Is warhammer 40K actually any good at warfare the thread
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Cloak&Dagger
Definitely Insane
Mass conscription is absolutely a huge advantage and one the Imperium is particularly strong and specialized in.
A large and reliable supply of barely adequate troops with 2nd or 3rd rate equipment is priceless in war. It let's you concentrate your better forces where they are most needed, covers weak points, and can be used to attack and pin down opponents and/or probe for weak points without expending irreplaceable assets.
Like, yes, the average Tau Firewarrior is much better trained and equipped and supported than an average Guardsmen, and resembles much more closely modern soldiers than Guardsmen do.
But while force multipliers like drones are rarely used on the squad level like the Tau do, the Imperium will instead just... multiply the force.
And it works. It works with horrific lopsided losses, sure, but even IRL it works. Of course, unlike Russia, the Imperium actually is just that flush with manpower. They're not relying on some limited stockpile, the Imperium actually can expend the manpower and production to just send troops to die holding the line every day forever.
In absolute fairness to Cloak, conscription can be an advantage or a straight-up necessity if you're fighting a protracted total war against a peer, or just don't have a lot of bodies to begin with. Like, you have Zelensky as of the time of posting feeling finally forced to consider conscription to make up numbers, or Singapore and South Korea today, and going back in time you have WW2. A hypothetical Imperium-scale polity without the Imperium's various issues would hopefully need to reply on raw bodies a lot less, but I think you'd still want stuff like having each planetary PDF organised similar to the South Korean army IRL, at least.
But in the case of the actual Imperium as it exists, throwing more bodies at the problem seem at best the result of operational and material deficiencies or enemies who are simply more formiddable, and at worst the result of an attitude to unnecessary loss of life that would make Luigi Cadorna blush and hide his face in shame.
The Imperium has these things, but the issue is there is a disconnect between what this implies, and how the Imperium is actually depicted fighting in novels, army codexes, games and visual media, and so on. Which can involve literal Napoleonic infantry squares, a total lack of being able to use supporting fires for anything other than pre-planned barrages before going over the top of trenches (if the author even remembers they exist!), and so on. This isn't all depictions, by any means, and there's stuff which makes the Imperium look more like a modern-ish army, or at least a decent modern war film like Saving Private Ryan, but it is a lot of depictions. So you need to make a judgement about what we choose to throw out or heavily rationalise here.
Even if we err on the side of ignoring the egregiously stupid, and creatively interpreting along the lines of trying to help things make sense wherever possible, I don't think one can reasonably say the Imperium fights wars like a modern US/NATO army. There's too many problematic elements which are more or less omnipresent through their depictions to the point that if you ignore them you are more or less essentially imagining something wholly new, not simply generously interpreting an existing fiction in an attempt to find some coherency. Just looking at the average Imperial Guard platoon, there is no "10 minutes or your JDAM is free!" they can rely on, most of their on-call fire support is regular tube artillery and not incredibly accurate (although there is a decent amount of it), theatres often bog down into literal trench warfare which implies a lack of operational tools for breaking this deadlock, not to mention the literal bayonet charges. Even as rationalised as a "death before dishonour!" or desperation tactic, the last one says something.
There are certainly famous modern armies the Imperial Guard resemble, averaging across depictions and taking a generous view, but it's not the Coalition during Desert Storm, able to simply delete one of the largest armies in the world with airpower before breach through an incredibly dense network of mines, trenches and barricades in a few days, taking more casualties in traffic accidents than combat. It's either various armies of the last century, or something like the Russian army in Ukraine, today. The latter example seems particularly fitting as an analogy because it captures the sheer incongruity of a state which simultaneously has advanced anti-satellite weapons and large quantities of almost every kind of artillery one can conceive of, yet also resorts to sending literal penal battalions to do human wave style assaults in conditions reminiscent of the Western Front or Stalingrad.
The Imperium may have SSTO fighter-bombers and titans, but still seems to need armed teenagers with shovels to actually fight its wars.
