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.

A continuation of a side discussion begun here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/480/812254.page#11629871



For simplicities sake I'm arguing that the models on the tabletop do not represent a faithful recreation of the number of units in the lore/setting.

Instead I argue that models represent a reflective flavour of the faction, but that does not translate to a 1:1 relationship with the lore and that there is no universal count either. So some might represent more individuals in lore and some less and that the game is a highly abstract take on the setting for the purposes of being a practical game to play with miniatures at the 32mm scale whilst commanding "armies".



I'd further argue this is the case because things such as unit model counts have changed over the years. Go back to 2nd edition and no one was using multiple 40 model strong gaunt squads and yet in some editions that has been possible, practical and done. 10th edition however changed the limit to 30max in a gaunt squad. There are also multiple other examples of unit group sizes changing over time, for some factions more than others.

Furthermore many armies feature powerful units/models that are fighting alongside regular infantry and yet can be taken down by those regular infantry. It doesn't feel right that super powered characters such as Primarchs, Ork Warbosses, Hive Tyrants and soforth can be taken down by a small handful of guardsmen having a lucky break on rolls.

I agree 100%.
Am phone posting, so not much to add right now

I 100% disagree, but can't respond further atm.

But as a thought experiment I want to ask what your proposed Guardsman to Marine ratio is. If 1 Marine model = 1 Marine, how many Guardsman does a model represent if it's not 1.

Likewise how many Lascannons should it take to knock out a Hive Tyrant?

 Insectum7 wrote:
I 100% disagree, but can't respond further atm.

But as a thought experiment I want to ask what your proposed Guardsman to Marine ratio is. If 1 Marine model = 1 Marine, how many Guardsman does a model represent if it's not 1.

Likewise how many Lascannons should it take to knock out a Hive Tyrant?

Honestly I don't have values for those. Or rather finding values would be hard because our premise is not based upon fact nor real world archival information, such as Historical Wargames can rely on; but rather upon video games, artwork and lore. Even within lore we have variations such as the infallible narrators voice down to personal accounts and internal setting references which could be inaccurate. Not to mention many references will not state exact numbers



It means any attempt to ascribe specific numbers is going to be flawed from the get go.




What I can see is that those numbers have changed over time. Marine Tactical squads haven't really changed in number, but things like Gaunts have gone up and down quite significantly over the years. Things like the Carnifex have gone from top to middle tier in power as armies have expanded with more model options. The relative strengths and powers have shifted around a lot between editions as have unit counts and numbers.

In addition the distances on the tabletop are not accurate
The relative sizes are not accurate (most buildings are garden sheds in size; even tanks are often well undersized for their designed purpose)
The ranges are all over the place - a basilisk should be measuring its range in mile upon mile whilst a guardsman should be vastly under that range, even with a lasgun.
Even weapon powers are all over the place and change between editions as the designers mess with trying to be lore accurate and at the same time produce a game that is fun to play (eg how aircraft went from AA only to many more units being able to attack them).

When almost every other thing in the game is being adapted to suite a tabletop experience, I can't see why the representation of models should be the one thing that's "set in stone real". Does this mean that each time the points get adjusted the lore setting gets a huge change? Were armies during 2nd edition vastly different to those in 10th?



Again I just don't see this. Plus if you look at other wargames, esp historical re-enactment, you don't see 1:1 numbers there either. Yes you do see more accurate calibrations because they can draw on actual historical fact and specific numbers. Whilst in Warhammer most stories deal in general numbers not specifics.
The only time you start to see 1:1 appearing is in skirmishing games or RPG games where you really are playing a 1:1 experience.

I'm pretty sure the math of a handful of guardsmen taking down a Hive Tyrant with 10th rules is ridiculous.

It was far more likely in oldhammer with the reduced wound numbers and worse save, not really an issue now.

I *think* I agree with this:

Instead I argue that models represent a reflective flavour of the faction, but that does not translate to a 1:1 relationship with the lore and that there is no universal count either.

The tabletop definitely isn't a super accurate representation of the universe. long-ranged mortars have barely more range than a rifle, terrain meant to represent a city block is scaled to be tiny compared to the infantry that would presumably live there, and said infantry are in turn way too big to fit inside the transports on the table. Psykers fail to use their powers about 1 in 6 times, and Thousand Sons sorcerers are self-destructing every other battle. Marines are deploying and dying in droves.

