn't matter much in melee - but only up until you reach literal superhuman levels. For some comparison, a light woman weighing around 110 pounds can absolutely parry and push back a swing from a 190 pound man, especially with good footwork. Although she could be leveraged into a bad position, a swordfight between a 110 pound woman and 190 pound man is still going to depend upon skill over feats of strength.

But if that 190 pound guy say, picks a fight with a Grizzly Bear and tries to block a swing from it; his arm is getting instantly dislocated in a -best- case scenario. Possibly getting fully removed in the worst. You can parry strikes from things that slightly outmass you, but there's just a certain point that there is no chance in hell that you are resisting any force imparted by said creature. Marines, Orks, Nids, Necrons, etc are all in this box. No human lacking bionic enhancement should ever be able to resist them in melee, and any attempt to parry or block a strike from them should result in instant death of said normal human (or eldar for that matter). It is trying to fight something even stronger than a Grizzly in melee. If their sword so much as comes in contact with yours, either your guard is immediately dropping and folding or your arm is swiftly getting dislocated/snapped like a twig.

w1zard wrote:
Otherwise I think you are correct in stating the gap between something like the swarmlord and a space marine is as big as the gap between a space marine and a normal human.

Actually, I said the physical disrepencies between human and Space Marine is significantly smaller than between Space Marine and Hive Tyrant let alone the Swarmlord. I would compare this disrepcency to that between a Space Marine and a Gretchin, maybe a nurgling.

However, space marines rarely fight with melee weapons only. One good grenade launcher shot to the face, or plasma burst at point-blank range will really ruin even a hive tyrant's day.

Yes, I can totally believe a space marine armed with an anti-tank weapon can injure or kill a hive tyrant with a few good shots in key areas, that's the point, but in close combat with lightning claws like in Helion Rain or Calgar with a powerfist, nope, completely ridiculous in my opinion.

PS: I was referring more to SoB fighting Marines than Cain or Gaunt who more often then not survive Space Marine duels more than win them by their lonesome. But for SoB, its more believable since they do have power armors (and sometime magic) which certainly help since it increases their strength and absorb a lot of the impact.

One thing I dislike? Well, the biggest one I can think of is the fact that my favorite faction, the admec, gets punked almost consistently at the one thing they are good at: coding and noosphere technology, the main draw of the faction.

Yea, I get it, they are but infants playing with grown up toys, making a religion around technology when they don't understand it, but com on. Seems like almost every admec story I come across has them getting pawned by the same scrap code infestation as the last one.

Surely, in how many blood years of it's existence, growth, technological study and knowledge acquisition, they never really have a way around this one specific weakness? No blessed psalms of purging? No firewall of Antioch? Something? It is the worst in the priest of mars series.

Spoilers for this series: The archmagos brings an obvious hive mind ai onboard, and even with all the failsafes in the world he still somehow gets punked by scrap code. It just makes no logical sense that they didn't have some sort of back up plan, or worked around it! Hell it feels hand-wavy that the ai even got into the system to begin with! made me stop reading the book, just because I'm tired of the cliche this is becoming.

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
One thing I dislike? Well, the biggest one I can think of is the fact that my favorite faction, the admec, gets punked almost consistently at the one thing they are good at: coding and noosphere technology, the main draw of the faction.

Yea, I get it, they are but infants playing with grown up toys, making a religion around technology when they don't understand it, but com on. Seems like almost every admec story I come across has them getting pawned by the same scrap code infestation as the last one.

Surely, in how many blood years of it's existence, growth, technological study and knowledge acquisition, they never really have a way around this one specific weakness? No blessed psalms of purging? No firewall of Antioch? Something? It is the worst in the priest of mars series.

Spoilers for this series: The archmagos brings an obvious hive mind ai onboard, and even with all the failsafes in the world he still somehow gets punked by scrap code. It just makes no logical sense that they didn't have some sort of back up plan, or worked around it! Hell it feels hand-wavy that the ai even got into the system to begin with! made me stop reading the book, just because I'm tired of the cliche this is becoming.

I guess we can add coding and hacking to the pile of things GW doesn't understand . Then again me neither, it's probably why I didn't jumped at such a problem.

To be fair, scrapcode is often daemonic in nature, so that's going to be a pain to lock out. It's essentially Abomnibal Intelliegence, and if you're not allowed to study it, how can you adapt?

Yes when reading the two Rob Sanders book (Skitarii and Tech-Priest) I was really tired of the Dark Mechanicus just shooting demons at the AdMech and so having everything gone to gak in half a second. It's just too easy dealing with AdMech in novels, "Just throw some machine-demons and/or corrupted code hurr". They also get wrecked fairly easily sometimes but at least they're not punching balls like Avatars of Khaine or something.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
To be fair, scrapcode is often daemonic in nature, so that's going to be a pain to lock out. It's essentially Abomnibal Intelliegence, and if you're not allowed to study it, how can you adapt?