But in the case of the actual Imperium as it exists, throwing more bodies at the problem seem at best the result of operational and material deficiencies or enemies who are simply more formiddable, and at worst the result of an attitude to unnecessary loss of life that would make Luigi Cadorna blush and hide his face in shame.
The Imperium has these things, but the issue is there is a disconnect between what this implies, and how the Imperium is actually depicted fighting in novels, army codexes, games and visual media, and so on. Which can involve literal Napoleonic infantry squares, a total lack of being able to use supporting fires for anything other than pre-planned barrages before going over the top of trenches (if the author even remembers they exist!), and so on. This isn't all depictions, by any means, and there's stuff which makes the Imperium look more like a modern-ish army, or at least a decent modern war film like Saving Private Ryan, but it is a lot of depictions. So you need to make a judgement about what we choose to throw out or heavily rationalise here.
Even if we err on the side of ignoring the egregiously stupid, and creatively interpreting along the lines of trying to help things make sense wherever possible, I don't think one can reasonably say the Imperium fights wars like a modern US/NATO army. There's too many problematic elements which are more or less omnipresent through their depictions to the point that if you ignore them you are more or less essentially imagining something wholly new, not simply generously interpreting an existing fiction in an attempt to find some coherency. Just looking at the average Imperial Guard platoon, there is no "10 minutes or your JDAM is free!" they can rely on, most of their on-call fire support is regular tube artillery and not incredibly accurate (although there is a decent amount of it), theatres often bog down into literal trench warfare which implies a lack of operational tools for breaking this deadlock, not to mention the literal bayonet charges. Even as rationalised as a "death before dishonour!" or desperation tactic, the last one says something.
There are certainly famous modern armies the Imperial Guard resemble, averaging across depictions and taking a generous view, but it's not the Coalition during Desert Storm, able to simply delete one of the largest armies in the world with airpower before breach through an incredibly dense network of mines, trenches and barricades in a few days, taking more casualties in traffic accidents than combat. It's either various armies of the last century, or something like the Russian army in Ukraine, today. The latter example seems particularly fitting as an analogy because it captures the sheer incongruity of a state which simultaneously has advanced anti-satellite weapons and large quantities of almost every kind of artillery one can conceive of, yet also resorts to sending literal penal battalions to do human wave style assaults in conditions reminiscent of the Western Front or Stalingrad.
The Imperium may have SSTO fighter-bombers and titans, but still seems to need armed teenagers with shovels to actually fight its wars.
Cloak&Dagger
Definitely Insane
The issue is more the genre's fault than the Imperium's though.
You see the exact same issue in Star Wars, with the same generic responses. It's a horde of bad writers covered up by post-facto explanations of theater shields preventing orbital bombardment from nuking everything and jamming preventing guided missiles and drones from blowing up all infantry and vehicles.
Hilariously, reality has shown Trench Warfare making a comeback in heavy combat between peers.
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The way Russia and Ukraine both used fortifications is different from how the guard does them, though.
Both Russia and Ukraine used fortified positions to basically force any breakthrough attempt to mass forces, at which point you have a large, easily visible massed assault with a large and vulnerable logistics tail which can be hit by precision and non-precision munitions ranging from Krasnopols and cruise missiles to unguided tube artillery. The fortifications helped bog down the enemy for long enough that they could be accurately attacked by fires.
The Guard doesn't really work the same way, as for them, the fortified position itself is generally portrayed as the most significant source of firepower they have, with indirect fire long-range artillery playing a supporting role rather than being the core of the defensive doctrine.
Cloak&Dagger
Definitely Insane
Yes, it's more conventional in 40k's case because it handwaves endless long range precision and bombardment attacks with, 'something something theater shields, something something jamming'.
The point is, we know 40k (and SW for that matter) don't operate as in modern warfare, so something exists in that gap and all we have are those vague explanations.
