Thread 96834842

Does it piss anyone else off how people think the Guard is just disposable chaff? They're not the most elite forces the Imperium has but they're hardly cannon fodder, in fact I'd say they're the most elite common infantry of any faction in the setting.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "How can Guardsmen be as elite as Aspect Warriors/Crisis Suits/Ork Nobs?" But that's not the average soldier of those factions. A Guardsmen isn't going to be fighting 1 to 1 versus an Aspect Warrior or a Crisis Suit or an Ork Nob, they're going to be fighting Guardians, Firewarriors, and Boyz instead, the common chaff of those factions. Likewise with all the other factions as well.

>>96834842 (OP)
>that's not the average soldier of those factions.
Aspect Warriors literally are the average soldiers of their faction. Guardians are not soldiers, they're citizen militia raised in times of need to defend the craftworld.

>>96834923
>Guardians are not soldiers, they're citizen militia raised in times of need to defend the craftworld.
Which means that they're going to compose the majority of the craftworld's military any time that craftworld is attacked. And they get attacked a lot.

>>96834842 (OP)
Skitarii, Boyz, Kabalites, Necron Warriors, and Hearthkyn are for sure more elite than Guardsmen. Fire Warriors and Guardians are about on par.

>>96834842 (OP)
Nah, I think it's funny.

Everyone complains about space marines getting flanderized but guardsmen going from chaff that needed preachers and commisars to motivate them into combat, using children and suicide bombers, slowly getting turned into heckin epic tactical veterans was a total waste.

>>96835128
The Commissars aren't there to motivate the troops, they're there to to keep them from being used recklessly in brave but suicidal charges.

>>96835135
reddit

>>96835135
no

>>96835163
Lore > Tabletop rules

>>96834842 (OP)
Alright. Let me review T'au vs Imperial Guard lore from
"Blades of Damocles" and the Farsight Enclaves codex supplement
"Kauyon" and especially "Montka"

The average engagement between fire warriors and guardsmen ends with fire warriors killing a tremendous number of guardsmen. I have a quote here that says that during the Damocles Crusade, the guardsmen killed so many ELITE CATACHAN Jungle Fighters that the T'au were running out of ammo.
In the second Agrellan campaign, the guardsmen used 18th-century wave tactics against the T'au firing positions. By the time the war concluded, more than half of the billions-strong Imperial guard force was lost.

The only reversal of this is whenever the Tempestus Scions are involved. The Scions chew through Tau fire warriors in the Kill Team material.

>>96835191
The T'au killed so many*

>>96835164
>something some novelist made up is more relevant than the core part of the ip
ok

>>96835191
Yeah but they're still wimpy though, melee combat is where men go to fight.

>>96834842 (OP)
>>96835208
Yeah, a bunch of wimpy Tau can kill guardsmen in droves. If the Tau infantry are wiping out your infantry to that extent, then guardsmen are not, as OP says
>the most elite common infantry of any action in the setting.

And if you don't want to count Fire Warriors for whatever arbitrary reason, then you can also count Necron Warriors, who are stronger and tougher than guardsmen in melee, have better guns, and are harder to kill.

>>96834842 (OP)
>whines about guard being elite
>posts coomer bait of a navy voidsmen

you should start by actually reading some books.

>>96834842 (OP)
Not that Abnett is the only authority, but I liked the angle he went with in the first Gaunt's Ghosts novel. Where it basically portrayed guardsmen as about on par with modern human military in terms of training. But its entirely up to the commander in charge how expendable they make the guard. Some Generals will spend guardsmen like pennies and others like dollars, sort of thing. Gaunt gained a lot of loyalty from trying to spend his men as dearly as possible, but the more important Generals didn't necessarily feel the same way.

>>96835135
>they're there to to keep them from being used recklessly in brave but suicidal charges
I think you've gotten fluff for Commissars in Kreig units mixed up with Commissars in general.

Yes.

Any being truly worthy of a God Emperor title would have transformed their entire population into their children, into primarchs, but if he had turned all of Earth into a population of primarchs, the entire cosmos would be totally conquered within 2 chapters, and you'd have nothing to moan about.

As we saw in the first nail of the coffin, with the initial betrayal of the thunderwarriors, the writers aren't up to the task of imbuing the emperor with the amount of charisma needed to fully and wholly recruit every being and saving every soul, reducing the initial grand, if whimsical, scope of their story from a true messiah level portrayal of miraculous levels of science-wartime leadership and reverting it to the far easier slapstick minutiae of 'ok lets just kill everything'. It is a genre that caters to the understandably retarded monkeys of this planet, while leaving the more benevolent warmongers wishing for more.

At the very, very least, the emperor would have given every human the ability to regenerate from life ending wounds, but uhh, I guess that isn't grimdank enough to sell plastic figures to manchildren.

>>96834842 (OP)
Ok retard

>>96835564
I agree that the horus heresy books make the emperor into a huge moron, to the point where his failure is no longer tragic, but the explanation that all the various transhuman methods are too resource intensive to deploy on a wide scale and make civil wars more destructive is internally consistent.

>>96834842 (OP)
I get your issue with the guard, but why didn't you use a picture of the imperial guard for your post?

>>96834842 (OP)
no, I believe quality of guardsmen fluctuates by planet and the needs of nearby crusades. Cadia, Catachan, Krieg and where ever a guy who roles well recruits from make great guardsmen, at least of good quality. High fitness standards, high marksmen scores, technical skills good environmental awareness, aware and great morale.
When times are desperate, masses get drafted from whatever stable population center they can get, drilled for a few weeks in the transport hold or makeshift training center, then thrown out with a commissar at the back in human wave attacks.

>>96835473
>navy voidsmen
That's a 30k era Solar Auxiliary.

>>96834842 (OP)
How did your last game with the guard go? Care to show your painted minis?

>>96835750
Why exactly do they no longer have these guys in 40k? is there an in-universe explanation?

Because that looks like it might just as well be a 40k-era space suit. Vac suit. Void suit, whatever you want to call it.

>>96834842 (OP)
>how people think the Guard is just disposable chaff
40k is junk fiction. They can be both, even talking about the same regiment, purely based on the writer's feelings.

>>96834842 (OP)
Why should I care about what a company says in their product adverts (40k lore) designed to encourage sales? Do you get upset at other made up adverts, like the colour of Ronald McDonald's hair? It's not real, get a life and spend your precious time focussed on more important things.

>>96835886
I don't know the real reason but if I had to guess a lot of tech that made the Solar Auxilia such an effective force is gone.
I will also blame the reintroduction of religion to the Imperium.

>>96835886
No reason, solar aux was the pet project of one of the FW sculptors

>>96834842 (OP)
>they're going to be fighting Guardians, Firewarriors, and Boyz instead, the common chaff of those factions

So the chaff fights the chaff. Seems pretty clear to me.

>>96834842 (OP)
Your special forces waifu is not representative of the average shitter with a flak jacket and a lasgun. No, they're not more elite than a guardian, or a space dwarf, or any dark eldar, or boyz, or necron warriors, or anyone really except for chaos cultists and genestealer cultists. You could argue they're similar to fire warriors but fire warriors are definitely better equipped and most likely better trained except vs elite regiments, which are already mostly outliers.

>>96834935
By that logic Guard is not the common infantry of the Imperium, the various planetary defence forces and local militia are.
>any time that craftworld is attacked
So basically never. And, again, they're still militia, not soldiers.