Honestly, that makes no sense either. I thought faith was supposed to be a weapon against daemons, so wouldn't faith in pure data be harder to corrupt? They honestly did this the best in the book Know No Fear. At least there, the scrap code attack was shown to have a great deal of sacrifice attached to it, and was used in conjunction with blowing up several space stations to neuter the admec on the planet. And, spoilers again, the admec was able to get control back after releasing a kill code that wiped the data clean and made it so they could use the internet again.

 Wyzilla wrote:
The bigger issue is that GW writers fundamentally don't understand how melee works in addition to not comprehending warfare. Now as one dabbled in (rapier) fencing, strength doesn't matter much in melee - but only up until you reach literal superhuman levels. For some comparison, a light woman weighing around 110 pounds can absolutely parry and push back a swing from a 190 pound man, especially with good footwork. Although she could be leveraged into a bad position, a swordfight between a 110 pound woman and 190 pound man is still going to depend upon skill over feats of strength.

But if that 190 pound guy say, picks a fight with a Grizzly Bear and tries to block a swing from it; his arm is getting instantly dislocated in a -best- case scenario. Possibly getting fully removed in the worst. You can parry strikes from things that slightly outmass you, but there's just a certain point that there is no chance in hell that you are resisting any force imparted by said creature. Marines, Orks, Nids, Necrons, etc are all in this box. No human lacking bionic enhancement should ever be able to resist them in melee, and any attempt to parry or block a strike from them should result in instant death of said normal human (or eldar for that matter). It is trying to fight something even stronger than a Grizzly in melee. If their sword so much as comes in contact with yours, either your guard is immediately dropping and folding or your arm is swiftly getting dislocated/snapped like a twig.

Eh, you can adjust your fighting style to dodge or deflect blows instead of outright parrying muscle to muscle. Assuming you had better speed than your opponent, he can't crush you with his overwhelming strength if he cant hit you. This type of fighting was exemplified in Muhammad Ali's boxing style. He would go up against absolute bruisers that he ended up dancing around and weakening with jabs before moving in for the kill.

epronovost wrote:

w1zard wrote:
Otherwise I think you are correct in stating the gap between something like the swarmlord and a space marine is as big as the gap between a space marine and a normal human.

Actually, I said the physical disrepencies between human and Space Marine is significantly smaller than between Space Marine and Hive Tyrant let alone the Swarmlord. I would compare this disrepcency to that between a Space Marine and a Gretchin, maybe a nurgling.

Not quite that much. A hive tyrant may be a 20 ft tall bioengineered monstrosity capable of crushing tanks, but a space marine is an 8 ft tall bioengineered monstrosity capable of deadlifting said tank, benching multiple times his own weight (he weighs 400-500kg) and is as fast and as agile as an eldar to boot.

Strength may not matter much in fencing, but it matters a lot in hand to hand combat. Competitive martial arts styles are meant to work within and take advantage of systems of rules, but when there are no rules the situation changes drastically. Speed and agility could save your life - if they allow you to escape.

BUT at the end of the day 40k is fantasy, so trying to tie it to real-life combat is a losing proposition. It's enough if a thing is "cool".

w1zard wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
The bigger issue is that GW writers fundamentally don't understand how melee works in addition to not comprehending warfare. Now as one dabbled in (rapier) fencing, strength doesn't matter much in melee - but only up until you reach literal superhuman levels. For some comparison, a light woman weighing around 110 pounds can absolutely parry and push back a swing from a 190 pound man, especially with good footwork. Although she could be leveraged into a bad position, a swordfight between a 110 pound woman and 190 pound man is still going to depend upon skill over feats of strength.

But if that 190 pound guy say, picks a fight with a Grizzly Bear and tries to block a swing from it; his arm is getting instantly dislocated in a -best- case scenario. Possibly getting fully removed in the worst. You can parry strikes from things that slightly outmass you, but there's just a certain point that there is no chance in hell that you are resisting any force imparted by said creature. Marines, Orks, Nids, Necrons, etc are all in this box. No human lacking bionic enhancement should ever be able to resist them in melee, and any attempt to parry or block a strike from them should result in instant death of said normal human (or eldar for that matter). It is trying to fight something even stronger than a Grizzly in melee. If their sword so much as comes in contact with yours, either your guard is immediately dropping and folding or your arm is swiftly getting dislocated/snapped like a twig.

Eh, you can adjust your fighting style to dodge or deflect blows instead of outright parrying muscle to muscle. Assuming you had better speed than your opponent, he can't crush you with his overwhelming strength if he cant hit you.

epronovost wrote:

w1zard wrote:
Otherwise I think you are correct in stating the gap between something like the swarmlord and a space marine is as big as the gap between a space marine and a normal human.