I mean, you're definitely not wrong about that, and it is a feature common to a lot of genre fiction and visual media. But there's some point at which you can't make use genre to excuse what's being shown in the fiction. It's arguable where you choose that point, but even I would feel a bit uncomfortable about like, ignoring things which seem core to the "vibe" of a particular faction, or are clearly stated almost every time that faction shows up, or whatever. A lot of the examples I cited with the Guard are like... you remove those elements, are they still the Imperial Guard from Warhammer 40,000?
Trench warfare is definitely making a comeback in modern warfare, and also occurred in many places after the First World War. You had trench warfare or psuedo-trench warfare taking place in the Italian theatre and bits of the Eastern Front in WW2, bits of the Iran-Iraq war, and other examples that someone like @100thlurker or @Apocal would be able to name instantly and I can't. Speaking very inexpertly, it's sort of what happens whenever armies fight above a certain density of forces per mile of frontage with modern weapons, and no one has the tools to force a quick decision - either enough sheer airpower, or mine-clearing tools, or whatever.
My point with bringing this up in terms of the Imperium is that it implies that at least semi-regularly, the Imperium seems to find itself in this situation. This does not necessarily imply that the Imperium are bad - in a lot of big campaigns, they're fighting against pretty serious opposition. In the Damocles Gulf Crusade for example, during the fighting on Dal'yth Prime the front line is described as freezing up* completely around the city of Gel'bryn, when Imperial forces can make no further gains and have to dig in to avoid the worst of Tau firepower. One can certainly understand digging a hole if railguns are getting shot at you.
But whilst reasonable under the circumstances, it also shows how the Imperium was fundamentally not able to shift the line any further - even after deploying a demi-legion of Titans and Space Marines.
*(Also quite interesting how this event shows the Tau are apparently 100% willing to fight in a big attritional set-piece engagement if they feel forced to do so - I forget the details but it would've been quite bad for them if the Imperium threatened the city. Although they're described as generally choosing only to attack at night because their night-fighting abilities were superior to the Guard's. It's not stated, but one presumes this means actually having night vision optics as standard rather than a rare special feature.)
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
The question is unanswerable because there is no offered or agreed upon definition of "war" or what being "bad" at it means.
So, I will say that WH40k is cartoonishly inefficient at war, but very effective anyway.
The Inperium is a galaxy-spanning Empire that hand loads it's space navy's cannons and uses literal cavalry charges.
But they win anyway because those hand loaded shells can explode entire neighborhoods when fired at a planet and on certain battlefields they may literally have more men than their opponent has bullets.
So, I will say that WH40k is cartoonishly inefficient at war, but very effective anyway.
The Inperium is a galaxy-spanning Empire that hand loads it's space navy's cannons and uses literal cavalry charges.
But they win anyway because those hand loaded shells can explode entire neighborhoods when fired at a planet and on certain battlefields they may literally have more men than their opponent has bullets.
- Location
- Drachyench on Discord
I'd argue that Craftworld Eldar and T'au are generally pretty good at it, if with some blind spots / setting-specific baggage. Could probably make an honorable mention for 3E Dark Eldar too. Admittedly I have also shared my concerns / complaints on here previously with 40K fluff slowly adapting to match tabletop meta which is. Not inherently a terrible idea / concept, but just doesn't work with 40K.
To point to Craftworld Eldar for example there were ample close combat specialists even in the era of 3E, yes. Shining Spears [Jetbike Lancers], Howling Banshees [Light Infantry melee specialists], and Striking Scorpions [Heavy Infantry melee specialists] immediately come to mind. But Howling Banshees were sort of their own thing [for a while they were closer to a sort of ritualized murder cult for Khaine], Striking Scorpions had some vague justification [there's definitely room in even modern warfare for heavily armored personnel to take point and names], and Shining Spears get a sort of aesthetic pass because Eldar are basically steeped in Mythology Bullshit and it's hard to do much more mythology than a techno equivalent of Knights in shining armor with their trusty steed and lance. Furthermore they were a minority of all the various aspects with a general focus on Eldar inserting quickly, breaking stuff, then getting out. You could also make something of an argument that the relatively short range of Shuriken Catapults was a non-weakness because with their focus on mobility and such they shouldn't be engaging in long-range slugging matches of infantry shooting at infantry with things like the IoM or such. Better to shock, get people to route, then grab whatever they came for and bugger off.
