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.

There are 1,000, give or take, Marine chapters.
Each chapter has 1,000, give or take, Marines.

That's one million Marines.

Let's assume that's off by a factor of 10, so there are actually ten million Marines.

Cadia has (okay, HAD) a population of 850,000,000.
Catachan has a mere 12,000,000 people.
Mordia has 10,000,000,000+ people.
Armageddon has 1,000,000,000+ people.
And there are thousands or more of other planets that include Guardsmen.
That's at least twelve billion people, just on four named planets. Let's assume that a mere one in twelve people are Guardsmen-the rest are children, the old and infirm, etc. etc.
That's one billion Guardsmen. Or one hundred Guardsmen for every Marine, from just FOUR PLANETS.

How many Guardsmen is a Marine worth? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?

Because, even though the tabletop is not representative of the fluff fully, I think it's safe to say that I'd prefer a hundred Guardsmen for most engagements than one ordinary Space Marine. (And for every more powerful Marine, like Chapter Masters, Captains, Librarians, or others; there's a Scion or other type of advanced Guardsmen.)

Now, there are some times when force ABSOLUTELY has to be concentrated in a way Guardsmen cannot manage, but Marines can. But those engagements are, far as I can tell, rare, relatively speaking, compared to what else there is.

I'm not saying Marines are BAD. But I do question why they're considered SO important.

They don't.

Force multiplayer, no other species in the galaxy can do what marines are designed to do as well as them (in the fluff), drop down, totally smash the enemies command structure and get out again, you use the guard to hold the enemy and then use the marines to break them.

Inspiring, they are literal angels of the emperor to the humans of the imperium, they prove their faith is real and that the emperor is real and thus a god, this makes them fight all the harder.

Propaganda. The serve to inspire the mortals of the Imperium though the fact that they are Angels of Death, decedent from the God-Emperor of Mankind. Their existence is a boon to the common man, who will never have seen one, but most will have heard stories told.

Then if Joe Blow who's grown up hearing the stories, and is fighting a losing battle as part of the Imperial Guard, and suddenly the Angels of Death appear, delivering the pinpoint strikes they are supposed to, it will in theory rally the common soldiers to hold longer. While hopefully the Astartes take out the one very important thing they should be there to take.

You know when they arent being wasted in open protracted conflicts they have no business in. The should be a Rapid Strike and Response Force.

One could make the same argument regarding special forces v. the rest of the armed forces. Why would we need a SEAL team when I could just toss a thousand or so enlisted sailors fresh out of boot at the problem?

The answer is that they do different jobs.

Plus the aforementioned issue of propaganda and morale.

PLUS, who then would be the poster boyz of geedubz? Some rando in flak armor with a flashlight?

IG/AM guard are numbered in insane quantities, they almost literally bury the enemies of the Imperium.

Think of the ratio this way:
472,000 active personnel in the USA Army.
184,000 in the Marine Corps.

About 2.5 to one.

The idea is rapid deployment, a forward unit able to deploy from a variety of platforms in conjunction with other military arms of government.

If you want it down to a tiny blurb: The difference between Quantity and Quality.

They ARE representative because of course every battle you play is IMPORTANT so of course the Space Marines will be there!

They don't. They are a relic from more ancient time. They still exist, but their impact is negligible in the grand scheme of things.

Marines are quite important in the fluff. (Or is that just propaganda?) They arive faster, have the best equipment etc. The IG is the hammer, SM are the scalpel.

However in the game you need game balance aaaaand they are not so strong anymore.

Speaking of witch, am I the only one who think it is odd that armies always have the same number of points on each side? Are we just playing the balanced battles? Where are the battles where a tyranid just eats the local gaurd regiment. 200 000 point of nids vs 5 000 point of guards? Odd, odd, odd.

 JNAProductions wrote:
think it's safe to say that I'd prefer a hundred Guardsmen for most engagements than one ordinary Space Marine. (And for every more powerful Marine, like Chapter Masters, Captains, Librarians, or others; there's a Scion or other type of advanced Guardsmen.)