So it's pretty clear that the tabletop doesn't perfectly reflect the lore. That said, I don't think 1 dire avenger model is meant to actually represent X dire avengers or what have you. A 30 gaunt squad is neither meant to represent 30 gaunts nor is it necessarily meant to represent 30 times X gaunts. It's more just... vibes. A maxed out squad of gaunts represents "a lot of gaunts," but not necessarily a sea of carapace packed shoulder to shoulder. Lasguns finishing off a rhino don't necessarily mean that the rhino abruptly succumbed to lasgun shots to the face so much as it represents the general notion that the guard squad was taking offensive action against the rhino.

It's all abstracted to the point of being largely "vibes," but it's not abstracted in a way that we can necessarily say, "Thing one actually represents a highly specific thing 2."

Did that make sense at all?

Hard disagree. 40k's models were always meant to be anything but a 1-to-1 translation, imo.

The issue we see is basically GW continually trying to expand the scope in ways it never should've been. Things like the Swarmlord, Knights, and numerous other larger vehicles and monsters cannot effectively translate over to what was designed to be a company-ish sized wargame.

The game mechanics and stats have never reflected the lore accurately. The minis have all kinds of scale problems and the entire tabletop battlefield is ridiculous. I’m not sure the game represents a battle in the 40k universe closely enough for “1-to-1” or any ratio to make sense.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The game mechanics and stats have never reflected the lore accurately. The minis have all kinds of scale problems and the entire tabletop battlefield is ridiculous. I’m not sure the game represents a battle in the 40k universe closely enough for “1-to-1” or any ratio to make sense.

Honestly I don't think "the lore" reflects the lore accurately. The details people tend to get caught up on are often extraordinary circumstances and embellishments.

The game started as a skirmish game that was definitely representing 1:1 model wise, and while the game has evolved/(devolved) I don't see a clear reason why the model:entity ratio has drifted.

40k didn't start as a setting where heros were supposed to be invulnerable powerhouses destroying entire armies. It started as a setting where your hero could fall to a lucky shot or trip whilst running into combat and fluff all their dice roles. As heros (especially named characters) became more popular and commonplace they developed a plot armour necessary to keeping them in the story, but that doesn't mean they should be able to take on whole armies by themselves.

The lore attached to 40k battles have always suggested formations of approximately platoon or company size facing off (bigger for large Apocalypse games). The lore and set up in codices has always suggested your force represents a specific, small force. This is Captain Smith's command squad in their command platoon, nothing states this is actually a command company represented by 5 models. Captain Smith's command squad is very squishy, but can hit hard under the right circumstances. Why would upgrading Captain Smith's laspistol to a boltpistol matter if it was just one model in a hundred? The granularity of 40k goes against such abstractions.

The more sober lore is generally clear that out-of-position Marines, heros etc. can become casualties* against basic troops with heavy weapons or overwhelming numbers. That checks out with the game. As Insectum7 points out, a typical evenly-matched game is going to be really rare in the setting, where both sides are forced to engage but neither can engage with greater strength. No force wants this scenario, and several major factions routinely avoid this scenario and perform pinpoint attacks with overwhelming strength as their primary MO (Marines and Eldar of all stripes being the most obvious candidates). 40k has long supplied rules for asymmetric missions with asymmetric objectives to accommodate a wider range of battles, but these are harder to write in a way which is fun for both players, are usually supplementary, and generally less common to see played.

I also think using army lists as a way to justify some abstract "ratio" of models to combatants is weak. Army lists have always represented a subset of the lore, and have never encompassed it. For example, an Imperial Guard infantry platoon typically contains up to 5 infantry squads. However, DKoK infantry platoons contain up to 6. Until they got their own list from FW, you couldn't take a platoon with 6 squads. Clearly, the basic IG list of the time only represented a common subset of Guard lists. Equally, you cannot currently take carapace-armoured Guardsmen, but they still exist in the lore. I think variable Gaunt unit sizes just represents different observed patterns when fighting forces of the Hive Mind, rather than highlighting some unknown and varying abstraction of the true numbers.