T'au have aforementioned issues with indirect fire, but that's. Only vaguely true, since Seeker Missiles in earlier editions [despite the hard count of ammunition] were somewhat bullshit in that things marked by Markerlights did not require direct LoS or Lines. Still a problem as somebody has to point the Markerlights, but I don't know if the lack of mortars is really that big a disadvantage when it's replaced with "A bunch of Broadsides fire a macross missile spam and suddenly tanks taking cover behind a building are being hit on all sides because some cheeky Pathfinder is on the roof pointing a doohickey at them". Likewise for all the cover art stuff of T'au in a featureless plain standing in a line shooting Napoleonic style you didn't actually see much of that in the fluffadmittedly because T'au didn't really get fluff but I digress.
Dark Eldar are a bit fucky in that they always had close combat specialists but how they're described in contemporary 3E media is just "The idea of warfare as we know it against them doesn't apply because they can just fucking appear if there's Webway portals and when they aren't distracted doing excessive murder-orgies they tend to be in and out with tens of thousands of prisoners in single-digit hours". And once again before fluff became meta-y the main close combat specialists for Dark Eldar were Wyches and Incubi with otherwise their entire thing being "That's a distressing amount of anti-tank support and LMGs on potentially supersonic transports / rides".
But over time fluff did match tabletop meta. So you had a bunch of strange melee specialists increasingly padding rosters and a bunch of narrative decisions that were intended to provide further examination but instead only make you wonder how anyone survived that long [such as the "Eldar cannot perform a decapitation strike on their own Craftworld without external aid" bit].
To point to Craftworld Eldar for example there were ample close combat specialists even in the era of 3E, yes. Shining Spears [Jetbike Lancers], Howling Banshees [Light Infantry melee specialists], and Striking Scorpions [Heavy Infantry melee specialists] immediately come to mind. But Howling Banshees were sort of their own thing [for a while they were closer to a sort of ritualized murder cult for Khaine], Striking Scorpions had some vague justification [there's definitely room in even modern warfare for heavily armored personnel to take point and names], and Shining Spears get a sort of aesthetic pass because Eldar are basically steeped in Mythology Bullshit and it's hard to do much more mythology than a techno equivalent of Knights in shining armor with their trusty steed and lance. Furthermore they were a minority of all the various aspects with a general focus on Eldar inserting quickly, breaking stuff, then getting out. You could also make something of an argument that the relatively short range of Shuriken Catapults was a non-weakness because with their focus on mobility and such they shouldn't be engaging in long-range slugging matches of infantry shooting at infantry with things like the IoM or such. Better to shock, get people to route, then grab whatever they came for and bugger off.
T'au have aforementioned issues with indirect fire, but that's. Only vaguely true, since Seeker Missiles in earlier editions [despite the hard count of ammunition] were somewhat bullshit in that things marked by Markerlights did not require direct LoS or Lines. Still a problem as somebody has to point the Markerlights, but I don't know if the lack of mortars is really that big a disadvantage when it's replaced with "A bunch of Broadsides fire a macross missile spam and suddenly tanks taking cover behind a building are being hit on all sides because some cheeky Pathfinder is on the roof pointing a doohickey at them". Likewise for all the cover art stuff of T'au in a featureless plain standing in a line shooting Napoleonic style you didn't actually see much of that in the fluff
Dark Eldar are a bit fucky in that they always had close combat specialists but how they're described in contemporary 3E media is just "The idea of warfare as we know it against them doesn't apply because they can just fucking appear if there's Webway portals and when they aren't distracted doing excessive murder-orgies they tend to be in and out with tens of thousands of prisoners in single-digit hours". And once again before fluff became meta-y the main close combat specialists for Dark Eldar were Wyches and Incubi with otherwise their entire thing being "That's a distressing amount of anti-tank support and LMGs on potentially supersonic transports / rides".