>>96835128
>that needed preachers and commisars to motivate them
Space Marines got chaplains, who basically fill both of these roles.
>slowly getting turned into heckin epic tactical veterans
Just about all the major regiments have been masters of their craft since forever. Cadians been born and bred to be soldiers since childhood. Catachans are all hardened jungle fighters from a hostile world where you sink or swim. Tallarn masters of mobile warfare and flanking.

>>96835886
>Why exactly do they no longer have these guys in 40k?
Because GW wants to keep the model lines separate, which is why they had to make whole new Guard tanks for 30k and imported the old 40k drop pods into 30k, rather than having you use the new, nigh identical, 40k drop pods.
>in-universe
What say they're not still there? Reorganized into the Guard as void trooper regiments. GW just won't acknowledge them because that'd make Paul Marketing cry.
>>96836440
This. And FW couldn't be arsed to design proper Imperial Army, so now all of Imperial Army is Solar Auxilia and a token Legends PDF for Milita using whatever token units and rules the writers could be arsed to throw in there.

>>96834842 (OP)
40k as a whole has a problem with people framing the setting in a particular way. Imo when GW started pandering to this memetic view from the internet it became a bit stale and lost its bite.
You're wrong about power levels, but you're right about them not being common chaff.

>>96834842 (OP)
>but they're hardly cannon fodder
That is both their function on the tabletop and their depiction in the lore. Yes, they are cannon fodder, they are what the Imperium sends and expends to hold back the tide of far, far worse threats like the Tyranids and Chaos. They aren't just sub-elite, Guardsmen are objectively worse than the basic units of other factions.
>Gaunts have massive move rates and charges, better WS
>Boyz have S/T4 and better WS
>Guardians are literally Tempestus Scions but better Ld and wargear
>Fire Warriors are better BS and far better wargear
The only faction that would be deploying basic grunt infantry on par with Guardsmen would be Chaos (traitor guard) and GSC. GSC are perhaps the only faction that Guardsmen would actually be at a strong advantage against in a direct fight due to GSC having (lorewise) worse weapons and less tanks.
And of course, it's always Space Marines that save the day.

>>96835208
Yeah melee combat is so manly and cool. Shame you're never getting there, though.

The Imperial Guard is so cannon fodder they have a specific unit whose purpose is to shoot soldiers when they try to run to keep the others in line. Come the fuck on man

>>96835886
>Why exactly do they no longer have these guys in 40k? is there an in-universe explanation?
The Solar Aux was already using difficult-to-reproduce wargear even in the Great Crusade era, it was constantly having to downgrade from standard issue volkite then to more advanced lasgun patterns. Their lore paints a grim picture that by the time of the Heresy, they were already basically a dying breed within the Imperial Army due to manpower and supply issues. It's not much of a stretch of the imagination to guess that in the post-Siege solar system, there simply was not enough of their wargear left to salvage nor enough manpower left to rebuild the Solar Auxilia. So when Guilliman reformed the Imperial Army into the Imperial Guard, he likely just deleted the Solar Auxilia as a sub-branch entirely. It would have been nearly impossible to rebuild at that point, and furthermore, the Imperial Guard had been designed to avoid becoming too powerful on a regimental basis, so the Solar Aux with their combined arms stratagems would have been gutted regardless even if they were kept along.

>>96835191
Modern military sci-fi writers just kind of assume you can drop into a place and win through EPIC MANUEVER WARFARE while your dumb enemy hordes trip over each other because their commanders don't know how to fight an enemy that won't stand still.

Ironically, the game itself now punishes anyone who isn't running out onto le circles in the middle of the table because that looks bad on stream.

>>96837248
Even Cadians wield lasrifles and space suits shouldn't be that hard to come by in a world with vast space fleets prowling the stars. Sure, some of their fancy stuff might get downgraded more in line with the rest of the Guard, but I don't see why the troop type would go away. There's still plenty of void combat to be hand in the post-Heresy galaxy. And it's not like SA clashed too much with the Navy. For troops specialized in void combat, they're pretty light on the actual space part. Their only flyer is an up-gunned civilian light transport and they can't even use basic stuff like Dreadclaws that the Imperial Navy used as a boarding craft before ditching them. Not to forget that long rifles that limit your ability to fire on the move are not the best weapons for fighting in tight corridors of space stations and ships. Ah, but who am I to tell FW how to do their job?

>>96835191
>Tau source doesn't make their enemies to be awesome and good at killing them
More news at 11.

>>96837286
Warzone Taros is primarily from an Imperial perspective and is generally the most well thought-out and detailed conflict between the Imperium and Tau. Unsurprisingly, the more you think about Tau vs Imperial Guard the more obvious it is that the latter just do not have the equipment or doctrine to effectively fight Tau outside of overwhelming numbers.

>>96837276
>but I don't see why the troop type would go away.
Why was the Imperial Army made into the Imperial Guard, a self-crippled joke that was intentionally designed by Guilliman to be the antithesis of self-sufficiency and combined arms doctrine? Shit happened. The Heresy broke the Imperium in a literal sense, destroying massive amounts of tech and ruining half a million planets forever, but it also broke the minds of the Imperium's leaders into paranoid idiots who saw in every army and every Navy ship a potential Chaos rebellion just waiting to happen (yes I am including Gully boy in that). The Imperium's fear of Chaos ironically weakened it tremendously against that very threat by denying its own forces the doctrines needed to win.

>>96837303
Yet somehow 19 regiments, 5 companies of marines and a fleet built around 12 capital ships was enough to push their shit in during the original Damocles Crusade, until writers had to make the Tau more awesome and have the kill billions of guardsmen and legions of titans. Or how they had to reverse the "titans are dumb, air superiority with combined arms is better" in order to sell all the big mechs the Tau were getting. I'm sure we won't be seeing any stories of Imperial Navy fighters taking out some supremacy suits to prove stupid big walkers don't belong on a sensible battlefield.

>>96837324
Sure, tit-for-tat, the authors throw random wins and losses around that are ridiculous and unearned for every faction, Warzone Damocles is a good example of the Tau getting a retarded win and I hate those books. Looking at things like Taros that are much more reasonable, thought out and gone to in-depth shows why the Imperial Guard are at a massive disadvantage against the Fire Caste even in an unbiased story though.

>>96837324
>Yet somehow 19 regiments, 5 companies of marines and a fleet built around 12 capital ships was enough to push their shit in during the original Damocles Crusade
Er... no? The Tau won the Damocles Crusade decisively and the Imperium's answer was "I guess we'll waste an ancient, irreplaceable superweapon to ignite space on fire (somehow) to stop them from expanding any further into Imperial space. That sure would have been useful against the Tyranids! lol"

>>96837340
That's the Second Damocles Crusade, common misconception not helped by even authors forgetting the difference sometimes, such as bringing Third Sphere Expansion equipment into First Damocles Crusade stories.

>>96837322
Are modern militaries crippled by Army, Navy and Air Force being separate branches and even within the Army having different regiments working together, rather than each regiment having everything they might ever need?
>fear of Chaos
Vast majority of rebellions are not Chaos related. And most of the time forces are not fighting anyone, so keeping them from causing more trouble is good. The Imperium has endured for 10,000 years under this system.

>>96837340
>Er... no?
I suggest you read the 3e codex, pg. 58 to 60. The Imperials reached the Tau core worlds until the resistance became too much and the reinforcements they were promised had not yet arrived. Then Kryptman ordered everyone back (to fight the Tyranids) and a hasty peace was negotiated.

