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Transhumance dread is overhyped IMO. Cadians fight chaos marines on the regular, seeing as they used to guard the freaking Eye of Terror. Catachans fight catachan devils while growing up, as well as other hostile wildlife. Steel legionnaires have been fighting orks for decades. Tallarn held off the Iron Warriors so well they had to get virus bombed and even that didn’t stop them etc…

You have to consider that compared to many xenos and chaos threats, marines are not actually all that special. If guardsmen were incapable of handling even just one marine, then the imperium would have collapsed long ago. Tyranids have plenty of monsters scarier than marines. Aspect warriors are generally equivalent to marines. Orks are orks. Even the tau have some nasty suits at their disposal (could a crisis suit take on 10,000 guardsmen?) And then of course, you have things like the death guard just out there, which presumably is still legion strength.

After it’s clear that the marine is out to kill all of them, any adversion to shooting back is going to go away.

Marine is going to be doing hit and runs. Swoop in, butcher a bunch of guard, and fade before they get over the shock and organize return fire. He’s probably going to take a few chance hits from time to time before breaking contact. How lucky those are will depend if he can burn through all the guard. Eventually the death of a thousand cuts will start degrading his performace. Marines can take a LOT of punishment, and their gear is top notch. But lasguns are not nothing, and get enough hits it something is going to give.

Dandelion wrote:
Transhumance dread is overhyped IMO. Cadians fight chaos marines on the regular, seeing as they used to guard the freaking Eye of Terror. Catachans fight catachan devils while growing up, as well as other hostile wildlife. Steel legionnaires have been fighting orks for decades. Tallarn held off the Iron Warriors so well they had to get virus bombed and even that didn’t stop them etc…

You have to consider that compared to many xenos and chaos threats, marines are not actually all that special. If guardsmen were incapable of handling even just one marine, then the imperium would have collapsed long ago. Tyranids have plenty of monsters scarier than marines. Aspect warriors are generally equivalent to marines. Orks are orks. Even the tau have some nasty suits at their disposal (could a crisis suit take on 10,000 guardsmen?) And then of course, you have things like the death guard just out there, which presumably is still legion strength.

Already covered by The Regiment In Question Matters.

Cadia is of course just one planet among millions. Yes, a Cadian either gets over THD quickly, or ends up dead. But that doesn’t change the overall fact of THD - or that the overwhelming majority of Guardsmen will never see an actual Space Marine, let alone have to fight one.

There’s another thing which has popped into my head, and it’s speculation based on known things.

First, Power Armour must have external mics, so when suited and booted the Astartes can hear what non-power armoured allies are saying, and indeed just the general environment.

Second, we know power armour can record combat, for later playback. This would of course be audio visual

Third we know the vox grill can amplify to deafening volume.

Now what i can’t prove or reasonably demonstrate is whether a Marine’s helm has it’s own power source - even if just a battery.

If that last bit is given? There’s the potential for the Marine to commit one big old massacre, recording the whole thing. Set his helm to playback, and bung it somewhere to draw attention, allowing him to ambush.

Even if that last bit isn’t possible (as I said it requires the helm to have some kind of separate batter or capacitator), when fighting the Marine could absolutely blare out the sounds of his last massacre as he tears through your infantry, adding another interesting psychological aspect.

Oh, lovely. Now your hypothetical Loyalist Scum from thinblooded founding #438261 is playing Night Lords.

Don’t blame me for having a good mind for fighting dirty

Hell, if the Astartes really wanted to play mind games? Given the Guard would be using Imperial Frequencies? Broadcast it. Broadcast the shrieks of the dying. Do it all day. Every day.

Sure the Guard can shut off their comm units and that. But…there goes their capacity to issue and receive orders.

Imagine, every time you go to pick up your phone, all you get are the death shrieks of comrades and the sound of hideously violent death.

As for changing frequencies? Only need to take out the one squad or platoon to find out what bandwidths they can receive - and therefore what bandwidths they can and can’t transmit on.

That's making a lot of assumptions about gear and frequencies to begin with. With how much separations between the Guard and the Marines, they likely have different frequencies to begin with, and different gear that does not work the same way from one or the other.

I think it's clear here that 1 Space Marine would not be capable of defeating them in a ranged fire fight, just be dint of ammo supply. That being said, there is quite a lot of underestimating of what a Space Marine is capable of.