But over time fluff did match tabletop meta. So you had a bunch of strange melee specialists increasingly padding rosters and a bunch of narrative decisions that were intended to provide further examination but instead only make you wonder how anyone survived that long [such as the "Eldar cannot perform a decapitation strike on their own Craftworld without external aid" bit].
Mustapha Mond
World Controller, Western Europe
I mean, I wouldn't call those "post-facto." The jamming is mentioned in the original novelization, and the energy shield is mentioned right away in the second film.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
That's...never been conventional though? Like, in WW1, trenches were still primarily obstacles to slow the enemy. In that case it was both to provide time for artillery response as in Ukraine but also to mass for a counterattack. Like, I think to find a situation where trenches weren't actually obstacles to enemy movement primarily we'll have to go back to Petersburg.
The Guard can't even manage WW1.
How's that any different to us though? I mean no we don't have SSTO fighter bombers or building-sized mechs, but in the age of drones and precision-guided munitions, we still need teenagers risking their lives on the ground to fight wars.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Generally speaking, the Imperium has good commanders: the returned Primarchs, the current Lord Solar, Ursula Creed, blah blah.
The problem that it is equal parts fascist dictatorship (a style of government notorious for pissing off all their neighbors and getting stomped), dark age feudalist monarchy (a style of government that sucked at administration), and religious theocracy (a style of government that was notorious for fighting itself as different people had different interpretations of religious doctrine).
Low and behold, the problems the Imperium faces is that it's fighting enemies without everywhere, routinely loses resources to poor management, and has fights with itself near constantly (even without involving Chaos). It's bloated and slow, and most factions are able to defeat it in detail because none of it's subfactions have much inclination to stand together.
The problem that it is equal parts fascist dictatorship (a style of government notorious for pissing off all their neighbors and getting stomped), dark age feudalist monarchy (a style of government that sucked at administration), and religious theocracy (a style of government that was notorious for fighting itself as different people had different interpretations of religious doctrine).
Low and behold, the problems the Imperium faces is that it's fighting enemies without everywhere, routinely loses resources to poor management, and has fights with itself near constantly (even without involving Chaos). It's bloated and slow, and most factions are able to defeat it in detail because none of it's subfactions have much inclination to stand together.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
The Maynarkh Dynasty opening its offensive on the Orpheus Sector by disappearing a supernova, stealing an entire sun to leave the planet orbiting it to die the slow death of freezing, turning the Angels Revenant's chapter homeworld inside out to drown the Space Marines in Magma when they threatened to slow Kutlakh's righteous reclamation, sending a signal that caused all technology that received it to fail until magnetically purged in ways that permanently damaged the machines in question, launching near light speed chunks of compact stellar remains, and inducing city vapourising solar storms is metal as fuck.
Especially with them deliberately giving the Imperials a whole year to prepare to honour their lawcode with regards to warfare despite fully intending to kill every last human squatting on their territory and the year the Imperium had to prepare barely mattering with how utterly demolished the Imperial warhost at Amarah Prime was when the Necrons withdrew. Something like 90% KIA ratios dealt to the Imperial Colonisers stealing the lands of Xun'Bakyr's dynasty while pulverising their cities with anti-matter bombs and hive spire slicing death rays.
Just absolutely metal as fuck and to this day, still my gold standard for how Necrons should wage war when they actually genuinely take you seriously and aren't fucking around for inscrutable higher culture alien reasons. I.E the Imperium simply does not exist on the same playing field and gets swept aside contemptuously when the Necrons genuinely want them gone instead of toying with them for sport and the alleviation of boredom only immortals can experience. But then I like the big xenos curbstomping the smelly humans when they decide to put their back into it anyway.
Alan Bligh wrote some of the coolest war sequences and it's a shame he died.
