The new adventures for Deathwatch are amazing, and they show how a small group of well trained and motivated Space marines can accomplish pretty much anything. In these 2 adventure, 4 Space Marines not only defend a planet against a tyrannid invasion, but also board the hive ship and manage to effectively shut down a hive fleet. If 4 marines can do that, imagine what more can do. As you add more the raw power multiplies so the true power of the legions astartes is revealed to the galaxy. No wonder they were able to conquer the galaxy back in the day. Even these are Deathwatch members, I am sure you could take 4 randomly selected Space Marines and get the same result. Space Marines are great not only for their stats, but also for their "can do" attitude.

5 Marines, a demi squad: An extra marine would probably be a welcome boost of firepower to make the adventures that much easier. Imagine 20% more firepower and how much of a difference that would make.

10 Marines: A full squad. Probably a ton of firepower which would make the adventures a cakewalk as the marines waltz through their encounters with tyrannids and rebels. Battles against hordes end instantly and every xenos they meet explodes in a shower of gore as ten marines unleash their bolters.

100 Marines: A full company. Probably the standard deployment of a Space Marine force. This same force of Salamanders held back an ork horde in Salamander. The same force of Red Scorpions in the Anphilion project was able to complete a mission agains another tyrannid horde. In the adventures prosented, The Marines take over the planet within hours, kill the rebels, and kill enough tyrannids to send Hive fleet Dagon screaming into space

200 Marines, 2 full companies. The UltraMarines and Mortifactors were able to hold back and defeat a hive fleet with such a force in the Ultramarines books. The Raptors were able to inflict heavy losses on the Tao in the Taros campaign (even if the campaign was a fiasco for imperial forces).. In the adventures, the rebels and tyrannids surrender as soon as the force spills out of the warp.

400 Marines: What survived on Rynns world after the missle accident. They stil manage to hold back an ork horde for over a year which numbered into the millions.

1000 Marines; A full chapter. According to the tyrannids book, the Ultramarines were able to destroy a whole hive fleet with their chapter (Kraken). They also didnt cheat and board the hive fleet to kill the hive queen. They actually fought and killed so many tyrannids that the whole fleet litterally burned through its biomass and ran out of soldiers.

Now, that is what a full chapter can do. Imagine that the lords of Terra felt inclined to put together a larger Space Marine force, imagine what they could do.

5.000 Space Marines, possibly the full Black Templars force. An unstoppable force, yet only about 0.5% of the full Legions Astartes. Could probably sweep into the Jerico reach and push back all three fronts in short order. Defeat and destroy a hive fleet. Wipe out a large Ork Empire. Exterminate some smaller races such as the Tao and Dark Eldar forever.

10,000 Space Marines, One hundredth of all Space Marines in the Galaxy. Bring the Jerico reach into line and take over a host of other sectors in the Eastern Fringe. Destroy a number of hive fleets which are still active. Send a message to any rebel systems that leaving the Imperium will be met instantly with force.

50,000 Space Marines. A full 5% of the total Space Marines everywhere. Probably something not seen since the days of the great crusade. Probably a large chunk of the total pre heresy legions not counting the Ultramarines. This is the stuff of epic battles which you read about in the Horus Heresy books. Able to destroy the Tyrannid threat permanently. Able to clean out most threats in the Eastern Fringe and make it a safe neighbourhood. Exterminate the Tao and spit out the bones as an after thought. Make sections of the Imperium ork free.

So, any other ideas of what a large Space Marine force can do?

Start a galactic civil war destroying hundreds of worlds, decimate the Primarchs, lay siege to Terra, and mortally wound the God-Emporer?

Just speculating, mind...

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Now, that is what a full chapter can do. Imagine that the lords of Terra felt inclined to put together a larger Space Marine force, imagine what they could do.

Get bombarded and eradicated from orbit?

The point of Space Marine warfare as outlined in the excerpts from the book is that they support ordinary troops and strike targets of high importance, essentially depriving an enemy force of its force multipliers. They generally let the guard mop up afterwards. A Space Marine army fighting an actual war and incapable of picking their targets would likely just be swarmed.

As for Macragge, I suspect there's good old Brecht at work - "The space marines defeated an entire hive fleet" just sounded better than "The space marines, the serf armies of their worlds and all the Imperial Guard and Navy the Administratum could funnel there defeated an entire hive fleet, with the guard and navy being horribly chewed up in the process".

