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I mean, its current damage of D6+6 is pretty much the same as instant death as far as Calgar and his 6 wounds are concerned

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, but the 1000 marine per chapter limit makes that unfeasible. Especially when GW insists on having them fight in large scale battles where they are out in the open when things like Doomsday Cannons exist.

So they should die against serious threats, but they won't because if they do then no more space marines.

The only way it makes sense is if GW actually portrayed them as intended and had them only attacking isolated, weak targets. But the SM fanbase doesn't want to see their chapter bully some heretic commander, they want to see them do stupid gak like German Suplex an Avatar of Khaine.

I think catastrophic events are totally acceptable even given the 1000 per chapter limit X 1000 chapters. This means at roughly any given time there can be 10,000 100-man battlegroups of Marines pushing around the galaxy and getting into trouble. A thousand of those battlegroups could suffer catastrophic losses and it would only represent 10% of the total Marine numbers available at that time, and each loss is still replaceable in raw numbers in some amount of time, maybe 10-50 years? If my math is right, even if it took 100 years to replace a company of Marines, that means the equivalent of 100 company-level catastrophes could happen every year, and the Marine numbers would be alright.

And we have to remember that most of the fighting is really done by other branches to begin with. Marines will normally be choosing for optimal deployments alongside the IG, Sisters, Mechanicum etc. in most cases, greatly reducing the chances of unforeseen catastrophe. So even while 100 catastrophes a year seems small compared to the number of conflicts at any given time in the Imperium, I think the wiggle room is there in the numbers and scenarios to make it feasible.


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 JNAProductions wrote:
Calgar was T4 Eternal Warrior.
Calgar is T6 right now.

Remember when he was just T4, 4 wounds, and no Eternal Warrior? Those were the days. he only gained EW in 5th edition.

Pre-5th was so based.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Calgar was T4 Eternal Warrior.
Calgar is T6 right now.

Calgar is Gravis. Gravis is T6. Terminators are T5.


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 Tyran wrote:
I mean, its current damage of D6+6 is pretty much the same as instant death as far as Calgar and his 6 wounds are concerned

Even Instant Death isn't death. Its still removed as a casualty. Getting poked in your second heart by either the most famous Daemon Sword or the Most famous Lightning Claw (I forget which, if it was even mentioned) is pretty instant-deathy too but its still removed as a casualty where the Apothecarion will rebuild you

 vipoid wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, but the 1000 marine per chapter limit makes that unfeasible. Especially when GW insists on having them fight in large scale battles where they are out in the open when things like Doomsday Cannons exist.

Surely it's no worse than when a named character dies on the table but is miraculously still alive and kicking in the next game?

That aside, if GW is going to retcon anything it should probably be the number of Marines in existence. Play it off as Imperial propaganda or something.

As it is, it just comes across as GW not understanding numbers - in the same way that galactic-level conflicts can somehow have fewer casualties than the first world war.

If anything the number of space marines is so tiny that the Imperium should be able to replace a destroyed chapter with no effort. Hell the Imperium should be able to found a new chapter of space marines every single day. It's a thousand guys in an empire with quadrillions of people. If the Imperium was the entire planet earth then every space marine in existence would be one person. The Ultramarines would be I dunno, a single finger of that person? It's really really dumb for real.

The numbers aspect is fundamentally flawed because it's artificial.

Even the genetic compatibility issue is meaningless in an empire as large as the imperium. If only 0.5% of the population is compatible, then the current male population of earth has 20 million suitable candidates....

The space wolves are relatively unique in that they recruit from a single planet with a very small human population (even the blood angels recruit from multiple moons - and their genetics ignore the limitations anyway).

Yet the wolves are actually larger than normal chapters and they're not exactly driving the human population of fenris to extinction keeping their numbers up, so I imagine the compatibility issue is nowhere near as severe as 0.5%.

The uniqueness of marines is partially based on their rarity, but that rarity is De Beers level faked.

So the Imperium in reality has an unlimited resource of marines that are uber in all aspects. If they were as powerful as they've been protagonisted to be, the imperium would be unstoppable.


They just keep churning their marines through, casualties mean nothing, so killing them is not tragic at all, and the imperium can make as many as they want.