Also the most fun thing about the Necrons is that in most sci-fi or fantasy, when aliens are arrogant and condescending to humans they're nearly always shown up as wrong and it makes them just look stupid and cocky, the Craftworld Eldar get this especially badly as GW seems to think that Torture porn and pyrhhic victories are what Eldar players want to see of their faction. When the Necrons are arrogant and condescending to humans they're just being objectively correct in their assessments of the accomplishments of their two peoples which instantly gives them a lovable gigachad vibe of entirely warranted confidence.
Like, the current Necrons conduct themselves like the entire faction is based around the gigachad memes when they're in the hands of authors who like the faction and that's honestly amazing and I love it. The sheer lack of concern for humanity's struggles and it being entirely warranted because they're just that good has a chad energy missing from the Eldar who never get any Ws without immense suffering or having to be bailed out by either their cultural antithesis (the Randian Dark Eldar) or the Imperium. Just for once I'd like to see the Craftworld Eldar; my Favourite faction; be entirely right in treating the Imperium as dumb children who should shut up, sit in the corner, and let the adults handle things.
tl;dr
Especially with them deliberately giving the Imperials a whole year to prepare to honour their lawcode with regards to warfare despite fully intending to kill every last human squatting on their territory and the year the Imperium had to prepare barely mattering with how utterly demolished the Imperial warhost at Amarah Prime was when the Necrons withdrew. Something like 90% KIA ratios dealt to the Imperial Colonisers stealing the lands of Xun'Bakyr's dynasty while pulverising their cities with anti-matter bombs and hive spire slicing death rays.
Just absolutely metal as fuck and to this day, still my gold standard for how Necrons should wage war when they actually genuinely take you seriously and aren't fucking around for inscrutable higher culture alien reasons. I.E the Imperium simply does not exist on the same playing field and gets swept aside contemptuously when the Necrons genuinely want them gone instead of toying with them for sport and the alleviation of boredom only immortals can experience. But then I like the big xenos curbstomping the smelly humans when they decide to put their back into it anyway.
Alan Bligh wrote some of the coolest war sequences and it's a shame he died.
Also the most fun thing about the Necrons is that in most sci-fi or fantasy, when aliens are arrogant and condescending to humans they're nearly always shown up as wrong and it makes them just look stupid and cocky, the Craftworld Eldar get this especially badly as GW seems to think that Torture porn and pyrhhic victories are what Eldar players want to see of their faction. When the Necrons are arrogant and condescending to humans they're just being objectively correct in their assessments of the accomplishments of their two peoples which instantly gives them a lovable gigachad vibe of entirely warranted confidence.
Like, the current Necrons conduct themselves like the entire faction is based around the gigachad memes when they're in the hands of authors who like the faction and that's honestly amazing and I love it. The sheer lack of concern for humanity's struggles and it being entirely warranted because they're just that good has a chad energy missing from the Eldar who never get any Ws without immense suffering or having to be bailed out by either their cultural antithesis (the Randian Dark Eldar) or the Imperium. Just for once I'd like to see the Craftworld Eldar; my Favourite faction; be entirely right in treating the Imperium as dumb children who should shut up, sit in the corner, and let the adults handle things.
tl;dr
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The Last One
Here because reasons
Do we really want to bring the IoM's aesthetic to modern warfare? Instead of a Predator drone overhead, you've got a winged cyborg baby. The cruise missile that blows up your house is a rocket-propelled coffin guided by a head in a jar. The encrypted data links are just really loud speakers attached to everything and so on.
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Honestly this sounds incredible
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
Some people hate Daemons being explicitly more resilient to ranged weapons because they run on narrativium due to being pleromic entities rather than conventionally living things and as such they have an easier time shrugging off more impersonal means of combat ranging from just a bit harder to drop with guns that lack a reputation of banishing Chaos' immortal hordes to being all but immune depending on how intense the energies of Chaos are in the area. But Daemons flipping all the paradigms you're comfortable with and forcing you to play by their rules unless you have some means to shut the chaos juju off (which only the Necrons and Tyranids can currently do at-will) is half the point of the realm of ideas vomiting the hordes of our collective wrongdoings and bad vibes into the waking world.