>>96835886
I'm sure some guard look like that. there's a million different IG regiments (literally) and no two are alike

>>96837352
>Are modern militaries crippled by Army, Navy and Air Force being separate branches and even within the Army having different regiments working together, rather than each regiment having everything they might ever need?
Modern military branches cooperate and use combined arm doctrines, attaching companies to fighting forces to mix and match into a complete detachment that is prepared for most eventualities. The Imperium's military does not. Guilliman designed it that way on purpose to make sure that if an Armored Regiment goes traitor, it won't have any infantry support because all the infantry are in the infantry regiments somewhere else. It also won't have air support, or orbital support of course.
>Vast majority of rebellions are not Chaos related.
Guilliman didn't give a shit about secular rebellions. Read the fucking lore nogames.

>>96837488
>Modern military branches cooperate and use combined arm doctrines
As does the Imperial Guard. Imperial Guard codex contains units from infantry, artillery and armoured regiments, abhuman regiments, Officio Prefectum, Tempestus Scions, Adeptus Mechanicus, Imperial Navy, Adeptus Astra Telepathica, etc. all operating together. Regiments from different worlds are trained using the same manual to ensure that even if regiments come from different cultures, there's a unified framework that allows them to work together as a single army. What the separation ensures is that because they all have to cooperate, rarely does one person have full command of everything necessary to wage war (on the Imperium). Instead of one lord commanding all the ships, land forces and logistics necessary, there would need to be a larger conspiracy among several members all commanding a portion of that force.
>Guilliman didn't give a shit about secular rebellions.
Which would be weird considering during the Heresy, on top of all the Chaos corrupted forces, there were large numbers of opportunistic individuals seizing the moment to carve a small empire of their own across the galaxy. Rogue traders and lords in command of regions of space with armies loyal to them before the Imperium.
>Read the fucking lore nogames.
Strong words for someone who doesn't know basic codex lore.

>>96834842 (OP)
I don't know. I don't think about 40k lore, ever since the primaris situation. If GW doesn't respect or care about its own setting, how could I?

>>96834935
They dont get attacked a lot, especially since superior to everyone else except maybe necrons eldar fleet will fuck up anything that even comes close.
Guardians are more of a backline, logistical unit you dont want to actually use on the battlefield.
They are only widely used by Ulthwe to suplement their Seer Council spam.
Aspect Warriors are your basic bitch eldar soldier. Usually.

>>96837818
To be fair more Craftworlds have been forced to deploy more and more Guardians per engagement due to the galaxy becoming fucked but I think people underestimate Guardians anyway, they're better equipped, trained and physically superior to anything short of Space Marines despite being militia because Eldar and their technology is busted.

>>96837916
I don't know if I'd go as far to say anything short of space marines. They've got good ballistic skill and solid armor, and the heavy weapons platform helps, but largely they seem worse than Necrons in everything other than speed, and are more on par with Tau.

Which isn't a bad place to be for what is ultimately a civilian militia, but I think people also underestimate them because Eldar routinely job extra hard.

All you need to make guardians usable is giving them longer range weapons like lasguns.

>>96838138
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr5isFIY4Lc

>>96838138
I'm surprised the Eldar wouldn't just give them the sort of rifles that Eldar rangers use, so that they could have guardians primarily as fire support alongside a heavy weapon platform, while Dire Avengers had Shuriken Catapults for a more mobile assault.

>>96838138
>>96838207
The Shuriken Catapult is supposed to be this hyper-advanced magic gun that makes other races besides Necrons shit themselves and used to essentially just be better Boltguns but got nerfed a long, long time ago so we have this weird dichotomy of Eldar equipment honestly being mid at best on TT but second only to Necrons in lore.

>>96837324
>was enough to push their shit in
They didn't really push their shit in, they got stopped hard at the first major world they met, the other two worlds they had gotten to first had a population of thousands and tens of thousands respectively, they were literally tiny outposts with basically no population whatsoever.

>>96837260
>Modern military sci-fi writers just kind of assume you can drop into a place and win through EPIC MANUEVER WARFARE while your dumb enemy hordes trip over each other because their commanders don't know how to fight an enemy that won't stand still.
like desert storm?

>>96837387
>first border sept world
>"core worlds"
literally the first planet that wasn't some worthless mining outpost or recently conquered from the imperium and they stalled and ran away crying

>>96838676
>crusade wasn't stopped until it reached worlds of the first sphere of expansion
>all worlds before that were mere outposts
So what the fuck did the Tau do for the almost 1700 years the Second Sphere lasted if all the worlds from that era were mere outposts?

>>96838964
Space doesn't work like normal 2D territory and it certainly isn't a line. You can expand in every direction but that also means it's not particularly difficult to get to the 'core worlds' so to speak. As big as the Imperium is there's nothing particularly stopping any race from beelining straight to terra so long as they have FTL for example since there's so much distance between planets that you can basically just waltz between them.

>>96838676
>>96838900
Sy'l'kell had a population of seven million Tau. Pra'yen was a First Sphere sept world and a military outpost. Tau attempted to ambush the Imperium there, but were defeated. Dal'yth was a major sept world of the First Sphere and by the time the Imperials had pushed there, even they were concerned if they could continue, as reinforcements promised to them had not arrived (wonder where they were being sent instead...) It was hardly the Imperium just bombing a few outposts and being halted at the first sign of resistance.
>>96839075
Imperium was out to purge the Tau. Why leave enemy worlds behind from where they could launch counter-offensives to your flank? And you assume ships in FTL cannot be tracked. The fact the Necrons managed to land on Mars was a big deal, because they did it undetected. Which would imply detecting ships is possible.

>>96839178
>Sy'l'kell
An agri-world of no particular strategic value.

>>96839204
And still had more of a population than the "thousands and tens of thousands" claimed.

>>96839237
Either way they hadn't run into any significant world of any value and when they did they got stopped cold.

>>96834842 (OP)
The original lore of 40k was closer to cold war Russia: the real threat political power players are concerned about is within. The mutant lower classes, the psyker intellectuals and social climbers, and the heretic upper class rivals. The outer threats are something distant to throw endless waves of conscripts at. You save the good equipment for yourself and your inner guards to deter rebellions.

The public heroes of the guard are the commissars on propaganda posters and the elites of the guards are the generals who organize the artillery, tanks, and waves of men.The kasrkin and storm troopers are the professional soldiers, more like the VDV in this example, but there is no 'professional soldier hero' in the tactical-shooter modern sense. The faceless everyman is lost in the crowd forever, unless he briefly surfaces in a glimmering instant in some last stand before the news is buried under a hundred other reports the Administratum will edit into a propaganda narrative.

>>96837324
>Yet somehow 19 regiments, 5 companies of marines and a fleet built around 12 capital ships was enough to push their shit in during the original Damocles Crusade,

Let open Blades of Damocles.

It says that the Imperials besieged fight cities on Dal'yth Prime. Each of the five cities was besieged by an Imperial forces made up of tens of millions of guardsmen and that more millons were being developed from orbit.

How does this translate to 19 regiments?

>>96839178
>(wonder where they were being sent instead...)
They got lost in the Warp. They popped up later to help the Tau against Gorgon. Read your lore.

Moreover, read the lore about Damocles being a just as planned by Aun'Va and how the colony worlds past the Damocles Gulf were allowed to fall to bait the Imperials to attack Dal'yth Prime.

>>96834842 (OP)
but they need to lose every single engagement, otherwise the space marine fans won't feel special and that's the setting's main appeal
neat art by the way

>>96840642
>How does this translate to 19 regiments?
To be fair, the size of a regiment can differ drastically, up to millions of soldiers per regiment.