 Hellebore wrote:
The numbers aspect is fundamentally flawed because it's artificial.

Even the genetic compatibility issue is meaningless in an empire as large as the imperium. If only 0.5% of the population is compatible, then the current male population of earth has 20 million suitable candidates....

The space wolves are relatively unique in that they recruit from a single planet with a very small human population (even the blood angels recruit from multiple moons - and their genetics ignore the limitations anyway).

Yet the wolves are actually larger than normal chapters and they're not exactly driving the human population of fenris to extinction keeping their numbers up, so I imagine the compatibility issue is nowhere near as severe as 0.5%.

The uniqueness of marines is partially based on their rarity, but that rarity is De Beers level faked.

So the Imperium in reality has an unlimited resource of marines that are uber in all aspects. If they were as powerful as they've been protagonisted to be, the imperium would be unstoppable.


They just keep churning their marines through, casualties mean nothing, so killing them is not tragic at all, and the imperium can make as many as they want.

There's one more factor for the slow replacement/addition of Space Marines. Its a fairly easy claim to make that the harder compatability obstacle to overcome is the mental/spiritual/character aspect not the genetic one.

The Imperium doesn't want massive numbers of Marines though. Low numbers keep the Astartes manageable for the wider Imperium.

Yeah don't even try to bring any sort of scale "realism" into the equation with galactic sized empires... Even just the concept of hive cities/urbanised planets has insane figures attached to it let alone the idea of an empire spanning a galaxy of 100 million stars.

"science and futurism with isaac arthur" has good fun breaking down those kinds of narrative things and seeing just how absurd a Coruscant style planet would actually be, or what mining an entire planet can produce etc

 Orkeosaurus wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, but the 1000 marine per chapter limit makes that unfeasible. Especially when GW insists on having them fight in large scale battles where they are out in the open when things like Doomsday Cannons exist.

Surely it's no worse than when a named character dies on the table but is miraculously still alive and kicking in the next game?

That aside, if GW is going to retcon anything it should probably be the number of Marines in existence. Play it off as Imperial propaganda or something.

As it is, it just comes across as GW not understanding numbers - in the same way that galactic-level conflicts can somehow have fewer casualties than the first world war.

If anything the number of space marines is so tiny that the Imperium should be able to replace a destroyed chapter with no effort. Hell the Imperium should be able to found a new chapter of space marines every single day. It's a thousand guys in an empire with quadrillions of people. If the Imperium was the entire planet earth then every space marine in existence would be one person. The Ultramarines would be I dunno, a single finger of that person? It's really really dumb for real.

Space Marine creation is resource intensive with a high failure rate. That's why they are so rare. Geneseed is in itself a rare resource too, and you need that to make marines. Even before the high failure rate one has to account for the screening process which is highly selective. So that's a small recruitment pool that's further reduced by a high failure rate.
The Imperium can't just snap their fingers and grab a bunch of cannon fodder to turn into marines, it's much more complicated than that. Whilst on paper they do have the numbers, in practice it's probably not that clear cut because every failed aspirant could be doing something more useful. How does the saying in setting go? "Lives are the Emperor's currency. Spend them wisely."

Not to mention that every chapter has their own traditions with incredibly specific training methods, which limits scope even further. Whilst the Imperium may have an absurd population as a whole, Space Marines do not recruit from every world in the Imperium, they recruit from very specific worlds in the Imperium which have much lower population densities. That has to be factored into account too.

Then we have the codex astartes which is less a logistical restraint and more a political one that came about because of the Heresy, in an attempt to prevent another large scale Space Marine coup.

But yeah, Space Marine fluff is pretty bad and inconsistent.
I'm still unclear about what age you actually recruit aspirants, because the fluff says 10-12 but if you actually read what the recruitment process entails it's gak that's very hard to imagine a 10-12 doing it. For example, iirc, the Space Wolf selection process involves recruiting warriors who's fought in a few raids and can drink a lot of booze. So are they recruiting a bunch of drunk, murderous 10 year olds? It doesn't make sense.


I suspect the fluff says that they are that age, but the writer writes them as if they were much older and it really sticks out to me.

