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.

 Formosa wrote:
I never said there were thousands on each side, my point was and still is in spite of having the drop on the marines the tau got mauled, in spite of having larger numbers the tau got mauled, in spite of superior firepower and planning the tau got mauled, the tau know how dangerous and effective marines are and respect them as an enemy and do not underestimate them. as for the casualties, a lot happened "off camera" that we are not told about, with only the key points described, the end of the battle had the Tau casualties at significant and the marines having to escape or be destroyed, now to you or I that means that the Marines put up a damn good fight, used the terrain to their advantage and still lost, to Peregrine that means that marines are useless and lost, no nuance, just black or white.

Marines are not perfect, that would be boring, this battle is one of the more realistic battles involving marines because they adapted to a very bad situation that would have seen any other force destroyed and any of them surviving is a testament to the true power of space marines.

During an engagment, Space Marines are a force to reckonned with, I don't think anybody here is trying to make the argument that Space Marines are bad at their job. They are great at it The argument is that there are so little of them and they are, let's face it, not am overwhelmingly dominating presence. in this story a single Tau Hunter Cadre could match a Space Marine Company. Both troops are less then a 1000. There are only a million Space marine in the Imperium while Tau easily have tens of millions of Hunter Cadre. Each Space Marine isn't a titan and all other armies have troops that can either match them or surpass them well in excess to the Marines numbers, making them rather pointless in the grand scheme of things. They basically matter as much as 20 Navy SEALS matter in the entire US military. Are the 20 SEALS bad? Absolutely not, they are some of the best soldiers in the world. These 20 can do great things, but in a total war where all the US military would be used at its maximum capacity, those 20 SEALS represent a ridiculously tiny amount of that power. Their death wouldn't change anything or so very little.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Commander Farsight was able to recreate the codex astartes from his observations of the space marines he fought against during his conquests of imperial space in the Damocles Crusade (the mirrorcodex). By doing so he was able to accurately predict how any codex-adherent chapter would react to battlefield situations and counter them with incredible efficiency.

.

just as an aside I hate fluff like this because it doesn't make much sense. if the codex was a paint by numbers tactics guide the Ultramarines (whom are noted to be strict adherants) would have been destroyed during the 1st Tyranid war. there's clearly room for improvisation.

 Formosa wrote:

epronovost wrote:
@Formosa

I just read through the battle of Taros, well at least the part where the Marines and Tau scare off. It seems that both forces were relatively tiny. The Space Marines had a battle group composed mostly of their entire 2nd company two squads of Terminators and a few dreadnaughts fighting within the same palace complex. The Tau had a Hunter Cadre, which, while bigger, isn't overwhelmingly bigger. Maybe a few hundred Tau at most.

During the description of the battle, there is a clear mention of Tau being overwhelmingly favored during ranged engagement while the Space Marines had an easy time in close combat which was possible thanks to the fact they were holding a fortified position were close combat became a necessity. That's what caused most of the casualties amongst the Tau. Furthermore, Crisis Suits are described as comparable to Terminators with a slight advantage to the later (4 casulaty vs 3 in their engagement), one of the only time casualties are mentionned in anything else then purely descriptive terms. The end description mentions that the battlefield was littered with Tau grav tanks and battlesuits, yet only two hammerhead were present and destroyed and only five battlesuit (one XV88 and four XV8 were destroyed in the engagement) the littering is thus not due to the number of deaths, but the small size of the battlefield. All in all, only a few hundred people died during that battle at most. Neither force engaged were numbered in the 1000's.

I never said there were thousands on each side, my point was and still is in spite of having the drop on the marines the tau got mauled, in spite of having larger numbers the tau got mauled, in spite of superior firepower and planning the tau got mauled, the tau know how dangerous and effective marines are and respect them as an enemy and do not underestimate them. as for the casualties, a lot happened "off camera" that we are not told about, with only the key points described, the end of the battle had the Tau casualties at significant and the marines having to escape or be destroyed, now to you or I that means that the Marines put up a damn good fight, used the terrain to their advantage and still lost, to Peregrine that means that marines are useless and lost, no nuance, just black or white.