Actually, I said the physical disrepencies between human and Space Marine is significantly smaller than between Space Marine and Hive Tyrant let alone the Swarmlord. I would compare this disrepcency to that between a Space Marine and a Gretchin, maybe a nurgling.

Not quite that much. A hive tyrant may be a 20 ft tall bioengineered monstrosity capable of crushing tanks, but a space marine is an 8 ft tall bioengineered monstrosity capable of deadlifting said tank, benching multiple times his own weight (he weighs 400-500kg) and is as fast and as agile as an eldar to boot.

No you don't even deflect it. Coming in contact with the blow at all will either slam you into the ground or mangle your limb beyond use. You must avoid every single swing and never come in contact with the receiving end of a blow. To go back to a grizzly bear (of which all parties mentioned are stronger than), a single swipe from a grizzly bear is enough to rip the head off a moose and send it flying for several meters. Against raw strength like that you don't even want to engage in melee unless you have something akin to a spear.

 Wyzilla wrote:
No you don't even deflect it. Coming in contact with the blow at all will either slam you into the ground or mangle your limb beyond use. You must avoid every single swing and never come in contact with the receiving end of a blow. To go back to a grizzly bear (of which all parties mentioned are stronger than), a single swipe from a grizzly bear is enough to rip the head off a moose and send it flying for several meters. Against raw strength like that you don't even want to engage in melee unless you have something akin to a spear.

Again, it depends on the angle of deflection. I could probably deflect a few thousand pounds of force at a shallow enough angle with my puny untrained arms. But, generally, you are correct.

w1zard wrote:

Not quite that much. A hive tyrant may be a 20 ft tall bioengineered monstrosity capable of crushing tanks, but a space marine is an 8 ft tall bioengineered monstrosity capable of deadlifting said tank, benching multiple times his own weight (he weighs 400-500kg) and is as fast and as agile as an eldar to boot.

Space Marines are 7 feet tall in armor (8 for Primaris).

They can't deadlift a tank. A tank weight at least 20 tons. It would be ridiculous for them to be capable to lift over 20 times their own weight. Especially ridiculous considering they struggle to move in their own armors when its shut down and that armor weighs about 300 kilos. A Space Marine can probably deadlift no more than a 2500 kilos and that's being generous. They are about as strong as silver back gorillas (which is absurdly strong btw, these thing can flatten a car by hammering on it and throw a human 10 feet in the air with a single hand). A Hive Tyrant weights 6 tons on average and is three times taller than a Marine. Even if Marines where capable of deadlifting ten times (note that five times is impressive since humans struggle to deadlift more than thrice their weight), they would be incapable of lifting a Hive Tyrant who can itself deadlift at least thrice its weight probably four or more considering Tyranids can use Space Marines genes if they want to for the construction of creatures (which they did with the Tyrant Guard for example).

They are much slower than eldars.

Your average Space Marine is no match for a genestealer in close combat that's why veterans in Terminator Armor investigate hulks so that their superior firepower, armor and skills gives them a chance to survive. A Patriarch or a Broodlord can slaughter a squad and both them are weaker then a Hive Tyrant.

A Hive Tyrant is about as fast as an eldar, faster than a Space Marine, stronger than at least five Space Marine put together and has a reach much greater than any Space Marine. Their exosqueleton protects them about as much as a power armor and that's counting without the potential psychic shield.

epronovost wrote:

w1zard wrote:

Not quite that much. A hive tyrant may be a 20 ft tall bioengineered monstrosity capable of crushing tanks, but a space marine is an 8 ft tall bioengineered monstrosity capable of deadlifting said tank, benching multiple times his own weight (he weighs 400-500kg) and is as fast and as agile as an eldar to boot.

Space Marines are 7 feet tall in armor (8 for Primaris).

They can't deadlift a tank. A tank weight at least 20 tons. It would be ridiculous for them to be capable to lift over 20 times their own weight. Especially ridiculous considering they struggle to move in their own armors when its shut down and that armor weighs about 300 kilos. A Space Marine can probably deadlift no more than a 2500 kilos and that's being generous. They are about as strong as silver back gorillas (which is absurdly strong btw, these thing can flatten a car by hammering on it and throw a human 10 feet in the air with a single hand). A Hive Tyrant weights 6 tons on average and is three times taller than a Marine. Even if Marines where capable of deadlifting ten times (note that five times is impressive since humans struggle to deadlift more than thrice their weight), they would be incapable of lifting a Hive Tyrant who can itself deadlift at least thrice its weight probably four or more considering Tyranids can use Space Marines genes if they want to for the construction of creatures (which they did with the Tyrant Guard for example).

They are much slower than eldars.

