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.

 Flinty wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
I think that's actually one of the most interesting parts of the setting. You have marines in super heavies, strike aircraft, even loading artillery and garrison duties, things like that.

And helps differentiate from the 40k setting, where because they had shown they could not be trusted with all of the toys they had a lot of them taken away - and no gatherings of more than 1000 allowed!

Same, I think people forget that the main fighting force in the Heresy was the Marines, they were the "imperial guard" of the time, the ones that did the main slogging of warfare while everything else was in support of them.
[snip].

I think people "forget" that, because its patently ridiculous.

Adding all the legion peak strengths together (taken from 40k fandom site, with no accuracy check) is about 2.1 million marines. An Imperium of 1m worlds cannot be retaken with that number of marines.

The only way it works is if the auxiliary baseline human forces are at the same scale as the Guard, i.e. quadrillions of troops.

According to the 40k fandom site numbers, there were twice as many Remembrancers as there were Marines, and apparently over 4,000 primary expedition fleets, or an average of around 500 marines per fleet.

The orders of magnitude are just way off...

Yeah, the Astartes were still only a small part of the Imperium in 30k. The book "Legion" focuses on the Imperial Army.

The difference was, the Astartes had a broad range of capabilities. The fielded titan hunting superheavies, they fielded artillery, they had a significant air force, they don't do that stuff in 40k which gives the Imperial Guard a niche separate to the capabilities of the Astartes.

I'm only about half way through the Horus Heresy novels, at this point it seems most of the heavy lifting is done by Imperial Army rather than Solar Auxilia though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pacific wrote:
I think that's actually one of the most interesting parts of the setting. You have marines in super heavies, strike aircraft, even loading artillery and garrison duties, things like that.

And helps differentiate from the 40k setting, where because they had shown they could not be trusted with all of the toys they had a lot of them taken away - and no gatherings of more than 1000 allowed!

Yeah, that's the nice side, the bad side to me is that they don't have a strong identity with clear strengths and weaknesses, capabilities and limitations.

 Flinty wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
I think that's actually one of the most interesting parts of the setting. You have marines in super heavies, strike aircraft, even loading artillery and garrison duties, things like that.

And helps differentiate from the 40k setting, where because they had shown they could not be trusted with all of the toys they had a lot of them taken away - and no gatherings of more than 1000 allowed!

Same, I think people forget that the main fighting force in the Heresy was the Marines, they were the "imperial guard" of the time, the ones that did the main slogging of warfare while everything else was in support of them.
[snip].

I think people "forget" that, because its patently ridiculous.

Adding all the legion peak strengths together (taken from 40k fandom site, with no accuracy check) is about 2.1 million marines. An Imperium of 1m worlds cannot be retaken with that number of marines.

The only way it works is if the auxiliary baseline human forces are at the same scale as the Guard, i.e. quadrillions of troops.

According to the 40k fandom site numbers, there were twice as many Remembrancers as there were Marines, and apparently over 4,000 primary expedition fleets, or an average of around 500 marines per fleet.

The orders of magnitude are just way off...

and yet its still true, the marines were the main fighting force of the Imperium of the time, everything else was support for the marines and the primarchs, marines ran the fleets, the imperial army "mostly" were seconded to marine forces, titans were pledged to legions and knight houses too.

500 marines and 10,000 imperial army support ran by marines in aid of making sure the marines won the fight. Just because the largest fighting force was the Imperial army does not mean they were the main fighting force, they were used for garrison duty, support elements, putting down rebellions etc. while the marines were given the lions share of resources, the best weapons and equipment etc. the stark change the Codex brought was to make the marines the support element while the imperial army (guard) became the main fighting force of the imperium, the fleets were detached from the marines and they only kept small flotillas of strike craft, they lost dedicated support elements of human auxilleries and armour such as legion Baneblades and artillery companies and were reduced in strength to 1000 marines not the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands.

we literally have 50+ novels showing this is the case.

And the magnitude is off with reqular soldiers. Numbers off which way you look.

Age of Sigmar has benefit of using little hard numbers. Its more of adjectives. You have uncounted ranks clashing. Scores of bodies flying around and so on.

Maybe because it's fantasy they feel more comfortable not adding hard numbers?

Marines were the blade of the Great Crusade. Warriors near perfect for shock and awe, there to take planets rapidly, and hopefully without a protracted conflict to minimise any damage to infrastructure.

That done? Off they went to the next world or system to bring about compliance, or to engage an oncoming threat.

Holding those planets largely fell to other forces - just as it is in the current day Imperium.

With integral fleet and armoured support, Legions were there to get the job done quickly and efficiently. And on more than one occasion their mere presence (both physical and metaphorical) was enough to ensure compliance.

