Warhammer Warhammer General discussion thread: Now with 100% more Space Marines

[Zachowon]

I think question here should be what effect will Guilliman's actions have on the Imperium. If something is treason, but preserves the state, then it is not a treason - say, removing an incompetent Emperor (see: Byzantine Empire and its dozens of rebellions).

Which is what he did by removing the high lords of Terra

 

[Battlegrinder]

Considering that his actions prevented not just him but Sanguinius and Johnson from even really attempting to make it to Terra, yes.

That doesn't make it treason, nor is "you were cut off from the outside and decided to start Imperium 2: This time with Romans" treasonous in and of itself. You keep evaluating events based on just a particular viewpoint of what happened without any context.

He voided the Edict of Nikaea without the authority to do so; that being treason by the Emperor's own command (although others did this one as well).

That's just grasping at straws. By that logic, every loyalist primarch is a traitor and Guilliman was right to distrust their authority.

He usurped the High Lords of Terra and the Imperium in direct violation of his own decree and without any legal authority to do so; that is again treason.

He was made Imperial regent by the emperor himself, he absolutely had legal authority to do that.

so was massively the wrong call. If Vulkan hadn't popped up at the eleventh hour, the Imperium would have fallen to the Beast because of Guilliman's "reforms".

And if hadn't made them, it might have fallen apart years before when some would-be Vandire came about. You can't simply assert that your hypothetical alternative system would work better without evidence, and certainly not when the only evidence is that both systems are defective.

As for a unified command structure going bad; well when it can only be created by individuals of extraordinary power deciding to ignore the rules to build one; I would posit that you are conflating cause and effect.

There was no rule saying you can't be the head of the church and head of the administrative state when Goge came about.

He absolutely had the power to do that post Heresy. The Mechanicum was in blatant violation of the Treaty of Olympus and he had six other Primarchs by his side along with nine legions against an enemy that was self destructing. What he should have done was sent the full might of the Imperium in Sol against Mars, purge the traitors, and then install Vulkan as the new Fabricator General with orders to reform the cog boys; at the time he had the force, authority, and prestige to make it stick. Instead he decided that embracing heretek traitors was a much better idea.

I don't recall any treaty violations on the part of Mars (if you're referring to the fact that some of them went traitor....well, the Imperium started that and Imperial traitors attacked Mars first. I think that'd be a hard sell). He also didn't have 9 legions. He had maybe three or 4, plus the battered remnants of 5 more, and of those 6 primarchs none of them trusted the others. Starting a war with the admech (who are, contrary to your belief, not just on Mars but have holdings throughout the imperium) woyld just be starting a second civil war while the last one was still ongoing, plus myriad other threats that had to be dealt with. That's a really stupid idea.

Especially seeing as he decided to totally ignore that little detail for his own empire and legion.

No, he didn't. The Ultramarines and thier successors are at worst abusing a few technicalities, not outright breaking any of the rules.

That's what the Primaris are. He ordered them built, ordered that only he could authorize their deployment, and that he was their commander. The entire Primaris project was multiple kinds of treason. But then, again, Guilliman

And your evidence that his intent on creating them was to build a legion strength force answerable only to him would be....? Because I don't recall that being mentioned in the codex or dark Imperium.

 

[Zachowon]

He made a bunch of space marines that HE GAVE TO ALL CHAPTERS.
You would have a point if he kept them all to himself but he made it to make marines even stronger and faster
He did that.

 

[Zachowon]

So a popular youtuber that makes 40k Music, and does a lot of the soundtracks for TTS, their new idol series are of the Chaos gods, each has the own, and each has their own type of Music.

If you think WAP is sexual, Watch the Slaanesh idol.

Khorne sings country, well his idol.

Tzeentch is well..His is jazz like.

Nurlge is pop and has a goo girl as an idol.

 

[PsihoKekec]

The Fabstodes are still the best idols

 

[Battlegrinder]

So, the 9th edition rules for FW models are out. My copy hasn't arrived yet, but the general tune I've heard is that FW stuff is getting toned down a tiny bit, but also being reworked to work with the rules for it's core faction a bit better. IE, FW dreads now share most of the same basic rules and mechanics as codex dreads, etc. Not sure if they fixed the issue with FW knights being almost totally disconnected from the rules of the knight codex, we'll have to see.

