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Maybe bolters are better than laser weapons for Marines just because the ammo can be supported off a lower tech industrial base. I mean the number of crew on a battle barge or strike cruiser runs to what? Tens of thousands? I don’t think you need a terribly high level of sophistication of workers or materials to create standard bolt rounds, while las weapons are truly space magic and may require a greater attendance of Mechanicus.

When the ships aren’t actively blowing chunks out of things with their main batteries, the gun crews will need something to do. Why not make ammo?

It would be far more sensible if marines were equipped in a way that didn't need continual resupply, so they could be completely self sufficient behind enemy lines.

The Raven guard trying to be sneaky sneaks using bolters and requiring continual stealth thunderhawk ammo drops is hilarious.


They wear a reactor on their backs, so they should be carrying battery powered laser weapons. Efficient and virtually unlimited. Resupply would look like new reactor cores being dropped every decade, or year depending on how much energy they use up during the conflict.

It made a lot more sense before Primaris when Marines used normal Bolters, Heavy Bolters, Lascannons etc, which are also used by the Imperial Guard and PDF forces that Marines are so often fighting alongside/against. (Bolter ammunition coming from Storm Bolters, which were a common upgrade on IG tanks.)

Nowadays there's less apparent logistical cross-support.

Ironically, i can imagine that Devastator Squads, or any weapon specialist really, being given lots of flamers and lascannon type weaponry because i guarantee that those are slightly easier to source and supply. (and if we go by older lore where loyalists could use autocannons as well... more so the better)

 JNAProductions wrote:
I mean…

Bolter is S4.
Multilaser is S6.

Bolter is Ap-1. Multilaser is Ap0. Strength is not the only stat.

And I think it's been pretty clear since like forever that the game is abstract from the background.
A Guardsman doesn't just shoot a single shot from their weapon in a given volley. In 4th Orks were S3, the same as Guardsmen, unless they charged when it's been long established they were tougher and stronger than baseline humans.

Totally agree. Primaris should have been equipped with hotshot volley guns.

Bolter was created by the Emperor? Source please? I find this fascinating..

Lexicanum states "The original Imperial boltgun was an invention of the Emperor of Mankind's own design." and references the Master of Mankind novel as source.

Multi-lasers aren’t infantry portable. They’re support weapons. We’ve seen scaled down versions in the Naval Kill Team, but so far that’s it.

You might as well argue all Astartes should carry Heavy Bolters instead of small arms versions.

Interesting thoughts, everyone.

This topic highlights, yet again, the manifold issues of dialling up Astartes into giants. Not only are tight and low corridors their bane, and flimsy elevators a potential deathtrap due to weight (which increase for both body and power armour as you increase Marine size).

As has been well pointed out, many ordinary firearms for non-genhanced people may not fit the hands of Space Marines without some field modifications.

I guess this is yet another point to the practicality of human-sized depictions of Imperial Marines in Rogue Trader (as opposed to the literal background written by Rick Priestley shortly after the rulebook's release in 1987), contra the aesthetics of huge Marines that came after 1st edition. Not that I'm convinced of one over the other. Style matters, and rule of cool should be given its due weight. I've never been much for giants at all, anywhere, but I can see the appeal for others and that should weigh in.

Well, the architecture we see in the background, regardless of origin, is pretty huge in scale.

Remember, whilst pretty much nobody builds with Marines in Mind? There are still cargo Servitors, Sentinel chassis work horse things, all sorts of noticably taller than a smelly hooman and kinda needed for day to day shifting of the gubbins. Which also means a great many cargo lifts and that.

Yeah but you can make your ship immune to boarding by astartes if all the corridors are 3 foot wide and 5 foot tall.

Yes. You could. But why? Their numbers are vanishingly small. And you still need to cart your guy, gubbins and gear around, no?

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Yeah but you can make your ship immune to boarding by astartes if all the corridors are 3 foot wide and 5 foot tall.

You’ve never seen an Astartes do the worm

Not having massive corridors makes sense from a construction point of view, trying to keep the mass down so you don't need as much thrust for acceleration is sensible.

I don't mind cathedral space ships either but I prefer my Marines a little smaller than they got too and definitely prefer Marine sized Primarchs.