Also, Daemonic Armies are meant to be the same across Warhammer 40k, Age of Sigmar, and Warhammer: The Old World since the Realm of Chaos is timeless and spaceless and the same numberless but thoughtless (as per Fabius Bile, Daemons do not actually have thoughts as we understand them as they're malignant ideograms within the Empyrean that lack definition until they interact with and are observed by Material beings, and Fabius Bile knowing this as fact robs them of some of their mystery and power and weakens them in his presence) legions of sin and self-destructive individualism menace all three settings.
That being said, the way human society would fall apart if the Earth became a Daemon world tomorrow and the legions of Chaos poured out in a numberless tide from the very air would probably be metal as fuck even as I am flensed by the soldiers of the Blood God and my young Children are turned into mewling, screaming chaos spawn by roving Tzeentchian hordes.
While I'm annoyed by the Chaos Space Marines being unwarrantedly boosted into the primary villains of the setting over the IMHO more interesting Necrons, Dark Eldar, Orks, and Tyranids, the Chaos Daemons are cool as hell and tickle my esoteric religious autism creature that loves the concept of the Platonic Pleroma; the realm of ideas; very mightily. Plus the whole thing about Daemons literally working on story tropes over the laws of physics with how heavily narrative trumps reality happens depending on the intensity of the Warp's influence over the Materium in the region.
Also, Daemonic Armies are meant to be the same across Warhammer 40k, Age of Sigmar, and Warhammer: The Old World since the Realm of Chaos is timeless and spaceless and the same numberless but thoughtless (as per Fabius Bile, Daemons do not actually have thoughts as we understand them as they're malignant ideograms within the Empyrean that lack definition until they interact with and are observed by Material beings, and Fabius Bile knowing this as fact robs them of some of their mystery and power and weakens them in his presence) legions of sin and self-destructive individualism menace all three settings.
That being said, the way human society would fall apart if the Earth became a Daemon world tomorrow and the legions of Chaos poured out in a numberless tide from the very air would probably be metal as fuck even as I am flensed by the soldiers of the Blood God and my young Children are turned into mewling, screaming chaos spawn by roving Tzeentchian hordes.
While I'm annoyed by the Chaos Space Marines being unwarrantedly boosted into the primary villains of the setting over the IMHO more interesting Necrons, Dark Eldar, Orks, and Tyranids, the Chaos Daemons are cool as hell and tickle my esoteric religious autism creature that loves the concept of the Platonic Pleroma; the realm of ideas; very mightily. Plus the whole thing about Daemons literally working on story tropes over the laws of physics with how heavily narrative trumps reality happens depending on the intensity of the Warp's influence over the Materium in the region.
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- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Eh, you can kill a bloodletter by shooting it and daemon incursions are beaten all the time, nothing really to it.
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Daemons should be the same in all three settings so you can make the most hilarious powerscaling possible. Yes, that blackpowder great cannon is as strong as a railgun.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
You have some comic book tier hitters in Age of Sigmar so you can argue that a Bretonnian Bow and Arrow hits somewhere in the same neighbourhood of force as a hammer being swung with enough force to shatter the skull of a continent sized giant.
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LordInsane
Loyalist to the Alvarian Merchant's Guild
- Location
- Bohuslän, Occupied Norway
Honestly, one of the Imperium's issues seems to be quite simply that they encourage specialisation in Imperial Guard regiments in a way that would make many of them good elements in a combined force... and then use the regiments as if they were full armies in their own right anyway. Take the Elysian Drop Troops - extremely good paratroopers by our standards, but you kinda need more than paratroopers even if they've perfected tank drops and by their focus have unusually tight and good relations with the Imperial Navy (eg. the military force in the Imperium that'd be responsible for Desert Storm-like deletion-by-airpower operations).