There's this one planet that the Imperium has been continuously attacking, and it's stated that hundreds of billions of Guardsmen have died trying to take it.

If we assume that there's 10,000 troops per regiment (about twice as much as the Tanith First and Only) then that would be twenty million Guard regiments....

...but that seems like a lot. So maybe they're sending million-man guard regiments instead, so only 200,000 guard regiments lost.

>>96834842 (OP)
People think guardsman are chaff because they are consistently depicted as such in the lore and the tabletop. Maybe if GW took the time to portray them as capable of more than being a massed firing line, they’d be more impressive? As it is they’re about as “elite” as WW1 conscript armies.
>>96834923
And they’re still better shots and fighters than fucking guardsman. OP’s “elite infantry” get outclassed by any given elven barista or farmer.

>>96834842 (OP)
>in fact I'd say they're the most elite common infantry of any faction in the setting
Thatwould be the Lucifer Blacks. Common guardsmen are cannon fodder, that's the entire point.

>>96834842 (OP)
guardsmen have been depicted and described as chaff since third edition and it has never changed. Only a wish fulfillment faggot wants guard to do anything but kill human-scale opposition, without vehicles. Guard are the normonigger masses that die to prevent a dysgenic genepool of mutants and uglies from being allowed to breed. Exfiltrate to r/40k if you want your jobber horde to do anything but job. They deserve to die because they're worthless and a dime a dozen, like nomrgroids are.

>>96841837
>Only a wish fulfillment faggot wants guard to do anything but kill human-scale opposition, without vehicles.
I agree with the sentiment but I also don't see anything wrong with something like kriegers suicide charging a chaos marine until somebody lands a lucky hit

>>96841855
there is no lucky hit. Your average marine has to fight outnumbered against charging orks. and charging nids. and charging eldar banshees. and charging khorne berzerkers. and kroot. your guys get pulped even by a sub-par astartes known for being cowardly, like the night lords.

>>96838544
Back in the day shuriken catapults essentially had rending, and would just gib fuckers if you rolled sixes on to wound, which you would do reasonably often given how many shots they put out.

>>96841864
lasguns wound marines on 5+ and do the same damage as a boltgun, nogames kun

>>96841864
>Ermmm... the centuries old elite warrior with thousands of years of experience when I, a dogmatic zealot prepared to die, runs at him with a primed melta grenade... bet he's never seen this one befo-

>>96841864
>your guys get pulped even by a sub-par astartes known for being cowardly, like the night lords
Yes, that's my whole point. It takes 100 guardsmen to take down even a single marine. Anyway, here's 101 charging right at you.

>>96841864
>>96841875
For however many termagants the average space marine should be capable of killing is about how many guardsmen you'd need in order to kill one chaos marine.

>>96841891
>Who would win: 101 coughing babies, or the sun

>>96841896
You are not the sun, marinefag. 40k's power ceiling goes so far above marines and relatively speaking they are just really big coughing babies.

>>96841882
Now do this but with 20 others dude doing the same thing from multiple directions

>>96841855
>>96841905
Half of elite super skilled veterancy warrior elite training is that you know to avoid getting in these situations. When you fight people more experienced and better trained than you, you fall into their ambushes, not the other way around.

People have this weird obsession over underdogs and their tricky traps taking out the elites when the elites are absolutely going to be better at that than them as well. For every IED taking out a super soldier, you're going to have stumbled into their killboxes dozens of times.

It was very tiresome to see when everything was moving to BS 4+ and everyone was saying MY GUYS ARE AS SHITTY AS GUARDSMEN NOW. Sure just homogonies everything to being BS + I guess

>>96841960
space marines and even more so traitor marines are arrogant and it results in their deaths countless time in the books.

>>96842183
It's okay to be arrogant if you really are that much better than everyone else. If you killed 600 people before lunch you might start getting the notion that you're pretty cool.

Also the books aren't canon.

>>96835135
Only in a few regiments like Krieg which are known for being zealots, in most regiments commissars are there to shoot their fellows for cowardice and maintain discipline

>>96841891
>>96841875
>>96841902
>>96841905

>least delusional guardfag redditors

>>96842645
It's not about speed its about literally suffocating the enemy with your own corpses.

>>96842645
I play thousand sons dawg.

>>96842241
>Also the books aren't canon.
And we have reached the pinnacle of marinefag cope in this thread.
I accept your concession.

>>96837248
Thanks. For roleplaying purposes, I will now just use them as Guard detached to Segmentum Solar Navy ships.

>>96835135
Only in regiments like the Death Korps of Krieg who don’t need more motivation. The ones that still have a self-preservation instinct need someone to stiffen their resolve from time to time, more frequently in regiments less known for their combat abilities than the Cadians or Catachans.

>>96835191
>In the second Agrellan campaign, the guardsmen used 18th-century wave tactics against the T'au firing positions.
Well, of course. That's what it takes to make the Tau look good.

>>96837336
>unbiased story
M8, going into the setting where people make science fiction wars by running at each other with chainsaws and going "herp durp, that's not realistic, my modern tactics would totally beat this" is fundamentally retarded. It's like low functioning autism levels of missing the god damn point.

>>96837818
>They dont get attacked a lot, especially since superior to everyone else except maybe necrons eldar fleet will fuck up anything that even comes close.
Except for when a single chapter of space marines comes calling and butchers a whole craftworld alone.

>>96843361
Guard books are mostly just cheap military fiction that they put the copywritten names over. Of course it's not canon.

>>96834842 (OP)
If you're a horde army you're chaff

>>96835128
Absolutely not reason why you can’t have both in the same faction, giga-nigga

>>96834842 (OP)
>you, fake military otaku: guard are bad because they're disposable chaff
>me, trve MTOE enjoyer: guard are good because they're disposable chaff

How can you not love the idea of a grimy Stalinist conscript army so large half of them go hungry whenever logistics falter, hyped up on a toxic blend of cynicism and fanaticism, struggling forward for cover against pinpoint accurate Eldar or Marine fire until they can call in heavy weapons?

>>96843646
Hardened veterans were an 0-1 choice for a reason. It says right there that they're typically the only survivors out of an entire company of dead guys. They're not representing standard trained dudes out of the gate.

>>96837580
>As does the Imperial Guard.
The separation of arms in the Imperial Guard was a major sticking point in older lore, but they've invented some new excuses to sidestep the issue such as regiments being fused into big soups of other regiments combined in order to retain full fighting strength as casualties pile up in the Indomitus Era. One of the (unintended) advantages of this strategy is that now regiments are getting back what the Imperial Army used to happily use as a core doctrine - combined arms. But regardless, yes, everything I just explained about Guilliman's plan for the Imperial Guard is the intended function of the Guard as he set out in the 30k era.
>Which would be weird considering during the Heresy, on top of all the Chaos corrupted forces, there were large numbers of opportunistic individuals seizing the moment to carve a small empire of their own across the galaxy.
In what fucking way would it be weird? Are you fucking retarded? You must be. The policies Guilliman set down were a direct response to the HORUS FUCKING HERESY, you stupid fucking nigger. The Imperium was never under threat from secular rebellions at any point. They were and are still put down with ease, they do not represent the same kind of cancerous influence that Chaos does. Guilliman just watched the Imperium tear itself in half due to Chaos seeping into the minds of billions of soldiers and millions of space marines, of course that's going to be his primary concern. No other faction, no other threat has ever come close to Chaos's threat factor to the Imperium.
>Strong words for someone who doesn't know basic codex lore.
Lol, projecting faglord. You don't even know how the Imperial Guard was formed nor the doctrines that Guilliman set down for them. Doubt you've ever touched a real codex in your life.