Also, vehicles are not scaled that badly in 40k, if anything they are usually similar dimensions to modern vehicles except taller. Infantry don't fit because they are heroically scaled in action poses. If they were more truescaled it stops being an issue. The classic DKoK infantry strips that could fit 50 guard into a Gorgon come to mind. Building components are likewise scaled to match the models, the problem is with the size of buildings constructed from those components, not the parts themselves.

IMO, all of this speaks to a tension between gameplay and lore, rather than models and lore.


*Note not just dead- the game has been clear in many editions that a casualty is simply not combat effective, they may be anything from dead to badly wounded to unconscious to having fled.

1 gaunt miniature = 100 gaunts in-lore.
1 guardsman miniature = 10 guardsmen in lore.
1 aeldari miniature = 1 aeldari in lore.
10 space marine miniatures = 1 space marine in lore.
100 custodes miniatures = 1 custodes in lore.

It's all so blindingly simple, sometimes I wonder how people struggle with it!

You're better off just admitting that the game does not reflect what happens in the lore, and leaving it at that. The point of the game is to sell more plastic to suckers, not to act out events from the lore (although it is often presented as if this were somehow the case, cuz it sells more models to suckers)

 tauist wrote:
You're better off just admitting that the game does not reflect what happens in the lore, and leaving it at that. The point of the game is to sell more plastic to suckers, not to act out events from the lore (although it is often presented as if this were somehow the case, cuz it sells more models to suckers)

The lore and the game aren't wholly disconnected. They aren't 1-to-1 connected, but they're related.

Related in the names of things and their general appearance, everything else is pretty hit and miss IMHO

They are one-to-one for me. Why is there a need to abstract it any further?

When my chaos sorcerer Zhutek leads a handful of Raptors and intercepts a squad of Battle Sisters in the ruined city of Gorth, it's not a platoon or a company or anything else. He and his band may represent a crucial moment in a likely much larger encounter, but each stands where they are.

Zhutek's cadre leaves the streets awash in blood, only to be repaid in kind by the Vindicare Drayon. Now the enraged Raptors seek to avenge the death of their leader. The shadow who hides in the nearby bell tower will soon receive his payment!

Or I guess a handful of snipers picked off a smattering of leaders only to be hunted down by a couple platoons of jump infantry all in some ruined city somewhere over the course of weeks of battle. *yawn*

I don't know what the current model count/composition looks like, but through 2nd it absolutely was 1 to 1 and it had the granularity to prove it.

There was greater parity between unit types and - as has already been noted - one could one-shot just about anyone with the right weapon (particularly a vortex grenade).

But back when 2nd was current, it was billed as a skirmish action, broadening it from the RPG format of Rogue Trader.

Third ed. saw an effective doubling in model count (point costs halved) and more abstraction to support it, but it was still 1:1.

What it is now, I have no idea, but just as the "lore" has changed significantly, so has the scope of the combat. In 2nd, for example "barrages" included airstrikes.

I think maybe what we're touching on isn't an issue of the body count being different between the table and the lore, but rather a matter of scale creep.

Like, back when there were one or two tanks on the battlefield and the rest of your army was a handful of infantry squads, it was easy enough to think of the battle as one force launching an attack on the other's isolated tank s. But when you have 3 russes and their artillery pals flanked by chimeras, with the artillery tossing their miles-long shots at a flyrant just a couple dozen yards away while valkyries somehow move painfully slowly through the sky...

It feels a little weird to have that many "big things" squeezed into such a seemingly small area and to have them focus-firing down significant enemy assets like a relatively fast/agile flyrant. It would feel more "natural" if the artillery was positioned in the opposite corner of the game store and their shots didn't land until a turn after they fired or something.

Not that that's practical for gameplay purposes, but I think this is where the weird feeling comes from rather than the number of bodies present.

You're ultimately looking at a game that has to have some form of rules for balance and structure compared to either reality or an RTS.

Dawn of War (1&2 not 3, never 3) and TW: WH series are better ways to represent Warhammer in the sense of an actual flow of battle or conquest.

You can't get that with a wargame when it has major limitations placed on it that divorce it from how things would work in reality. And that's any TTWG BTW not just Warhammer.