Also, Deathwatch marines are veterans of countless battles, not average marines just promoted to tactical. And even their efforts would have been in vain if there hadn't been the PDF and Navy around to mop up the weakened enemies when the broodlord and the synapse node died.

Number check. There are 1,000,000 Space Marines (ish), not 100,000...

Certainly not the vision of Space Marines that I have but, well, that's another one of the good things about the 40k universe. It encompasses all the extremes of interpretation. To some, each Marine is a William Wallace, not as portrayed by Mel Gibson, but how the common man was portrayed in thinking about William Wallace.

Kage

Cifer said:

Not necessarily. A larger Astartes force wouldn't necessarily make itself a target like that - a larger number of Astartes can, in theory, operate just like a smaller one, but with the added advantage of being able to hit far more targets simultaneously.

Cifer said:

Again, not necessarily. They wouldn't work well in long, brutal wars of attrition (though they used to be capable of it, before the Second Founding), but an Astartes war is still conceivable - it would simply have to be a swift, vicious war that systematically crippled key enemy targets over a period of hours or days, forcing the enemy to withdraw. As an army, they've got limited staying power (though different chapters vary on this - the Imperial Fists are more than a little skilled in siege warfare, and have a proud tradition of defensive warfare - and local conditions have a big influence), but they with virtually unparalelled force and precision, and who needs to grind an enemy to dust when you can simply rip out his heart and shatter his skull with a few well-placed strikes?

The Marines in the adventures are player characters, standing shoulders above normal Marines, chosen by the Emperor to do great deeds. Also, they're veterans of Deathwatch, so they have more experience under their belts than others.

You could just as well say, that if 4 unaugmented 4-6-level humans can stop Erasmus Haarlock from coming back, bringing the Tyrant Star into full power and plunging the Sector and probably the whole Segmentum into Chaos, then imagine what an army of unaugmented 4-6 level humans can do. Protagonists just don't play by the rules.

There's a short story in Tales of Heresy where... (Spoiler from here on out - since I don't know how to do the dropdowns here, as

doesn't work)

12 veteran Space Wolves wage a months long guerrilla campaign against a massive Dark Eldar force. Holding out and doing enough damage until the locals want to join in and they make one final strike against the Dark Eldar's Archon. Killing him. The goal because they figured the Raiders were just that, and on losing their leader would likely end up turning on each other for the power struggle, especially after months of being ambushed by Space Wolves and the people not giving over slaves easily.

All of these are valid arguments. The point I was trying to make was get a sense of how well the mechanics of the game match the fluff of the canon. Several times they have mentioned that even a force of 50 marines can take over a planet. It is not hard to imagine, 50 marines could take most of the objectives in "final sanction" simultaneously and without breaking a sweat. They could manhandle massive hordes or rebels and force them to surrender pretty quickly (the players in final sanction would need to do so in a slower more methodical basis since there are only 4 of them). Here are some other ways that the rules work with the cannon and how small groups of Marines are able to accomplish things well past their numbers would suggest is possible.

In the Chaos Marines Codex, a squad of marines which was tasked with cleansing of the planet of Tyrannids, got bored (went renegade) and took over the planet. Before long they had an army of 3,000,000 million following them.

The Iron Warriors were known to garrison entire planets with little more than a squad of Space Marines (mind you, they didn't appreciate it which probably explains why they rebelled).

2 Space Marines, Uriel Ventris and his buddy Panasis, go to the Eye of Terror and throw a massive wrench into the plots of the Chaos Marines.

Another duo of Space Wolves in "Legends of the Space Marines", where able to harass and disrupt a rebel force which tried to attack Fenris.

The Horus Heresy books are filled with stories of how Space Marine forces were able to defeat entire planets by killing "millions and millions" of enemy soldiers, some of them armed with high tech weapons.

The adventures are a good idea of how even a small group of space marines drip fed into a war can drastically change the outcome (which seems to be what the game Deathwatch is all about, wars in the balance and Space Marines to turn the tide). I am just taking that and seeing how much can be done if you factor in 1,000,000 marines over the whole galaxy.

Besides, there is no reason that the Imperial Guard and PDF would not be used. It is just that they would most likely play a supporting role and be tasked more with holding the line and keeping territory to better free up the Astartes forces. There is no reason why, in my hypothetical example, a crusade of 5,000 Space marines could not be supported by an army of, say, 4,000,000 imperial guards.

