This is an opinion thread, I think I'll point out first.

Something I am wondering, regarding how Only War will go; what might take the place of some of the cool stuff various characters often aspire to acquire? If you are an Inquisitor, you have cart blanche access to most of the coolest stuff in the galaxy, and your direct underlings can probably get some of those via being under your umbrella. No one except another Inquisitor is likely to call you on it, either. Rogue Traders have a similar access, either by virtue of having more money than most Sub-Sectors, or by stealing it from some hole they just dug threw. Their Warrant gives them a certain amount of immunity to persecution, and their penchant for being outside the Imperium's borders helps with this immensely. Space Marines are some of this stuff, and while they rarely go looting for alien gear, or ancient toys, they do possess a number of both, and CAN requisition such things, if the need is really there.

Then we get the Guard; the group the universe doesn't care about. They have no names, they live and die in droves. While I wholeheartedly expect them to break with the regular mold, and tweak in things to make individual Guardsmen important, and thus fun, worthwhile characters, what are they maybe to do to fill this particular gap that the game might have? Much of a game is the acquisition of better stuff, preferably rare stuff, but the Guard doesn't get such stuff. If they find it, they give it up, or pay a high price when they are found out. They don't usually req awesome stuff; that's not necessarily their place. They are likely to start the game with lasguns, and maybe aspire to plasma weapons, meltas, and heavy bolters, someday (and these might only be certain specialties; an Officer might get a Plasma Pistol, Power Sword, and/or Refractor Field, but not virtually anyone else, nor is anyone other than the hw wielder likely to get the heavy bolter, rocket launcher, or what have you, and only Stormtroopers or Vets are likely to get carapace, and hot-shot (better) las-weapons). Finding an archeotech plasma pistol, when you don't use them, or can't keep them, is sort of a let down, while finding an Eldar Firepike is akin to finding a Chaos Altar; it's evil, and you don't even want it/can't have it, even if it might be the best weapon your group has yet encountered. So many "important" Guardsmen have spent their careers making due with just the lasgun, flak armor (carapace if they are fortunate), and hope in the Emperor's blessings. What might the book fill in the "Ancient Relics, Archaeotech Wonders, and Artifacts of Xenos" Chapter/motif with? What might Guard characters, still being Player Characters, who want to feel important among the multitudes of faceless ready-to-dies hope to get to feel like they are getting better?

Okay, opinions please?

I wouldn't say it's prohibited if you get an Archaeotech Pistol to keep. Or stuff like that. In the Purging of Kadillus, a Guardsman was given a Bolt Pistol by a Space Marine, and was allowed to keep it. And it wasn't exactly seen being given by anyone. Now, ammo might be prohibitive if you're in the guard, I mean, the same marine said a single shell from a boltgun costs more than a Lasgun. But yeah, it shouldn't be impossible to keep some nice stuff!

You would be supprised at the amout of extra kit squaddies can squirral away. I was offerd a Hummve in 91 for one of our Landrovers including Kit also personal pistols form USMC fliers. There was a south african battalion CO who had a 20mm gatling cannon from his brother in the Airforce. Most decent army units will overlook a certin amout of diffrent kit. The only time the I wore only issued british army kit was in basic training.

The harsh dicspline of the guard from the fluff is probable not how it will work in the game if the commisionar regulary kills people for silly reasons he will not probable survive the first major battle he is in

Moglwi said:

I think the brutal discipline of the Commissariat is often overstated to the point of ludicrousness.

As I see it, a Commissar resorts to summary execution only for serious infractions during battle - cowardice, desertion, etc - when nothing less than a clear and brutal punishment is necessary to remind everyone else of the consequences of disloyalty. Outside of battle, a Commissar doesn't just shoot anyone he sees doing something wrong… there is, afterall, a series of rules and regulations in place for such matters. Those rules are harsh, yes, and often cruel… but they are not arbitrary.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Have you seen the Minsturium manual and it list of punishments and crimes

N0-1_H3r3 said:

The great modern fantasies were written out of religious, philosophical and psychological landscapes. They were sermons. They were metaphors. They were rhetoric. They were books, which means that the one thing they actually weren’t was countries with people in them.

The commercial fantasy that has replaced them is often based on a mistaken attempt to literalise someone else’s metaphor, or realise someone else’s rhetorical imagery. For instance, the moment you begin to ask (or rather to answer) questions like, “Yes, but what did Sauron look like?”; or, “Just how might an Orc regiment organise itself?”; the moment you concern yourself with the economic geography of pseudo-feudal societies, with the real way to use swords, with the politics of courts, you have diluted the poetic power of Tolkien’s images. You have brought them under control. You have tamed, colonised and put your own cultural mark on them.

http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/viriconium/

Careful - you are in severe danger of trying to realise someone else's rhetorical imagery and producing 40k lite and the reasonable commissar.