Per reviews, the knight Porphyrion has apparently not recovered from it's savage and totally unwarranted 2019 nerfing, but the cost on it went down a bit. It's still probably not worth it's points, but it's not like was last year where the only reason to bring one was "damnit, I spent $400 on this I'm going to use it!"

And per the norms of contemporary 40k, they moved a bunch of guys and characters that don't have models or no longer have models into legends. My main man Lias Issodon made it through unscatched and with a bit of a price drop to boot, and the land raider Helios also seems to be in the same boat.

 

[Tyzuris]

Does the thousand marines limit of CA count within it the vehicle crews, artillery, etc... of the chapter?

 

[Battlegrinder]

Does the thousand marines limit of CA count within it the vehicle crews, artillery, etc... of the chapter?

No. The thousands marine limit (really 900 marine limit, there's no cap on the number of scouts) only counts line infantry. Officers, command sqauds, pilots, specialists personnel like librarians and techmarines, those don't count.

 

[Tyzuris]

No. The thousands marine limit (really 900 marine limit, there's no cap on the number of scouts) only counts line infantry. Officers, command sqauds, pilots, specialists personnel like librarians and techmarines, those don't count.

So a more realistic size for a Chapter should be somewhere around a few thousand Astartes in that case considering US Army Brigade Combat teams have nine infantry companies like Astartes chapters yet they are much larger than the 1000+ Astartes chapters at about 4500 soldiers strong.

 

[Battlegrinder]

So a more realistic size for a Chapter should be somewhere around a few thousand Astartes in that case considering US Army Brigade Combat teams have nine infantry companies like Astartes chapters yet they are much larger than the 1000+ Astartes chapters at about 4500 soldiers strong.

Yes and no. Chapters will have a vast number of support personnel, but only a small number of marines. Human chapter serfs fill the vast majority of the support roles within a chapter, even at full strength I think there's only ~1500 actual astartes in the chapter.

 

[Zachowon]

I gotta say. Stringstorm does a great job.

Also, I am tempted to commit to a 40k imperial guard cosplay as soon as I get back to the states. CADIAS stands and all thatr

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

Yes and no. Chapters will have a vast number of support personnel, but only a small number of marines. Human chapter serfs fill the vast majority of the support roles within a chapter, even at full strength I think there's only ~1500 actual astartes in the chapter.

Dont we see that Marines are the ones driving the tanks and speeders and such?

 

[Hlaalu Agent]

Dont we see that Marines are the ones driving the tanks and speeders and such?

I thought they needed some peons to be their crew? Or is it somehow all of those bendy-men in armour.

 

[Morphic Tide]

Dont we see that Marines are the ones driving the tanks and speeders and such?

It's stuff like basic maintenance of mass equipment, the gruntwork aspects of operating the ships, and generally any task where being an Astartes is a negligible impact. Everything on the ground is Astartes when speaking of the Chapter proper, though some certainly have Chapter Serfs behaving as pocket regiments of Guardsmen.

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

It's stuff like basic maintenance of mass equipment, the gruntwork aspects of operating the ships, and generally any task where being an Astartes is a negligible impact. Everything on the ground is Astartes when speaking of the Chapter proper, though some certainly have Chapter Serfs behaving as pocket regiments of Guardsmen.

Then you'd still need thousands more Astartes just to operate all their field equipment, you'd think.

 

[Hlaalu Agent]

Then you'd still need thousands more Astartes just to operate all their field equipment, you'd think.

Ultramarines: laughs in auxilia.

 

[Morphic Tide]

Then you'd still need thousands more Astartes just to operate all their field equipment, you'd think.

The field equipment doesn't have long-ranged artillery or much in the way of on the ground logistics, since Codex-based doctrine is for Astartes to be shock assault forces rather than self-contained campaign troops.

 

[Tyzuris]

Then you'd still need thousands more Astartes just to operate all their field equipment, you'd think.

And basically even most support functions like logistics on field level should be handled by Astartes. Basically imagine deploying Astartes to a deathworld hellhole unaugmented humans can't survive in. So that means non-Astartes logistics couldn't follow up with the Astartes fighting force which leads to them having to pull out as they spend all ammunition, etc... So that's why relying on Chapter serfs is a bad thing. An army requires logistics to operate well, and infantry Astartes would need logistics Astartes to suppor them so they can follow them into battle providing support and basically keep up with them given the stamina and speed of Astartes.