 Hellebore wrote:
The more OTT levels of background like THE sanguinor carrying a bloodthirster into the air, grey knights bathing in sister blood, or a bunch of marines destroying a craftworld are all from a very Matt Ward shaped era of GW fiction where they went off the rails with pure cartoon idiocy.

Depending on the specifics, two out of those three could be reasonable - I'm never going to defend the GK/SOB one, though.

As has been pointed out, the Sanguinor isn't even a Marine, but a Warp spirit of some form - and echoing the Sanguinius/Bloodthirster fight may make narrative sense. Also, the size of Bloodthirsters - like your beloved Avatar - have varied significantly over time.

Mental note - we need some fiction where the Sanguinor beats an Avatar up.

As for "a bunch of Marines destroying a Craftworld", plausibility would vary depending on how many "a bunch" is, and the size and condition of the Craftworld in question. Half a squad of Intercessors taking out Ulthwe would be problematic, for example, but significant elements from multiple Chapters taking down a smaller and/or damaged Craftworld would be reasonable.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
The more OTT levels of background like THE sanguinor carrying a bloodthirster into the air, grey knights bathing in sister blood, or a bunch of marines destroying a craftworld are all from a very Matt Ward shaped era of GW fiction where they went off the rails with pure cartoon idiocy.

Depending on the specifics, two out of those three could be reasonable - I'm never going to defend the GK/SOB one, though.

As has been pointed out, the Sanguinor isn't even a Marine, but a Warp spirit of some form - and echoing the Sanguinius/Bloodthirster fight may make narrative sense. Also, the size of Bloodthirsters - like your beloved Avatar - have varied significantly over time.

Mental note - we need some fiction where the Sanguinor beats an Avatar up.

As for "a bunch of Marines destroying a Craftworld", plausibility would vary depending on how many "a bunch" is, and the size and condition of the Craftworld in question. Half a squad of Intercessors taking out Ulthwe would be problematic, for example, but significant elements from multiple Chapters taking down a smaller and/or damaged Craftworld would be reasonable.

Didn't Sanguinor pick up the Avatar and do a pile driver on him in one of the Ward codices? I know that Ward had Calgar and Sanguinor do incredibly questionable feats, I forgot the specifics though.

Yeah there's definitely inconsistencies with the age and behaviours of the aspirants. Seems like someone thought it would make more sense if the aspirants were prepubescent for some idea of believability or metaphor for puberty, but they wanted the aspirants to come from dangerous worlds with lots of battles to echo the ideas in Dune.

I personally don't believe the 10 year old aspirant thing. I think you can probably start indoctrinating them then, and you can probably make early implants and so on, but I reckon based on background descriptions the process pretty much HAS to work on any young adult, IMO 20 is the likely cut off point.
Maybe there's a peak chance of success at one of the younger ages, or the psycho indoctrination works better then.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
The more OTT levels of background like THE sanguinor carrying a bloodthirster into the air, grey knights bathing in sister blood, or a bunch of marines destroying a craftworld are all from a very Matt Ward shaped era of GW fiction where they went off the rails with pure cartoon idiocy.

Depending on the specifics, two out of those three could be reasonable - I'm never going to defend the GK/SOB one, though.

As has been pointed out, the Sanguinor isn't even a Marine, but a Warp spirit of some form - and echoing the Sanguinius/Bloodthirster fight may make narrative sense. Also, the size of Bloodthirsters - like your beloved Avatar - have varied significantly over time.

Mental note - we need some fiction where the Sanguinor beats an Avatar up.

As for "a bunch of Marines destroying a Craftworld", plausibility would vary depending on how many "a bunch" is, and the size and condition of the Craftworld in question. Half a squad of Intercessors taking out Ulthwe would be problematic, for example, but significant elements from multiple Chapters taking down a smaller and/or damaged Craftworld would be reasonable.

Regarding the sm vs craftworld part, that's another part where gw's aversion to numbers makes anything possible. Are aspect warriors still at least as powerful as marines lore-wise? If so then say a massive 500 marines strong strikeforce attacking a craftworld would only be succesful if there were 100-200 aspect warriors at most, since they'd also have guardians, wraith units, automated defenses and who knows what else. That's not a craftworld crew, that's maybe a cruiser (or even just a frigate).