>>96843491
There are multiple famous regiments who literally use Napoleonic war tactics and get highlighted in their own Guard books for it. The Guard makes themselves look bad, they don’t need the Tau’s help.

>>96844537
What these discussions almost always fail to mention is that regiments historically weren’t combined arms formations, it’s usually multiple regiments working together in larger formations like brigades. That’s not an excuse to sidestep the issue so much as functioning like a normal military, except phrased poorly by writers who don’t understand how combined arms actually work. Frankly, I’m not sure why the Imperial Army even fielded mixed units of those sizes during the Great Crusade in the first place, those are usually ad hoc flying columns or, if done as a permanent formation, so a small unit can operate with some independence from a larger force. I’m pretty sure troop deployments were large enough that it wouldn’t be necessary.

>>96841875
ummm something, something, non-diegetic game rules heheh

>>96845575
Because Imperial Guard regiments can be millions of soldiers strong. They're not the historical 1,000 to 5,000 soldiers typically, but often 1 million to 5 million troops.

>>96834842 (OP)
Not really? Manpower is basically the only surplus the Imperium has.

>>96845992
While size does vary, you’re overstating how much, plus they’re usually not deploying just a single regiment on its own.

>>96846547
Not on their own, no, but there are single planets with deployments of hundreds of billions of guardsmen, and these are considered minor insignificant fronts. Even if we're assuming 1 million Guardsmen per regiment, that's still at least 100,000 regiments deployed to a single planet.

>>96834842 (OP)
>They're not the most elite forces the Imperium has but they're hardly cannon fodder

They're literally canon fodder.

>>96843218
>>96843361
>>96845918
>still more coping

marine game for marine players, 30k is just more honest about it. Also why the most iconic extra media is exclusively marines meanwhile "guard" get a poorly made mobile game-tier L4D2 clone.

>>96834842 (OP)
It bothers me more that they're taking the brunt on GW's awful web videos.

They really just should've hired sodaz

>>96845992
>but often 1 million to 5 million troops
This is old lore, there hasn't been anything written since the early 90s that suggests regiments in the millions are common, and the 7e Guard codex outright states that most regiments number in the thousands

>>96851712
But then that would mean that you have like...40 million Imperial Guard regiments fighting and dying on a single planet as part of a minor skirmish, when the Indominus Crusade only had like 1,000 Imperial Guard regiments.

>>96834842 (OP)
Guardians are better shots/fighters than guardsmen.
Orks are better in melee/tougher than guardsmen.
Firecaste warriors have much better arms and armor than guardsmen.
You might have something with Kin, just due to the massive fucking nerf every Votann statline took in 10th edition. But lorewise they're still written as WS/BS 3+.

>>96851796
Why would Guardians be better fighters than Guardsmen? They're emergency militia, not warriors.

>>96851732
The official explanation for these types of situations is that all regiments from a single planet are known as a "regimentum", which is often shortened to "regiment" (while still being distinct from actual regiments), so basically a thousand worlds made major contributions (contributed regimentums) to the Indominus Crusade

GW knows full well their fanbase is a mix of angry amateur military historian autists, "le epic meme"-guzzling dipshits, and emotionally fragile self-inserting special snowflakes that want their faction to have stupendous kill ratios, so anything they can do muddy the waters when it comes to numbers comes in handy

>>96834842 (OP)
In older editions a Fire Warrior Pulse rifle wounded a Guardsman on 2s and ignored their armor save, Guardians wounded them on 3s and ignored their armor as well (and all armor saves on a 6 to wound), and Boyz got into melee it was over.
Throwing waves of Guardsmen and Conscripts on objectives while tanks and your elite infantry do the damage is a core part of the Guard’s identity as a faction.

>>96851817
>why would the guys who live for millenia and are physically superior to the average human in every category have better stats then some malnourished cannon fodder with a flak jacket and a lasgun?

>>96851817
>Why would Guardians be better fighters than Guardsmen? They're emergency militia, not warriors
better tabletop stats
better equipment
far faster reflexes
far faster ability to process information
most of them were Aspect Warriors at some point in their lives
they do train on a fairly regular basis, and are essentially reservists not untrained conscripts

>>96851817
guardsmen are not warriors, they're cattle

>>96851796
>Firecaste warriors have much better arms and armor than guardsmen.
Bold words for someone in Deathstrike range

>>96851864
You might be mocking anon with that greentext, but many authors unironically seem to struggle with that question.

You have books where eldar are these graceful beings, trained for millenia in every form of martial art, tactics and weaponry. Able to hear an imperial peasant scratch his asscheeks from the opposide side of the planet, literally predict all enemy actions before they have lifted even a finger, and essentially run laps around spacemarines.

Then you have books where imperial conscript Kyle sneaks up on an aspect warrior and knocks them out cold through their helmet with a candle holder.

>>96851817
All Guardians (have to) wear war masks, which they can't get, unless they have at some point actually joined one of the Aspect shrines and served as full fledged Aspect warriors. So you're conveniently forgetting, that most craftworld eldar live ten times longer than the upper limits of 40k humanity reasonably can, and they have vastly better quality of life, not to mention their inherent biological superiority compared to 40k baseline humans, on every single level. Therefore, a good chunk of craftworlders (including non-combatants) are actually space marine-level veterans. There're very few combatant types in 40k that are *worse* than Guardsmen, and most often they're just even less trained and/or physically worse versions of humans, like Chaos cultist chaff, or abhumans like ratlings.

>>96853774
The majority of 40k prose writers are not 40k players, just your average regular genre fiction writers for hire. Even the best ones are not attuned to the bones and core of 40k, and at best have a strong point or two for some part of the setting/universe, with the respective niche understanding.
Remember that GW is and always has been a slop producing machine, they've just become progressively more dishonest and capitalist about it over the decades.

>>96851817
Because the Eldar are superhuman beings, duh. There even used to be a time where Guardians were as good shots as muhreens were.

>>96851817
Craftworld Eldar civilians spend hours every day doing combat training exercises with their brethren in addition to the Path activities they devote their lives to. This is so that when they must be drafted, Guardians are fully qualified soldiers. Since they also learn extremely quickly and live very long, your average Craftworld civilian is on par with Tempestus Scions in terms of their lethality and skill.

>>96852008
Shame, shame.

>>96854179
Only Storm Guardians are ex-Aspects, you don't need to be one to have a War Mask, but otherwise yeah fair.

>>96834842 (OP)
I wonder why this artist's work is only ever posted alongside bait. Is it thought to be especially infuriating?

>>96849469
Except you don't even get marines anymore, you get marvel Primaris, paypig.

>>96835854
What does that have to do with discussing the lore for their miniatures game?
>>96835886
My guess is that perhaps the tech is still there, but the priorities towards making it aren't. So it could be something that hypothetically is still possible. But the priorities of 40K era military logistics do not make it permissive or practical, as unpractical as that era is.

>>96846600
Well, there shouldn’t be a problem getting a good mix of unit types in that case.
>>96851732
>>96851832
Sci-fi writers aren’t known for being good with numbers as well.