The Great Crusade could’ve been mounted in some capacity without the Legions. But they sure did speed things up, allowing it to simply steamroller its way from system to system, only gathering pace as more worlds were folded in and began to provide resources.

Number pretty much require that the Marines are limited to only a handful of fleets, or else operate in a manner similar to Napoleon's Old Guard.

Take your pick. It's one of the other. It can't be both.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Here's hoping for a full scale version eventually too, we never did get a plastic plasma blastgun for the 40k Baneblade, did we?

I thought we did, but apparently we didn't - that's an odd omission.

For anyone with any shred of idea about military numbers, taking almost any number in wh30k/40k fluff at it`s face value is recipe for a headache. But since it`s all made up anyway, none of that actually needs to make sense.

But yes, according to current fluff legions were the main assault force, using brute superhuman strength, speed and toughness to subdue any enemy. And if anyone was left standing, it was up to the rest of imperial army to clean-up.

That being said... WH fluff has a big problem with cranking everything past any resemblance of sense. Sure marine legions are superhumans with unimaginable power, etc... But so are the toys from dark age of technology harnessed by mechanicum (ordo reductor comes to mind), and endless hordes of super heavy tanks and auxiliaries fielded by solar auxilia, etc.

Ultimately though, this is a tabletop wargame, and it has to have some minimum of balancing to be playable, so even though every single marine might be nigh indestructible superhuman warrior, in game they have to be toned down, or other forces brought up in strength.

Could you gents take the numbers of marines and the like to a separate thread?

I'm hoping the new as yet to be named expansion has some more terrain rules.

In the same way the great slaughter added titan death as an expanded way to play, it would be nice to continue this trend as its a good way to have sort of more specific kinds of games without mucking up the core game. It'd be cool to see like a planet strike style expanded way of playing incorporating bunkers and defense lines, possibly something that can be purchased with points. As the game already trends toward top weighted games with a very certain outcome often by turn 2-3, it might work well for how LI plays.

Another possible spin-off would be for lower level skirmish games. Perhaps with some more guard rails on army construction, like indexing formations to point level, making all formations 0-1 ect. Would also be a great excuse to make scenarios/missions for smaller boards/point levels.

If it at least rounds out the units for both factions I can live with it, but if come the third book and both sides don't have super heavies/artillery/light armour, it really will feel like a dlc.

2nd edition got a very good siege scenario, instead of eight objectives placed by both players it was four placed by the defender.

had bunkers, walls, razor wire, emplaced guns etc all bought normally, everything else on the defenders side cost twice as much

but they very much had "home field" advantage

have to say some of the most enjoyable WW2 games have been beach assault stuff, this scale is perfect for that, Planetstrike stuff for sure too

they have a smaller scale game, 40something I think they call it, not sure its popular though

leopard wrote:
2nd edition got a very good siege scenario, instead of eight objectives placed by both players it was four placed by the defender.

had bunkers, walls, razor wire, emplaced guns etc all bought normally, everything else on the defenders side cost twice as much

but they very much had "home field" advantage

have to say some of the most enjoyable WW2 games have been beach assault stuff, this scale is perfect for that, Planetstrike stuff for sure too

they have a smaller scale game, 40something I think they call it, not sure its popular though

Some people on reddit were hoping the new expansion would be tallarn themed as it'd be a good excuse for a tank-heavy release.

LI doesn't need more tanks, at least not before they make it possible to get hold of the ones they have already done.

after that the battles of North Africa and Kursk etc, 30k edition, would probably work quite well with the rules as they are presented - especially if the fortifications can be brought in and a nice blanket rule about moving units leaving vision obscuring dust clouds comes in

leopard wrote:
LI doesn't need more tanks, at least not before they make it possible to get hold of the ones they have already done.

This. The first and biggest priority is making it possible to get ahold of the basic tanks without having to buy more starters. The second priority should be getting all of the other models that we currently have rules for into the game.

The third priority should be providing more supporting units to both armies in order to provide more flexibility in the types of units available.

More tanks can wait.

leopard wrote:
LI doesn't need more tanks, at least not before they make it possible to get hold of the ones they have already done.

Probably fair to assume that we're not going to see the Shadowsword any time soon. This article is just a marketing strategy to reassure customers that LI still has new models in the pipeline, so that when GW drops the next wave around April there will be more interest.

Yes I agree with Eumerin's comment - you've gotta get the basics down, people need to be able to buy Legion infantry and Leman Russ tanks. I think the subset of customers that use proxies or print their own are still a pretty small % compared to GWs overall customer base, so while the people really into Epic will do that, a lot of people will just give up waiting. I would say there has definitely been a drop in social media posts and forum activity based on Legions and you have to think stock availability is a part of that.