Moglwi said:

Just because it is written there doesn't mean it will always happen. As Cain said, those who cleave too stringently to it tend to very quickly have 'friendly fire' accidents.

My dear Aluminiumwolf, the problem with making something from something else, especially from literary material, is that you really can't make anyting without changing the basic matter. And so it is with making a game from already-existing source material; in order to do this, you have to get down to nuts and bolts…which means you have to find, or surmise, those nuts and bolts in the first place. I'll simply stick with the notion that Commissars are more like lessened military Ordo Hereticus: They're there to keep troops loyal to the Imperium, to preach the Imperial Creed (never forget that commissars are officially trained by the Ordo Ministorium), and to watch for signs of heresy and corruption.

Of course, with so many variations and sub-sects in the Imperial Cult, 'heresy' is one of the most-used words in the game, up there with 'bolter,'

Speaking of bolters, I am amused by the fiction of a Space Marine giving a guardsman a bolt pistol. Sure, I could believe that it would be done (not a bolter. Those are holy to the Astartes). It's just that Deathwatch, and the Space Marine video game, make a lot of the relative size of Marines, and their kit. Said bolt pistol would be at least 70cm long by 25cm thick by 50cm deep, the size of a suitcase, and probably weigh zoggin' lots. Handling it would take a weapons mount, and where would said guardsman get the ammo? Special issue, Astartes only, by law. (And you don't want to see who the Astartes send to enforce that law. Sure, a few rounds here and there, but a steady supply?). The pistol would be something of a trophy, in the end.

Warboss Krag said:

He actually fired it like a rifle, and made a point of that it was so crazy - also, the way they work, there isn't a lot of recoil, the 'rocket' part kicks in after the barrel ejects it. It was give heat of battle to a very courageous guardsman who just effectively, while not saved the life of the Astartes, relieved some pressure. It had 5 rounds, he was told not to waste them. It was given after the guy said he had no more weapon, and thus.. got it. He ended up wounded, then named a "Son of Calliban" or something like that as an honor for his valor.

As there is no such thing as a 'standard' piece of basic kit in the Imperium, perhaps using different 'patterns' might give some range to available kit. Different lasgun patterns with varying pros and cons, plus some 'rare' good patterns perhaps might be an option. I guess some more attachments for kit too, as I can easily imagine Guardsmen scourging up improvements to their weapons. Prehaps ability to buy 'traits' for weapons to reflect high usage and familiarity, like 'accurate', or 'reliable'. I suppose a lot depends on how/why the unit has come together - a special ops team may have access to kit far and beyond what would be expected for a normal guard.

Strange, I've seen a lot of background that says bolters kick like crazy. (It's the initial charge that clears them from the gun, you know. That's the reason they spit brass. If they didn't have an initial charge to get them out, they'd have the gyrojet problem, that the round is still trying to attain velocity when it exits the muzzle - a gyrojet pistol, .45 cal, would hit like a mule at 20m range. At 1m, it wasn't even a spit-wad. Having a bolter do the same thing would be real stupid, particularly for a close-ranged device like a pistol…)

AluminiumWolf said:

No, I'm really not.

My favourite depiction of a Commissar is the one attached to the Elysian forces in the first Word Bearers novel. Prior to battle, he moves amongst the men as an ally and an inspiration - he plays cards with them, shares war stories, and generally ensures that their morale is high. When battle begins, and one of the men he was playing cards with the night before turns tail and runs, the Commissar does not hesitate to shoot that man in the face with his bolt pistol.

Now, to each their own, but the purpose of the Commissar is to ensure discipline and loyalty in the men… he can do that in whatever way he sees fit, and there are rules and regulations to support his works (yes, a lot of those rules may have standard punishments involving execution… but that's not summary execution, which is a battlefield punishment… summary execution doesn't give you a chance to interrogate the accused to find his co-conspirators).

Guardsman will probably never get good upgrades like the other games do. Besides a small trophy item here and there. However, they do have acces to some great gear. Like Autocannons, flamethrowers, a Leman Russ…. Nothing to sneeze at. Of course which items they are allowed to bring on a mission would depend a lot on the mission I am sure. So their mission loadout could differ quite a lot from mission to mission.

I can't believe the OP said that. As IG you are going to be supplied directly by the nigh omnipotent Departmento Munitorum! An organisation who's resources make Space Marine chapters, Rogue Trader Dynasties and the Inquisition look like a local church fundraiser.

…of course it's got to be spread out a lot more. There should be whole a mini-game involved in getting more than standard gear out of the Munitorum.

But one of the classes is already Storm Trooper, who have basically the best gear human can get hold of on a regular basis, let alone once you rank up.