 JNAProductions wrote:
(And for every more powerful Marine, like Chapter Masters, Captains, Librarians, or others; there's a Scion or other type of advanced Guardsmen.)

 JNAProductions wrote:
There are 1,000, give or take, Marine chapters.
Each chapter has 1,000, give or take, Marines.

That's one million Marines.

Let's assume that's off by a factor of 10, so there are actually ten million Marines.

Cadia has (okay, HAD) a population of 850,000,000.
Catachan has a mere 12,000,000 people.
Mordia has 10,000,000,000+ people.
Armageddon has 1,000,000,000+ people.
And there are thousands or more of other planets that include Guardsmen.
That's at least twelve billion people, just on four named planets. Let's assume that a mere one in twelve people are Guardsmen-the rest are children, the old and infirm, etc. etc.
That's one billion Guardsmen. Or one hundred Guardsmen for every Marine, from just FOUR PLANETS.

How many Guardsmen is a Marine worth? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?

Because, even though the tabletop is not representative of the fluff fully, I think it's safe to say that I'd prefer a hundred Guardsmen for most engagements than one ordinary Space Marine. (And for every more powerful Marine, like Chapter Masters, Captains, Librarians, or others; there's a Scion or other type of advanced Guardsmen.)

Now, there are some times when force ABSOLUTELY has to be concentrated in a way Guardsmen cannot manage, but Marines can. But those engagements are, far as I can tell, rare, relatively speaking, compared to what else there is.

I'm not saying Marines are BAD. But I do question why they're considered SO important.

When analyzed from even the most minimally realistic perspective, Space Marines would be utterly and completely irrelevant on the scale of many planetary wars, much less a galactic scale. They are so rare as to be nonexistent, and so few in number as to be trivially encircled and destroyed in major conflicts. A chapter of Space Marines are so few in number that they couldn't hold a mid sized town adequately. There are literally *millions* of IG regiments for each individual Space Marine, and hundreds of thousands of sector battlefleets for each Space Marine warship. GW is bad at numbers and scales, and half the time portrays Marines, both loyalist and heretic, as engaging in bloody frontal confrontations and gruelling attritional wars, despite that each casualty takes years or decades to replace.

They matter becausr they're thematic centerpieces, nothing more.

 Formosa wrote:
no other species in the galaxy can do what marines are designed to do as well as them (in the fluff), drop down, totally smash the enemies command structure and get out again

No other species maybe, but a Manticore barrage or lance strike from orbit can deal with the problem just fine.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
One could make the same argument regarding special forces v. the rest of the armed forces. Why would we need a SEAL team when I could just toss a thousand or so enlisted sailors fresh out of boot at the problem?

Because in the real world we tend to be a bit hesitant to do things like sacrifice a million soldiers to take an objective, or to slaughter a million enemy civilians to kill one military leader. The Imperium has no such constraints, life is cheap and any enemy civilians killed in an artillery barrage only reduce the amount of work for the extermination camps once the war is over.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gael Knight wrote:
pictures

Why marines matter?

1.) Marines aren't political(*) and aren't constrained by the bureaucracy. This means they can respond quickly to threats the fleet and/or guard could take (literally) decades to respond to.
2.) Marines have their own fleets of space ships, which facilitates 1.) above, not to mention things like orbital bombardment or fleet engagements.
3.) Marines have toys that can exploit opportunities that other forces cannot - dropships and teleporting Terminators being only a small sample of deployment options that would KILL any normal human being that even tried them.

On a pitched battlefield it's wasteful to employ Space Marines. Need to send a small force that punches above its numbers? Space Marines are the ones for the job.

(*) In general, and some chapters are still a bunch of jerks.

They are mostly hesitant to completely destroy infrastructure, particularly when said infrastructure could be too hard to replace. For instance, they didnt just exterminatus Armageddon, they rounded everyone up, killed them in camps repairing the damaged infrastructure.