Ok that note I have seen Legion Infantry are now back in stock with GW online (UK) for the first time in several months, hopefully this means some stock will disseminate to local stores now as well.

 Pacific wrote:
people need to be able to buy Legion infantry and Leman Russ tanks

That's what I'm talking about though. Whenever that next wave of rulebook / Great Slaughter units finally arrives GW don't want people thinking LI is all done. They're trying to keep the hype train going by dangling another future wave of new toys, so customers retain interest in the range and still buy any Russes / Predators / Dire Wolves / etc that we've known about for months.

Regarding restocks, recently I have seen more launch item stock gradually more available both in GW and 3rd-party UK stores. Finally managed to get another Thunderhawk this month to help deliver my Leviathans, and along with the new Spartans my marine army is functional at last.

local shop has more boxes of stuff than its had for the last few weeks

if only they can get some actual expansion rulebooks maybe people will buy them

Probably in for another box of Marine Infantry this month, as I need a Troops unit for my Garrison, and I’d like to max out the non-Tactical only units in my Demi-Company.

If they could add Predators and Sicarans to that, and maybe the Bike box, that’d be fab.

 Formosa wrote:

 Flinty wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
I think that's actually one of the most interesting parts of the setting. You have marines in super heavies, strike aircraft, even loading artillery and garrison duties, things like that.

And helps differentiate from the 40k setting, where because they had shown they could not be trusted with all of the toys they had a lot of them taken away - and no gatherings of more than 1000 allowed!

Same, I think people forget that the main fighting force in the Heresy was the Marines, they were the "imperial guard" of the time, the ones that did the main slogging of warfare while everything else was in support of them.
[snip].

I think people "forget" that, because its patently ridiculous.

Adding all the legion peak strengths together (taken from 40k fandom site, with no accuracy check) is about 2.1 million marines. An Imperium of 1m worlds cannot be retaken with that number of marines.

The only way it works is if the auxiliary baseline human forces are at the same scale as the Guard, i.e. quadrillions of troops.

According to the 40k fandom site numbers, there were twice as many Remembrancers as there were Marines, and apparently over 4,000 primary expedition fleets, or an average of around 500 marines per fleet.

The orders of magnitude are just way off...

and yet its still true, the marines were the main fighting force of the Imperium of the time, everything else was support for the marines and the primarchs, marines ran the fleets, the imperial army "mostly" were seconded to marine forces, titans were pledged to legions and knight houses too.

500 marines and 10,000 imperial army support ran by marines in aid of making sure the marines won the fight. Just because the largest fighting force was the Imperial army does not mean they were the main fighting force, they were used for garrison duty, support elements, putting down rebellions etc. while the marines were given the lions share of resources, the best weapons and equipment etc. the stark change the Codex brought was to make the marines the support element while the imperial army (guard) became the main fighting force of the imperium, the fleets were detached from the marines and they only kept small flotillas of strike craft, they lost dedicated support elements of human auxilleries and armour such as legion Baneblades and artillery companies and were reduced in strength to 1000 marines not the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands.

we literally have 50+ novels showing this is the case.

We have 50+ novels that focus on the marines because they're the main antagonists, but throughout those novels it's alluded to that there are plenty of non-marine Imperial Army forces going about spreading the Imperial Truth and compliance. It's just that we only really hear about them in the novels when they can't beat an enemy so the Marines (who will be the focus of said novel) show up to win a years long war in the space of a week.

As an example of what figures I would hope to see instead of yet more tanks...

When Space Marine (i.e. Epic 1st Edition) was released, the only Marine vehicles available were the ones that already existed in 40K - i.e. the Land Raider, Rhino, and Predator. Space Marine created new Marine vehicles to fill the missing battlefield roles. Quite possibly the two earliest new vehicles that had models released were the Whirlwind and the Vindicator. Both provide fire support for the marines - one direct, and the other indirect.

Both are still missing from the Astartes lists.

Eumerin wrote:

leopard wrote:
LI doesn't need more tanks, at least not before they make it possible to get hold of the ones they have already done.

This. The first and biggest priority is making it possible to get ahold of the basic tanks without having to buy more starters.

Is there really a shortage? I have some Sicarans up on eBay and they've been there for probably 12 weeks with a very low number of views. The price is completely competitive and there's nothing functionally wrong with the listing. Sold some Russes and Predators there too and those took probably 6 weeks to move. Walked into my local GW the other day and the same box of Rhinos is sitting on the shelf like it was weeks ago.

Not doubting that some folks are having trouble getting stuff. But I just don't see this great demand out there. Is it more of an UK/EU thing?

 gorgon wrote:

Eumerin wrote:

leopard wrote:
LI doesn't need more tanks, at least not before they make it possible to get hold of the ones they have already done.