I think long range operation Marines with laser weapons would be a really cool alternative to the bolter shock troopers doing surgical strikes from orbit.

mrFickle wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Yeah but you can make your ship immune to boarding by astartes if all the corridors are 3 foot wide and 5 foot tall.

You’ve never seen an Astartes do the worm

Neither have we, as that’s some kind of twisted abomination!

"Your Chatbot Art Skills are weak, Old Man."

If you have a smaller ship, the Imperial Navy will just Virus Torpedo your ship into submission, and then send in Breachers.

Marines are not always required. Heck, if the action occurs offscreen (or offpage), you can send over 1 Harlequin or Custodes to solve the problem.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Multi-lasers aren’t infantry portable. They’re support weapons. We’ve seen scaled down versions in the Naval Kill Team, but so far that’s it.

You might as well argue all Astartes should carry Heavy Bolters instead of small arms versions.

Lascannons are also support weapons, but Marines toddle about with them with ease.

Also the heavy bolter toted by heavy intercessors appears to be marginally smaller than the heavy bolt rifles, so why not (for some specialisms).

Back on the Multilaser front, on the face of it power armour would be able to carry/mount a multilaser easily enough as there are enough other similarly big weapons that get issued to them.

Could it be powered off the backpack reactor? Possibly not, as marines with lascannon and even lasfusils use external additional power packs to feed the weapon. Hotshot lasguns (or whatever they are now) might actually be the sweet spot as they may be feedable off a standard backpack, or one with minimal mods.

Additionally, even moving to purely las-based weapons changes the logistics balance. Even if you could power the weapons straight off the reactor, new barrels, focussing crystals, power cables all become the new logistics train. Is production and supply of these harder or easier than the internal gubbinz of projectile weapons, plus the projectiles? At the Imperium-wide level, lasweapons are fine, but can that be scaled down to the resources of a chapter? The answer is obviously "it depends on who is writing the thing you are reading"

Personally I think all Marines should take a leaf out of Yarrick's book and have a visor-mounted laspistol (hotshot if you like) fed from their armour power supply so they can properly death-stare stuff that is slightly out of their reach






Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Karak - Flimsy lifts are only a deathtrap to people who aren't able to tear out of the top with their gauntleted hands and then climb up the shaft faster than the lift could move anyway

@Mad Doc Grotsnik: Aye, that is spot on. The need for servo-haulers and big servitors or even teams of men pulling ropes to drag cargo through ships and compounds do mean that there will be many corridors fit for Marines. But there will also be smaller corridors. Claustrophobically small. It would be a great missing out of grimdark if Warhammer 40'000 did not have lots of cramped passageways, since the setting draws on the most depraved aspects of human history, and tight passages and even crawlspaces have been with us for a long time.

@Flinty: Hahaha, that is true! And hilarious.

Y’know what I think I’d like to see?

A tale of a Marine, presumed lost, left behind on a Feudal type world to deny him high technology, learning to lead mere smelly hoomans in revolt against an otherwise successful invading force.

We’ve had something close to that in Inferno! Years ago. But that was just a (very good) short story. Give me a full novel, maybe even a trilogy.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Y’know what I think I’d like to see?

A tale of a Marine, presumed lost, left behind on a Feudal type world to deny him high technology, learning to lead mere smelly hoomans in revolt against an otherwise successful invading force.

We’ve had something close to that in Inferno! Years ago. But that was just a (very good) short story. Give me a full novel, maybe even a trilogy.

Wasn't it Abnett's Brotherhood of the Snake where they send 1 marine to help out the locals?

No idea, I’ve not read it!

 Quixote wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Y’know what I think I’d like to see?

A tale of a Marine, presumed lost, left behind on a Feudal type world to deny him high technology, learning to lead mere smelly hoomans in revolt against an otherwise successful invading force.

We’ve had something close to that in Inferno! Years ago. But that was just a (very good) short story. Give me a full novel, maybe even a trilogy.

Wasn't it Abnett's Brotherhood of the Snake where they send 1 marine to help out the locals?

Yes it was.

Astartes will use whatever weapon they need - lasguns, multilasers, severed legs and arms - or just their fists and feet and acid spit

 Flinty wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Multi-lasers aren’t infantry portable. They’re support weapons. We’ve seen scaled down versions in the Naval Kill Team, but so far that’s it.

You might as well argue all Astartes should carry Heavy Bolters instead of small arms versions.

Lascannons are also support weapons, but Marines toddle about with them with ease.