Agreed, even if you shift scales to 10mm or even 6mm you still can't put enough bodies on the table to be faithful to even real world wars. Everything is a representation and when we don't have hard facts and figures to calculate that representation; then you go for flavour of the faction.

Few of this and lots of that which "feel" right based on the lore.

Sure battles are also featuring way more exotic things than there should be in a small skirmish. Even if you took the named heroes out of the equation entirely you'd still have lots of things in a tiny sphere that wouldn't really happen in the reality of battle.

I honestly don't think the lore is a faithful representation of how many soldiers exist in-universe, sometimes. It doesn't matter how shiny your thousand shock troops are, a thousand shock troops is how you capture, like, a spaceport, not a city or a planet...

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I honestly don't think the lore is a faithful representation of how many soldiers exist in-universe, sometimes. It doesn't matter how shiny your thousand shock troops are, a thousand shock troops is how you capture, like, a spaceport, not a city or a planet...

This is going offtopic (and has been discussed before) but the way the Imperium functions in a feudal and/or colonial manner to extract rents from otherwise fairly independent populations probably doesn't necessitate a lot of boots on the ground to control what they need to control. This tallies with historical situations where a small colonial force could still protect extraction of a lot of resources from much larger host populations.

Given most worlds in the Imperium cannot meaningful stop a Space Marine strike from taking out whoever they feel like (incl. the planetary governance) there doesn't need to be a lot of Space Marines to encourage the powerful on a given world to act in their own interests and cooperate with the Imperium or be personally wiped out. You don't have to actually hold territory if you can convince the second in command to do it on your behalf after they just watched the former first in command get smoked with no defense (in practice I think it is more likely that a Marine force would systematically destroy several layers of leadership to prove a point, but the general principle is to get locals to self-regulate through fear).

Also it is quite clear that the Imperium is entirely willing to tolerate long-running insurgencies so long as their tithe is received in a way most modern polities are not (see Necromunda having an insurgency run for 10000 years from the time of first compliance in the Great Crusade). So captured means very different levels of control depending on what you want to actually achieve. Capturing a star port may be entirely sufficient to achieve the Imperium's goals.

To me it has always been 1:1 as well, with the "slice of a larger battle" approach to explain the relatively low amount of individuals. Having a commissar represent only himself but his squad of 10 guardsmen represent 100 is a disconnect I couldn't stomach, personally.

At the same time a commissar, full staff and general along with support mechanicus all leading 20-40 guardsmen is kind of nuts for a command situation.

 Overread wrote:
At the same time a commissar, full staff and general along with support mechanicus all leading 20-40 guardsmen is kind of nuts for a command situation.

Er, wut? There are no rules for a generic general in 40k. There are a couple of special characters at a command staff level, but they are special characters notable for going and getting stuck in on the frontline at a crucial sector rather than commanding from their Proteus command bunker or Leviathan miles away.

The default HQ-level Guard commander has been a company or regimental commander for most editions. The latter is a bit much for frontline but can be easily rationalised as personally commanding the most critical sector. A colonel remains a frontline commission.

Commissars likewise are embedded at the regimental level, with only senior commissars at the general staff level.

Company commanders overseeing a handful of platoons in combat is very appropriate. Also, 20-40 guardsmen is a pretty small Guard army even in 3rd edition.

 Haighus wrote:
[ if you can convince the second in command to do it on your behalf

Capturing a star port may be entirely sufficient to achieve the Imperium's goals.

It’s just as likely to be the governor’s rival being used as a proxy. On an entire planet there are multiple centres of industry, so there are multiple loci of power and one of them just happens to be dominant at a given time.

The Imperium can do this to Xenos. It’s possible and actually common in the real world to play both sides of a conflict, and to help a faction that says it hates you. The Goff Klan is very strong, fundamentalist, and intolerant of unorkiness in other klans. It’s very possible to take a spaceport from an Ork planetary warlord, hold it long enough for a faction of Goffs (or other) to seize it, and fight a ruinous civil war that weakens everyone, and results in a weak leader ultimately triumphing and leading g ineffective attacks against whoever this intervening faction was. The Deathwatch marines exist to do exactly this.

