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I was just under the assumption that SMs do have spare lasguns in their armory and might bring a few along on an extended mission in case all the bolters run out of ammo, but it never really comes up. It's more of an emergency fallback than a serious weapon option. But I don't see why they wouldn't have a few lying around, they're cheap and easy to use and better than throwing rocks at termagants.

More likely shotguns. Scouts sometimes are armed with them and Chapter Serfs on ships etc.

That's making an assumption that combatants in 40k don't actively seek CQC fighting because it's "honourable".

The ultimate answer as to why Astartes don't use things like Lasguns or Multilasers are all down to illogical reasons.
The Bolter is a Holy Instrument. Close Combat is honourable. Dying for the Emperor instead of tactically withdrawing is the superior tactical option.

Zealots don't need logic when Divine Sanction is their default.

It’s Ritual, isn’t it.

It’s the same ritualistic understanding of technology.

You can make Wonder Weapon A by following the held plans for Wonder Weapon A, and Wonder Weapon B by following the held plans for Wonder Weapon B.

But even if, to our modern more curious minds, You Shall Not Mix Those Designs.

A Space Marine carries his Bolter because that’s his Ritual Weapon. There’s all cants and prayers and rituals about it. It’s part of him, his identity and his warrior culture. And to many within The Imperium, a sign of status.

That there may, arguably, be weapons better suited just….doesnt come into it. A Space Marine carries a Bolter due to ritual and tradition. That’s the common sense of The Imperium.

And it’s worked out pretty well for the past 10,000 years.

Exactly. It's like the scene in Kingdom of Heaven when one of the Templars declares that "An army of Jesus Christ bearing his holy cross cannot be beaten", and then the Crusaders proceed to lose the Battle of Hattin like half an hour later (in film time of course).

Whenever anyone argues that the Crusaders can't leave water and march to meet Saladin, they are met with "Blasphemy" and "God wills it" as responses.
That's the level of fanaticism and zealotry that is baked into every single Imperial institution, even the Astartes.

The Boltgun is a holy instrument of the Emperor's Angels, designed by His very hand for them to smite the foes of the Imperium. It's not flowery language, it is a legitimate belief that a Bolter in the hands of an Astartes is the wrath of the God-Emperor given form.

Same reason as the Sisters stick to their holy trinity. Tradition. Ritual. Rote.

The weapons are symbols of faith, purpose and fidelity.

As for the Power Pack? That’s there to power the power armour, and approved accoutrements. Not just anything that comes to hand.

It’s the same reason Cawl dusted off/designed new Bolters. Not new firearms. New Bolters.

 Gert wrote:
Exactly. It's like the scene in Kingdom of Heaven when one of the Templars declares that "An army of Jesus Christ bearing his holy cross cannot be beaten", and then the Crusaders proceed to lose the Battle of Hattin like half an hour later (in film time of course).

Whenever anyone argues that the Crusaders can't leave water and march to meet Saladin, they are met with "Blasphemy" and "God wills it" as responses.
That's the level of fanaticism and zealotry that is baked into every single Imperial institution, even the Astartes.

The Boltgun is a holy instrument of the Emperor's Angels, designed by His very hand for them to smite the foes of the Imperium. It's not flowery language, it is a legitimate belief that a Bolter in the hands of an Astartes is the wrath of the God-Emperor given form.

Even the Custodes carry bolters in their Guardian Spears, and according to the fluff, they've nee lost a battle.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Same reason as the Sisters stick to their holy trinity. Tradition. Ritual. Rote.

The weapons are symbols of faith, purpose and fidelity.

As for the Power Pack? That’s there to power the power armour, and approved accoutrements. Not just anything that comes to hand.

It’s the same reason Cawl dusted off/designed new Bolters. Not new firearms. New Bolters.

And religion Is used to control a galaxy spanning empire. So giving people something and saying this is holy, you use it because you are special and allowed to use the special thing. It’s all part of the indoctrination. Their toilet roll is probably blessed by someone before it gets shipped.

We thank the Empror for this holy paper with which we wipe our blessed bottoms.

One thing I would like to point out is that in Dawn of War 2, when Tarkus becomes the traitor, he will start quoting the Codex Astartes when fighting the player's party. Tarkus claims that "Space Marines will master all weapons and all battlefields" to justify him using the Chaos-corrupted Bolter.