Also the heavy bolter toted by heavy intercessors appears to be marginally smaller than the heavy bolt rifles, so why not (for some specialisms).

Back on the Multilaser front, on the face of it power armour would be able to carry/mount a multilaser easily enough as there are enough other similarly big weapons that get issued to them.

Could it be powered off the backpack reactor? Possibly not, as marines with lascannon and even lasfusils use external additional power packs to feed the weapon. Hotshot lasguns (or whatever they are now) might actually be the sweet spot as they may be feedable off a standard backpack, or one with minimal mods.

Additionally, even moving to purely las-based weapons changes the logistics balance. Even if you could power the weapons straight off the reactor, new barrels, focussing crystals, power cables all become the new logistics train. Is production and supply of these harder or easier than the internal gubbinz of projectile weapons, plus the projectiles? At the Imperium-wide level, lasweapons are fine, but can that be scaled down to the resources of a chapter? The answer is obviously "it depends on who is writing the thing you are reading"

Personally I think all Marines should take a leaf out of Yarrick's book and have a visor-mounted laspistol (hotshot if you like) fed from their armour power supply so they can properly death-stare stuff that is slightly out of their reach

Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Karak - Flimsy lifts are only a deathtrap to people who aren't able to tear out of the top with their gauntleted hands and then climb up the shaft faster than the lift could move anyway

I've never seen someone try to say that the imperium-wide capability to produce billions of lasguns and all their supporting components makes it HARDER for a marine chapter to be equally equipped... or are you saying something else?

It's pretty clear there is 0 logistical issue with lasgun components, or in fact virtually any imperial gun components. On the scale of the departmento munitorum, they have millions/billions of plasma guns, lascannons, storm bolters, multi meltas etc they need to service across the imperium. If they couldn't those weapons would disappear from the ranks very quickly. Even a single hiccup in the supply train would make the next jam, or natural barrel wear remove the weapon from battle entirely. That the imperium still has millions of these weapons across all its different forces suggests this isn't a problem.

There are very likely more hotshot volley guns than there are astartes bolters in the imperium (at a very generous estimate there is 1 bolter for each marine so 1 million, despite barely half of the chapter being equipped as such)...


Logistics is one of the reasons marines SHOULDN'T be using bolters. The imperium doesn't function on logistics though, so the holiness of the gun makes it more important than the practicality of it.

We have seen Custodes kill ogryns with a thrown pebble before. So I reckon if you gave a bunch of marines a few stacks of rebar they'd probably make a mess of things when they throw them.

Additionally, could you imagine the pull strength a space marine could handle with a bow? Think Tomb King Ushabti.

cody.d. wrote:
We have seen Custodes kill ogryns with a thrown pebble before. So I reckon if you gave a bunch of marines a few stacks of rebar they'd probably make a mess of things when they throw them.

Additionally, could you imagine the pull strength a space marine could handle with a bow? Think Tomb King Ushabti.

I've seen regular guys kill Eldar Skimmers by throwing stones into the intakes.

So, if the Black Library novels are to be believed... regular Marines would have no trouble with defeating foul xenos, like the Eldar, with any weapon available.

Still all about speed and spectacle.

Lasguns are often seen as joke weapons. But they’re really not. They’re at least as effective as modern firearms, and have several serious upsides to them. But, they’re just not as deadly as a bolter.

As I mentioned earlier, Bolters don’t tend to do flesh wounds. Background wise, if it penetrates your armour? You’re at least out of the immediate fight due to horrendous injuries. And a Bolter is perfectly capable of penetrating the most commonly seen armour. Same with Chainswords. A knife to the guts is going to hurt a lot, because of course it does. But a Chainsword? Make A Mess, even from relatively glancing blows. I’m not exactly claiming “one hit, one kill”, but they’re the common tools most likely to cripple or kill on the regular.

And they’re both loud and messy. Intentionally so.

For stuff like Orks? Remember their legendary resistance to injury is more about lasting injury. They can absolutely have their or someone else’s arms crudely stapled back on and survive the whole debacle. But getting the arms off in the first place isn’t especially hard. And so Bolter and Chainsword do just fine there, especially given armour of any mentionable quality is pretty uncommon in their ranks. And there, the kills come from coup de grace or bleeding out (provided the Marines drive back the existing Ork forces in the immediate area, stopping Docs getting to fallen and mangled Boyz)

 Hellebore wrote:

I've never seen someone try to say that the imperium-wide capability to produce billions of lasguns and all their supporting components makes it HARDER for a marine chapter to be equally equipped... or are you saying something else?

