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.

After watching "Beyond the War of the Worlds" I questioned.

How would the battles go if the martians invaded an Imperial world in 40k?

Throwing out the fact that the aliens in War of the Worlds are from Mars and died from the common cold and all that how would their masses of Tripods fair against the Imperial Guard? The Space Marines? and so on, but lets leave the Navy out of this.


I belive the Alien war machine (the Tripod) is all its many many designs always has several things in common. It has a directed energy weapon (the "heat ray") as its primary offensive weapon and in the books it has a gas attack which is discharged via large canister style projectiles. the gas hangs low to the ground and is utterly lethal and somethign tells me it would even be effective against the crew of tanks or space marines in their suits.



Also they are extreamly durable (at least they are depicted as such) and have 3 legged locomotion which afords them some degree of manuverability.

The only instances in the book War of the Worlds where a tripod is damaged or destoryed by human weapons (of the era) is a single tripod after a massive heavy artillary barrage at close range which after the cannons fired and downed the one machine were blasted away by another tripod quickly.

And another involved a full blow battleship (or in this case a "dreadnaught class warship"), named the Thunderchild which valiantly fought back a number of tripods. ramming one and blasting another to peices with its massive guns, but it was destroyed with a concentrated blast from the remaining aliens.

In most of the movie adaptations, the Tripods are easily immune to human weapons (of the period in which they are depicted) until they are weakend at the end of the movie by the common cold then they fall to weapons fire.


How do you belive an Imperial World of 40k would fair against what can be compared to warhound titans with increased armor, beam and chemical/biological weapons, and reletivly large numbers?

The PDF would be killed to a man.

Once the IG got there, Im sure a heavy dose of AP2 would drop Tripods. Titans? Game over.

Weapons from a battleship killed one.... 40k weapons are many time more powerful than this, even some of the man portable ones would punch them down, leman Russ bt would smash them appart with ease.
Av wise I would put them at 12 12 12 and a 5++ due to there shields

Infantry would likely get killed off pretty quick, unless they carried heavy enough weaponry, and some tanks would likely get destroyed by the heat rays (long ranged melta weaponry in my opinion), but a little bit of heavy fire and the tripods would fall with ease.

If we'd also delve into the TV series (which, however, was an offshoot of the first movie rather than the old novel), the aliens could "possess" people and infiltrate human society... call in the Inquisition/Deathwatch!

Seeing as if a Martian invaded a planet, we'd be royally screwed. I mean, they have Titans!

Joking aside, the time in War of the Worlds was a lot different than the year 40,000. For one, standard infantry have pistols that literally fire minature rockets. Spess Mehreens have fully automatic rocket guns. Imperial Guard have row after row of tanks, each one with more dakka than the last. The Martian Tripods would be blow apart by all manners of war machines, defence lines filled to burst with lasgun armed soldiers, and if it really does hit the fan then the planet will just get blown to pieces by an Exterminatus.

Mind you, the Tripods "Heat/Death Ray" is basically a Melta gun. That's where GW got the idea for Melta guns, a gun that shoots a beam of concentrated energy and heat that can punch through most armor and vaporize humans. And since there can be a lot more Melta weapons than Death Rays, and a lot of powerful weaponry even among the PDF, I think that once the PDF gets mobilized then they can win. They will take a lot of casualties, but it's the Guard. The guns and ammo cost more money than the soldiers. And I quote from the IG codex from the Master of Ord entry "Whilst the loss of life is regrettable, the waste of ammunition is intolerable"

It probably also depends a lot on the individual world and its state of technology. I mean, on some worlds, the PDF is fighting with spears or bow and arrow.

... and if the 5E Codex is to be believed, they can even get recruited into the Imperial Guard this way, if lasguns are in short supply at the time.

But yeah, I guess the average Guard regiment would be a tough opponent, provided that walkers are at least somewhat laserproof. The tricky thing would be to get close enough to use a melta to disable one or more of their legs, I think. IG man-carried meltas have a rather short range I think. And then there's the fact that most IG regiments are very specialised, either having lots of tanks and little infantry, or vice versa. If there's only one regiment facing them, this could be an issue. And meltas are not standard issue either ...

I can immagine it being like a triarch stalker with a few adjustments. WS 4 BS 4 S 7 F 11 S 11 R 11 I 5 A 1
Vehicle, walker.
Quantum shielding, heat ray stuck on focussed
Move through cover.
125 points.