However, the fact it was written by G-Man can mean that Space Marines are encouraged to adapt and improvise their weapons (without turning to Chaos, of course) to suit their situations. This definitely should include using lasguns to shoot at Hormagaunts and Termagants, and reserve bolter rounds for bigger targets like Warriors or Ravenors. Like, Hormagaunts and Termagants are specifically designed to waste enemy munition, so it doesn't make sense to be killing them with expensive bolters all the time.


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 Gert wrote:
Exactly. It's like the scene in Kingdom of Heaven when one of the Templars declares that "An army of Jesus Christ bearing his holy cross cannot be beaten", and then the Crusaders proceed to lose the Battle of Hattin like half an hour later (in film time of course).

Whenever anyone argues that the Crusaders can't leave water and march to meet Saladin, they are met with "Blasphemy" and "God wills it" as responses.
That's the level of fanaticism and zealotry that is baked into every single Imperial institution, even the Astartes.

The Boltgun is a holy instrument of the Emperor's Angels, designed by His very hand for them to smite the foes of the Imperium. It's not flowery language, it is a legitimate belief that a Bolter in the hands of an Astartes is the wrath of the God-Emperor given form.

Kingdom of Haven is a very poor representation of history. I don't mind using misconceptions and memes to create fictional settings. However, there is a fine line between silly fun and stupidly frustrating.

Space Marines are not fanatical when it comes to the Imperial Creed, except the Black Templar, and when they are portrayed by bad writers. They are practical and very realistic when it comes to warfare. They make quotes to venerate the Emperor to boost morale, much like how real-life soldiers would still pray to God/Yahweh/Allah for protection in battle or better afterlife after murdering for secular causes, but the idea of expecting favor from the Emperor or modern-day deities for doing this or that is nonsensical. Protecting the Emperor's subjects with lasguns is still more glorious than running out of bolter ammo and letting the Orks slaughter them.

I never said it was accurate to history, I said that scene is what you should be expecting when you're faced with the illogical fanaticism of the Imperium.

Just because Astartes largely don't view the Emperor as a God, he is still venerated by them as the father/destined leader/shepherd of Mankind. You don't have to be religious to be a fanatic or a zealot.

And again, Astartes are the epitome of "Warrior Spirit". If the Bolter runs dry, they fight with their chainsword or blade, if that breaks they fight with their fists. "Only In Death Does Duty End" isn't just flowery words to Astartes, it's their creed and ethos by which they live.

The argument from tradition doesn't make sense because both bolters and lasguns were available at the creation of the space marine legions. If lasguns were better weapons for them then the Emperor would have outfitted them with lasguns from the start. Bolters just perform better as a fact of the setting; they only became "sacred" because the brilliant inventor-warlord who founded the Imperium considered them the optimal gun for killing aliens. The Guard doesn't use them for the same reason that Kasrkins don't have power armor.

Also like every month GW invents a new space marine unit with a gun that never existed before, so the idea that they're averse to adopting new weapons is bizarre to me. They apparently invent more new guns than the Tau do.

Right, but look at the purpose of Astartes.

Shock And Awe turned up to Eleventy.

Not just built and armoured to make an absolute mockery of your small arms fire, but armed in a way that make such a firefight ludicrously one sided.

And they’re not even trying to be stealthy. Giants of myth clad in near impenetrable armour and of ridiculous resilience should your shot happen to get them in the relative weak spot.

All the time your comrades are just….sort of exploding around you. At an increasing pace as the range closes and they just won’t stop coming and the inevitable calculus of attrition falls against you and OH MY THAT ONE JUST PELVIC THRUSTED HIS WAY THROUGH A WALL

I now await Hellebores inevitable counter that somehow Astartes are in fact Sizeable Ladies Chemises, despite all sources pointing to them being horrifying foes, if not actually invincible ones.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Right, but look at the purpose of Astartes.

Shock And Awe turned up to Eleventy.

Not just built and armoured to make an absolute mockery of your small arms fire, but armed in a way that make such a firefight ludicrously one sided.