Your average Space Marine is no match for a genestealer in close combat that's why veterans in Terminator Armor investigate hulks so that their superior firepower, armor and skills gives them a chance to survive. A Patriarch or a Broodlord can slaughter a squad and both them are weaker then a Hive Tyrant.

A Hive Tyrant is about as fast as an eldar, faster than a Space Marine, stronger than at least five Space Marine put together and has a reach much greater than any Space Marine. Their exosqueleton protects them about as much as a power armor and that's counting without the potential psychic shield.

Generally speaking, lying isn't a good form of argumentation. Space Marines don't struggle to move in their armor with the power pack gone, it just slows them down. Not to mention you're cherrypicking given that (1) the stats from deathwatch are pretty high grade bullsh*t, and (2) in deathwatch a marine is strong enough to juggle a terminator or pick up another marine and throw him a good long distance. Or literally punch harder than a boltgun. Going by ADB's statement of 10x10x10, an average human male with training can bench 200 pounds, an astartes is 10 times stronger at 2,000 pounds, and in power armor would be able to bench 20,000 pounds. They should be able to easily lift up a Hummer while wearing power armor or even kick it, but they'll be 10 tons short of lifting a Rhino (that is taking FW stats at face value, which we probably shouldn't).

Secondly, since when are Genestealers or Eldar more deadly in melee than Astartes? They achieve outlandish, disproportionate kill ratios with Space Marines killing tens of thousands of Genestealers when cleaning out Space Hulks or as in Path of the Eldar, slaughtering their way into the heart of Alaitoc and nearly killing the Craftworld itself (albeit at the cost of the chapter dying in the process). I've also never seen anything to ever propose that a Hive Tyrant can move as fast as Eldar, who are capable of dodging supersonic and hypersonic munitions after they've been fired, or weave around lasgun fire. Hive Tyrants may be able to run, but they can't jink.

To further elaborate, it's akin to saying that the NVA kicked the US Military's ass, while the NVA/VC suffered as much as 1 million combatant deaths while the US only lost around 60,000 troops in the war. Sure the NVA completed their objective, but they only achieved it at obscene loss of life.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Secondly, since when are Genestealers or Eldar more deadly in melee than Astartes?

In Path of the Eldar, a squad of Scorpions kills an entire squad of Marine despite being less numerous and the young Farseer defeats in duel the chief Librarian of the Sons of Orar. The Sons of Orar were not attacking Alaitoc alone either, you might have missed the part where throngs of Elysians and titans are also attacking the Craftworld. They certainly helped drown the eldar defense and allowed the Space Marine to launch precision strikes. In Path of the Dark Eldar, a squad of wych kills a squad of Plague Marine and has enough survivors to then fight a squad of Incubus who did the same (Incubus wins at the end of all this). In Soul Hunter, the Banshees easily massacres the Night Lords until they are caught in the open and Space Marine scream at them to death literally (yes it was absurd, but meh). The two seem to be a close match. Space Marine are tougher and stronger, but they are slow compared to eldars.

They achieve outlandish, disproportionate kill ratios with Space Marines killing tens of thousands of Genestealers when cleaning out Space Hulks

They shoot them down. Space Marine shoot down scores of them, but if they get stuck in melee, they die fast. In a short (I think it was called Deathwatch, I'm not to sure). All goes well until a single Broodlord awakes and proceed to kill half the squad of Deathwatch marine while on fire. In Vigilus shorts, a Vindicare, a significantly faster and better fighter than a Space Marine, gets killed with contemptuous ease by a Patriarch, who are again weaker than Hive Tyrants.

I've also never seen anything to ever propose that a Hive Tyrant can move as fast as Eldar, who are capable of dodging supersonic and hypersonic munitions after they've been fired, or weave around lasgun fire. Hive Tyrants may be able to run, but they can't jink.

Hive Tyrants are too big to jink and weave like that. It would be useless. They are described as having the a stricking speed superior to that of a preying mantis. That's ridiculously fast and they have 4 fething arms. How do you fight a thing so strong and fast that has four arms in a duel?

PS: btw, in Hellsreach, a Spce Marine gets stuck in his armor when its shut down by an ork mek weapon. The book was written by ABD, looks like he doesn't follow his own rule of thumb. If you are heavly weight down by a 300 kilos armor like Talos was, you certainly can't fight a giant monster made to crush a tank or a dreadnaught. I don,t think I ever heard of a Marine fencing a dreadnaught so I don't think they can fence a creature that can overpower one.

it would make sense that when the power armour isnt powered it would be harder to move due to the electro-fibres not energizing.

w1zard wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
The bigger issue is that GW writers fundamentally don't understand how melee works in addition to not comprehending warfare. Now as one dabbled in (rapier) fencing, strength doesn't matter much in melee - but only up until you reach literal superhuman levels. For some comparison, a light woman weighing around 110 pounds can absolutely parry and push back a swing from a 190 pound man, especially with good footwork. Although she could be leveraged into a bad position, a swordfight between a 110 pound woman and 190 pound man is still going to depend upon skill over feats of strength.

