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 year during which he must NEVER be stumbled upon or run into a trap etc. With no misshaps or accidents, no Krak Grenade hidden somewhere etc. My main concern would be something like that scene from Sodaz Death Korps vid (5:10 to 5:23)

and I fully believe that is how it would end for the SM 99% of the times he tries to solo 10.000 men, however small he chooses his battles.




And with jamming frequencies/broadcasting slaughter: to jam frequencies you must transmit something. If you transmit something you can be located via triangulation
Regarding "listening in": you can listen in to one frequency. Lets give the Marine the ability to listen into 10 frequencies at once. What about the other 20,30,100?
Regarding "stealing sleep" by broadcasting something: one can switch off Voxcasters...

But I'm under the strong impression non of us two (meaning MDG and myself) are likely to be convinced by the others arguments at this point. Fair enough, that happens during discussions.

This is the funniest thread I have seen in ages. You got to wonder if the pro space marine camp even know what it is to be human? "just kill some and the rest will run!" "just take a year to kill them and they'll lose" etc etc etc ad nauseum.

When in a personal emergency in your life have you ever just accepted your fate? Im going to assume never. When have you witnessed a civil emergency and seen people just do nothing? Never. People dont just sit about.

The other thing is, in a group of 10,000 people, you likely have the skill set of a huge town at your disposal, more technically as its essentially the productive adult population inflated to a town. Thats an insane amount of knowledge and capability in many topics and interests represented. They as a group will notice patterns, will do things by trial and error, will learn and will keep trying to overcome.

Another factor is the longer it takes, the worse for the marine it is. The Guardsmen is equipped for long term warfare, that Marine has a few minutes of intense shooting out of its gun before its a glorified bigfoot in the forest. Failing this somehow, depending on the regiment, the humans could breed prolonging this ridiculous engagement more so.

Whenever you think of an amazing space marine plan, think about what you would do to stop it. It's that simple. Then imagine 10,000 brains doing that task and realize that 1 being, especially a giant colourful meatlord, just isn't going to do it.

Even thinking of the physics of it all, one guy having to kill all day, every day, with no mistakes, no accidents and no changes in enemy behaviour, is just delusional.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Not 10,000 at once. Some Regiments have Vox beads per trooper, others have one Vox Unit for a squad or even Platoon. The latter two drastically reduce the number of people able to access the Vox Network.

Once the Marine knows which frequencies are in use? He can transmit on them as well. Just noise and what have you to erode the Guard’s ability to rest properly. Power Armour is also able to jam frequencies. Now the potential range of that is unknown. But likely enough for the Marine to jam whilst attacking.

Sorry, come again, what exactly are your sources for all the faffing over power armour communication electronics? Would I be mistaken if I guessed: 1 or 2 no context lines of text excerpted from codexes (drenched under a ganache of your lunchbreak headcanon)?

I get that you have no interest in reading anything besides codexes but that doesn't mean a combination of narrow sources + simpleton musings suddenly becomes hypervalid. Do you have an example of a Marine jamming communications from their armour alone? I'm no BL aficionado, but throughout the modest ~15 novels I've read I've never observed a Marine doing that (novels that include many situations where it would be a useful trick). If such an ability exists at all it must have extremely limited use cases.

 Altruizine wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Not 10,000 at once. Some Regiments have Vox beads per trooper, others have one Vox Unit for a squad or even Platoon. The latter two drastically reduce the number of people able to access the Vox Network.

Once the Marine knows which frequencies are in use? He can transmit on them as well. Just noise and what have you to erode the Guard’s ability to rest properly. Power Armour is also able to jam frequencies. Now the potential range of that is unknown. But likely enough for the Marine to jam whilst attacking.

Sorry, come again, what exactly are your sources for all the faffing over power armour communication electronics? Would I be mistaken if I guessed: 1 or 2 no context lines of text excerpted from codexes (drenched under a ganache of your lunchbreak headcanon)?

I get that you have no interest in reading anything besides codexes but that doesn't mean a combination of narrow sources + simpleton musings suddenly becomes hypervalid. Do you have an example of a Marine jamming communications from their armour alone? I'm no BL aficionado, but throughout the modest ~15 novels I've read I've never observed a Marine doing that (novels that include many situations where it would be a useful trick). If such an ability exists at all it must have extremely limited use cases.

Not sure why you think I’m sticking solely to Codex sources. Indeed, I’ve mentioned the Cain series multiple times.

Infiltrators Aside from their weaponry, the most important tool at the Infiltrators' disposal is the Omni-Scrambler. This portable, back-mounted device intercepts wave signals across a broad spectrum, scrambling frequencies and diverting holo-broadcasts to ensure that enemy communiques never reach their intended recipients.

How’s about that then, guys and gals?