Marines are not perfect, that would be boring, this battle is one of the more realistic battles involving marines because they adapted to a very bad situation that would have seen any other force destroyed and any of them surviving is a testament to the true power of space marines.

So....... admech can change their canticles. IG can change orders. Even drukhari get more buff as the fight goes on. Marines have zero adaptation rules. The more i hear about the fluff the more confused and annoyed i get.

epronovost wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
I never said there were thousands on each side, my point was and still is in spite of having the drop on the marines the tau got mauled, in spite of having larger numbers the tau got mauled, in spite of superior firepower and planning the tau got mauled, the tau know how dangerous and effective marines are and respect them as an enemy and do not underestimate them. as for the casualties, a lot happened "off camera" that we are not told about, with only the key points described, the end of the battle had the Tau casualties at significant and the marines having to escape or be destroyed, now to you or I that means that the Marines put up a damn good fight, used the terrain to their advantage and still lost, to Peregrine that means that marines are useless and lost, no nuance, just black or white.

Marines are not perfect, that would be boring, this battle is one of the more realistic battles involving marines because they adapted to a very bad situation that would have seen any other force destroyed and any of them surviving is a testament to the true power of space marines.

During an engagment, Space Marines are a force to reckonned with, I don't think anybody here is trying to make the argument that Space Marines are bad at their job. They are great at it The argument is that there are so little of them and they are, let's face it, not am overwhelmingly dominating presence. in this story a single Tau Hunter Cadre could match a Space Marine Company. Both troops are less then a 1000. There are only a million Space marine in the Imperium while Tau easily have tens of millions of Hunter Cadre. Each Space Marine isn't a titan and all other armies have troops that can either match them or surpass them well in excess to the Marines numbers, making them rather pointless in the grand scheme of things. They basically matter as much as 20 Navy SEALS matter in the entire US military. Are the 20 SEALS bad? Absolutely not, they are some of the best soldiers in the world. These 20 can do great things, but in a total war where all the US military would be used at its maximum capacity, those 20 SEALS represent a ridiculously tiny amount of that power. Their death wouldn't change anything or so very little.

it was not a single hunter cadre that we know of and more than likely it was mutiples given the size of the area they were trying to contain the marines inside, it was an imperial govenors palace and these are fortified positions most of the time (#notall), a single hunter cadre would not be able to cover that amount of ground.

As for real world spec ops, allegedly the bravo two zero SAS team had nearly 1200 kills, I am dubious of this though as such things are notoriously hard to confirm, anyway, assuming its true and the SKUDS they destroyed (IIRC) these 8 men swung things quite heavily during that conflict and potentially saved thousands of lives, the whole thing is surrounded in so much hype and myth though its hard to find exact facts. we have many examples in history of soldier fighting overwhelming odds and coming though, small groups swinging whole engagements and even wars, its relatively rare but it does happen, this is the acheotype that marines are built upon and dialled up to sometimes stupid levels (brotherhood of the snake).

Now if we are going down the rabit hole of "but real life" then you have to clarify two important points.

Are we assuming that all the rules in the 40k universe apply to ours

Are we assuming that marines perform in real life exactly as they do in the fluff

Because if those two things are true then we literally have nothing that compares to them and from our real world perspective simply cannot understand how effective they are, a good example of this is anyone who has never been to war, sure you have read about it, but you have no idea what its really like and cannot understand it no matter how hard you try.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

So....... admech can change their canticles. IG can change orders. Even drukhari get more buff as the fight goes on. Marines have zero adaptation rules. The more i hear about the fluff the more confused and annoyed i get.[

Fluff does not equal rules and yes its stupid they have nothing (bar combat squads) to represent their adaptability.

