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.

a_typical_hero wrote:
Not sure if your target audience are people who like to be realistic about their military stuff with covers like these for your starter boxes..

Spoiler:

The combi-bolter is a double flamer with no bolter on the 3rd edition box. Never realized that until now.

It's only true if the configurations you can build with a single kit are so atrocious that they're unplayable... in which case it sounds like the right solution is to address that in the rules, rather than just lock out all other options.

Well, they've had only 9 editions to work out balance between those weapons and so far it is not going well.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Oh yeah man. Totes beginner friendly.

Not a pain in the bum for a new player at all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
It's beneficial to beginners because they'll never get told that their Plague Marine box wasn't good enough, and they now need to buy or convert (presumably after buying bits as well).

Clearly GW thinks that that's a bigger hurdle than slightly convoluted wording. Which I'd tend to agree with, you can just build your models according to the instructions and need'nt bother even attempting to navigate the options because you'll assemble the kit in a legal loadout.

Except I'd say the one box of plague marines still isn't really good enough when for just 3 more marines you can get so much more bang for your buck, forcing the buy of two boxes anyways just to have one full squad and 4 extra dead weight. Way more beginner friendly, thanks GW help me buy 2 troop boxes for one potent squad and some wasted bodies, amazing, wonderful, fantastic and totally pro new player move, power move on their part.

From what I understand new DG players are being told to never buy Plague Marines, just buy the artilery, 3 boxs of termintors and poxwalkers, anda bunch of characters. Actual PM in a DG army are rather rare. Plus the number of errors a new player can do with how the unit is build out of the box, specially the ETB one, makes them not want to deal with the problem at all.

Karol wrote:
From what I understand new DG players are being told to never buy Plague Marines...

"Don't buy the most iconic unit of your faction, artwork of which has likely drawn you to this army in the first place."

Garbage advice from a toxic "community" and best be ignored.

The point is that they want mixed units, then they should make having mixed units desirable in the game rules.

But the weird thing is, with some factions they want mixed units, but with others (Primaris) they've moved from mixed units to mono-weapon units. So it seems like as usual there is no overall design intent behind any of this, just good old fashioned GW unprofessionalism and incompetence.

 Da Boss wrote:
But the weird thing is, with some factions they want mixed units, but with others (Primaris) they've moved from mixed units to mono-weapon units. So it seems like as usual there is no overall design intent behind any of this, just good old fashioned GW unprofessionalism and incompetence.

What if the design intent is for Primaris to have mono weapon squads and for other armies to function differently? Wouldn't that be an overall design intent? I wouldn't throw insults around so freely if all you go by is guesswork.

So one army gets to have units that work well and the others have units that work badly?

Well, I actually think that's even worse, because that's deliberately making some factions worse than others for some reason.

Faction balance is much more nuanced than a reductive "you got mono weapon squads, so you are stronger".
Marines have a lower win rate than Death Guard for example, despite tournament Marines making great use of (more flexible) Firstborn.
And just a quick reminder that Eradicator spam is nowhere to be seen winning anything.

Try again to spin a narrative where you can gak on GW.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Because, as we all know, nothing says "I'm a serious military force!" like an eclectic collection of mismatched weapons that all perform a different mission set mashed together into a single tactical unit!

It's why an American squad is usually a single jeep, one man with a grenade launcher, one man with a flamethrower, one man with two knives, one man with a big flail, one man with a 9mm and a knife, the sergeant who can choose between an ATGM or a single .45, and like 2 people with the standard issue M4. Though one of them has a scope.

Currently with our small specialist armies squads look quite different to the WW2 mass squads. Case in point

WW2 British section (squad was a looser term) - 3 sections per platoon
10 men, but 2 were reserve and 8 patrolled.
Corporal Submachine gun and wire cutters
Lance Corporal Lee-Enfield rifle and sometimes machete
1 Bren light machine gun
Assistant gunner with Lee-Enfield rifle, spare barrel and the bulk of the magazines (everyone else carried 2 for the gun)
4 Lee-Enfield riflemen
PIAT anti-tank weapons were allocated to squads from the company level as required

Modern British section
2 4 man fireteams each carrying
1 × L85A2 rifle
1 × L85A2 with Under-slung Grenade Launcher
1 × Minimi light machine gun
1 × L129A1 DMR (sharpshooter rifle)
1 × 84mm Antitank Weapon
1 × Light Anti Structure Munition
4 × White Phosphorus smoke grenades
8 × high explosive grenades
4 × smoke grenades

If patrolling as a section will sometimes leave the second minimi and sharpshooter rifle behind and take 2 rifles carrying more ammo for the single minimi.

a_typical_hero wrote:

Karol wrote:
From what I understand new DG players are being told to never buy Plague Marines...