>>96853774
based imperial conscript Kyle. fuck the xenos, the Emperor protects, simple as

>>96834842 (OP)
Not really, it's what happens when you have Space marines. It's like being Usain Bolt in the world with speedsters who can run at thousands or tens of thousands of mph. In comparison someone like Usain bolt becomes kind of unimpressive. The guard are necessary to hold cities and for most front line fighting but compared to Space Marines they're kind of ordinary, no matter how impressive a elite guard squad would be like the Tanith.

>>96834842 (OP)
>>96857170
Also comparing a guardsman, with their numbers recruited from population of planets makes the average guardsman pretty replaceable with their numbers compared to what it takes when a Space Marine falls in battle, what it takes to make another. Even just what it takes even before becoming a Space Marine scout. They kind of are cannon fodder, necessary cannon fodder, but still cannon fodder.

>>96835722
This. Of all of the factions the guardsmen are going to be so diverse and numerous that you will have everything possible.
Sure, on *average* across the entire galaxy a guardsmen probably is just a mook. Some will be so bad they are literal cannon fodder, like herding ducks with lasguns towards the enemy.
But lorewise not every damn planet in 40k is a poverty stricken hellhole. A lot of them are planets with higher standards of living and technology than we enjoy today, except completely united and knowing that any moment now aliens could show up and ruin this crap. So you will also have Guard regiments who are well equipped, trained and which could legitimately take on any of the factions and win. Because they're the best of the best with the best equipment who also outnumber the enemy 100 to 1.
That's the fun of the Guard. That sometimes they're screaming children running away and getting smushed, and sometimes they're ordinary people who are still so badass they get to go up against the thousand year old elves or the literal forces of Satan and beat the everloving shit out of them.

Same for the PDF for that matter. Sure, PDF are usually going to be worthless 99% of the time. But who knows? Maybe on this planet the nobles in charge have unusually strong links to the nearest forgeworld and as a result have entire regiments of augmented supersoldiers with the best equipment who have trained all their lives against Skitarii in the most grueling arenas available. There's no reason that *couldn't* be a thing, it'd just be crazy rare. It's just no one writes any books about that one time the uber scary threat of the month showed up on a planet and got their teeth kicked in by the 'cannon fodder'.

>>96857230
To use the superhero analogy i used, a super strong flying man in a superhero world can only do so much, he can't capture and hold a city by himself against a army and keep going back and forth clearing and re-clearing house by house, street by street again and again. That is what the Guard is, they have the numbers to hold a planet and cities. Even if they are canon fodder.

>>96851832
Which gets confusing when there's things like the Moebian 6th having 50,000+ Guardsmen in it. Is it a regiment, or a regimentum? Who the fuck knows. GW sure as shit doesn't.

>>96835163
>>96835206
Even in the lore and old rules.
Commissar are there to make sure everyone do their job. They are usually next to officers and in special cases like for example Krieg they stuck with the regular troops.
You needed to use special doctrine points to attach a commisar to random infantry squad or use up all your advisor slot.

>>96857238
>lot of them are planets with higher standards of living and technology than we enjoy today, except completely united and knowing that any moment now aliens could show up and ruin this crap
Factually untrue. These worlds are at best 0.01% of the total of planets and 0.000001% of the population (majorly concentrated on utterly dogshit hiveworlds.) CRUELEST AND MOST BLOODY REGIME IMAGINABLE.

>>96835722
Some Guards Regiments are the Gurkas, some are the Russian Mobnik meatwaves, some are the apathetic Americans who Jdam every house and then call rocket strikes on the rubble.

Point the wrong one at the wrong target and they’ll burn like chaff, point the right one at the right target and the opposite is true. And for some of them, dying like chaff is the point, so long as the ash and cinders are advancing.

>>96858601
>Factually untrue that nice planets exist.
>Yeah these planets exist but there's not many of them.
>???

The Imperium takes up like 50% of the entire galaxy and has so many inhabited planets that they do not know how many inhabited planets they have: 'a million worlds' is thrown around and I suspect is a bare minimum considering the size of the place. One in ten thousand or 0.01% is still going to be a hundred planets and trillions of people.

In general it's the most miserable regime imaginable feeding untold trillions into slavery or near slavery at a leve lof suffering beyond human comprehension, but in specific those Paradise Worlds are going to exist.

>>96858601
>CRUELEST AND MOST BLOODY REGIME IMAGINABLE.
You do know that a common joke in South America about Necromunda is that Necromunda is like LATAM but safer.

>>96837303
>Guard the more obvious it is that the latter just do not have the equipment or doctrine to effectively fight Tau outside of overwhelming numbers.
It's always a matter of fighting a highly mobile enemy when facing of against the Tau (skimmer mechanization and airmobile troops through Orca insertion) who relentlessly drills all of their actions vs the guard who do not have access to such units outside of Elysians (and the like) and Stormtrooper detachments.

Anytime things boil down to an actual frontline or position the Tau have to defend or maintain they get blasted. Taros was just a perfect example of them using superior technology and hit & run tactics to keep the imperium on the backfoot.

The entire campaign was an afterthought and they did not have the resources they should have received with I think the Kriegers never even making it to the conflict.
>>96837994
>because Eldar routinely job extra hard.
They're turbo-autistic space elves who have to focus all their discipline in one aspect of their life because if not their Turbo-ADHD takes over, so yeah guardians are probably a lot deadlier than baseline humans thanks to space-elf physiology but no match for an Astartes or Necron warrior. Aspect warriors all fall somewhere of elite soldiers within their armed forces with some going toe-to-toe with astartes but only in one aspect of warfare.

>>96858399
>to make sure everyone do their job
Exactly, they shoot soldiers for cowardice. It literally triggers from a failed morale check. They can't shoot their own men for being too brave or foolhardy or whatever you're making up.

>>96838892
Which time?

>>96864107
Well the biggest problem with fighting the Tau is that they have way more battlesuits than the Imperium has Space Marines. While they aren't a perfect 1:1 comparison (a battlesuit is more the equivalent of a lightweight flying dreadnought) that's still not a good sign when you consider how many Guardsmen it takes to take down a single Space Marine usually.

>>96834842 (OP)
It depends.
What a pointless thread.

>>96864107
>Anytime things boil down to an actual frontline or position the Tau have to defend or maintain they get blasted.

Agreed, it's the prime example of showing that the Imperial Guard usually have the numbers to overwhelm the higher quality but much lower quantity Tau forces. Tau doctrine when fighting the Imperial Guard is to not let that happen and cause maximum casualties while skirting the frontlines while Guard doctrine when fighting Tau is to force them into a pitched battle where they can essentially overwhelm with numbers.

This does mean that the Guard still end up usually taking massively more casualties than the Tau even in battles the Guard win, mind, further reinforcing the cannon fodder idea of the thread, but it's their most effective solution when put up against faster, more elite units with better gear and coordination.

>>96834842 (OP)
>Does it piss anyone else off how people think the Guard is just disposable chaff?


outdated lore that few people still follow nowadays

>>96864540
IIRC all battlesuit users are Shas'ui and up and while more numerous and more capable than Astartes still present quite a drain on resources for Tau. Crisis, Hazard, Ghostkeel suits showing up amidst a guard platoon is probably a catastrophe for them and only get countered by heavy weapon platoons holding back, special weapon teams with plasma or melta weapons or heavy support responding. But yeah, fighting highly mobile warfare is not the guards strength.
>>96864758
Which proves the point of the thread that yes there are specialized elite human factions out there, but when translated to the game itself and how xenos interactions go the guard rely on massed firepower and discipline. The way we know them on the tabletop are as chaff because we're seeing a very small skirmish in the grand scheme of things with overly simplified stats and principles to keep the wargame moving along.