But if that 190 pound guy say, picks a fight with a Grizzly Bear and tries to block a swing from it; his arm is getting instantly dislocated in a -best- case scenario. Possibly getting fully removed in the worst. You can parry strikes from things that slightly outmass you, but there's just a certain point that there is no chance in hell that you are resisting any force imparted by said creature. Marines, Orks, Nids, Necrons, etc are all in this box. No human lacking bionic enhancement should ever be able to resist them in melee, and any attempt to parry or block a strike from them should result in instant death of said normal human (or eldar for that matter). It is trying to fight something even stronger than a Grizzly in melee. If their sword so much as comes in contact with yours, either your guard is immediately dropping and folding or your arm is swiftly getting dislocated/snapped like a twig.

Eh, you can adjust your fighting style to dodge or deflect blows instead of outright parrying muscle to muscle. Assuming you had better speed than your opponent, he can't crush you with his overwhelming strength if he cant hit you. This type of fighting was exemplified in Muhammad Ali's boxing style. He would go up against absolute bruisers that he ended up dancing around and weakening with jabs before moving in for the kill.

I disagree slightly here. While Ali was a lot more agile than most of his opponents, usually he just took the punishment from them until they gassed out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You're never going to be able to completely avoid hits from an opponent in a fight. That's basically a physical impossibility.

About the original post, for some reason I really dislike the GSC. I already never was a fan of Tyranids in the first place as I find them boring and devoid of characterization, but GSC, although having their own aesthetics and said characterization, still don't strike me as a likable faction. I think part of the reason is that in their fluff (the one I've read at least) they're always so smarter than everyone, more cunning, with their heightened senses and all that. Managing to have their entire cults secret while basically in the middle of town is a little too much for me, and then when some smart dudes do find them, they get outsmarted for reasons and die and repeat ad infinitum until uprising where they have a masterplan to win in 4 hours or something. I'm extrapolating here but it wouldn't surprise me.

epronovost wrote:
Space Marines are 7 feet tall in armor (8 for Primaris).

I was referring to primaris. They are the new marines now.

epronovost wrote:
They can't deadlift a tank. A tank weight at least 20 tons. It would be ridiculous for them to be capable to lift over 20 times their own weight. Especially ridiculous considering they struggle to move in their own armors when its shut down and that armor weighs about 300 kilos. A Space Marine can probably deadlift no more than a 2500 kilos and that's being generous. They are about as strong as silver back gorillas (which is absurdly strong btw, these thing can flatten a car by hammering on it and throw a human 10 feet in the air with a single hand). A Hive Tyrant weights 6 tons on average and is three times taller than a Marine. Even if Marines where capable of deadlifting ten times (note that five times is impressive since humans struggle to deadlift more than thrice their weight), they would be incapable of lifting a Hive Tyrant who can itself deadlift at least thrice its weight probably four or more considering Tyranids can use Space Marines genes if they want to for the construction of creatures (which they did with the Tyrant Guard for example).

A m1a1 ambrams tank weighs roughly 57,000 kg. Assuming the marine is deadlifting the front/back end of the tank (not the entire vehicle because the idea of a tank suspended from a rope is hilarious), this would put their needed lift at roughly 1/4 of the total mass. Which would mean the marine would need to deadlift a total of roughly 14,000 kg. Assuming once again a marine weighs roughly 300 kg without armor (which is consistent with the lore and is 50% more than a gorilla, which weighs 200kg and which can already deadlift 10x its own weight) and that their bioengineered muscles let them deadlift 20 times their own weight (not that much of a stretch considering this is less than twice the muscle density of a gorilla because of the square cubed law and muscle volume), this would mean a marine is capable of deadlifting 6,000 kg without power armor which I think is totally within the realm of reason. For comparison purposes, an unagmented human athlete can deadlift 300-500kg with enough training. Add in the power armor doubling or even tripling the strength of a marine and this is pretty close to the mark, which I think is generous considering that some sources put the strength magnification of power armor at absurd amounts like 10x.

epronovost wrote:
They are much slower than eldars.

Unlike my post above my response to this is statement is not speculation, it is fact within the setting. It has been shown numerous times in the lore that marines are just as fast as eldar, and it is outright stated that they have reflexes that are roughly 10x as fast as a normal human.

epronovost wrote:
Your average Space Marine is no match for a genestealer in close combat that's why veterans in Terminator Armor investigate hulks so that their superior firepower, armor and skills gives them a chance to survive.

An average space marine could rip apart a genestealer with his bare hands, considering even guardsmen with bayonets can kill genestealers in close combat. I will grant you though that a genestealer is perfectly capable of killing said marine right back, as their claws are even capable of getting through terminator armor.

epronovost wrote:
A Patriarch or a Broodlord can slaughter a squad and both them are weaker then a Hive Tyrant.

