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 Haighus wrote:

It isn't that incredible that a Marine veteran could survive hundreds of battles and thousands of campaigns. We are told a strike cruiser merely arriving in orbit is often enough to end a rebellion. It is likely a proportion more can be ended with some orbital fire alone. These are technically campaigns, but no Marine has to actually get their hands dirty up close and personal.

While true, it also feels a bit pointless to call that a "campaign". Like, saying that a Sergeant "participated" in such a campaign by watching TV for the five minutes until the surrender call comes in isn't a very helpful metric.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson wrote:
Interestingly "veteran sergeant" has not been a thing in the game for a while, and I'm not sure it is an official rank in many chapters either. It has always been a bit unclear how the marine ranks really work. Like does an intercessor sergeant outrank a basic sternguard veteran? Is the sternguard sergeant " a veteran sergeant" and thus outranks the other sergeants? How about the honour guard? Do they outrank sergeants and veteran sergeants?

Interestingly, in 30k, Centurion command squads (equivalent to company command squads in 40k) consist of veterans chosen by the captain for his retinue, while the Praetorian command squad (equivalent to Honour Guard) are considered "Legion officers" for heraldry purposes, ie they are above regular line officers like captains and lieutenants as well as above specialists like apothecaries and techmarines, comparable to high specialist officers like forge lords and primus medicae (chief apothecary).

The role has probably evolved to some degree in the millennia to follow, but with the Imperium's obsession with tradition, not necessarily all that much. It makes sense a Chapter Master's chosen retainers would have a lot of clout. The 5e marine codex suggests that their word is heavily respected but they tend to be sparing with their advice in order to not undermine the authority of the formal officer structure (whose job it is to actually command, not protect).

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

It isn't that incredible that a Marine veteran could survive hundreds of battles and thousands of campaigns. We are told a strike cruiser merely arriving in orbit is often enough to end a rebellion. It is likely a proportion more can be ended with some orbital fire alone. These are technically campaigns, but no Marine has to actually get their hands dirty up close and personal.

While true, it also feels a bit pointless to call that a "campaign". Like, saying that a Sergeant "participated" in such a campaign by watching TV for the five minutes until the surrender call comes in isn't a very helpful metric.

Sure, but from the point of view of the Imperium a rebellious world was returned to the fold through a Marine deployment and they can distribute glorious propaganda that isn't technically wrong (the best kind of propaganda).

I dunno, it just feels like a stretch.

Like if the codex says this duelist character has won ten tournaments in a row, you could technically argue this doesn't indicate anything as each tournament could have been won on rules technicalities, walkover, and so on. It would be unlikely though, because then why highlight the duelist character?

On the scale of the battle/campaign?

Not all areas of the Imperium are equally imperilled. A Chapter who’s Homeworld is in a comparatively quiet sector may simply not have larger fires to put out, and so can trot around stamping out relatively minor ones. Which in turn of course can stop minor ones growing larger.

In fact, that’s the dream, isn’t it? To have sufficiently regular Marine involvement that nobody gets out their pram in the first place, further enforcing peace and stability in that area.

Perhaps a more combat involved scenario that still takes very little time could be a world that has a conflict on it between the Imperium and some human rebels. A Strike cruiser shows up with a couple marine squads. They spend a week drop podding into various rebel command centers before being evac'd, while making sure plenty of survivors saw the Marines in action. Within a week all rebel commanders have been eliminated and organization has collapsed. The marines can move on and let the Guard finish the job. The rebellious citizens of the planet have been thoroughly cowed by the Space Marines and they will behave knowing that they might come back.

There's a couple of things at play.

Marines suffer less causalities because of the kind of warfare they conduct. People cheered for the coolness of the astartes animation and secret level, but all you were cheering was grown men punching pre schoolers. It was not a fair fight at all. Any factions elites could have taken the place of the marines and waded through the mooks like that.

Every faction in the setting possesses a huge array of guns that can one shot a marine. You don't need a squad of anti marine guns to deploy enough to wipe out a whole bunch of them by sheer weight of numbers.

A guard regiment probably has more 1 shot marine weapons than a whole chapter has marines.