 Formosa wrote:
it was not a single hunter cadre that we know of and more than likely it was mutiples given the size of the area they were trying to contain the marines inside, it was an imperial govenors palace and these are fortified positions most of the time (#notall), a single hunter cadre would not be able to cover that amount of ground.

An entire Hunter Cadre was bearing down on the Space Marines, moving at speed to reinforce the Governor's Palace.

That's the exact quote from the book in question when they described the entire force attacking the palace. Note that a 100 Space Marines were holding that ground, a few hundred Tau were thus more then enough to assault it. The fortress in question probably wasn't all that big all things considered since Taros was a scarcely populated mining colony. There was around 12 million people on the entire planet. At the height of the battle for Taros, there were a 100 Hunter Cadre active on the planet (numbering around 8 to 9 thousand fire warriors), about 5000 kroots and 10K traitorous PDF against the entire Imperial forces composed of over 12 Imperial Guard regiments, two company of stormtrooper, 4 Space Marine Companies and five titans.

As for real world spec ops, allegedly the bravo two zero SAS team had nearly 1200 kills, I am dubious of this though as such things are notoriously hard to confirm, anyway, assuming its true and the SKUDS they destroyed (IIRC) these 8 men swung things quite heavily during that conflict and potentially saved thousands of lives, the whole thing is surrounded in so much hype and myth though its hard to find exact facts. we have many examples in history of soldier fighting overwhelming odds and coming though, small groups swinging whole engagements and even wars, its relatively rare but it does happen, this is the acheotype that marines are built upon and dialled up to sometimes stupid levels (brotherhood of the snake).

Now if we are going down the rabit hole of "but real life" then you have to clarify two important points.

Are we assuming that all the rules in the 40k universe apply to ours

Are we assuming that marines perform in real life exactly as they do in the fluff

Because if those two things are true then we literally have nothing that compares to them and from our real world perspective simply cannot understand how effective they are, a good example of this is anyone who has never been to war, sure you have read about it, but you have no idea what its really like and cannot understand it no matter how hard you try.

Down the rabbit hole indeed, now, we are to assume that, even though, Space Marines aren't numerous or powerful enough to be relevent in the grand scheme of things according to the fluff of 40K, they are essential nonetheless. two things can be considered. One, the fluff of GW is so grossly incompetently written that any sort of discussion about it is nearly pointless or two one or several premise of the fluff are false. Here's a good one, what if Space Marines were numered in billions? It's been mentionned several times in the fluff that the Imperium is so large and its bureaucracy so ponderous that the High Lords of Terra are basically operating with ridiculously outdated and false information. Here's an hypothesis, the 1000 Chapter number comes from the first and last survey of Space Marine Chapters right after the Heresy was over and the Codex was approved. Since then hundreds of Chapters have been founded and others destroyed.

"Fluff does not equal rules and yes its stupid they have nothing (bar combat squads) to represent their adaptability."

You can say that, but my point was that other factions DO have something to simulate this adaptation. They consciously left it out for marines. Why is it the rules can at least get kind of close for these other factions? Look at how many special tricks Drukhari can stack up.

So for marines fluff does not equal rules, but for other factions it does?

Seems to be case, I've rarely seen the line ''fluff =/= rules'' coming from anyone else than Marines.

The rules greately favours those in the weaker background scale of power.


In the lore when Dark Eldar raid a Imperial Guard outpost they had to slow the recordings just to be able to see what was happening. The same happens with Craftworld Eldars or Harlequins.

Titans and creatures like Greater Demons are incredible nerfed compared with how they are portrayed in the lore (Unless they are fighting another giant monster and/or the protagonist of the novel at hand)

Etc, etc...


But theres something I always find curious. The most fierce anti-"Marine are very superpowerfull soldiers" players are always Imperial Guard players. And I don't put in that camp of people that just don't think Marines are the Gods of War many people believe they are, but in the "Space Marines are irrelevant for the scale of 40k and they shoudln't exist because you could have 100 imperial guard basilisk doing the job" kind of people.
I assume is some kind of victim complex? They feel Space Marines have an undeserving amount of time on the spotlight but unlike Tyranids, Necrons or Orks players that have accepted their place as the NPCs, they feel that because they are humans they should be much more relevant?