At least that's what'd make sense to me, but afaik we don't have any hard numbers on the amount of eldar on craftworlds (and given gw's track record I don't think it'd help if we did). So anything goes.

GW's numbers are just all over the place, as different writers clearly have a massive variance in scale.

In some stories Craftworld's seem utterly tiny, with low thousands if not hundreds of Eldar and maybe 10 Aspect Warriors that can be taken down by whoever's the protagonist in this bit of fiction.

But then you have Iyanden: "The craftworld's armies and fleets were all but gone, destroyed by the relentless Tyranid advance. Countless billions were slain, whole families and bloodlines lost forever; the living were outnumbered many times over by the dead."
Which rather suggests that at least before its collapse Iyanden had... countless billions to lose. Cue lots of debate online on what number is "countless".

I think Space Marine Chapters are too small. As people say you can zoom the camera in to make the exploits of the Ultramarines 2nd company interesting. But its like talking about the mission of one small commando unit in the context of WW2.
But in terms of grand strategy scale, GW always want to do a lot more. So it becomes "The Ultramarines conquered planet X" - prompting sorry, what? With all six of them? They couldn't conquer a small town.

But I suspect if GW ever want to tidy up the lore they'll just expand the Marine numbers. Kind of feel they've been doing that anyway as founding Chapter after founding Chapter turns out to "secretly be in control/cahoots with all its successors."

The size of chapters was probably at least partially to encourage the idea that people might collect 100 marines for a full company. It's a pretty achievable target.

Personally, I think the worst SW inconsistences happen after the HH ends.

Crusades era: SW have reportedly anywhere from 80k-200k marines.

HH: SW did not take part in the SoT, engaged elsewhere; inconclusive data.

Post-HH: Legions are broken up into ~1000-man chapters. SW, historically referred to as a smaller legion, only have the troop numbers to make 1 Second Founding Chapter, the "ill-fated Wolf Brothers".

So...the SW lost ~78-198k Marines from the height of the Crusade to implementation of the Codex Astartes?

 Da Boss wrote:
The size of chapters was probably at least partially to encourage the idea that people might collect 100 marines for a full company. It's a pretty achievable target.

I think it also aimed to sell how hyper rare and powerful they were compared to regular Imperial Guardsmen and such. These were your super-elite super-soldier warriors.

Yes 40 years later they are the most heavily sold army as a result of marketing and popularity; yes mandates on BL to focus on the Imperial factions and sales of Marines means that they have a gross over-representation in the number of books about them.


We see this in the real world too - how many action-flicks are based on regular grunt recruits - not half as many as are based on "Ex super-military para-SAS-SEAL mega operative".

 Da Boss wrote:
The size of chapters was probably at least partially to encourage the idea that people might collect 100 marines for a full company. It's a pretty achievable target.

Rogue Trader and 2nd Ed were also far smaller in scale. Even for Orks, you’d rarely field more than 60 models in 2nd Ed.

Epic kinda broke that though, as a Space Marine army would represent a significant proportion of a Chapter.

That's true - armies way back in 2nd and even 3rd ed were way smaller than they are now. That was back in the day where some troops were all metal and sold in blisters of one or two models to a pack (3 for some if I recall right).

A 2K army today, back then would have seen insanely expensive and huge not to mention something like a knight or baneblade would have been FW only (place your order by mail or phone and wait up to 2 weeks to arrive)

Breton wrote:

Even Instant Death isn't death. Its still removed as a casualty. Getting poked in your second heart by either the most famous Daemon Sword or the Most famous Lightning Claw (I forget which, if it was even mentioned) is pretty instant-deathy too but its still removed as a casualty where the Apothecarion will rebuild you

Sure, but getting hit by 20 kilograms of tungsten at ten times the speed of sound is going to turn Calgar into half vaporized meat sauce, and an Apothecary isn't rebuilding him from that.

 Lord Clinto wrote:
Personally, I think the worst SW inconsistences happen after the HH ends.

Crusades era: SW have reportedly anywhere from 80k-200k marines.

HH: SW did not take part in the SoT, engaged elsewhere; inconclusive data.

Post-HH: Legions are broken up into ~1000-man chapters. SW, historically referred to as a smaller legion, only have the troop numbers to make 1 Second Founding Chapter, the "ill-fated Wolf Brothers".