Transhuman dread is literally a thing. A Pantsshittingly terrifying thing that the overwhelming majority of guard experience the first time they actually meet an angel, let alone one that has chosen to kill them. There is a very good reason that with a few "extreme" situations, Gaunt's mob never actually face off against a space Marine, at least a real one. There is a heavily damaged one they snipe or Bragg takes out with an AC, but other than that, a real standup fight, even with stealth experts like the Ghosts, would go VERY badly for anyone not wearing power armor.

Cain's remarkable feat of actually defeating one in melee combat was just pure propaganda for the news, and it had more to do with a Melta to the face, than his ability with a chain sword.

Can a marine kill 10k guard troops by himself?

Yes.

Would he be able to survive if they all decided to fight back? No.

Well, we know canonically Imperial forces can unify their communications net. Which strongly suggests a shared set of frequencies.

And again, given specific combat roles, it seems more likely the Guard would have restricted access to certain bands, where it’s very much in the ethos and benefit of Marines to have as wide range access to frequencies as possible.

 Bobthehero wrote:
That's making a lot of assumptions about gear and frequencies to begin with. With how much separations between the Guard and the Marines, they likely have different frequencies to begin with, and different gear that does not work the same way from one or the other.

Also might be too much tech-savy work for your average battle brother. I think a techmarine or some equivalent specialist might be able to pull off some e-warfare stuff, but the gear/smarts is probably not baked into every marine and suit of power armor.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
. There is a heavily damaged one they snipe or Bragg takes out with an AC, but other than that, a real standup fight, even with stealth experts like the Ghosts, would go VERY badly for anyone not wearing power armor.

Wrong, a team of 12 Ghosts ambush 5 CSMs in swamps with the help of locals. The Ghosts survive, the Marines do not (and neither do most other locals). Transhuman dread seems to be mostly in Marine books, as almost any books I've read from the IG point of view mentions nothing of the sort. There's deference and respect, but that's about it.

Well, a Marine must presumably know how to use his own armour. And we know they have some knowledge of maintenance (at least repairs).

Knowing how to switch and scan radio frequencies? Not exactly a deeper mystery of the Omnissiah. Nor does the Marine need to know how works, just that the option is there and how to do it.

The Power Armour itself may well have suitable programming for scanning and tuning in.

Now, if comms are encrypted? Yes I accept that’s gonna need specialist knowledge beyond the 40K equivalent of twiddling knob thing until speaky box make voice.

But the 40K equivalent of twiddling knob tning until speaky box make voice? Definitely within the skill set of a Marine, because they have constant access to their own varied comms channels (squad, company, higher up). Hell I even think there are examples of individual Marines sharing a channel for private conversations.

Are you having a laugh? The Gaunt books are rife with men losing control of their bowls when CSM show up.

And ALL the Ghosts are seasoned Vets. There are no rookie ghosts.

 Bobthehero wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
. There is a heavily damaged one they snipe or Bragg takes out with an AC, but other than that, a real standup fight, even with stealth experts like the Ghosts, would go VERY badly for anyone not wearing power armor.

Wrong, a team of 12 Ghosts ambush 5 CSMs in swamps with the help of locals. The Ghosts survive, the Marines do not (and neither do most other locals). Transhuman dread seems to be mostly in Marine books, as almost any books I've read from the IG point of view mentions nothing of the sort. There's deference and respect, but that's about it.

It’d be a very short book about Guard if it reflected.

We came, we saw, we froze up, Dave besmirched his uniform, then we all got violently killed by the 8’ armoured psychopath.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Don’t blame me for having a good mind for fighting dirty

Hell, if the Astartes really wanted to play mind games? Given the Guard would be using Imperial Frequencies? Broadcast it. Broadcast the shrieks of the dying. Do it all day. Every day.

Sure the Guard can shut off their comm units and that. But…there goes their capacity to issue and receive orders.

Imagine, every time you go to pick up your phone, all you get are the death shrieks of comrades and the sound of hideously violent death.

As for changing frequencies? Only need to take out the one squad or platoon to find out what bandwidths they can receive - and therefore what bandwidths they can and can’t transmit on.

You been reading the Grimoire Nostromo Doc? Careful. You know what the Nostroman punishment for copyright infringement is.

From which books? I can think of two times where they encounters them, and don't recall specific panic. Besides, I am not saying people wouldn't be scared, but the sort of brain-shutting-down panic that is described doesn't happen.