 Galas wrote:
The rules greately favours those in the weaker background scale of power.


In the lore when Dark Eldar raid a Imperial Guard outpost they had to slow the recordings just to be able to see what was happening. The same happens with Craftworld Eldars or Harlequins.

Titans and creatures like Greater Demons are incredible nerfed compared with how they are portrayed in the lore (Unless they are fighting another giant monster and/or the protagonist of the novel at hand)

Etc, etc...


But theres something I always find curious. The most fierce anti-"Marine are very superpowerfull soldiers" players are always Imperial Guard players. And I don't put in that camp of people that just don't think Marines are the Gods of War many people believe they are, but in the "Space Marines are irrelevant for the scale of 40k and they shoudln't exist because you could have 100 imperial guard basilisk doing the job" kind of people.
I assume is some kind of victim complex? They feel Space Marines have an undeserving amount of time on the spotlight but unlike Tyranids, Necrons or Orks players that have accepted their place as the NPCs, they feel that because they are humans they should be much more relevant?

it can vary, some of it could just be saltyness at marines getting so much attention, attention they perceive taking away from their prefered faction. on the other hand it could be that they have a preferance for a certain style of fluff that matches closer to what the guard are. I suspect it's some of each

I agree with you BrianDavion. Most people that like Imperial Guard are more the kind of historical and realistic setting kind of player.

Space Marines and Imperial Guard are like oil and water. They catter to totally opposite ends of the warhammer 40k spectrum of fans.
The problem is when ones try to impose their vision onto others.

 Galas wrote:
I agree with you BrianDavion. Most people that like Imperial Guard are more the kind of historical and realistic setting kind of player.

Space Marines and Imperial Guard are like oil and water. They catter to totally opposite ends of the warhammer 40k spectrum of fans.
The problem is when ones try to impose their vision onto others.

For instance, by relegating anything not Space Marine as mere NPCs?

Or by writing the fluff in such a way that, when you get down to it, a faction should be utterly irrelevant?

 Bobthehero wrote:
Seems to be case, I've rarely seen the line ''fluff =/= rules'' coming from anyone else than Marines.

Until GSC can all show up turn 1 in charge range from deep strike I can safely say they're not terribly fluffy. They don't ignore ld like the mindless hordes of the books either. Not to mention what's happened to genestealers over the editions. Apparently "Feth your armor save" has fallen out of fashion unless you're a plasma gun.

Eldar seem to do a great deal of dying for the master planning race attempting not to die. But then that is a bit fluffy.

Tau went from a confederation race to a power armor escalation league, don't think the fluff ever changed.

Superheavies and lords of war fail to even have a proper point in battles as small as 40k is generally played.

Orks, nids and guard seem proper fluffy, but then people complain about them being NPC races.

In general I think people just really enjoy complaining.


Honestly, give marines something to better represent their shock tactics and I think they'd be plenty fluffy. You just have to remember you're not fielding squads of legendary hero marines, but rather marine jobbers.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I agree with you BrianDavion. Most people that like Imperial Guard are more the kind of historical and realistic setting kind of player.

Space Marines and Imperial Guard are like oil and water. They catter to totally opposite ends of the warhammer 40k spectrum of fans.
The problem is when ones try to impose their vision onto others.

For instance, by relegating anything not Space Marine as mere NPCs?

Or by writing the fluff in such a way that, when you get down to it, a faction should be utterly irrelevant?

Have you read Horus Heresy? I don't. But when the most relevant part of the setting, at least in the eyes of the company and creators of the universe, are about Space Marines killing Space Marines commanded by bigger Space Marines , I think is pretty clear whats happening here. SM aren't irrelevant as much as people want them to be. Thats how the universe works. Just like in Superheroes comics, Earth is the most relevant part of the universe. Just because.