Would the specialised paice of equipment for messing with comms not imply that it *isn't* possible to do that from a standard power armour?

It also simply doesn't work unless the signal being intercepted is sent via a focused, coherent beam, a laser, which can be blocked completely and replaced by the scrambled signal.

Typical lack of understanding of how information warfare works from GW writers. Intercepting radio transmission isn't like intercepting a ball in football, or even a letter in physical mail. The message still reaches the recipient because when an electromagnetic wave passes an antenna, the wave keeps going afterwards, as does all of the information it is carrying. And no, you can't alter it as it passes by because it is travelling at the speed of light. By the time your equipment has registered the signal from the antenna, the wavefront you picked up is thousands and thousands of metres past you. Every radio message to german u-boats the allies intercepted in ww2 still reached the u-boat in question.

What the space marines could do is just fill the area with garbage signals, but the guard could use the strength of those garbage signals to triangulate the source of interference and just drop a load of mortar or artillery fire on it.

Also, even if that backpack did work as described, it has a limited range and that allows the Guard to establish the location of the marine. Then it is just overlay a grid onto that area and pulverise them one by one with artillery or mortar fire. End result is a dead marine either way.

Swastakowey wrote:
This is the funniest thread I have seen in ages. You got to wonder if the pro space marine camp even know what it is to be human? "just kill some and the rest will run!" "just take a year to kill them and they'll lose" etc etc etc ad nauseum.

When in a personal emergency in your life have you ever just accepted your fate? Im going to assume never. When have you witnessed a civil emergency and seen people just do nothing? Never. People dont just sit about.

The other thing is, in a group of 10,000 people, you likely have the skill set of a huge town at your disposal, more technically as its essentially the productive adult population inflated to a town. Thats an insane amount of knowledge and capability in many topics and interests represented. They as a group will notice patterns, will do things by trial and error, will learn and will keep trying to overcome.

Another factor is the longer it takes, the worse for the marine it is. The Guardsmen is equipped for long term warfare, that Marine has a few minutes of intense shooting out of its gun before its a glorified bigfoot in the forest. Failing this somehow, depending on the regiment, the humans could breed prolonging this ridiculous engagement more so.

Whenever you think of an amazing space marine plan, think about what you would do to stop it. It's that simple. Then imagine 10,000 brains doing that task and realize that 1 being, especially a giant colourful meatlord, just isn't going to do it.

Even thinking of the physics of it all, one guy having to kill all day, every day, with no mistakes, no accidents and no changes in enemy behaviour, is just delusional.

Thank you. This sums up my thoughts as well. I get that Space Marines are badass, but many of you just don't give normal humans enough credit, despite (presumably) being humans yourselves. Humans are nothing if not adaptable, and they won't just throw themselves at the lone Marine in endless waves like the NPCs of a Goldeneye-era video game, unless they're led by a moron like Kubrick Chenkov. They'll look for the most efficient way to get the job done with minimal losses.

Remember the film Aliens (extended edition). The xenomorphs run into a sentry gun and get mowed down in large numbers. But the gun is fast running out of ammunition. Thankfully, just before it clicks empty, the xenomorphs appear to cease their assault, and some of the Colonial Marines begin to breathe in relief... until they realize the xenomorphs have changed tactics and are now coming through the ceiling. And xenomorphs aren't even that smart or ingenious! They just have animal cunning and the ability to learn and adapt. Humans will be 10x smarter... and some of them will have plasma guns and melta guns on top of that.

.

So now we are comparing Xenomorphs to Space Marines? Can we compare the Average Guardsman to Leonidas from the 300 film by Zack Snyder next? That's more fun.

But honestly, I think smudge said it best. 10k all standing around a single marine, yeah, marine loses.

10k a full km away, with room for the Astartes to break off and try tactics, he'd still likely lose in the end. But there are still two very glaring flaws.

1. Not all Space Marines are Chapter masters, and thus able to live 1k+ years and go dormant for years at a time.

2. Not all Guardsmen are hyper elite baddasses. They are more like Hudson than Hicks. And Hicks was an idiot as well.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So now we are comparing Xenomorphs to Space Marines?

No. I'm saying that if even xenomorphs are smart enough to try new tactics when a frontal assault is getting nowhere, so are guardsmen.

Also, the Marine, just like the sentry gun, will run out of ammo.

.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So now we are comparing Xenomorphs to Space Marines? Can we compare the Average Guardsman to Leonidas from the 300 film by Zack Snyder next? That's more fun.

But honestly, I think smudge said it best. 10k all standing around a single marine, yeah, marine loses.

10k a full km away, with room for the Astartes to break off and try tactics, he'd still likely lose in the end. But there are still two very glaring flaws.