And they’re not even trying to be stealthy. Giants of myth clad in near impenetrable armour and of ridiculous resilience should your shot happen to get them in the relative weak spot.

All the time your comrades are just….sort of exploding around you. At an increasing pace as the range closes and they just won’t stop coming and the inevitable calculus of attrition falls against you and OH MY THAT ONE JUST PELVIC THRUSTED HIS WAY THROUGH A WALL

I now await Hellebores inevitable counter that somehow Astartes are in fact Sizeable Ladies Chemises, despite all sources pointing to them being horrifying foes, if not actually invincible ones.

Im not sure when the retcon happened, but i think in older lore volkites were intended to be the standard issue service rifle for Marines at the onset of the Great crusade but due to production limitations and the budget, they went for boltguns instead

Horus Heresy 1st Edition introduced Volkite and the lore for that

And the Volkite is well suited to the same purpose. Kills rapidly and nastily, and your dying mates might just take you with them as they burst into radioactive flame.

Bloody love Volkite, me!

I heard somewhere in the old fluff that it was theorised Boltguns were initially designed to combat Orks.

In the old editions orks had bolters

I think it’s simply that sample marines are capable of using a powerful weapon like the bolter as easily as a guardsman can use a lasgun. If not easier.

Where as a blower or poly pistol isn’t a suitable weapon for the general infantry.

And those humans that have them as a symbol of rank or other achievement as much as combat effectiveness.

Going all the way back to Confrontation, the precursor to Necromunda serialised in White Dwarf, the Bolter was presented as a Prestige Weapon.

Loud, flashy, immensely destructive for its size. All outweighed the practical difficulties of keeping one maintained and ammo’d up* in places such as the Underhive.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Going all the way back to Confrontation, the precursor to Necromunda serialised in White Dwarf, the Bolter was presented as a Prestige Weapon.

Loud, flashy, immensely destructive for its size. All outweighed the practical difficulties of keeping one maintained and ammo’d up* in places such as the Underhive.

Yeah I really liked the original low tech aspect of necromunda where the worst weapons in 40K were high end weapons in the underhive where stub pistols and knives were the norm.

With all the talk of the bolter being about tradition and holy and so on it makes you wonder why it's still the go to weapon for CSM as well. They have some additional special weapons, but the bolter is still the Standard issue rifle apparently. So, there must be some combat quality to it and logistics that aren't that hard to support (though I'm in the Camp of "there must be a lot of not that chaotic Chaos recruitment worlds and forgeworlds in the eye of Terror, it can't be all tentacles and exploding heads all the time").

Well, they are 10,000 year old veterans. If you're a soldier who used a particular weapon system for 10,000 years you're going to still want to use that weapon because it's what you know, its probably been infused with demonic power so it probably hits harder than most other weapons and might even have some symbiotic bond because the warp is weird like that.

It's like having a phone; sure you can ditch your phone for the fancy new model, but you like your "antiquated" model of phone and don't want to deal with the new UI or idiosyncrasies that model has. Especially when the "advanced" model actually performs worse than your old phone and has a bunch of features you don't even want or need and is probably just a ploy to harvest your data to sell to ad companies anyway.

Pride, Spite, Habit?

They remain weapons of considerable prestige, no matter who is wielding them.

It’s the weapon you were issued with, quite possibly pre-Heresy, and for more recent converts, most definitely pre-turncoat. Is it not just to use the weapons your false god gave you to strike down his lapdogs?

As above, that’s been your main sidearm for as long as you can remember. For some, you literally cannot put it down. Also, your squad tactics are based around it and its traits. Sure, you could swap it out for say, Heavy Stubber. But that’s a different weapon, with different benefits and drawbacks - including at least the argument other Traitor Marines might look down on your for substituting your Bolter for a lesser weapon.

I think the out of universe reason is just faction identity and not having to put a load of options on the sprue or in the rules.

But I imagine that renegade Space Marines might end up falling back on all sorts of weapons as their supply lines break down - they're hardly gonna skip out on a battle because they're out of ammo just because bolter shells are hard to source. I'd imagine a fair few of them would have "back up" las weapons due to the ease of resupply - all they need is an energy source and a fire will do in a pinch. Their armour could probably power a hotshot las anyway with some minor modification and that's not a million miles away from a bolter in terms of damage output.