Finally, there is also no reason that a large Space Marine army could not be broken up into hundreds of small teams (someone else mentioned this). Imagine the havoc if 250 squads, each made up of 4 marines, were all striking out at the same time (or even 500 "buddy pairs"). It would be enough for the Hive queen herself to have a migraine.

I think this is really well written and to scale.

Of course, I would agree with some of the later posters of how a Chapter always must encompass several tens or hundreds of thousand ancillary and garrison troops to actually do all the stuff described in the fluff. 1000 Men simply can not conquer a country, let alone continent, planet or solar system - it's just too big. Even if you are *really* well armed, someone's got to do the actual conquering....

I figured 1000 serfs per marine, half of them servitors. It also goes better with my idea of Chapters as monastic orders and Space Marines as their knights....

Yeah, Marines are basically just that.

They are the precision scalpel, give them an objective and they'll figure out a way to do so. But conquering a planet is a bit harder. Remember in the Heresy it was a bit more like 10,000 Marines backed up by a tremendous amount of Imperial Army soldiers. The marines made the beachhead, took the major objectives, the Army consolidated the gains and still probably did the majority of the fighting.

The premise of the second sample adventure was absurd if you ask me. Four veteran Space Marines are pretty bad-ass, but c'mon, a Tyranid Hive Ship? Yeah right.

Atheosis said:

I kinda disagree, since storming a ship and such things like that is basically what Marines are supposed to be for. And remember, there was a big group of Storm Troopers helping cause distractions too. It wasn't just the Marines on the ship. And narrow quarters allows a marine to focus their power a lot more than an open battlefield.

Dulahan said:

Boarding a sentient ship that can communicate with all other Tyranids on board seems like a suicide mission to me. But to each their own.

Oh and the Stormtroopers don't count for much if you ask me...

Well, it can. But keep in mind it's as much a much larger organism as anything. It's communication with everything else is similar to how our own bodies send white blood cells and other anti-bodies against foreign agents. The Sentient Ship is far more concerned with the Larger Scale of Space Side stuff.

I'd assume it's a question of adaption, like everything when it comes to tyranids. How often did this hiveship come up against enemies who had the nerve to actually try and board it ? Boarding is something that happens to other navies! Therefore, it probably assumed that its standard responses to foreign elements were sufficient until it was too late.

Being focused on raining biological death on an imperial voidship was probably not conducive to its concentration either.

One word. Sphincter.

It's going to have an effect on a Marine invasion of a Tyranid any way you call it. And you can take that however the heck you want to.

Kage

Cifer said:

That's an interesting rationalization, but in the end it's still just a rationalization.

Assuming that its defenses were weak enough for a handful of Marines to fight through (a far-fetched notion as far as I'm concerned), there still are the problems of navigating a ship that isn't designed to be navigated by humans, without any kind of schematics, through organs and cavities that have no logical reason to even be connected (at least not in a way that Marines should be able to walk from one to the other). There's also the problem that the Hive Ship's reaction to the intruders is going to intensify the more harm they cause, so that by the end they should be getting swarmed by every Tyranid onboard (which, I think we can all agree, would be a hell of a lot).

Sorry, the idea behind the entire mission is completely absurd.

Atheosis said:

There have been instances in the fluff of boarding hive-ships, so it's perfectly reasonable for Deathwatch to include such a mission as a demo.

Also, the background has generally said that Tyranids don't store the individual creatures during space-flight, instead reabsorbing them back into the nutrient cycle and then remaking them when they arrive, because that results in the least waste of resources (reabsorbing them and then rebuilding them takes less resources than feeding all the creatures on route). Therefore it's also perfectly reasonable that there wouldn't be thousands of Tyranid creatures on-board, rather just a vanguard to act as anti-bodies to any intrusion.

The only problem I see if navigation, but seeing as the Deathwatch are experts in xenos, including Tyranids, I don't find it hard to believe that they'd generally know where to go and how to get there, even if it is on the fly.

MILLANDSON said:

If you say so.

The only stories I've ever encountered regarding anyone boarding a hive ship went pretty poorly for those involved.

Honestly I can deal with the initial get in part (even if it stretches credulity a bit), but the get out part, that's where the adventure really loses me. Four Marines and a bunch of IG schmoes boarding a Tyranid hive ship has suicide mission written all over it.

Atheosis said:

That seems a little unfair. The Imperial Guard are the butt of every joke as far as the fluff is concerned, but Stormtroopers are pretty competent individuals.

EDIT: I can't figure out this quote system. Gahh.