"Don't buy the most iconic unit of your faction, artwork of which has likely drawn you to this army in the first place."

Garbage advice from a toxic "community" and best be ignored.

Eh, there were times where this actual was good advice. But today? Plague marines aren't the top competitive choice for troops, but you can totally make them work and even work well outside of hyper-competitive games.
Heck, I even get away with running squads of 7 all the time without a major impact on my army's performance.

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Because, as we all know, nothing says "I'm a serious military force!" like an eclectic collection of mismatched weapons that all perform a different mission set mashed together into a single tactical unit!

It's why an American squad is usually a single jeep, one man with a grenade launcher, one man with a flamethrower, one man with two knives, one man with a big flail, one man with a 9mm and a knife, the sergeant who can choose between an ATGM or a single .45, and like 2 people with the standard issue M4. Though one of them has a scope.

Currently with our small specialist armies squads look quite different to the WW2 mass squads. Case in point

WW2 British section (squad was a looser term) - 3 sections per platoon
10 men, but 2 were reserve and 8 patrolled.
Corporal Submachine gun and wire cutters
Lance Corporal Lee-Enfield rifle and sometimes machete
1 Bren light machine gun
Assistant gunner with Lee-Enfield rifle, spare barrel and the bulk of the magazines (everyone else carried 2 for the gun)
4 Lee-Enfield riflemen
PIAT anti-tank weapons were allocated to squads from the company level as required

Modern British section
2 4 man fireteams each carrying
1 × L85A2 rifle
1 × L85A2 with Under-slung Grenade Launcher
1 × Minimi light machine gun
1 × L129A1 DMR (sharpshooter rifle)
1 × 84mm Antitank Weapon
1 × Light Anti Structure Munition
4 × White Phosphorus smoke grenades
8 × high explosive grenades
4 × smoke grenades

If patrolling as a section will sometimes leave the second minimi and sharpshooter rifle behind and take 2 rifles carrying more ammo for the single minimi.

At the 40k scale, that's
4 men "Combat Squad" (team)
2 bolter (one modeled with scope)
1 combi-weapon (bolter with underslung special thing)
1 special weapon
1 Missile Launcher with frag and krak (probably on one of the bolter guys, not sure who carries this in your example; in 40k it's the 5th man in the tactical squad)
...
so basically a tactical squad, except you give the Missile Launcher to one of the 4 other guys rather than making him a guy by himself. That really isn't all that unreasonable.

Now, if 40k modeled things like different grenade types, or designated marksmen within squads, you'd have a point.

 Da Boss wrote:
The point is that they want mixed units, then they should make having mixed units desirable in the game rules.

But the weird thing is, with some factions they want mixed units, but with others (Primaris) they've moved from mixed units to mono-weapon units. So it seems like as usual there is no overall design intent behind any of this, just good old fashioned GW unprofessionalism and incompetence.

Let me see…

Uniformly armed squads of the newest poster boy of the stagnant and orderly Imperium.

Every man with his own unique weapon options for Chaos.

There can’t possible be any design theory here

IDK, cynical reasons aside, when I first got into the game I was pretty put off by the tendency to need to buy 30 models to make the 5 man squad I wanted, and competitively for my army to require me to take that same 5 man squad as many times as possible. It feels far more doable these days to make a viable army from the kits sold by the company designing them. That seems like an improvement to me.

 alextroy wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
The point is that they want mixed units, then they should make having mixed units desirable in the game rules.

But the weird thing is, with some factions they want mixed units, but with others (Primaris) they've moved from mixed units to mono-weapon units. So it seems like as usual there is no overall design intent behind any of this, just good old fashioned GW unprofessionalism and incompetence.

Let me see…

Uniformly armed squads of the newest poster boy of the stagnant and orderly Imperium.

Every man with his own unique weapon options for Chaos.