1. Not all Space Marines are Chapter masters, and thus able to live 1k+ years and go dormant for years at a time.

2. Not all Guardsmen are hyper elite baddasses. They are more like Hudson than Hicks. And Hicks was an idiot as well.

I dont think you understood anything that was said. Nothing in what we said is what a bad ass human does. It's what normal humans do. How do you think your cities and nations dont collapse? Not because of "badasses" but because normal people putting their brains together. World war 2 wasn't hordes of "badasses" going at it, but hordes of normal people, most of whom didn't even choose to be there. Many pilots had minimal training for example. Also 1km is nothing, I can walk that in less than 10 minutes briskly.

Just as a question of interest, can you in detail explain how the space marine will kill 10,000 men? I want numbers per day, how does the marine do this when after a few days he has no ammunition? When this inevitably goes on for months or years at what point does the marine need to maintain his kit? Does his grotesque fingers have the dexterity to modify lasguns to work in his mutant hands? Try to piece it together with numbers and you'll realize how low IQ the premise is.

-Guardsman- wrote:

Thank you. This sums up my thoughts as well. I get that Space Marines are badass, but many of you just don't give normal humans enough credit, despite (presumably) being humans yourselves. Humans are nothing if not adaptable, and they won't just throw themselves at the lone Marine in endless waves like the NPCs of a Goldeneye-era video game

Yeah I agree. It surprises me a little bit to see what some people claim humans might behave like in this scenario.

Hecaton wrote:
Which is not the same as saying that the Astartes has total access to and control of the IG comms network.

I highly doubt this.

1. The guard would likely have their own signal intelligence officers.
2. They could operate via regularly swapping frequencies frequently.
3. They could be encrypted, which the marine would need to find the right decryption to gain access.
4. They could also be encrypted messages, which would require the right decipher to understand.
5. Alternatively to the above, the Guard might just choose soldiers with forms of low gothic the marine simply can't understand.

So now the 10k guard includes Siggo Intel Weenies, strategic level comms, and encryption specialists. We keep jumping the shark here.

Just admit that Guard are weaker and of overall lesser quality life forms than our great angels, and we'll stop arguing.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So now the 10k guard includes Siggo Intel Weenies, strategic level comms, and encryption specialists. We keep jumping the shark here.

Just admit that Guard are weaker and of overall lesser quality life forms than our great angels, and we'll stop arguing.

Encryption would be in the kit, you wouldn’t need specialists, it’s just how comms kit works.
This comes back to the issue that 10,000 guard can mean a lot of different things.

But that’s by the by.

No one disagrees that guardsmen are weaker and generally less skilled, less experienced and worse equipped than Astartes.

It’s just that a lot of people disagree that they’re ’a single Space Marine has good odds at killing a force of 10,000 of them’ weaker. Particularly if it’s an actual 10,000 strong force of Guardsmen as opposed to 10,000 random grunts.

-Guardsman- wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So now we are comparing Xenomorphs to Space Marines?

No. I'm saying that if even xenomorphs are smart enough to try new tactics when a frontal assault is getting nowhere, so are guardsmen.

Also, the Marine, just like the sentry gun, will run out of ammo.

.

Personally, I have been giving the marine the benefit of an ammo cache just to make it even worth considering. If he's stuck with only the ammo he's carrying, he's screwed. Even 10 marines would be screwed in that case. Many pages ago, it was established that a marine doesn't carry all that much ammo on them considering how fast a bolter can presumably fire

Imagine the ammo depot gets set up for the marine and just by happenstance the humans set up camp 6 weeks away from the depot or more. Cracks me up. But a depot isn't full proof, plus it can be eliminated.

Swastakowey wrote:
Imagine the ammo depot gets set up for the marine and just by happenstance the humans set up camp 6 weeks away from the depot or more. Cracks me up. But a depot isn't full proof, plus it can be eliminated.

Like I said, the ammo cache was really just something I gave the marines to make things interesting (because otherwise there is almost zero possibility of the marines winning, imho).

This does raise another interesting matchup. Would a lasgun-only (to make it a challenge) regiment of 10k guardsmen be able to take an ammo storage bunker being held by 10 standard space marines?

DeadliestIdiot wrote:

Swastakowey wrote:
Imagine the ammo depot gets set up for the marine and just by happenstance the humans set up camp 6 weeks away from the depot or more. Cracks me up. But a depot isn't full proof, plus it can be eliminated.

Like I said, the ammo cache was really just something I gave the marines to make things interesting (because otherwise there is almost zero possibility of the marines winning, imho).

This does raise another interesting matchup. Would a lasgun-only (to make it a challenge) regiment of 10k guardsmen be able to take an ammo storage bunker being held by 10 standard space marines?

considering how bunkers are built... and lasguns only. No. Not unless the guardsmen start improvising explosives. Frankly even a bunker door would be a massive hurdle for just lasgun using guardsmen.