Cain was able to fight a patriarch with a chainsword and even got a few good hits in because it's size and reach limited it when he got in under its guard. I am assuming a space marine could do much better. Again I'm not saying that these things cannot hurt a space marine, merely that the space marine is perfectly capable of hurting them right back.

I want to re-iterate my point. A single marine fighting a hive tyrant in close combat is as likely to win as a single guardsman facing a marine is close combat. That is, extremely unlikely. However, I can see 5-10 space marines with close combat weapons rushing a hive tyrant and hacking it to peices at the cost of a few casualties.

Cain also had Jurgen with him, whose blank nature was disorienting the Patriarch.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Cain also had Jurgen with him, whose blank nature was disorienting the Patriarch.

IIRC Cain was dueling with the patriarch before Jurgen and Sorrel arrived.

w1zard wrote:

Unlike my post above my response to this is statement is not speculation, it is fact within the setting. It has been shown numerous times in the lore that marines are just as fast as eldar, and it is outright stated that they have reflexes that are roughly 10x as fast as a normal human..

Neither is it speculation on my part. Eldars have been shown to be much faster than Marines in many if not all scenarios. For example, it's the case in Path of the Eldar and Dark Eldar, or in Soul Hunter or even in Fulgrim where Lucious state that the Eldar he was duelling was even faster then him and managed to slice through his armor, but was just fast enough to avoid death. Considering the difference in nacked strength between the two, the only chance for the Eldar to present a challenge is to be way faster. Plus Eldars have shown one of the very best Space Marine couldn't beat one of the very best Eldar, but it was a close match. Considering that both Gaunt and Cain have doedged blows from Space Marines and that at least one Canoness dueled a Grey Knight Champion (the duel was a draw, it stopeed when the Sister recognise that the book on the grey knight was a holy bible of the Emperor and the Grey Knight recognised that she was chanting psalms while fighting him), it seems to me that Space Marines are way slower than ten times the speed of a human because of this. The average one's are a bit above the quickest most well trained humans and in turn their quickest are a little bit slower than the average Eldar warrior (probably as fast as Guardian). An entire squad of elite MArines were no match against a Wraithlord. A single Hive Tyrant is more powerful than a Wraithlord. Even against a squad armed with power weapons, the Hyve Tyrant would most likely win since a Wraithlord could do it.

Neither of us is speculating and that's a problem.

Neither of you are speculating because BL authors are basically given carte blanche to write whatever they feel like, and certain authors definitely show a bias toward "their guys". (ADB is a Chaos fan boy, Gav Thorpe is an Eldar guy etc.)

w1zard wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Cain also had Jurgen with him, whose blank nature was disorienting the Patriarch.

IIRC Cain was dueling with the patriarch before Jurgen and Sorrel arrived.

Huh. I'll have to pay attention next time I reread the series. I had the impression that all of Cain's victories were at least assisted by Jurgen.

 Wyzilla wrote:
The bigger issue is that GW writers fundamentally don't understand how melee works in addition to not comprehending warfare. Now as one dabbled in (rapier) fencing, strength doesn't matter much in melee - but only up until you reach literal superhuman levels. For some comparison, a light woman weighing around 110 pounds can absolutely parry and push back a swing from a 190 pound man, especially with good footwork. Although she could be leveraged into a bad position, a swordfight between a 110 pound woman and 190 pound man is still going to depend upon skill over feats of strength.

But if that 190 pound guy say, picks a fight with a Grizzly Bear and tries to block a swing from it; his arm is getting instantly dislocated in a -best- case scenario. Possibly getting fully removed in the worst. You can parry strikes from things that slightly outmass you, but there's just a certain point that there is no chance in hell that you are resisting any force imparted by said creature. Marines, Orks, Nids, Necrons, etc are all in this box. No human lacking bionic enhancement should ever be able to resist them in melee, and any attempt to parry or block a strike from them should result in instant death of said normal human (or eldar for that matter). It is trying to fight something even stronger than a Grizzly in melee. If their sword so much as comes in contact with yours, either your guard is immediately dropping and folding or your arm is swiftly getting dislocated/snapped like a twig.

I think your experience here is getting colored by your fighting form. With a rapier, I absolutely believe that, with a claymore, not so much. Rapiers are thin and designed to be a bit flexible (to score a point in fencing, after all, you have to both make contact AND bend the blade). Heavier swords are flexible only as a byproduct of the physical properties of steel and iron (brittle = bad). If the same woman was attempting to parry an overhead swing, the weight of her own weapon, the weight of her opponent's weapon and then the mass behind it is definitely going impact her guard. It might blow right past it.