I wanna do a Blackshield unit in scavenged armour with scavenged suped up las weapons now!

I think it would have been interesting if the Traitor marines used volkite weapons and other superior tech from the Heresy. One of the themes of 40k is that things get worse over time, including technology and especially weaponry.

The Ad Mech aren't against innovation because they are stupid, they are against it because they know that literally nothing they can make can ever eclipse what humanity achieved during the Dark Age of Technology, so why even bother?

The traitor marines should have been a reflection of that; ancient, spiteful warriors from the past armed with some old lost technology that humanity wished it had but can't use now because it's been thoroughly corrupted by the warp.
They don't use "new" equipment out of sheer contempt and because they know what they have is much better. It also would have made them actual threats instead of just Loyalist Marine punching bags.
That would have been suitably grim dark and bleak.
But nah, give them decrepit looking bolters because worst marines I guess.

Difficulty there is the Dark Mechanicum. The impression I get is that unless you’re a serious mover and shaker, every supply run is a new negotiation and bargain. And it’s the DM that hold most of the cards there. You want something only they can reliably provide, but they’ve a choice in who they bargain with and the prices they charge.

And from there the reality of supply and demand occurs.

I don’t doubt the DM could equip your force with really nice weapons. But is it worth that price, when you can stick with maintaining, replacing and reloading your Bolters for a lower price and/or for a longer period?

There may even be a curious balance between Warbands and forces of wildly varying sizes.

A small warband simply may not have the readies to pay to equip everyone with Really Fancy Guns. And for something like a Legion force? It’s still ruinously expensive.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Difficulty there is the Dark Mechanicum. The impression I get is that unless you’re a serious mover and shaker, every supply run is a new negotiation and bargain. And it’s the DM that hold most of the cards there. You want something only they can reliably provide, but they’ve a choice in who they bargain with and the prices they charge.

And from there the reality of supply and demand occurs.

I don’t doubt the DM could equip your force with really nice weapons. But is it worth that price, when you can stick with maintaining, replacing and reloading your Bolters for a lower price and/or for a longer period?

There may even be a curious balance between Warbands and forces of wildly varying sizes.

A small warband simply may not have the readies to pay to equip everyone with Really Fancy Guns. And for something like a Legion force? It’s still ruinously expensive.

The Soul Hunter Night Lords series kinda addresses this too.
Much of their raiding seemed to be for supplies in the early going of the first book.

Not using lasguns is even less sensical for the chaos marines given their lack of logistical support.

 Hellebore wrote:
Not using lasguns is even less sensical for the chaos marines given their lack of logistical support.

Except for the 1000 Sons and their magical bolters.

 Quixote wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Not using lasguns is even less sensical for the chaos marines given their lack of logistical support.

Except for the 1000 Sons and their magical bolters.

that is true, 1ksons are basically space marine wraithguard, so they fire spirit energy.

But given that chaos marines have to raid the imperium a lot just for resources, it would be far, far, FAR easier for them to get their hands on lasguns, components and batteries than bolter rounds...

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: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.

My understanding is that the modal Space Marine action is this: Rebellion on an imperial world, the rogue governer's forces are deeply entrenched and holding off the loyalist IG in a bloody stalemate. A strike crusier shows up, deploys a company via thunderhawk and drop pod directly to the governor's palace, they crush his household guard and kill him. Fin.

Astartes are tougher and stronger and blah blah blah but the reason 10 or a hundred or even a full chapter can be so valuable is that they can arrive exactly at the crisis point.

Hellebore wrote:

 Quixote wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Not using lasguns is even less sensical for the chaos marines given their lack of logistical support.

Except for the 1000 Sons and their magical bolters.

that is true, 1ksons are basically space marine wraithguard, so they fire spirit energy.

But given that chaos marines have to raid the imperium a lot just for resources, it would be far, far, FAR easier for them to get their hands on lasguns, components and batteries than bolter rounds...

The 40k universe in general, but especially the Imperium and Chaos, are insane. The people are all inundated with propaganda, relgious zeal, drugs, hypnosis, and even literal demonic possession. I think that aside from just basic plot necessity, that explains some of the questionable choices they make.