So...the SW lost ~78-198k Marines from the height of the Crusade to implementation of the Codex Astartes?

The Wolves sent out a lot of babysitter forces that were never heard from again, They also engaged in two Marine on Marine punishment tours with Angron and Propsero among other less sanctioned, less suported, less wise decisions.


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 Tyran wrote:

Breton wrote:

Even Instant Death isn't death. Its still removed as a casualty. Getting poked in your second heart by either the most famous Daemon Sword or the Most famous Lightning Claw (I forget which, if it was even mentioned) is pretty instant-deathy too but its still removed as a casualty where the Apothecarion will rebuild you

Sure, but getting hit by 20 kilograms of tungsten at ten times the speed of sound is going to turn Calgar into half vaporized meat sauce, and an Apothecary isn't rebuilding him from that.

You're very literal, I get that. And it has its uses. But in this case not so much. Getting hit by an instant death weapon isn't necessarily a direct hit. An indirect hit can still remove you as a casualty. And its much more likely to be an indirect or near miss removing a man sized target as a casualty than it is an anti-titan weapon sniping a man sized target.

And that difficulty is represented by Calgar having character rules that allow him to hide behind his buddies so he doesn't get hit by a Hammerhead railgun.

But if for some reason his buddies are removed as casualties, Calgar is in the open and he gets hit by a railgun? He is dead

The numbers of marines are at odds with the sheer number of large weapons in 40k that can kill them. Marines may be resistant to small arms, but they will die to lascannons, plasma guns and krak missiles.


And although there are more lasguns than lascannons, the sheer number of lascannons outnumbers the marines by substantial amounts. And that doesn't include every alien or chaos faction's anti tank weapons that will kill marines.

This just highlights more contradictions in 40k - either there are small numbers of marines and every army has even smaller numbers of AT weapons that could kill them, or there are plenty of marines and those weapons aren't that rare.


It's like the setting is a whole bunch of multiverses that overlap, where in one marines can one punch a tank and bounce of lascannon and in the other, an enemy force has a hundred lascannons that will incinerate a whole marine army.

But where the quantum super position of each collapses always in favour of the marines.

Hellebore wrote:The numbers of marines are at odds with the sheer number of large weapons in 40k that can kill them. Marines may be resistant to small arms, but they will die to lascannons, plasma guns and krak missiles.


And although there are more lasguns than lascannons, the sheer number of lascannons outnumbers the marines by substantial amounts. And that doesn't include every alien or chaos faction's anti tank weapons that will kill marines.

This just highlights more contradictions in 40k - either there are small numbers of marines and every army has even smaller numbers of AT weapons that could kill them, or there are plenty of marines and those weapons aren't that rare.


It's like the setting is a whole bunch of multiverses that overlap, where in one marines can one punch a tank and bounce of lascannon and in the other, an enemy force has a hundred lascannons that will incinerate a whole marine army.

But where the quantum super position of each collapses always in favour of the marines.

Well, this is where tabletop games get wonky when they meet lore. Generally, marines would probably be trying to take measures to mitigate how many of those lascannons ever get pointed their direction in the first place. They shouldn't be face tanking every lascannon a traitor guard army has; they should be doing spec ops missions to wreck the traitors' cohesion and lightning attacks to prevent the enemy from amassing forces in one place for a head-on battle.

But you're not wrong; realism is not super compatible with 40k.

Tyran wrote:And that difficulty is represented by Calgar having character rules that allow him to hide behind his buddies so he doesn't get hit by a Hammerhead railgun.

But if for some reason his buddies are removed as casualties, Calgar is in the open and he gets hit by a railgun? He is dead

Breton's point, I think, is that we're supposed to assume a named character like Calgar is never actually taking a direct hit thanks to the power of plot armor. When you remove his model from the table, it can be assumed that a near miss from a railgun was still enough to knock him out or that a d-cannon caused some wonky warp lightnign to arc out and fry his nervous system even though he wasn't dragged into the warp.

There's also the fact that if the game followed the lore then everyone would be sick of the fact that most Marine armies would be 1 tactical squad - whilst IG and Tyranid players would never get past the huge mountain of chaff models they'd have to assemble and paint to get to the tabletop.