As I said, as a Tau player I recognise my place as the "Token sci-fi alien empire". I can read some tau-centric (Aka Rail-porn) fluff that to be honest isn't that much better than boltern porn. But GW just isn't very good at writting specific fluff. They are good at making broad strokes, creating a setting and letting people fill the gaps with their own headcanon.

 Galas wrote:
They feel Space Marines have an undeserving amount of time on the spotlight but unlike Tyranids, Necrons or Orks players that have accepted their place as the NPCs, they feel that because they are humans they should be much more relevant?

Well it is called the Imperium of Man, and yet the big spotlight is shone on the mutants. Furthermore, the IG are rarely portrayed as competent in books other than their own, so the more the focus go on the SM, the less likely you'll have good Guard stuff. The other faction can at least be written to be threatening antagonists, but the Guard is almost always the gakky ally that's there to be killed.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Galas wrote:
They feel Space Marines have an undeserving amount of time on the spotlight but unlike Tyranids, Necrons or Orks players that have accepted their place as the NPCs, they feel that because they are humans they should be much more relevant?

Well it is called the Imperium of Man, and yet the big spotlight is shone on the mutants. Furthermore, the IG are rarely portrayed as competent in books other than their own, so the more the focus go on the SM, the less likely you'll have good Guard stuff. The other faction can at least be written to be threatening antagonists, but the Guard is almost always the gakky ally that's there to be killed.

And Superheroes are there protecting normal humans but their histories aren't normally about those small beings.

I'll agreee that actually the better ones are when normal humans and the impact of superheroes on them is the spotlight, of the history. But I don't come to warhammer 40k expecting deep background and themes. I can have them in some novels like Gaunt Ghosts. But those are exceptions. The universe, as much as it has grown, and as much as it has become much more "mature"... at is core has remained the same.

Martel732 wrote:
"Fluff does not equal rules and yes its stupid they have nothing (bar combat squads) to represent their adaptability."

You can say that, but my point was that other factions DO have something to simulate this adaptation. They consciously left it out for marines. Why is it the rules can at least get kind of close for these other factions? Look at how many special tricks Drukhari can stack up.

So for marines fluff does not equal rules, but for other factions it does?

That one is quite easy to answer funnily enough, legacy rules, marines are the vanilla of vanilla for 40k, if you look at nearly every other army bar orks they have all had some good shake ups over time and gained a lot of rules and flavour, new armies gain from new army syndrome, they are actively trying to make them stand out from what we have and others are clearly given more focus and love by the writers, marines are so run of the mill cookie cutter from the writers I question whether or not they actually know the fluff exists sometimes let alone have even read it.

This problem is for ALL marines and types too, custodes, chaos space marines and all the different marine codex's, throwing one rule for the chapter/legion does nothing to fix the underlying problem with marines and that is that they suck, they suck because they have always had the same problems and in 20 years of marine codex's I have never seen them address these underlying problems, but thats GW for you.

So to answer your question, no, almost none of the factions represent the fluff that well, but the marines (all kinds) and possibly orks are at the bottom of the heap with Eldar and Tyranids at the top, play against or as those armies and you get the feel they fit the fluff more or less.

Then we get to the biggest problem, do we want them to represent the fluff accurately, yes and no, I would like them to move closer to the fluff, so an orders system of some sort (something I have asked for a lot), Bolter, pistol and close combat weapon for all marines to represent the adaptive style, and extra wound across the board... etc. etc. but this is no the place for wishlisting, I much prefer the fluff of the game that the actual game though so I am clearly Biased in that manner, I want to see more stories from non imperial points of view though, I would love to see the Taros campaign from the perspective of the Tau.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Galas wrote:
They feel Space Marines have an undeserving amount of time on the spotlight but unlike Tyranids, Necrons or Orks players that have accepted their place as the NPCs, they feel that because they are humans they should be much more relevant?