The average age of combat infantry amongst NATO nations is actually trending upwards due to demographic shifts and I believe today is north of twenty, but I take your broader point. What I mean is that the Guard in practice still require an awful lot of messy jobs done by infantry which a post- Desert Storm style military with sufficient PGMs does not. Although it's worth noting that "sufficient PGMs" may rule out anyone who is not the US or possibly China in a large or protracted conflict, and the lesson of Ukraine should stand as a stark reminder.
Funnily enough:
Skyspear Missile Launcher - Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum
This is honestly the kind of shit I love in WH40K and wish there was far more of. Medieval guilds of craftsmen lovingly hand-crafting and decorating each guided missile, the guidance system of which is actually the interred brain of a monk whose entire monastic tradition considers this its highest honour.
I think part of this is that the structure of the Guard means that it's quite hard to have regiments following their strengths and skillsets, because a commander of a given campaign often has no idea what regiments they'll be given or much familiarity with them until they're aboard the troopships and en route. So you end up with the Rough Riders regiment or drop troopers being sent into protracted urban combat, the Catachans holding trenches, and so on. You just don't know for sure what you're going to roll on the Departmento Munitorium Gatcha, and at best maybe have very broad categories like "mechanised infantry" or "artillery regiment".
Longer campaigns or crusades with the same set of regiments sometimes seem to show Imperial command essentially learning to work around these issues and use their forces better. But by design, at the end of a campaign/crusade these forces tend to be broken up and any institutional learning gets reset. Seems to show that the priority in Imperial organisation is much more geared towards limiting Guard commanders from easily being able to rebel than operational efficiency, I think.
For some reason I'm pretty sure the shoot it until it dies mentality isn't as simple as you make it out to be.
Zed.
Cannon Fodder
The Imperium isn't good at war, but when you have the amount of men, material and outright superhumans that even incompetent Guard generals can throw at their enemies en-masse, it almost doesn't matter.
Yeah, using 40k tactics on a modern battlefield would get millions of guardsmen killed, but it's easy for Imperial officials to call in more men than the enemy has bullets.
Yeah, using 40k tactics on a modern battlefield would get millions of guardsmen killed, but it's easy for Imperial officials to call in more men than the enemy has bullets.
- Location
- England
Comparisons fall down as well in the nature of victory.
How many wars fought in history have required the winners to kill every single member of the opposing forces as a bare minimum for Victory?
When fighting Orks, Chaos insurgents and especially Tyranids, Scorched Earth may be the minimum or you are facing another fight as soon as you look away.
Ork spores persist, Chaotic effects corrupt again and 'Nids specifically evolve to counter what you just did to beat them.
It doesn't matter how good at warfare you are compared to the persisting crapsack of multiple omnicidal species who are incapable of stopping short of doing the same to you by their very nature.
When they say "In the grim darkness of the 41st millenium, there is only war" they are not speaking hyperbolically.
You can never win, only hold the line for a short time, no matter what tactics, logistics or war crimes you throw at the problem. The scale however is such that the weight of entire galactic spanning power has manged to delay it's own demise by a mere 50,000 years or so. Other species in this galaxy have been at the same task for more than 65 million years and are still facing their extinction.
How many wars fought in history have required the winners to kill every single member of the opposing forces as a bare minimum for Victory?
When fighting Orks, Chaos insurgents and especially Tyranids, Scorched Earth may be the minimum or you are facing another fight as soon as you look away.
Ork spores persist, Chaotic effects corrupt again and 'Nids specifically evolve to counter what you just did to beat them.
It doesn't matter how good at warfare you are compared to the persisting crapsack of multiple omnicidal species who are incapable of stopping short of doing the same to you by their very nature.
When they say "In the grim darkness of the 41st millenium, there is only war" they are not speaking hyperbolically.
You can never win, only hold the line for a short time, no matter what tactics, logistics or war crimes you throw at the problem. The scale however is such that the weight of entire galactic spanning power has manged to delay it's own demise by a mere 50,000 years or so. Other species in this galaxy have been at the same task for more than 65 million years and are still facing their extinction.