"Honestly I can deal with the initial get in part (even if it stretches credulity a bit), but the get out part, that's where the adventure really loses me. Four Marines and a bunch of IG schmoes boarding a Tyranid hive ship has suicide mission written all over it."

It could very well be they went into it knowing they were going to die, but so long as they disabled the hive ship in some way then they died for a reason. Selfless sacrifice is part of what makes Space Marines so heroic.

It could also simply be through stupid, blind luck that any one of them made it out, but your mileage may vary. Automatically assuming they made it out seems a little hasty. Run the adventure yourself and see how it pans out. It could very well be they never made it past the first hallway in "your canon."

Artemesia said:

Oh if I were to run the adventure I can pretty much guarantee you they wouldn't make it out alive...

FFGs line is that only 1 marine in 100 in good enough for Deathwatch. So player characters are amongst those 1-in-100 best of best. Logically it comes around to say that 4 other marines could not do the same. Probably a whole company of other marines would not. Playing proteagonist is supposed to be fun. Protagonists of novels are supposed to be heroes. Thats why in RPG or in Novels you never see the just-out-of-scouts newbie marine who gets ripped to pieces by the first hormagaunt swarm he meets. That doesn't mean dozen of marines do not die each day in some cesspool of a war, ripped to pieces by "inferior" enemies without ever seeing the inside of a hiveship. Thats war. It happens.

Also, worth noting is the fact that the 4 deathwatch marines could not do it without the 10 000+ PDF fighters sacrificing themselves against the Swarm and the 10 000+ Imperial Navy spacemen doing their part.

So, instead of asking "if 4 deathwatch marines can do that..." you should ask "If 20 000 people with four capital warships and a handfull of marines can do that..."

Polaria said:

Based on the lore regarding what it's like to fight Tyranids, my answer would be no, they couldn't do that...

Atheosis said:

While I agree with with you that conducting a daring hit and run board action on a Tyranid Hive ship is a daunting prospect and would likely mean the death of most anyone directly involved, it is not impossible to conduct one successfully.

First lets address the fiction. I am not surprised that you would draw the conclusion that our "heroes" in this adventure don't stand a chance, because I have been reading fiction about Tyranids for about decade and games workshop paints as some of the scariest stuff out there in the 40k universe. I used have a poster on my wall that got from my White Dwarf subscription that described step by step the entire process by which the Tyranids assimilate whole planets, leaving behind nothing but lifeless rocks. More than 90% of what is out there promotes the Tyranids as an unstoppable force.

However, looking at the universe in its totality begs us to reexamine this narrow view because Games Workshop provides the same treatment to many other groups, including space marines. The 40k universe is littered with these unstoppable forces and immovable objects, so we can't just accept all the hype about any one group because it can't all be true.

So if we can't simply trust the fiction on this matter we will need another source. Might I suggest a rules precedent, from another 40k universe inspired game. In the rules for Battlefleet Gothic ships are able to make hit and run attacks to inflict critical damage on enemy ships (similarly to the rules in Rogue Trader). The game has rules for Tyranid fleets with hive ships and allows for enemy assault boats/boarding torpedos to make hit and run attacks against them. Yes the Tyranids are much better protected from such attacks than most fleets, but they are still succeptable. Furthermore, space marines have the distinction of having the best bonus on hit and run attacks amongst all the fleets, so it makes more sense they could succeed where others would fail.

Now I do need to concede, that I know of no instance in Gothic were a critical hit will wipe out the synapse capability of a hive ship like the players would be doing in the adventure, but that has more to do with the distinction between a tabletop wargame and a rpg. In Gothic a hit and run attack is a simple die roll and it would be very unsatisfying to have that simply cause the destruction of the entire enemy fleet in and of it self. In Deathwatch that same event can easily take an entire nights play session, so it would be more appropriate.

Besides the players have the right to expect to do something epic like what they can accomplish in this adventure. Not only are they are playing 8 foot tall supper-humans in high tech battle armour, firing what amount to small arms sized rocket launchers, but they also represent an elite cadre of the tiny minority of humanity that makes up the Adeptus Astartes. Nearly nobody else can do what the players can accomplish, and that is what makes the games interesting.

As and aside, if anyone would like to check out the rules for Battlefleet Gothic either to play or to go-over the information I provided they can be found for free on the Games Workshop website under there specialist games here .

Atheosis said:

I thought BL/FFG fluff was supposed to be as much "canon" as anything else... So I guess they just did do that