There can’t possible be any design theory here

Only disagreement is you put "weapon options" there, instead of just "weapon".

Y'know, because there's no option - it's just either "weapon" or "default weapon"

It strikes me as odd that if you build plague marines out of the DG codex you have different options than if you build them from the CSM codex. I wonder how the game designers are going to reconcile that situation.

Easy. They will port over the weapon options from Codex Death Guard whenever they get around to publishing Codex Chaos Space Marines.

 alextroy wrote:


Uniformly armed squads of the newest poster boy of the stagnant and orderly Imperium.

Every man with his own unique weapon options for Chaos.

There can’t possible be any design theory here

Where do the Skitarii fit into that?

Regarding real world loadouts, each army is going to try to use what they've got the best way they can, and it can vary quite a bit. WWII Americans had extra BAR, Thompson and Bazookas assigned to a company, so theres one instance where the historical GW loadouts would make sense. Private Smith and Private Johnson are given Bazookas as their squad is tasked with destroying the enemy bunker. WWII Soviets fielded entire platoons with SMG instead of a rifle, and different numbers of LMG in both the rifle and SMG squads. In fairness, that seems more of a WWII "lets do this until we can give the whole platoon assault rifles" thing.

More modern US platoons have a "Devastator" squad with 2 MGs and 2 missile launchers. Are they Heavy Support even though they are in an infantry platoon, or Troops?

 alextroy wrote:
Easy. They will port over the weapon options from Codex Death Guard whenever they get around to publishing Codex Chaos Space Marines.

Yeah this. They probably didn't want to errata just the one entry to create an odd situation where plague marines have two wounds, while chosen with the mark of nurgle don't.

Or they just didn't want to errata it.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

At the 40k scale, that's
4 men "Combat Squad" (team)
2 bolter (one modeled with scope)
1 combi-weapon (bolter with underslung special thing)
1 special weapon
1 Missile Launcher with frag and krak (probably on one of the bolter guys, not sure who carries this in your example; in 40k it's the 5th man in the tactical squad)
...
so basically a tactical squad, except you give the Missile Launcher to one of the 4 other guys rather than making him a guy by himself. That really isn't all that unreasonable.

Now, if 40k modeled things like different grenade types, or designated marksmen within squads, you'd have a point.

Not quite - I would say that is an imperial guard (or other squad) of 8 men carrying
2 lasguns and demolition charge
2 Sniper Rifles
2 Heavy stubbers
2 grenade launchers/combi weapons and one shot rocket launcher
Everyone has frag and smoke grenades.
4 different load outs, 2 of each. If you wanted to take it to 10 men maybe include a two man GPMG, essentially a heavier stubber but here we can call it a heavy bolter.

Compare to 40k, pistol/rifle, 8 lasguns, 1 special weapon and 1 heavy weapon.
Say
1x Bolter/pistol (and most players want him to have a lasgun)
8 x Lasgun
1 x Sniper Rilfe
1 x Heavy Bolter

I think real life still has more variety than most of 40Ks troop choices currently.

Why are you comparing modern military squad weapon distribution to an universe that isn't based in that?

You can look at Infinity if you want something similar to those weapon options in your dudes.

40K has no semblance to contemporary military tactics in any of their factions, not even the more professional ones like tau or stormtroopers.

And to add to that thought. I doubt any of the GW designers have any real military experience. I can't say that none of them do but I'd be surprised if one did.

 Galas wrote:
Why are you comparing modern military squad weapon distribution to an universe that isn't based in that?

You can look at Infinity if you want something similar to those weapon options in your dudes.

40K has no semblance to contemporary military tactics in any of their factions, not even the more professional ones like tau or stormtroopers.

Gates of Antares is probably a better option for putting a bit more realism in your sci-fi, given that it's in the same scale as 40k and built by ex-40k designers. If you go into Infinity expecting something resembling contemporary military tactics the ninjas with vampiric health regen that hack your IFF so you can't shoot them wandering into your lines and eating everyone are going to come as a bit of a shock.

The_Real_Chris wrote:

Spoiler:

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Because, as we all know, nothing says "I'm a serious military force!" like an eclectic collection of mismatched weapons that all perform a different mission set mashed together into a single tactical unit!