Well it is called the Imperium of Man, and yet the big spotlight is shone on the mutants. Furthermore, the IG are rarely portrayed as competent in books other than their own, so the more the focus go on the SM, the less likely you'll have good Guard stuff. The other faction can at least be written to be threatening antagonists, but the Guard is almost always the gakky ally that's there to be killed.

Right now that's because they are 4 ppm.

Martel732 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

epronovost wrote:
@Formosa

Spoiler:

I just read through the battle of Taros, well at least the part where the Marines and Tau scare off. It seems that both forces were relatively tiny. The Space Marines had a battle group composed mostly of their entire 2nd company two squads of Terminators and a few dreadnaughts fighting within the same palace complex. The Tau had a Hunter Cadre, which, while bigger, isn't overwhelmingly bigger. Maybe a few hundred Tau at most.

During the description of the battle, there is a clear mention of Tau being overwhelmingly favored during ranged engagement while the Space Marines had an easy time in close combat which was possible thanks to the fact they were holding a fortified position were close combat became a necessity. That's what caused most of the casualties amongst the Tau. Furthermore, Crisis Suits are described as comparable to Terminators with a slight advantage to the later (4 casulaty vs 3 in their engagement), one of the only time casualties are mentionned in anything else then purely descriptive terms. The end description mentions that the battlefield was littered with Tau grav tanks and battlesuits, yet only two hammerhead were present and destroyed and only five battlesuit (one XV88 and four XV8 were destroyed in the engagement) the littering is thus not due to the number of deaths, but the small size of the battlefield. All in all, only a few hundred people died during that battle at most. Neither force engaged were numbered in the 1000's.

I never said there were thousands on each side, my point was and still is in spite of having the drop on the marines the tau got mauled, in spite of having larger numbers the tau got mauled, in spite of superior firepower and planning the tau got mauled, the tau know how dangerous and effective marines are and respect them as an enemy and do not underestimate them. as for the casualties, a lot happened "off camera" that we are not told about, with only the key points described, the end of the battle had the Tau casualties at significant and the marines having to escape or be destroyed, now to you or I that means that the Marines put up a damn good fight, used the terrain to their advantage and still lost, to Peregrine that means that marines are useless and lost, no nuance, just black or white.

Marines are not perfect, that would be boring, this battle is one of the more realistic battles involving marines because they adapted to a very bad situation that would have seen any other force destroyed and any of them surviving is a testament to the true power of space marines.

 Dakka Wolf wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

epronovost wrote:
@Formosa

Spoiler:

I just read through the battle of Taros, well at least the part where the Marines and Tau scare off. It seems that both forces were relatively tiny. The Space Marines had a battle group composed mostly of their entire 2nd company two squads of Terminators and a few dreadnaughts fighting within the same palace complex. The Tau had a Hunter Cadre, which, while bigger, isn't overwhelmingly bigger. Maybe a few hundred Tau at most.

During the description of the battle, there is a clear mention of Tau being overwhelmingly favored during ranged engagement while the Space Marines had an easy time in close combat which was possible thanks to the fact they were holding a fortified position were close combat became a necessity. That's what caused most of the casualties amongst the Tau. Furthermore, Crisis Suits are described as comparable to Terminators with a slight advantage to the later (4 casulaty vs 3 in their engagement), one of the only time casualties are mentionned in anything else then purely descriptive terms. The end description mentions that the battlefield was littered with Tau grav tanks and battlesuits, yet only two hammerhead were present and destroyed and only five battlesuit (one XV88 and four XV8 were destroyed in the engagement) the littering is thus not due to the number of deaths, but the small size of the battlefield. All in all, only a few hundred people died during that battle at most. Neither force engaged were numbered in the 1000's.

I never said there were thousands on each side, my point was and still is in spite of having the drop on the marines the tau got mauled, in spite of having larger numbers the tau got mauled, in spite of superior firepower and planning the tau got mauled, the tau know how dangerous and effective marines are and respect them as an enemy and do not underestimate them. as for the casualties, a lot happened "off camera" that we are not told about, with only the key points described, the end of the battle had the Tau casualties at significant and the marines having to escape or be destroyed, now to you or I that means that the Marines put up a damn good fight, used the terrain to their advantage and still lost, to Peregrine that means that marines are useless and lost, no nuance, just black or white.