Basically here is how I would organize an Astartes chapter:

1x HQ Battalion:

Headquarters​

Communications company​

Radio Company​

Intel handling company​

​

3x Combat battalion:

Battalion HQ​

3 Astartes infantry companies​

BN artillery group consisting of howitzers, rocket launchers and mortars​

BN support company consisting of communications, medical, supply and repair crews.​

Air-defense platoon​

​

Recon battalion:

Consists of three companies of Vanguard Astartes supported by comms, medical, supply and repair crews.​

​

Artillery battalion:

Consists of a few batteries of artillery meant to support the individual battalions and their needed support.​

​

Chapter Support battalion:

A few companies specialized in such things as supplying the Chapter, repairing Chapter equipment, providing medical aid, etc...​

​

Combat Engineer battalion:

A few companies some specializing in getting rid of obstacles made by enemies and creating obstacles for enemies, destroying infrastructure the enemy needs, specialization in explosives and disarming them.​

​

Armoured battalion:

Consists of the heavy armour, etc... companies that can be subordinated to particular forces within the chapter as needed.​

​

Aviation group:

Consists of all forces operating flying equipment.​

​

The totals for this force without the aviation group could be somewhere around 6000-7000 region.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Dont we see that Marines are the ones driving the tanks and speeders and such?

Then you'd still need thousands more Astartes just to operate all their field equipment, you'd think.

Marines operate all the vehicles, but I think you're overestimating how many vehicles they have. From what I can find on a quick search, the ultramarines (who are almost certainly better off than the average chapter) have about 10 land raiders, 25 or so predators, 50 or so rhinos, and then a vaguely defined number of other ground vechiles like hunters, land speeders, and a small air wing. They almost certainly don't have more of the specialist vehicles than they do predators, however. Most of those vehicles have a a crew of 2, and I think the biggest ones like the raiders don't have more than 4 or 5, so you're only looking a a few hundred more marines, not thousands.

It's stuff like basic maintenance of mass equipment, the gruntwork aspects of operating the ships, and generally any task where being an Astartes is a negligible impact. Everything on the ground is Astartes when speaking of the Chapter proper, though some certainly have Chapter Serfs behaving as pocket regiments of Guardsmen.

That's not quite the case. Chapter serfs are trained to fight, but they're not typically employed as infantry by the marines, the only times they'll see action is when they're forced to defend the chapter's ships or bases from hostiles.

And basically even most support functions like logistics on field level should be handled by Astartes. Basically imagine deploying Astartes to a deathworld hellhole unaugmented humans can't survive in. So that means non-Astartes logistics couldn't follow up with the Astartes fighting force which leads to them having to pull out as they spend all ammunition, etc... So that's why relying on Chapter serfs is a bad thing. An army requires logistics to operate well, and infantry Astartes would need logistics Astartes to suppor them so they can follow them into battle providing support and basically keep up with them given the stamina and speed of Astartes.

Marines don't normally set up forward bases and the like on the surface, they handle resupply, repair, etc back on the ship. They also don't normally fight like that for extended periods, marines are a speartip, elite strike force, they try not to bog themselves down in conventional warfare because they don't have the numbers for it (if you ever have the time, you should listen to Arch Warhammer's seige of Vraks series, most of is about the IG, but marines do show up and you get a clear sense of how they prefer to operate).

Basically here is how I would organize an Astartes chapter:

The problem with that is those forces are actually way too big. Remember, for most engagements in 40k, a single company of a hundred marines + attached specialists is more than sufficient, and it's not uncommon for a company to split up into two smaller formations tactically. One of your battalions would be ludicrously overkill for nearly every battle.

It's also too big in the sense the imperium does not the marines to have this kind of power at their disposal, the secessionist forces as Badab had about that number of marines at their disposal, which turned out really badly when they went sorta traitor and the imperium had to go dig them out (and that was with several, not fully united secessionist chapters, not a single force with unified command). Remember, most of the limits the marines have placed upon them exist for political reasons, not practical ones.

 

[Zachowon]

I will stick to my guard who are more basic and realistically organized