Every faction is capable of being in both sides of this. Necrons, all throws if Eldar and all types of hewmons have exploitable rivalries on the target side. Craftworlders are famous for doing this type of Little Green Men type operation, but the deathwatch, chaos cults, and officio sabatorum do it for human factions and there are a few cases of human politicians collaborating outright with Necrons or Orks.

And it’s easy to simulate this kind of asymmetric warfare, which is better than some fanciful idea of 40 eldar/marines vs 300 guard. The first tier is just to build in to their data sheet that every individual marine model that’s killed* gives up victory points. That’s applicable to normal pickup style games. Ideally it’d also be standard to do scenarios more like the breakout and meatgrinder scenario types from the ‘00s rulebooks but that’s a lot to ask for some people.

The concept of filler models being abstractions is navel-gazey

*killed being models removed by weapons with high damage or while trapped by some definition of “trapped”

 Haighus wrote:
The default HQ-level Guard commander has been a company or regimental commander for most editions. The latter is a bit much for frontline but can be easily rationalised as personally commanding the most critical sector. A colonel remains a frontline commission.

Commissars likewise are embedded at the regimental level, with only senior commissars at the general staff level.

Company commanders overseeing a handful of platoons in combat is very appropriate. Also, 20-40 guardsmen is a pretty small Guard army even in 3rd edition.

If you attack a company, there's a chance the battalion commander and his staff might be present if it is a crucial sector.

If you want to lean into abstraction, than you can say that the bodyguards of the senior officer get better as rank goes up rather than the actual guy himself, but this abstracted into the leader's stats.

Still, on the 1:1 scale, it works. I think 40k has always been clear that the part of the battlefield being described in such painstaking detail is the focal point of the campaign, rather than the scope of the battle itself.

 Overread wrote:
A continuation of a side discussion begun here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/480/812254.page#11629871



For simplicities sake I'm arguing that the models on the tabletop do not represent a faithful recreation of the number of units in the lore/setting.

Instead I argue that models represent a reflective flavour of the faction, but that does not translate to a 1:1 relationship with the lore and that there is no universal count either. So some might represent more individuals in lore and some less and that the game is a highly abstract take on the setting for the purposes of being a practical game to play with miniatures at the 32mm scale whilst commanding "armies".



I'd further argue this is the case because things such as unit model counts have changed over the years. Go back to 2nd edition and no one was using multiple 40 model strong gaunt squads and yet in some editions that has been possible, practical and done. 10th edition however changed the limit to 30max in a gaunt squad. There are also multiple other examples of unit group sizes changing over time, for some factions more than others.

Furthermore many armies feature powerful units/models that are fighting alongside regular infantry and yet can be taken down by those regular infantry. It doesn't feel right that super powered characters such as Primarchs, Ork Warbosses, Hive Tyrants and soforth can be taken down by a small handful of guardsmen having a lucky break on rolls.

Disagree. Unit sizes can change but that does not mean that the model representation changed as well. There is no ground scale nor a time scale, but I see no indication that the model scale is anything other than 1:1.

Looking at the 10th Ed Space Marine Codex, for example, it has an entry for "Intercessor Squad" which consists of "1 Intercessor Sergeant and 4-9 Intercessors." It is a squad - not a platoon or a company. The models are representations of individual troopers.

I would say no it is not a 1:1. I would put it as highly unlikely.

When they write the rules they try to make a good game. While inspired by the lore they do not adhere to it. Imagine an edition change - did the world of 40k change just because the edition changed? No it did not. Comparing two editions the representation of the lore must be wrong in one of them, if not both.

Likevice when somebody is writing Warhammer fiction do you think they break out the calculator to see on average or the bell curve of possabilaties how many lascannon shots it will take to kill a carnifex. If two authors disagree about something won't that make the game unable to be an acurat representation of the game.

They are inspired by each other. That is it.

It….depends.

Marines? Yes. Definitely 1:1. Because canonically they are that Stupid Hard.

Tanks? Again, yes.

Everything else? Possibly. Some units (Aspects, other formerly known as Elite Slot units) yes. But your grunt and file? Not necessarily.

All about the mind’s eye.

Stargrunt was interesting as it explicitly stated that the infantry models were an overscaled representation. It was all a bit heisenberg with the actual combatant being at some unknown position on the base, but definitely around there somewhere. A very different game though where suppression and psychology was way ,ore important than actual, damage.