If she's smart and tactical, she won't try to block and will do one of a hundred other possibilities, but the point is that strength accounts for a lot depending on weapon type and style.

epronovost wrote:

w1zard wrote:

Unlike my post above my response to this is statement is not speculation, it is fact within the setting. It has been shown numerous times in the lore that marines are just as fast as eldar, and it is outright stated that they have reflexes that are roughly 10x as fast as a normal human..

Neither is it speculation on my part. Eldars have been shown to be much faster than Marines in many if not all scenarios. For example, it's the case in Path of the Eldar and Dark Eldar, or in Soul Hunter or even in Fulgrim where Lucious state that the Eldar he was duelling was even faster then him and managed to slice through his armor, but was just fast enough to avoid death. Considering the difference in nacked strength between the two, the only chance for the Eldar to present a challenge is to be way faster. Plus Eldars have shown one of the very best Space Marine couldn't beat one of the very best Eldar, but it was a close match. Considering that both Gaunt and Cain have doedged blows from Space Marines and that at least one Canoness dueled a Grey Knight Champion (the duel was a draw, it stopeed when the Sister recognise that the book on the grey knight was a holy bible of the Emperor and the Grey Knight recognised that she was chanting psalms while fighting him), it seems to me that Space Marines are way slower than ten times the speed of a human because of this. The average one's are a bit above the quickest most well trained humans and in turn their quickest are a little bit slower than the average Eldar warrior (probably as fast as Guardian). An entire squad of elite MArines were no match against a Wraithlord. A single Hive Tyrant is more powerful than a Wraithlord. Even against a squad armed with power weapons, the Hyve Tyrant would most likely win since a Wraithlord could do it.

Neither of us is speculating and that's a problem.

Firstly, the fact that one highly trained eldar is faster than one space marine, is not proof that all eldar or even the average eldar is faster than the average space marine.

Second, no, eldar warriors (the real ones) are a threat to space marines because they have more experience than them. Aspect warriors train for centuries perfecting their art, and honing their bodies to peak perfection and this is the only reason they are able to fight on par with space marines. An aspect warrior is probably a little faster and has better technical skill, but the Space Marine is undoubtedly stronger which evens out the balance. I would consider that the average aspect warrior is roughly on par with the average space marine, with the most experienced space marines (Bjorn, Dante) being roughly on par with the pheonix lords themselves. The average eldar guardian would be only slightly more dangerous to a space marine than an average guardsman considering that guardians are just eldar civilians given guns.

Third, Gaunt and Cain have dodged blows from space marines because they were both superbly trained human swordsmen (Inquisitor Vail suspected that Cain was the best human swordsman in the entire subsector) that were at the peak of fighting ability, and at least on Cain's part was because the space marine was going easy on him. I highly doubt that if the tech marine really wanted Cain dead that he could have any real chance of stopping it for longer than 10 seconds or so, and the only other instance of Cain fighting a space marine was the Khorne beserker whom he stalemated and taunted for a few seconds while Jurgen readied the meltagun.

Fourth, the only reason the sister was able to even keep up with a Grey Knight was because she was wearing power armor herself. You notice the battle only lasted for a few blows, I suspect if it went on longer than that the Grey Knight would have handily won.

Lastly, a hive tyrant is not more powerful than a wraithlord. A hive tyrant is 20 ft tall, and a wraithlord is about the same size. I would consider them at least to be roughly equal.

I think you underestimate how dangerous a Space Marine really is. They are more than just augmented humans given power armor. They are 8 ft tall hyperintelligent supersoldiers, with twice the strength of an average gorilla, ten times the reflex speed of an average human, wearing a suit that doubles or triples their already prodigious strength and is roughly equivalent to the armor on a light tank. They don't need to eat or drink or even breathe for long periods of time, don't need to sleep for days, can eat and digest pretty much anything, can spit acid that can dissolve steel, and have blood that instantly clots wounds to the point where a marine can lose both of his legs and the stumps will stop bleeding within seconds.

 Luciferian wrote:
Neither of you are speculating because BL authors are basically given carte blanche to write whatever they feel like, and certain authors definitely show a bias toward "their guys". (ADB is a Chaos fan boy, Gav Thorpe is an Eldar guy etc.)

Considering Cadian Blood, I dunno about ADB bias being all that strong.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
Neither of you are speculating because BL authors are basically given carte blanche to write whatever they feel like, and certain authors definitely show a bias toward "their guys". (ADB is a Chaos fan boy, Gav Thorpe is an Eldar guy etc.)

Considering Cadian Blood, I dunno about ADB bias being all that strong.