I've always maintained that whilst the game is cool and lifts some elements from the lore; its never really supposed to "work" like in the lore itself. Heck a Greater Demon manifesting is a massive thing - two or three or four at once is almost pure insanity and yet we have that tabletop side. Lore side you'd be calling on ships in orbit to fire; whole vast armies to take them down and more

I think trying to draw a line from the lore(reality) to the tabletop is always going to lead to either insanely wonky representations or disappointment because its never going to line up.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Well, this is where tabletop games get wonky when they meet lore. Generally, marines would probably be trying to take measures to mitigate how many of those lascannons ever get pointed their direction in the first place. They shouldn't be face tanking every lascannon a traitor guard army has; they should be doing spec ops missions to wreck the traitors' cohesion and lightning attacks to prevent the enemy from amassing forces in one place for a head-on battle.

But you're not wrong; realism is not super compatible with 40k.

I mentioned a few pages back that this isn't specific to marines. Apart from say orks or nids, virtually no army is going to choose a fight that isn't heavily skewed in their favour. The table top's balanced approach leads to massive casualties far in excess of what many armies (notably eldar and marines) would actually receive based on how they fight and choose their battles.

The irony with marines is that their normal modus operandi is at odds with showing how badass they actually are - as much as people love the astartes animation, and as accurate as it is, it shows marines killing peasants in vast numbers, which is not really a challenge.

Marines setting themselves up for success by only attacking weak foes in advantageous ways is at odds with the superhero Titus taking on carnifexes. Which is just another contradiction GW has no interest in resolving.

People want the indestructibility of marines from astartes but applied to things that kill them like carnifexes, aspect warriors, immortals, nobz etc. And don't care or realise that their survivability is due to their opponent's weakness, not their strength.

It gets worse when you remember Titus also takes on Chaos Space Marines, Terminators and Hellbrutes.

So people want Space Marines to be invencible unless they are Chaos, then they can be killed like fodder.

Well Titus is not only a marine but a video game protagonist, so I don't mind he can do those things with that in mind but if people do take that as standard marine officer ability can see how it'd get annoying. Would love to see them take a risk with an autarch or something in one of those games, they'd be perfectly fluffy to have different power ups etc.

We had a game where a lone Fire Warrior murdered his way through hundreds of Marines (loyalist and chaos), multiple Daemon princes, and a Lord of Change.

 Hellebore wrote:
The numbers aspect is fundamentally flawed because it's artificial.

Even the genetic compatibility issue is meaningless in an empire as large as the imperium. If only 0.5% of the population is compatible, then the current male population of earth has 20 million suitable candidates....

The space wolves are relatively unique in that they recruit from a single planet with a very small human population (even the blood angels recruit from multiple moons - and their genetics ignore the limitations anyway).

Yet the wolves are actually larger than normal chapters and they're not exactly driving the human population of fenris to extinction keeping their numbers up, so I imagine the compatibility issue is nowhere near as severe as 0.5%.

The uniqueness of marines is partially based on their rarity, but that rarity is De Beers level faked.

So the Imperium in reality has an unlimited resource of marines that are uber in all aspects. If they were as powerful as they've been protagonisted to be, the imperium would be unstoppable.


They just keep churning their marines through, casualties mean nothing, so killing them is not tragic at all, and the imperium can make as many as they want.

You know it's funny, but there's really only one interpretation of all this that works: Space Marines have no significant impact on the Imperium's military power at all, and only still exist as a ceremonial throwback like the Swiss Guard. They're objects of cultural and religious reverence, not a real fighting force.

I mean they do still fight aliens and are individually very good at it, but it never affects the outcome of a war because there are so few of them. All of the real "elite shock troop" work is done by modern units like the Tempestus or Arbites, who number in the hundreds of billions. The Space Marines are deliberately kept irrelevant by the High Lords and the Emperor accepts this because he considers the Space Marines to be a failure, but he won't allow them to be totally destroyed because he feels responsible for them. The Space Marine chapters themselves are mostly deluded, convinced by hypno-indoctrination from childhood into believing that they're essential to humanity's survival. The few that see the truth often become rebels or turn to Chaos, but unless they escape to the Eye of Terror they're easily crushed by the Guard.

They're sci-fi Don Quixote.