Not Online!!! wrote:

considering how bunkers are built... and lasguns only. No. Not unless the guardsmen start improvising explosives. Frankly even a bunker door would be a massive hurdle for just lasgun using guardsmen.

*facepalm* I apparently didn't think this one through far enough to foresee the use of door technosorcery

DeadliestIdiot wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

considering how bunkers are built... and lasguns only. No. Not unless the guardsmen start improvising explosives. Frankly even a bunker door would be a massive hurdle for just lasgun using guardsmen.

*facepalm* I apparently didn't think this one through far enough to foresee the use of door technosorcery

Well, locally we are talking about reinforced concrete doors playing around in the categories of 30mm to 1.5 m, but that is normally in any combat bunker only the first door, behind this is normally a second reinforced door, creating with the first door a room that can be controlled from behind said door via normally a placement of a embrasure (normally manned by a MG but since we got marines in this case boltgun) , in essence it's a room that can be indefinatly hold so long you have ammo, especially considering what a boltgun would be capable to do in such an environment. Behind that second door, which again you'd need to blow open you would then be faced very likely with a zig zag layout which in essence would turn all corners into higgly dangerous redoubts.
NVM further doors to points of interest.

On the ammo thing.

Marines are big, but not so monstrously huge human scaled equipment becomes unusuable.

Accuracy may suffer, and they’d probably look a bit silly, but it’s likely a lesser size difference between a grown adult using a child’s cap gun. Main is any trigger guard - and they’re not exactly difficult to get shot of.

All the Guard’s own equipment then becomes fair game, including heavy and special weapons.

I'm pretty sure the Deathwatch RPG book said marines were not able to shoot non-marine guns due to their fingers not fitting.

The difference in finger sizes between an adult human and a marine is akin to a babies fingers and those of Andre The Giant.

Also, that highlights a thing now. Andre likely could not fire some guns made for other humans, his fingers were huge. So even with humams there are outliers who can't operate our mass-produced weapons.

Still not significantly different.

It would be awkward compared to Astartes scaled, sure. But far from insurmountable, particularly on Heavy Weapons.

Biggest risk there is that Guard Weapons may not be built with Astartes strength in mind. That’s not to say they’re therefore poorly built. But the handles and triggers may get bent out of shape by the Astartes if they’re carelessly wielding it?

Also, on Andre, the operative word there would be some guns. With the dual pistol grip style of IG HB, AC and LC? Possibly not a problem?

The inverse must also be true, except when it's not. I mean in one of the Gaunt books, Bragg literally carries around an assault cannon he ripped off a vehicle. I think this may be writer error and it was an auto-cannon...

Point is, the average guardsman can't use the standard bolter of an astartes. Or an Astartes Chain sword, or pilot one of their land speeders, etc.

How is that relevant?

Ammo, and limits thereof.

If the Space Marine is solely limited to his own equipment, things shift considerably. But if, however awkwardly and performance impacting, he can use Guard issue Heavy Weapons, let alone Special Weapons, his options are considerably widened.

In terms of canonical examples? Uriel Ventriss forcibly commandeers an emplaced weapon (memory says a Heavy Bolter) in Nightbringer, and turns it on the bunker’s occupants. And in the Space Marine game, the player character can pinch Guard Heavy Bolters here and there.

Not your point, the fact that Guardsmen can't handle Marine weaponry easily.

Edit: As for taking Space Marine things canonically, Guardsmen are programmed to do 0 damage on Orks, so anything in the game is dubious at best.

That wasn’t my point

Whether or not a Guardsman can wield a Marine’s Bolter seems moot in this discussion, as there’s only the one Marine kicking about?

That was my point, yes. They don't need the Marine bolter

Depends dance and baking the marine wins hand down synchronised swimming my moneys on the Guard.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Well, locally we are talking about reinforced concrete doors playing around in the categories of 30mm to 1.5 m, but that is normally in any combat bunker only the first door, behind this is normally a second reinforced door, creating with the first door a room that can be controlled from behind said door via normally a placement of a embrasure (normally manned by a MG but since we got marines in this case boltgun) , in essence it's a room that can be indefinatly hold so long you have ammo, especially considering what a boltgun would be capable to do in such an environment. Behind that second door, which again you'd need to blow open you would then be faced very likely with a zig zag layout which in essence would turn all corners into higgly dangerous redoubts.
NVM further doors to points of interest.

Even regular lasgun armed Guardsmen have grenades. Frag, sometimes krak, sometimes melta, etc. Worst case, even if it’s just frag grenades they can just bundle them up and toss a bouquet at the door or into a firing slot.

You’d just end up with a scenario like WW1 when units made anti-tank grenades by just tying multiple charges together.