Marines are not perfect, that would be boring, this battle is one of the more realistic battles involving marines because they adapted to a very bad situation that would have seen any other force destroyed and any of them surviving is a testament to the true power of space marines.

How is it hard? IG have it. Admech have it.

BrianDavion wrote:
personally this is why guard getting a chapter tactics AND orders annoys me, I'm of the opinion every faction should get "eaither or" a chapter tactic to reflect a broad tactical skill set or orders to reflect a basic set of skills dependant on a strong command structure that is strong yes but also vunerable to disruption.

I know this is purely rule, but my beef with Guard Orders is that there is no disadvantage for the Guard to lose their officers beside losing orders. There are no extra layer of bad. Tyranid get Instinctive Behavior that screws with them and Tau Ethereal cause moral loses, but Guards, which should be highly dependant on its officers, don't suffer any form of lost moral or efficiency. It's not even that hard to make. When I did one of my fandex, one of the xeno races I created had an order-like system with a variety of debuff built-in should they be killed. Then again, GW sometime struggles with its rules at about the same rate it struggles to make proper worldbuilding.

Well, we've certainly passed the point of absurdity here. Crisis suits are "rare" despite the standard Tau formation (roughly the size of a 2000 point game) having multiple squads of them, a battle where space marines explicitly suffer a "costly defeat for the Imperium" and lose 60% of their numbers somehow has anything positive to brag about, and space marines will grasp at any possible argument to avoid admitting that their favorite faction isn't the best. Sorry, but the simple fact here is that the space marines went up against a comparably-sized force of standard, common Tau units and lost. The Tau are explicitly shown fighting at parity or better with the space marines, and in the 40k universe there are a lot more Tau cadres than space marine companies. Like it or not, space marines are a weak and irrelevant faction that needs help to deal with even the setting's smallest empires.

 Peregrine wrote:
Well, we've certainly passed the point of absurdity here. Crisis suits are "rare" despite the standard Tau formation (roughly the size of a 2000 point game) having multiple squads of them, a battle where space marines explicitly suffer a "costly defeat for the Imperium" and lose 60% of their numbers somehow has anything positive to brag about, and space marines will grasp at any possible argument to avoid admitting that their favorite faction isn't the best. Sorry, but the simple fact here is that the space marines went up against a comparably-sized force of standard, common Tau units and lost. The Tau are explicitly shown fighting at parity or better with the space marines, and in the 40k universe there are a lot more Tau cadres than space marine companies. Like it or not, space marines are a weak and irrelevant faction that needs help to deal with even the setting's smallest empires.

Someones salty they got called out for not paying attention to what was written

 Formosa wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Well, we've certainly passed the point of absurdity here. Crisis suits are "rare" despite the standard Tau formation (roughly the size of a 2000 point game) having multiple squads of them, a battle where space marines explicitly suffer a "costly defeat for the Imperium" and lose 60% of their numbers somehow has anything positive to brag about, and space marines will grasp at any possible argument to avoid admitting that their favorite faction isn't the best. Sorry, but the simple fact here is that the space marines went up against a comparably-sized force of standard, common Tau units and lost. The Tau are explicitly shown fighting at parity or better with the space marines, and in the 40k universe there are a lot more Tau cadres than space marine companies. Like it or not, space marines are a weak and irrelevant faction that needs help to deal with even the setting's smallest empires.

Someones salty they got called out for not paying attention to what was written

Don't worry, I paid plenty of attention to your ridiculous spin attempts.

 Peregrine wrote:
Like it or not, space marines are a weak and irrelevant faction that needs help to deal with even the setting's smallest empires.

Like it or not, that's not the lore.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Like it or not, space marines are a weak and irrelevant faction that needs help to deal with even the setting's smallest empires.