This. The first and biggest priority is making it possible to get ahold of the basic tanks without having to buy more starters.

Is there really a shortage? I have some Sicarans up on eBay and they've been there for probably 12 weeks with a very low number of views. The price is completely competitive and there's nothing functionally wrong with the listing. Sold some Russes and Predators there too and those took probably 6 weeks to move. Walked into my local GW the other day and the same box of Rhinos is sitting on the shelf like it was weeks ago.

Not doubting that some folks are having trouble getting stuff. But I just don't see this great demand out there. Is it more of an UK/EU thing?

I suspect most people are like I am, and don't turn to E-Bay for our stuff.

And I never mentioned the Rhino, which isn't even in the starter. I'm explicitly talking about the stuff that's only available in the starter, despite the fact that these are supposed to be the basic "line" tanks for the two armies.

Now having said that, out of curiosity I hopped onto E-Bay just now to check availability. I did a search for "Leman Russ Legions Imperiales". The vast majority of what came up on the first page was 28mm, and not even for LI. The pair of sales that I spotted that were for LI Leman Russ sprues both were a single sprue for more than what GW is currently charging for the LI boxes (the add-on figure boxes, not the starter). Given that I expect two sprues in the box - as has been the pattern so far - the stuff that I found on the front page of E-Bay costs more than double what I would expect to eventually be paying for the tanks.

I agree on the e-bay point. The Sicarans and predators should have been released already, and better to get a brand new full box set from a retailer rather than trusting to e-bay. Also I personally prefer to be able to see the actual retail price point to enable a proper assessment of what pricing is reasonable.

@Gorgon - Not trying to imply that your pricing is unreasonable, but just I can't make that call at the moment, so prefer to wait.

Gorgon - as Eumerin says its more to do with specific sets that are core components if you want to collect a 'standard' force (in UK at least). My local store is showing 50+ Spartan tank sets but I haven't been able to get the Legion infantry since Christmas - out of stock everywhere and you have individual bits of sprues selling for silly money on eBay.

I'm guessing sprue components for those have gone into starter sets - fair enough as the starter set was OOS for some time and the game is new, you need to get more people playing. But it does mean that anyone with that starter set is struggling with subsequent purchases in the following months, unless they have turned to proxies or printers.

I can only speak for my neck of the woods but collecting a Marine army boils down to some Rhino and Krato kits. The other kits only seem to be available directly through GW themselves.

Solar Aux kits are well stocked.

 Rhakkachan wrote:
The Leman Russ also seems to be a little too small, shouldn't the PRedator be the smaller of the two tanks?

Leman looks small compared to the Demolisher barrel xD


I need a Stormlord to lead the Dracosan squadron (still missing).
I need also more crewmen options, like a tank commander

Honestly, I doubt we’ll see things like the stormlord. Forgeworld are sticking with a kind of classic tank pantheon that ignores a lot of GWs more modern designs. If you have an imperial armour book, expect that. For example, I’d expect a destroyer tank hunters and thunderer siege tanks to turn up at some point

 zedmeister wrote:
Honestly, I doubt we’ll see things like the stormlord. Forgeworld are sticking with a kind of classic tank pantheon that ignores a lot of GWs more modern designs. If you have an imperial armour book, expect that. For example, I’d expect a destroyer tank hunters and thunderer siege tanks to turn up at some point

Maybe, but Forgeworld did the Stormlord in resin before the main studio spun up plastic kits. It's possible FW will make the Stormlord as a resin hybrid kit for sale at the usual mark-up.

 Breotan wrote:

 zedmeister wrote:
Honestly, I doubt we’ll see things like the stormlord. Forgeworld are sticking with a kind of classic tank pantheon that ignores a lot of GWs more modern designs. If you have an imperial armour book, expect that. For example, I’d expect a destroyer tank hunters and thunderer siege tanks to turn up at some point

Maybe, but Forgeworld did the Stormlord in resin before the main studio spun up plastic kits. It's possible FW will make the Stormlord as a resin hybrid kit for sale at the usual mark-up.

Stormlord was a plastic only tank with the vulcan megabolter on the front. Maybe you're thinking of the stormsword?

As an aside, I've got my hands on some Great Slaughter cards and, interestingly, the Valdor Tank Hunter card's silhouette is of a Destroyer Tank Hunter...

Am I the only one who's lost when it comes to the names of the Imperial Guard super heavy tanks. Just use the words 'Shadow', 'Storm' or 'Bane' followed by 'Sword', 'Lord', 'Hammer', 'Blade', etc. the combinations are endless, but you kinda end up getting very confused