>>96864806
>there are specialized elite human factions out there
Yeah, not guard.

>>96835886
The in universe explanation was that between the expanded need for soldiers and the lack of need for a human force that can fight in space and on the ground, along with the separation of the space and ground forces, they just fell out of use.

Their armor still exists and you can get it in Rogue Trader, but it's just not common anymore.

>>96864806
Yeah, Hunter Cadres tend to be much smaller than Imperial Guard regiments, more akin to a military company rather than a full on regiment (you'd need about 10 or so of them to make up a regiment size). Typically they'll come with about 8 or so battlesuits in support, which essentially act as highly mobile armored gunships/flying dreadnoughts they can position where needed.

Definitely not an army that wants to stand in a place and let the enemy come to them, if they do need to slow someone down with a static defense they do have drone turrets which provide such a role but obviously that's not the primary intended tactic, more of a delaying tactic like how a minefield would work.

>>96864864
>>96864806
>>96864758
>>96864540
So what it sounds like is essentially the Imperial Guard uses the Warsaw Pact/Russian military doctrine and the Tau use the NATO/American military doctrine

>>96864887
That's the closest analogy.
>Focus on delaying actions, destroy as much of the enemy as possible, retreating to fire another day before an overwhelming counter-attack or airpower can be utilized
versus
>Recon in force followed up by assault elements, reserves on stand-by and once a weak point is found poor in all of the reserves and wreak havoc in the enemies rear.

>>96864163
Did you miss the part where commissar only shoots officer? Commissar going trigger happy on the grunts required some mechanical shenanigans to happen.

>>96837352
If you want a real world example of this look no further than the Imperial Japanese military. The Army and Navy actively hate each other, to the point where they categorically refuse to work together at all. It takes the literal word of God (the Emperor) to make the Navy ferry Army troopers to the islands that Japan needs them to fight on. Both Army and Navy have their own air forces and their own army and ships respectively. There are accounts of them literally shooting at each other.

Now take that level of brain-dead internal rivalry, and make it so space-Satan can also infect your brain and make you eat your own babies. Now you have the reason the ioM's military is so dysfunctional. It's designed to be. Until the Sickytrix whatever the IoM was effectively immortal to anything but simply falling apart internally. It's simply too large to be conquered by anything (in their eyes) so they focus all of their effort on making sure that Heresy 2.0 can't happen again as that's the only real existential threat they acknowledge openly.

>>96843513
oh it's one of you. fuck off doorknob licker.

>>96858399

>Commissar are there to make sure everyone do their job. They are usually next to officers and in special cases like for example Krieg they stuck with the regular troops.

In that same edition you could take 50 man conscript squads and group them with an independent commissar.

The whole codex proves you wrong; you're trying to post a fraudulent limited excerpt from it.

>>96834842 (OP)
>in fact I'd say they're the most elite common infantry of any faction in the setting.
Not a fucking chance when necrons and eldar exist

>>96867010

Yeah, like compare the common infantry of Harlequin troupes to Guardsmen.

>>96834923
This
Guardians are PDF equivalents, not Guardsman equivalents.
Aspect Warriors are somewhere between a Guardsman and a Sister of Battle, with Exarchs being on the SoB side.

>>96866534
This
Except add the layer that the Imperial Navy has the (correct) opinion that their ships are literally the single most important resource the Imperium has, so quietly lodge themselves a step above everyone else.
If there is any unaugmented human, who might actually, and deliberately get into a screaming match with a Space Marine, it is the captain of an imperial vessel. And the captain does so with the expectation that he will win.
The sons of god aren't enough, the captain outranks them in his mind.

>>96846613
Not quite
Penal legions, conscripts, and pdf are literally canon fodder. The guard can step up to the canon if nobody else is available.
The guard is fire support, and the bodyguards for the fire support. They actually get quite a bit done. Space Marines are pretty rare to actually see, remember.

>>96834842 (OP)
they're disposable chaff and that's not because they're not elite soldiers, it's because the setting is meant to demonstrate that even the absolute best of humanity deployed at an unfathomable scale is barely enough to stem the tide
guardsmen are the best, tithed and selected from a million worlds, executed if they show any amount of disloyalty or cowardice, raised from birth to be warriors
the standard lasgun, the "flashlight", is a weapon that deals damage equivalent to a .50 caliber rifle with perfect accuracy and insanely high rate of fire, and restocking its munitions is as easy as dropping the whole thing in a campfire for a few hours
the carapace armor they wear is as tough as the armor you'd find on modern tracked combat vehicles, just shy of proper tank armor
in any other setting, these would be unkillable super-soldiers, but in warhammer 40k they're disposable chaff because everyone else is that much stronger

>Does it piss anyone else off how people think the Guard is just disposable chaff?
thatsthejoke.jpg

Wow, it's almost like the feudal nature of 40k allows there to be everything in both directions, from highly trained and resource intensive 80s action heroes to underfed peasants barely armed for the tithe.

>>96866983
Yah but you could not shoot anyone in the conscript squad anon.

>>96866983
Did you even read my post?
>You needed to use special doctrine points to attach a commisar to random infantry squad or use up all your advisor slot.
Also the example you give about conscripts mechanically you could take a commissar with them but outside of giving them Ld10, the Summary Execution rule would not trigger. Since it calls out for an Officer or Sergeant leading the squad.
While the Regimental Doctrines only allows the Commissar to to work on their own it doesn't even mention the Summary Execution rule.
Remember lore wise Commissar join the Guard as advisors not team killers. Reason why Catachan dislike them, they do not like outsiders telling them how to do things

>>96834842 (OP)
>in fact I'd say they're the most elite common infantry of any faction in the setting.
That's dark eldar warriors and it's not even close.

>Basic bitch cabalite warrior wounds every other infantry in the game on a 3+
>Half the squad carries heavy weapons on suspensors
>Rides around in the fastest anti-grav transport in the game
>Still have carapace equivalent armor and an invul from their dodging abilities
>They're not considered elite by the Dark Eldar at all and number in the billions

Cabalite warriors are what people think fire warriors are.

>>96868625
>Remember lore wise Commissar join the Guard as advisors not team killers.
The recent effort by Imperial Guardtards to try and gaslight the lore on Commissars to claim they never execute guardsmen is genuinely baffling. This is one of the coolest aspects of the Imperial Guard and you're desperately trying to whitewash it out of existence?

>>96868658
Not what anon is saying.
84% strikes again

>>96868692
That anon has been whining that Commissars don't execute guardsmen for multiple posts now despite him posting a screencap that specifically emphasizes the most important authority of the Commisar is the power of execution over the rank and file to purge them of those unable or unwilling to do their duty. You are the one misunderstanding him.

>>96865022
Exactly. They need to change the rules so they execute them on a passed morale check, just in case they're getting too brave. The guard are an army of cowards, and that needs to be mechanically enforced.

>>96867728
Most of them are wearing flak armor, not carapace, though that’s at least on par with modern ballistic protection.
>>96869030
On the contrary, they should keep it as is, and frame it like the Representatives on Mission in Revolutionary France, to look at a pre-Soviet example of political officers. The rank and file aren’t cowards if they have to retreat from an impossible situation, it just means the commander is a traitor trying to sabotage the war effort. The appearance of cowardice in the former is simply the consequence of the reckless bravery of the latter.

>>96834842 (OP)
>they're going to be fighting Guardians, Firewarriors, and Boyz instead
And theyre less elite that almost all of those (not the orks, although thats honestly comparable). Seriously, go put a guardsman up against a fire warrior, not even close. Add to that the fact that the fire warrior is literate and its not even a contest.