Like it or not, that's not the lore.

yup.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Like it or not, space marines are a weak and irrelevant faction that needs help to deal with even the setting's smallest empires.

Like it or not, that's not the lore.

The lore is that many people in the Imperium believe that space marines are gods of war and can conquer planets with a single squad. The most reasonable explanation is that it should be considered like the Catholic priests that are trained to do exorcisms. Yes, someone devoutly believes that it works that way, but from an outside point of view we know that it's utter nonsense. So we should view most accounts of space marine exploits with a lot of skepticism and understand that many of them are cases of the non-marine forces being minimized in the story so that the cult of space Jesus can get more glory or even outright lies being told because the priest needs a sermon and it's not like the ignorant masses in a hive city are ever going to be able to question the story. The most reasonable interpretation of the reality of space marines is that they're somewhere fairly close to their tabletop rules in strength: better than most troops individually, but not by huge margins. That would be fine if GW didn't suck at scale and had there be orders of magnitude more space marines in the Imperium, but as it is we're forced to conclude that they are elite troops that are far too few in number to ever be relevant.

"Your head-canon sucks. Heres mine, based in my own logical conclusions and interpretations, and as it is mine, is not head-canon but the actual lore of the setting"
-Peregrine, 2019

 Peregrine wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Like it or not, space marines are a weak and irrelevant faction that needs help to deal with even the setting's smallest empires.

Like it or not, that's not the lore.

The lore is that many people in the Imperium believe that space marines are gods of war and can conquer planets with a single squad. The most reasonable explanation is that it should be considered like the Catholic priests that are trained to do exorcisms. Yes, someone devoutly believes that it works that way, but from an outside point of view we know that it's utter nonsense. So we should view most accounts of space marine exploits with a lot of skepticism and understand that many of them are cases of the non-marine forces being minimized in the story so that the cult of space Jesus can get more glory or even outright lies being told because the priest needs a sermon and it's not like the ignorant masses in a hive city are ever going to be able to question the story. The most reasonable interpretation of the reality of space marines is that they're somewhere fairly close to their tabletop rules in strength: better than most troops individually, but not by huge margins. That would be fine if GW didn't suck at scale and had there be orders of magnitude more space marines in the Imperium, but as it is we're forced to conclude that they are elite troops that are far too few in number to ever be relevant.

So if we ignore the lore then you are right.

But if we don't ignore the lore, because the lore is the lore and you're just some anonymous schmoe on the internet, then you're wrong.

Ergo, Space Marines are viable and effective in the 40k universe.

 Insectum7 wrote:
So if we ignore the lore then you are right.

No, if we interpret the lore and attempt to resolve its contradictions in the only reasonable way. The lore says both that space marines are effective and that space marines are too few in number to be relevant when their level of effectiveness is on par with the forces of other factions (as is demonstrated to be the case). So you have three options:

1) Throw out all concept of scale and just mindlessly repeat that space marines are awesome, because who cares about pesky details like an entire space marine chapter being unable to carry enough ammunition to kill a meaningful number of enemies in a planetary-scale conflict even if they get an instantly fatal headshot every time they pull the trigger.

2) Ignore all of the fluff where space marines are roughly as capable as the far more numerous elites of other factions. For example, the Taros example where a space marine force fought a standard Tau cadre equipped with nothing but the standard Tau units and suffered 60% losses in a "costly defeat for the Imperium". Even the elites of other factions can be no better than cultists armed with pointy sticks, no matter how much fluff says otherwise.

3) Acknowledge that the Imperium is a totalitarian theocracy full of lies and myths and interpret the implausible stories of space marine feats as religious doctrine much like the myths of real-world religions. When a real-world myth says that Jesus walked on water we don't ignore how water works because every piece of fluff must be true, we acknowledge that some people believe it happened but it's clearly just a work of fiction.

One of these maintains as much of the fluff as possible, the other two involve throwing out any inconvenient piece of fluff.