The casualty rate is also a bit of a red herring. The imperium has unlimited manpower. Even if 0.001% of the population is suitable to be a marine, that's still trillions of replacements. And not every marine chapter recruits as restrictively as say the space Wolves (who also have a cheat seed that allows them to spool up aspirants 10x faster than anyone else).


Marines will die in droves against the wrong weapons, and marines will have endless replacements at different points in their recruitment stretched out through their supply lines. When they send replacements they're already training THEIR potential replacements.


Chapters maintain full strength by:

Strategic control of engagements only favouring the ones that won't kill them or only setting up engagements to ensure they won't be killed

Having endless trains of the unlimited replacements humanity can provide being shipped up.



What they don't do, to keep their numbers high, is chew lascannons and krak missiles or bounce battlecannons off their chest.

They survive small arms like no one except Orks, but in reality no one would spend much time aiming their small arms when they have much bigger and better ones available.

And of course when marines attack there's only 2 dozen or so of them, making it very easy to concentrate fire in a way you couldn't on anyone else. It doesn't matter if they're hard to hit, at least one of the 50 lascannons you have will.

And that is where the marines are supposed to be strategically and tactically savvy so they don’t engage in a way that the have to face down 50 lascannon.

Right. As someone mentioned in the lasgun thread, power armour isn't really for wading openly into enemy fire. That's what Terminators are for. Power armour is used combined with standard cover tactics in order to make you extremely difficult to kill even with what hits the enemy does land through that cover, as well as giving an enormous advantage in close combat.

Is a bit of both. Power Armour will allow you to cross the final length even in the face of normally withering small arms fire. But you still want to get in that final striking range as hale and healthy as possible.

It’s all part of the role as terror troops. Posthuman Dread, a resilience most will most likely never have encountered, and the Marines’ own weapons and skills making firefights shockingly one sided.

Each part plays will the others, combining into a terrifyingly effective whole.

For instance. The old “pop out of cover to take a shot or two”. A Marine has a greater chance in that sliver of time of being able to line up and take a kill shot. They’re still ill advised to remain there and not duck back. But they’re far more efficient overall.

Then there’s the capability to crash through walls, depending on the construction. My house is Victorian, possibly Edwardian, and so is made out of gorgeous red brick. Keeps the elements out a treat. But a car can go through such a wall without needing to be driven at excessive speed. And I’m confident a Marine could batter their way through in a trice. So in the sort of fight mentioned above? They can potentially charge right through the cover you’re hugging, depending again on its construction.

And so, with options that very few others enjoy? Marines have a very different concept of a fair fight. Add in their rarity and deadliness? It’s an experience few receive, and even fewer survive to learn from.

From a command level view? They’re the sort of force that can crush a position the enemy expected to hold out for a couple of hours in minutes, and so change the entire pace of a battle.

Consider. You and your comrades in arms are tasked with a delaying action. The enemy are closing in, and you need to buy time for your artillery to be pulled back and repositioned. And as much of it as you can. You’re not necessarily expected to survive, but it’s of course a bonus if you do.

If you’re dug in in an urban environment and have enough sense for how to best exploit it? You should be able to do the job at hand (again, whether or not you actually survive).

Except….its not Guardsmen attacking as expected. It’s Astartes. Nowt fancy. Just a Tactical or Intercessor Demi-squad.

Where perhaps you had reasonable hopes and expectations of holding the enemy off for and hour or two? The Astartes may reduce that to a handful of minutes. Especially if your nerve breaks, or even just some of your comrades decide to flee the carnage.

That means you artillery hasn’t had the chance to get all that far away. And there may be little to nothing between the surviving Marines and that asset. Which could mean that asset is lost entirely.

One deployment, at the right time, at the right pressure or choke point? And suddenly your Command is in a far worse position that even its most pessimistic predictions.

Even if the Marines don’t stick around? With the loss of your artillery, whether total or simply a reduction in number? You’re more vulnerable to the massed assault some Guard regiments favour. And unlike you? It’s quite likely the Guard being supported by the Astartes were girding their loins for a push as soon as the Marines were through your line.

That is why Marines are effing horrible to fight.