Lots of seething guard players in here unable to know their role of holding the line while Astartes do the heavy lifting. Space Marine Legions retook the Empire you are serving. You're welcome.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
no other species in the galaxy can do what marines are designed to do as well as them (in the fluff), drop down, totally smash the enemies command structure and get out again

No other species maybe, but a Manticore barrage or lance strike from orbit can deal with the problem just fine.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
One could make the same argument regarding special forces v. the rest of the armed forces. Why would we need a SEAL team when I could just toss a thousand or so enlisted sailors fresh out of boot at the problem?

Because in the real world we tend to be a bit hesitant to do things like sacrifice a million soldiers to take an objective, or to slaughter a million enemy civilians to kill one military leader. The Imperium has no such constraints, life is cheap and any enemy civilians killed in an artillery barrage only reduce the amount of work for the extermination camps once the war is over.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gael Knight wrote:
pictures

Only if you dont care about the infrastructure, population or resources the planet has, otherwise we just exterminatus any planet that is in conflict and rebuild afterwards.

Also there are some enemies where numbers literally mean nothing and armour, speed and massive force is needed in a specific point, lances cant do that, neither can artillery, marines can as its what they are designed to do.

 Formosa wrote:
Only if you dont care about the infrastructure, population or resources the planet has, otherwise we just exterminatus any planet that is in conflict and rebuild afterwards.

Carefully targeted artillery can destroy specific targets without reaching exterminatus levels of destruction. If you can aim a marine drop pod at an enemy commander you can demolish the building with artillery and leave the rest of the area untouched.

Also there are some enemies where numbers literally mean nothing and armour, speed and massive force is needed in a specific point, lances cant do that, neither can artillery, marines can as its what they are designed to do.

{citation needed}

Just what exactly are these enemies that are immune to normal humans using plasma guns/lascannons/etc, but vulnerable to a bunch of screaming idiots in power armor using the same weapons?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gael Knight wrote:
Lots of seething guard players in here unable to know their role of holding the line while Astartes do the heavy lifting. Space Marine Legions retook the Empire you are serving. You're welcome.

Space marines and their lack of loyalty created the need to retake the Imperium in the first place.

 Peregrine wrote:

Space marines and their lack of loyalty created the need to retake the Imperium in the first place.

The Imperium's grip was loosened during the heresy but ultimately it was restored by the Astartes.

 Formosa wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
no other species in the galaxy can do what marines are designed to do as well as them (in the fluff), drop down, totally smash the enemies command structure and get out again

No other species maybe, but a Manticore barrage or lance strike from orbit can deal with the problem just fine.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
One could make the same argument regarding special forces v. the rest of the armed forces. Why would we need a SEAL team when I could just toss a thousand or so enlisted sailors fresh out of boot at the problem?

Because in the real world we tend to be a bit hesitant to do things like sacrifice a million soldiers to take an objective, or to slaughter a million enemy civilians to kill one military leader. The Imperium has no such constraints, life is cheap and any enemy civilians killed in an artillery barrage only reduce the amount of work for the extermination camps once the war is over.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gael Knight wrote:
pictures

Only if you dont care about the infrastructure, population or resources the planet has, otherwise we just exterminatus any planet that is in conflict and rebuild afterwards.

Also there are some enemies where numbers literally mean nothing and armour, speed and massive force is needed in a specific point, lances cant do that, neither can artillery, marines can as its what they are designed to do.

 Gael Knight wrote:
Lots of seething guard players in here unable to know their role of holding the line while Astartes do the heavy lifting. Space Marine Legions retook the Empire you are serving. You're welcome.

You mean the dudes that tore it asunder in the first place over daddy issues?

The troops that are so rare that most of the Imperium's wars are won without ever seeing a single one?

The guys that aren't trusted to lead and command the vast fighting armies of the Imperium anymore without special dispensation?

The same retaking that was accomplished primarily by normal human troops because there were more worlds than marines?