To be fair to ADB, he's decent at making the characters/factions he's writing seem awesome while having at least minor flaws from their own perspective, but it's pretty clear he has a hard on for the Nightlords and prefers Chaos to "win" 40k.

w1zard wrote:
I think you underestimate how dangerous a Space Marine really is. They are more than just augmented humans given power armor. They are 8 ft tall hyperintelligent supersoldiers, with twice the strength of an average gorilla, ten times the reflex speed of an average human, wearing a suit that doubles or triples their already prodigious strength and is roughly equivalent to the armor on a light tank. They don't need to eat or drink or even breathe for long periods of time, don't need to sleep for days, can eat and digest pretty much anything, can spit acid that can dissolve steel, and have blood that instantly clots wounds to the point where a marine can lose both of his legs and the stumps will stop bleeding within seconds.

If they were that fast, how the hell did Gaunt and Cain dodge those blows, how the hell could a Sister trade blows with a Grey Knight champion? Ten times seems completely hyperbolic. BTW, an Aspect Warrior doesn't have necessarily centuries of training. While Path of the Eldar is murky in term of time frame, it seems that the main character of the first book becomes an excellent Scorpion in what looks to be only a few years. Eldar were built for war afterall. It's supposed to come to them as naturally as breathing. They struggle not to be violent murderers. Neither are guardians just civilians. They are the eldars who follow a none combattant paths, but that doesn't mean that many ofthem haven't been aspect warriors before. It's stated in their codex that war is such a part of the eldar psyche that almost all of them wil follow the path of the warrior at some point in their lives. A solid chunk of the guardians of a craftworld probably were Aspect Warriors at some point, while their skills might be rusty and their equipment worse, they are far from a human militia.

A Hive Tyrant can kill rather easily a wraithlord or a dreadnaught since Carnifex can do those thing and while the later are stronger, they are weaker in combat than Hive Tyrants who are supposed to be the most dangerous Tyranid creatue pound for pound, with maybe a Partiarch in contention. You seem to forget that Hive Tyrants are massively intelligent, skillful creatures, not brutes and powerful psykers who's psychic ability are a match for that of a Librarian. All of this is rolled in a single package. Beside a Greater Daemon or Prince, an Avatar, C'Tan Shards or a Primarch, I don't think any other creature in 40K was ever described with such a wide array of powers.

epronovost wrote:
If they were that fast, how the hell did Gaunt and Cain dodge those blows...

Because having ten times faster reflexes doesn't necessarily mean they MOVE ten times as fast, they can just REACT ten times as fast. Hell, if you want to go down that route, it is still possible to dodge a blow from something that moves as ten times as fast as you, you just need to start dodging sooner than you would normally.

epronovost wrote:
Ten times seems completely hyperbolic.

Don't look at me, it is outright stated in the lore. Space marine reaction times are ~3 milliseconds, which is 10 times faster than a standard human's reaction time of ~30 milliseconds.

epronovost wrote:
... how the hell could a Sister trade blows with a Grey Knight champion?

I've already answered this question, it is because she was wearing power armor. Something that we all agree increases your strength and speed significantly. You seriously think a battle sister no matter how experienced is going to last long against a grey knight?

epronovost wrote:
They are the eldars who follow a none combattant paths...

So... eldar civilians? You do realize that is the exact definition of "civilian" right?

epronovost wrote:
...they are far from a human militia.

Agreed, which is why I was not comparing them to human militia I was comparing them to guardsmen. The imperial guard are most certainly not a militia. A militia would be the PDF of each individual planet.

An eldar is many times as quick as a normal human that much is true, and have better equipment while having comparable physical strength. I would put eldar guardians on par with Guard veterans, or Stormtroopers, which seems pretty fair IMO.

epronovost wrote:
A Hive Tyrant can kill rather easily a wraithlord or a dreadnaught since Carnifex can do those thing and while the later are stronger, they are weaker in combat than Hive Tyrants who are supposed to be the most dangerous Tyranid creatue pound for pound, with maybe a Partiarch in contention. You seem to forget that Hive Tyrants are massively intelligent, skillful creatures, not brutes and powerful psykers who's psychic ability are a match for that of a Librarian. All of this is rolled in a single package. Beside a Greater Daemon or Prince, an Avatar, C'Tan Shards or a Primarch, I don't think any other creature in 40K was ever described with such a wide array of powers.

I'm not claiming that Hive tyrants aren't dangerous, nor that they aren't likely the most dangerous tyranid creature short of a bio titan. But when the average space marine gun is a 100 caliber fully automatic rocket propelled grenade launcher, and hive tyrants are shown regularly in the lore getting blasted apart by things ranging from space marine plasma guns to imperial guard chimeras, it is hard to think of them as anywhere close to the most "dangerous" creature in the setting. Cain's regiment even killed two of them in one engagement.

Like I said, if we are talking about close combat only, I'd say a hive tyrant is pretty up there, still under things like greater daemons or daemon princes, and roughly equal with an eldar wraithlord. But 40k is hardly close combat only.