It's why an American squad is usually a single jeep, one man with a grenade launcher, one man with a flamethrower, one man with two knives, one man with a big flail, one man with a 9mm and a knife, the sergeant who can choose between an ATGM or a single .45, and like 2 people with the standard issue M4. Though one of them has a scope.

Currently with our small specialist armies squads look quite different to the WW2 mass squads. Case in point

WW2 British section (squad was a looser term) - 3 sections per platoon
10 men, but 2 were reserve and 8 patrolled.
Corporal Submachine gun and wire cutters
Lance Corporal Lee-Enfield rifle and sometimes machete
1 Bren light machine gun
Assistant gunner with Lee-Enfield rifle, spare barrel and the bulk of the magazines (everyone else carried 2 for the gun)
4 Lee-Enfield riflemen
PIAT anti-tank weapons were allocated to squads from the company level as required

Modern British section
2 4 man fireteams each carrying
1 × L85A2 rifle
1 × L85A2 with Under-slung Grenade Launcher
1 × Minimi light machine gun
1 × L129A1 DMR (sharpshooter rifle)
1 × 84mm Antitank Weapon
1 × Light Anti Structure Munition
4 × White Phosphorus smoke grenades
8 × high explosive grenades
4 × smoke grenades

If patrolling as a section will sometimes leave the second minimi and sharpshooter rifle behind and take 2 rifles carrying more ammo for the single minimi.

Spoiler:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

At the 40k scale, that's
4 men "Combat Squad" (team)
2 bolter (one modeled with scope)
1 combi-weapon (bolter with underslung special thing)
1 special weapon
1 Missile Launcher with frag and krak (probably on one of the bolter guys, not sure who carries this in your example; in 40k it's the 5th man in the tactical squad)
...
so basically a tactical squad, except you give the Missile Launcher to one of the 4 other guys rather than making him a guy by himself. That really isn't all that unreasonable.

Now, if 40k modeled things like different grenade types, or designated marksmen within squads, you'd have a point.

Not quite - I would say that is an imperial guard (or other squad) of 8 men carrying
2 lasguns and demolition charge
2 Sniper Rifles
2 Heavy stubbers
2 grenade launchers/combi weapons and one shot rocket launcher
Everyone has frag and smoke grenades.
4 different load outs, 2 of each. If you wanted to take it to 10 men maybe include a two man GPMG, essentially a heavier stubber but here we can call it a heavy bolter.

Compare to 40k, pistol/rifle, 8 lasguns, 1 special weapon and 1 heavy weapon.
Say
1x Bolter/pistol (and most players want him to have a lasgun)
8 x Lasgun
1 x Sniper Rilfe
1 x Heavy Bolter

I think real life still has more variety than most of 40Ks troop choices currently.

The Imperial Guard has long had more in common with WWI than modern military combat. That's why everyone has the same gun, they stick in big groups, and are ready for the First Rank Fire, Second Rank Fire order

Imperial Guard are more an amalgamation of 19th and 20th century militaries than any one specific war, depending on regiment.

I'd say the Cadians are definitely more WW2 though.

Also depends on the author or story. Some like to go all in on the Zapp Brannigan 'clog their guns with our corpses' take, others play it a lot more smart/tactical.

In the Lore the Guard take calls from all walks of life because they come from millions of worlds over the whole Imperium.

Some are dumb as ditchwater and little more than cannon fodder; some use archaic tactics and armours; some use cutting edge materials with outdated tactics. Some use cutting edge tactics coupled with poor equipment. Some get it all. Some are clones, some are almost like nobility and some as rough as sandpaper


They vary a lot and whilst there are common themes, there's a huge scope for authors to make their Guard their own in their story, even if they are from an already established world with some set styles of attitude and equipment.



Cadians I would say are very WW1-2 which is the backbone of the visuals we get from the Guard.

Catachan are your Vietnam Rambos

Krieg are you WW1 trench troops

I'd argue that things like vostoyans, the visuals of ratlings and first rank, second rank are even dating to wars before WW1.

Anachronism is kinda GW's design ethos.

Haven't seen anybody post it yet but the real reason is to fight 3d printing.

No need to print out plasma rifles when you can only take the one that came in the box to begin with.

 Aijec wrote:
Haven't seen anybody post it yet but the real reason is to fight 3d printing.

How could you possibly not have seen anybody post it?