It's pretty clear there is 0 logistical issue with lasgun components, or in fact virtually any imperial gun components. On the scale of the departmento munitorum, they have millions/billions of plasma guns, lascannons, storm bolters, multi meltas etc they need to service across the imperium. If they couldn't those weapons would disappear from the ranks very quickly. Even a single hiccup in the supply train would make the next jam, or natural barrel wear remove the weapon from battle entirely. That the imperium still has millions of these weapons across all its different forces suggests this isn't a problem.

There are very likely more hotshot volley guns than there are astartes bolters in the imperium (at a very generous estimate there is 1 bolter for each marine so 1 million, despite barely half of the chapter being equipped as such)...


Logistics is one of the reasons marines SHOULDN'T be using bolters. The imperium doesn't function on logistics though, so the holiness of the gun makes it more important than the practicality of it.

Apologies for my lack of clarity. What I was trying to get at is that Marine chapters have their own forges to supply their day to day needs. In my head that means ammo, weapon consumables and spare bits and gubbinz. This gives them operational flexibility on a day to day manner and not tied to the Munitorum. Now Chapters need to rely on Munitorum and Mechanicus for more advanced stuff, but seem ot be intended to be self-sufficeint day to day.

I was just exploring the potential difference in technology base needed to maintain a supply chain for projectile weapons, that are not any more advanced than current weapon systems, versus a similar supply chain for las weapons that are space magic. The ammo needs are greatly reduced, but ammo is not the only consumable for a weapon system.

Now the Imperium clearly can do that to supply lasguns to the Guard, but the entire Mechanicus and Munitorum system is set up to supply the Guard. For Marine Chapters, there may still be logistical and manufacturing benefits not to go down that route.

I agree that logistics is not the only parameter here, but just playing with some thought experiments

Hmm it could be more difficult if chapters have their own tiny supply chains separate from the rest of the imperium. Perhaps the lasguns only work at megascale, to produce everything. You could argue that the tech needed to produce them requires gigafactories, while bolter tech can be produced at smaller scales.

So the chapter doesn't have room for the MkXXIII Gigareactor to make the crystals for a lasgun, even if it would then produce a trillion a minute.

But that's requiring that they stubbornly remain independent of the greater imperial war machine, which itself is another one of those cultural idiocies over practical value... ;p

I mean define tiny. Astartes rule worlds where they get to pick up chunks of the population as slaves and they don't pay tithes.

Everything made in the forge stays with the Chapter and everything produced on the homeworld stays with the Chapter.

Chapter serfs are still slaves but they are given technical training and sometimes even enhancements to server their masters far more effectively than malnourished Manufactorum workers on an Industrial World.

Being the Emperor's Angels also means they're going to have some prime equipment in the Chapter forges.

We can also consider them during the Heresy.

In that period, Astartes forces were vast, closer in deployment scale to the modern Guard than modern Chapters. And they tended to go around mob handed in Crusade Fleets, comprised of many different wings of the Imperial armed forces.

Even then, their purpose and intent was to win battles as swiftly and brutally as possible where the sheer presence of such a force in a system didn’t impress or terrify a world or system into compliance.

Hence the Volkite and Bolter. Both kill swiftly, efficiently and horribly.

And the fleets were of such scale, resupply was rarely an issue. Even where a world was garrisoned, it was never “you couple of hundred stay here and muddle through as best you can”. They were left with supply chains and manufactorum to support them.

Into the modern day? Their tactics and strategies have changed to reflect their much reduced numbers. But the purpose (get in, kill as much as possible as swiftly as possible as messily as possible) remains the same, with the arguable benefit of, for most of the Galaxy, Astartes being myth made flesh.

Their entire schtick is less efficiency of supply lines, and more efficiency of action. Their purpose isn’t to merely defeat the enemy in a given battle, but to shatter its resolve and cohesion, allowing the vast numbers of the Imperial Guard and other forces of The Imperium to finish the job off thoroughly.

Despite what we see in novels? They’re really good at it. And most forces are vulnerable to such rapid and incredibly violent strikes.