>>96869156
1 Guardsmen is worth a dozen Firewarriors

>>96869175
I see you read your uplifting primer the mandated number of times.

>>96868652
>>They're not considered elite by the Dark Eldar at all and number in the billions
Well yea, theyre literally mooks grown in vats as disposable fodder. Theyre worth less than amazon employees.

>>96867728
>executed if they show any amount of disloyalty or cowardice
Which happens all the time in active combat due to their poor training and crap equipment.

>>96867728
>the standard lasgun, the "flashlight", is a weapon that deals damage equivalent to a .50 caliber rifle
Except it isnt, its like an ak or some shit. The autogun, in every way comparable to it in terms of damage, is just a regular earth rifle in terms of caliber and power.

>>96836980
>clumsy
>hit on 3s VS 4 for a guardsman

What did they mean by this?

>>96869366
lorelet
>The Lasgun uses a small portable capacitor power pack to produce a focused pinpoint laser beam which is strong enough to take an ordinary Human arm off with one shot but is not as effective against the more durable alien bodies and the stronger types of personal armour. A Lasgun's beam also cauterizes the wounds it inflicts due to the immense heat given off by the shot. The Lasgun is effective when used en masse, but considerably less effective when used alone.

>The Lasgun uses the same basic technology and operates along the same lines as other laser weapons, emitting a beam of highly-energetic, focused, coherent photons. The high amount of energy carried by the photons of the beam causes the immediate surface area of a target to be vaporised in a small explosion.

>>96867728
>but in warhammer 40k they're disposable chaff because everyone else is that much stronger
Doesn't really work desu

The Imperium has much stronger stuff. Power armor, volkite weapons, plasma, etc. It just doesn't give it to Guardsmen cause through its own inefficiencies it can't afford to or it just doesn't care to.

>>96869556
>to take an ordinary Human arm off
They tested it on guardsmen and they're just really weak like that. If you even punch a guardsmen he explodes into gibs.

>>96869564
exactly
that is exactly my point
guardsmen are strong, but are still chaff, because everything else is stronger
everything in 40k is cranked up and powerscaled to insanity (but the imperium still gets no diffed by star wars' empire)

anyway, op said that guardsmen shouldn't be chaff, and my actual point is that they definitely should, because they are the barometer for powerscaling in 40k, and to illustrate how wacky and zany powerscaling in 40k is, the guardsmen themselves are an order of magnitude more powerful than any modern military

>>96869418
It's obvious propaganda.

>>96869556
In practice they're as deadly as assault rifles but with slower rate of fire.

>>96869624
Right, my contention wasn't that the other stuff was stronger, only that this is the 'best' humanity could do. They could do better, even discounting Space Marines humanity absolutely could achieve a military force on par with what the Tau have on a quality basis, they would just have to care to do so.

>>96868756
The rule says it only executes officers and Sargents
They can't shoot regular guardsmen, even in the same codex by using regimental doctrines and put him in a squad without a squad leader the rule simply does not work.
In the lore boxes it say they can, but in the rules they can't and considering that's from the reprint that's intentional.

>>96869683
>They could do better, even discounting Space Marines humanity absolutely could achieve a military force on par with what the Tau have on a quality basis, they would just have to care to do so.
They can't field such armaments en masse, period. The tech just isn't there anymore. The Mechanicus successfully kneecapped the Imperium's technology like they always wanted to do and yet they somehow blame the Imperial masses for the decline of technology when it was always their own damn fault. The Mechanicus are pure fucking evil incarnate and the worst mistake the Emperor ever made was signing a concordat with them rather than wiping their rusty faggot faces off the face of Mars while he still could.

>>96869708
>In the lore boxes it say they can,
So what even is your point? Your own example proves you wrong.

>>96869074
That's the reason why commissar only shoots officers in the game at least in the first editions.
You shot the grunts later not mid battle like a retard.
If the men are running away is because their leaders fuck up and that needs correction

>>96869724
>>96869727
>>96869074
Basically this.
Commissar shooting random guardsmen mid battle is retarded. Is the realm of grimderp.
You punish the cowards grunts later. That is the fluffy reason why commissar got attached to command squads and not random squads. They are to make sure command does not fuck up.

>>96869748
This is actually a change from the second edition rule. Guard could pass morale checks if a commissar executed a random infantry. It had some obscure rule issues so they changed it to only affect the officers.

>>96834842 (OP)
They're unaugmented humans with about the most basic rifles and armor the Imperium can provide, they absolutely do exist to be cannon fodder, their purpose is to die in large numbers to make 40k wars sound more epic and dramatic.

>>96837352
It's more extreme than modern US branch separation.
Imagine if the Army only had infantry. No tanks, artillery, helicopters, or transports more involved than a Striker or MRAP. Each of those assets are their own separate branch with separate command that must be coordinated through Imperial Japanese politicking.

>>96868652
Kabalite warriors are elite in Dark Eldar society. Not at the top of the hierarchy of course but still in the upper echelons of Deldar society. You don't get to join a kabal unless you are already a someone that can kill people good.

The scrubs of deldar society are the likes of hellions and what not.

>>96869648
RL rifles will also take a arm off with a lucky crit. Lasguns are British SLR/FAL rifles with a 10x bigger magazine.

>>96869564
It isn't even that it's unable to. The IoM could marshal together sufficient numbers of powerful weaponry to equip a thousand Regiments with excellent equipment.

But why? It doesn't serve any purpose to do that. The Lasgun is unironically the ideal infantry rifle. It's powerful enough to engage anything you need it to. It has effectively unlimited fucking ammunition so you don't have to lug around bullets. It's pinpoint accurate because it's literally a laser. It's got 0 moving parts so it can't jam or misfire. It always works no matter what you do to it or what environment you're in. There isn't a solider alive that wouldn't kill their parents to have one of these things even if it only had the stopping power of 5.56. For an empire that spans the galaxy having 8/10 soldiers equipped with a gun that requires exactly 3 magazines per soldier EVER is a fucking god-send. All of the issues of logistics in procuring basic ammunition are GONE. You can focus on shit like food, fuel, clothing, and heavy ordnance instead. It's incredible. The savings on logistics alone justify the widespread implementation of the las weapon category. They could be lol 9 mm and it would STILL be worth it simply because it's good enough and if it isn't you've got at least 2 other dipshits in the squad with a weapon that will do the job.

>>96841960
>When you fight people more experienced and better trained than you, you fall into their ambushes, not the other way around.
Ahem
We can conclude that Taliban and HAMAS are better trained and more experinced that Israeli Defence Forces and Israeli Foreign Legion (formerly known as US Armed Forces).

>>96873640
>The IoM could marshal together sufficient numbers of powerful weaponry to equip a thousand Regiments with excellent equipment.
No. It's not a question of "oh they just need to authorize deployment of higher grade weapons," Imperial arms production is already stretched to the breaking point just putting lasguns in the hundreds of trillions of active duty guardsmen serving across the Imperium as-is. The Imperium has no secret reserves of 500 billion human-scale boltguns ready to be shipped out in the hands of guardsmen. Plasma guns are relics passed down in the regiment for generations because only a single forge world still knows the jealously guarded secret rites of manufacturing them. Meltaguns are only slightly better off than plasma weaponry. Volkite practically no longer exists except in Mechanicus vaults and the Temu brand Cawl-pattern Neo-Volkite he passes out to Primaris.