Also that is widely regarded as one of the worst moments in the entire series. People regularly bring it up when they want to point out how rubbish Space Marines are despite it being a stand out of weirdness.
As well as that, in the first Ghost's book there is a clear moment of THD when a grand total of 3 Iron Warriors tear through a combined infiltration unit made up of Ghosts and Vitrians.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Don’t blame me for having a good mind for fighting dirty

Hell, if the Astartes really wanted to play mind games? Given the Guard would be using Imperial Frequencies? Broadcast it. Broadcast the shrieks of the dying. Do it all day. Every day.

Sure the Guard can shut off their comm units and that. But…there goes their capacity to issue and receive orders.

Imagine, every time you go to pick up your phone, all you get are the death shrieks of comrades and the sound of hideously violent death.

As for changing frequencies? Only need to take out the one squad or platoon to find out what bandwidths they can receive - and therefore what bandwidths they can and can’t transmit on.

You been reading the Grimoire Nostromo Doc? Careful. You know what the Nostroman punishment for copyright infringement is.

Like certain Ad Mech and Mechanicum stuff? When you understand the goodies think nothing of horrific behaviour, it makes the baddies doing stuff the goodies draw a line at far more terrifying!

Example of “fine, just fine” pre-Heresy Mechanicum horror? These bucket heads.



Gather up some works, strap the lid on, bingo instant combat infantry. Oh. And the person inside remains conscious, just….can’t control their own body. Completely sanctioned. And they could churn them out in the millions if needs be.

Yeah, 30k Mechanicum are way cooler than 40k Mechanicus. But your little loyalists is still using 100% 8th Legion tactics. What you're describing is exactly what Night_Lords_do.

Well it’s not the 31st Millenium yet so clearly in the dim and distant future Dakka somehow survives and the excesses of that Legion are all my fault

Maybe you picked the wrong team? Do you enjoy painting lightning bolts? This is totally not a recruitment attempt.

I’ll stick with my Heresy Era Dark Angels.

Translation. I’m a lazy painter. Sod lightning bolts. Black is easy to paint!

Too much headcanon fiddling and selective single source dependence on the last two pages.

Like, there may be a lonely, forgotten paragraph in one novel describing "transhuman dread" but then there are 68 others where battles between humans and astartes resolve with no trace of that phenomenon. Your four paragraphs of teenage fanfic rumination are smoothly superseded by a single contradictory scene from the worst BL book, unfortunately.

I've only read >20 WH40K novels, nearly all from the HH series, and even in that small repository I can recall the blow-by-blow combat regularly contradicting things mentioned here. Just in the single most recent one I've read, "Fallen Angels," you can find:

- glancing lasgun shots temporarily scrambling the helmet/armour senses of marines
- human soldiers landing wounding blows on a charging veteran chaplain

Yet in this thread a marine's armour is gonna stay in pristine condition and he's gonna move like Ip Man? Nah. GW has already hired writers to render the codex-level fluff into omniscient depictions of actual events, and your bolter porn mind palace can't overcome that.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
. There is a heavily damaged one they snipe or Bragg takes out with an AC, but other than that, a real standup fight, even with stealth experts like the Ghosts, would go VERY badly for anyone not wearing power armor.

Wrong, a team of 12 Ghosts ambush 5 CSMs in swamps with the help of locals. The Ghosts survive, the Marines do not (and neither do most other locals). Transhuman dread seems to be mostly in Marine books, as almost any books I've read from the IG point of view mentions nothing of the sort. There's deference and respect, but that's about it.

It’d be a very short book about Guard if it reflected.

We came, we saw, we froze up, Dave besmirched his uniform, then we all got violently killed by the 8’ armoured psychopath.

So long as we get a Marine story that goes

I came, I saw, an artillery shell fell on me and now I am in fifteen places at once

 Gert wrote:

As well as that, in the first Ghost's book there is a clear moment of THD when a grand total of 3 Iron Warriors tear through a combined infiltration unit made up of Ghosts and Vitrians.

Well there's your new worst moment of the book series, eh.

Also when it comes to comms, so a Marines kills an isolated squad. Good. Now he's got access to vox-beads that were used by the squad to speak between them, and a vox-caster to speak to the rest of the unit.

What then? How does he listens in on the bead with his helmet in the way. What does he gain from it? The bead was set to the individual squad frequenciy that squad is dead.