No wars of any consequence are fought without the Astartes.

If anything the victory of the Guard is down to the Imperial Navy, rather than anything they can muster themselves.

 Gael Knight wrote:
No wars of any consequence are fought without the Astartes.

Citation Needed. Many vital wars never see a single Space Marine boot and are taken care of by the Guard, AdMech, Stormtroopers, Knights or other forces.

One will also notice that the largest post-heresy forces, and the highest Imperal ranks of Lord Solar or Wamaster have been held by Guard commanders, not Space Marines, except for Guilliman of late (a literal son of the Emperor and Primarch).

If anything the victory of the Guard is down to the Imperial Navy, rather than anything they can muster themselves.

Again, citation needed, because 40k in general portrays a very limited level of naval combat and orbital bombardment

Maybe you can give a few examples of wars of consequence that did not feature the Astartes?

 Gael Knight wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Space marines and their lack of loyalty created the need to retake the Imperium in the first place.

The Imperium's grip was loosened during the heresy but ultimately it was restored by the Astartes.

And, again, the only reason the Heresy happened was because of treason by space marines. Cleaning up some of the mess you made doesn't make you the hero.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Gael Knight wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Space marines and their lack of loyalty created the need to retake the Imperium in the first place.

The Imperium's grip was loosened during the heresy but ultimately it was restored by the Astartes.

And, again, the only reason the Heresy happened was because of treason by space marines. Cleaning up some of the mess you made doesn't make you the hero.

The Loyalists didn't create the mess though. They destroyed the forces of the traitors, routing them into the Eye of Terror, and prevailed.

 Vaktathi wrote:

One will also notice that the largest post-heresy forces, and the highest Imperal ranks of Lord Solar or Wamaster have been held by Guard commanders, not Space Marines, except for Guilliman of late (a literal son of the Emperor and Primarch).

Not that you are wrong, but Lord Solars and Warmasters still hold less power than Horus did. Typically also in those theaters they command, its not an entire Chapter working with them but Companies of Chapters. When large numbers of Imperial Commanders are present, and there isnt a Warmaster, its not uncommon for a Chapter Master to take over all command


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gael Knight wrote:


The Loyalists didn't create the mess though. They destroyed the forces of the traitors, routing them into the Eye of Terror, and prevailed.

It was still the Astartes that started the whole mess. But its foolish to think it was just them. The Fabricator General of Mars turned traitor as did much of the Human Imperial Army.

 Gael Knight wrote:
The Loyalists didn't create the mess though. They destroyed the forces of the traitors, routing them into the Eye of Terror, and prevailed.

And yet if no space marines at all had existed there would have been no traitors and no Heresy.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Gael Knight wrote:
The Loyalists didn't create the mess though. They destroyed the forces of the traitors, routing them into the Eye of Terror, and prevailed.

And yet if no space marines at all had existed there would have been no traitors and no Heresy.

There would also be no Imperium. Not a very useful point is it?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Gael Knight wrote:
The Loyalists didn't create the mess though. They destroyed the forces of the traitors, routing them into the Eye of Terror, and prevailed.

And yet if no space marines at all had existed there would have been no traitors and no Heresy.

That's a bold claim that cant be backed up. Chaos would still try to tear down the Imperium.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
That's a bold claim that cant be backed up. Chaos would still try to tear down the Imperium.

Try, yes, but succeed? Chaos had not succeeded in destroying the Imperium prior to driving space marines to treason, and it was their arrogance in their god-like status that made the primarchs targets in the first place.

 Peregrine wrote:

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
That's a bold claim that cant be backed up. Chaos would still try to tear down the Imperium.

Try, yes, but succeed? Chaos had not succeeded in destroying the Imperium prior to driving space marines to treason, and it was their arrogance in their god-like status that made the primarchs targets in the first place.

With how little convincing it took on the Traitor's part to get him to switch sides, I think the Fabricator-General going traitor, would still have torn the Imperium apart.