Something occurred to me the other day while pondering Deathwatch. How do space marines handle "handedness"? As a player of 40k since the first states side release of Rogue Trader (the war-game that started it all, not the more recent RPG), I've read the countless reiterations of the modification process that makes a normal man into a space marine. It came to mind that I don't recall any particular implant rewiring the brain pathways and/or genetic markers that control handedness (our actual scientific understanding of handedness is still being developed).

The reason it seems an interesting thought is that we see abundant examples of space marines dual wielding weapons to devastating effect (the ol' bolter and chainsword for example), but no real mention on how they learned to use both hands effectively enough to be able to shoot straight or hit hard enough with their "off" hand. This leads me to wonder if there is an implant process or hypno/psycho/indoctrination/training/brainwashing that addresses this and in essence makes all space marines effectively ambidextrous.

In most real-world applications, people tend to switch weapons out of their dominant hand rather than attempting to use both hands to fight (outside of hand to hand combat at any rate), don't let Hollywood fool you.

I wonder if the RPG will hit on this little detail.

Also, in order to cut down on some of the misinterpretations of the space marine augmentation process, here is a link to a list of the changes a potential space marine goes through (the website has, as far as I can tell, reproduced the list faithfully):

wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Creation_of_a_Space_Marine

Indications are that they are all ambidextrous. There isn't any official reason for this as far as I'm aware. I would tend to think it's part of their training seeing as it is possible to develop ambidexterity with a lot of practice. But that is only a guess.

That seems to be my line of reasoning as well. Now let's hope the devs actually gave that some thought before the book publishes and we end up with some sort of backlash about it when characters start dual wielding things (or people) and how the rules handle it.

Well, to offer my two cents, it's an accepted fact that every Space Wolf is first a Blood Claw, which are their version of Assault Marines but without jump packs. It's what they do instead of training them as "scouts," so at the very least every Space Wolf should be ambidextrous, and I wouldn't be surprised if in the YEARS (sometimes decades) of training the other chapters manage to teach their aspirants to use either hand in combat.

Jurinetblade said:

Scouts dual-wield in standard Marine armies as well.

Depending on their armament, but yes.

Funny enough, until the latest marine sculpts, all marines used their gun left handed or twohanded, and close combat weapon in the right hand (which would point to their "dominant" hand righty), it was one of the subtle ways you could tell chaos marines who were always sculpted to wield things in either hand (space wolves too, **** mutant puppies )

In the end, the effect is that marines are ambidexterous and should have two-weapon wielder melee/ballistic, ESPECIALLY in the Deathwatch since their prefered method of combat is wielding bolter & close combat weapon (similar to space wolves and gray knights).

This is really an easy fix....if you are worried about it in your game just give all your players the option to start with the ambidextrous talent

RedSkull said:

I would be surprised if the didn't automatically give it to all Marines or make it purchasable.

All SM's are ambidextrous, probably as a result of hypnodoctrination.

Considering how closely GW is working with FF I am confident that they will get this right.

I think that is more a training matter that a mental issue. Most of the people has a dominant hand which will be use for most the things, but that is a thing most people could change training is "off-hand". Some Special Forces includes this training in their instruction, so Space Marines who have decades to perfect their combat skills are likely to be ambidextrous.

I will very surprised too if DW characters do not start with the ambidextrous talent, (as more talents and skills)...

Deathseed said:

I must say I'm quite looking forward to the first person in my group to say "to hell with this, I pick up the tau negotiator and beat his friends to death with him!"

It'll be magical.

Zamnil Blackaxe said:

Sounds very Space Wolf to me.