Same questions for the Vox caster, really. Can the Marine even pick up on the frequencies used by the Guard? That's likely, but then again, IRL squad comms don't get picked up by platoon/company wide radios, it's not a stretch to think it's the same for Marine/Guard comms, needing Tech-Priests to bridge the gap. If he has the use the Vox caster, how long till the batteries run out? Will the Vox be reliable enough to interfere with the IG comms? How did he get the frequencies, it's not always the guy with the radio that knows them, it might be one of the radio-tech guy back at camp that set the caster up.

So now we are to believe that SM are the same speed as humans, are likely armored in tissue paper, and every single guard soldier is an experience vet of no less than 4 black crusades.

Or we can believe the lore inherent in the setting. SM are mildly terrifying to general humans. They are strong enough to hold and fire tank mounted human weapons. They are faster than the human eye can perceive.

Without retreating to whataboutisms, I would simply ask, which is more likely true; The lore in a codex/BRB, or the lore presented by an author trying to make his personal protagonist/s look cool?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So now we are to believe that SM are the same speed as humans, are likely armored in tissue paper, and every single guard soldier is an experience vet of no less than 4 black crusades.

Or we can believe the lore inherent in the setting. SM are mildly terrifying to general humans. They are strong enough to hold and fire tank mounted human weapons. They are faster than the human eye can perceive.

Without retreating to whataboutisms, I would simply ask, which is more likely true; The lore in a codex/BRB, or the lore presented by an author trying to make his personal protagonist/s look cool?

How about something inbetween, since we have two conflicting sources? You're also assuming the codex isn't incredibly biased to begin with.

What then? How does he listens in on the bead with his helmet in the way. What does he gain from it? The bead was set to the individual squad frequenciy that squad is dead.

Same questions for the Vox caster, really. Can the Marine even pick up on the frequencies used by the Guard? That's likely, but then again, IRL squad comms don't get picked up by platoon/company wide radios, it's not a stretch to think it's the same for Marine/Guard comms, needing Tech-Priests to bridge the gap. If he has the use the Vox caster, how long till the batteries run out? Will the Vox be reliable enough to interfere with the IG comms? How did he get the frequencies, it's not always the guy with the radio that knows them, it might be one of the radio-tech guy back at camp that set the caster up.

Recover a commbead (though not all Regiments issue them), and you know that frequency is in use. Recover a comm unit, and you can ascertain which band range they’re using.

We know Imperial Forces can share their comm frequencies. Not constantly by any measure, but when the need to coordinate exists, they do so.

Therefore, we know the Marine’s Power Armour’s comms stuff absolutely can be tuned to Guard frequencies.

Done and done. The only thing you’d really need specialist training for is tapping into encrypted channels.

Specifically….

Lexicanum, cribbed from published sources wrote: Auto-senses: Contained in the helmet, these systems include thought-activated communication arrays and audio filters, targeting reticules and range finders, tactical displays and auspex-links, and a host of other features.

Thought-activated. He thinks it, it scans the frequencies. Comm beads and Comm Units simply give you a set range to search.

Not all radios display their frequencies when used. So no, it's not a given that picking one up and looking at it will not give you the answer.

Might want to have a look at the models for IG Comms backpacks.

Dials my dude. Dials.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Look. Right here.

Those dials can be for a lot of things. Channels, volume. You can enter a frequency linked to a certain channel on the radio, and the only display you'd have is the channel that this radio uses. No need to display frequencies, the operator himself doesn't even need to know the frequencies, only has to know that channel 1 is direct comms to Company, 2 is backup, 3 is direct comms with another platoon, etc.

If a vox goes missing, the IG can switch their frequencies, it would take some logistic work, but soon the Marine wouldn't be able to tap in the comms.

Like, for the radios we get issued? We have to enter the frequencies manually, link them to a channel with an extra tool that we don't head out on patrol with. The radio doesn't not display the frequency in place, only the channel we use. It's got dials, too.

Now you’re just grasping at straws.

Remember. Tech competence applies to both.

Imperial Guard equipment is, by design? Rugged and simple to use. What it doesn’t need to be is efficient, because they largely rely on overwhelming force via overwhelming numbers.

What the Marine can learn from such a recovered item are the frequencies it can be tuned to. That drastically reduces the channels needing to be scanned - and being thought activated, and not needing to worry about his own incoming comms? Just keep on scanning them.