I know, but don't have time to look it up, there are number of regiments that employs mercenaries or ner-do wells with the promise of battlefield spoils (much in the same way that medieval armies worked). So baring the obviously xeno or heretical it's going to be more reliant on 'drops' than the DH and especially DW.

Warboss Krag said:

Yes, but unlike the gyrojet pistol, the bolter round explodes (damage code X). That should more then make up the difference.

That said, I would imagine a SM-sized bolter to kick like a rabid mule on PCP, because it is designed for the size, strength and robustness of Astartes physiology, even before factoring in the powered armour. When making a gun fit for a combat demigod to be used against enemies powerful enough to challenge him, one tends to use all the leeway available to ensure maximum performance.

Richard Sharpe wore a pair of looted French cavalry overalls with leather reinforcement that he took from a trooper he killed. Rather than the Rifle officers standard sword based on the light cavalry sabre, he used a straight 1796 pattern Heavy Calvary sword, a heavy and brutal weapon that better fitted his fighting style.

Patrick Harper carried a Nock volley gun, a seven barrelled weapon that in the books only someone of his immense strength could use.

I dunno. I don't think an unending quest for gear with better stats is… Necesscary,,, for a roleplaying game, although that can be fun as well.

Re: Bolters. The bolter is described, as far back as the basic Rogue Trader, as have an 'admantium penetrator tip.' This is a useless design without a muzzle velocity to power it through armor. Ergo, the bolter shell is a high-velocity thing, whichs means a nasty accelerator right out of the muzzle. QED, it's anything but recoilless.

Besides, in the old days, Orks useta use 'em. Wassa use uv havin' a gun what don't kick 'n go BOOM! den?

Face Eater said:

I said that because the Guard rarely gets COOL stuff; no three-barrel flamers, or nooverheat plasma pistols. They get lots of stuff, but much of it is the bottom end, plain jane stuff. It's reliable, and easy to mass produce, but nothing to right home about. They don't get the cool stuff, like relic weapons, xenos toys, or what have you. I don't expect players in Only War to run out of the stuff the DMun gives them, but it will rarely be awesome, unless you are a special weapons/heavy weapons expert, or the aforementioned Officer with a plasma pistol and a power sword (putting him a lot closer to the opposition than one might like), and a refractor field. Comparing their military to ours can also fail; we don't shoot our deserters, and worship our President. While I grant that a typical IG Commissar is not likely as severe as Yarrick might seem, and could easily be a friend, a confidante, and a moral elevator, prior to a battle, the fact still remains that, while the US Military, or the British Armed Forces, likely treat their soldiers as people, caring what we want, need, and think, the Imperium treats their Guardsmen as one more variety of ammunition, to be thrown at the enemy till the end. Those soldiers don't get better gear, often, because their superiors likely don't view them as needing it; the gear they have will carry them through to their eventual death. Granted, much of this could just be my opinion, but it seems to be what I read. If the game makes allowances for soldiers to get nifty kit, in difference to how they are illustrated in the table top, and maybe even scrounge looted gear, without being shot for touching heathen xenos gear, or tainted Chaos tech, all power to them. As is, I don't see them getting better than "standard" plasma/melta weapons, and the occasional Officer's Power sword/Power Fist, and that's what i was saying; if other games might have you start with plasma pistols, power swords, masterworked carapace armor, or what have you, it would seem weird to play a game where that will be forever out of your reach. Dark Heresy is rather similar, I grant you, though you'd think an Inquisitor could foot a bit more, but the others start with good stuff, better than the rank-and-file Guardsman might ever hope to get.

Warboss Krag said:

Don't you love how, much like the Space Marines, themselves, their vaunted weapons change size with the fiction, and the lack of convenience? Sometimes, a Space Marine is just a bit bigger than a man, other times, he's a 9' superman with hands that make an SMG seem like a pistol. I rather miss the older days, when the power armor and weapons of the Astartes might have been a pinch bigger, but were mostly just higher quality (compared to ehat i often wonder, as no one else uses bolters consistently), with better machine spirits. If a Space Marine really did give someone in the Guard a Bolt Pistol, it would be a Bolt Pistol, and the Guardsman's "gift" would be stocked from the same stores Commissar's bolt pistol ammo comes from.Oh well, and yes, i would agree that a bolter should have a good bit of recoil.

Don't get me wrong with what I am whining about; I am extatically awaiting this game; I just wonder how it will flow, when compared to more possibly character-driven/individual merits based games of the system? I hope to sometime soon see.

I think that the true measure (pun intended) of the Astarte's size wasn't really made into an issue until, surprise of surprises, Deathwatch did them right. I had hoped (and dreaded) that they would be supermen, and by gum, they were!

If you look at the original Marine lore, it becomes clear that they were supposed to be super-sized from the word go. Of course, it's not like Citadel (the minis company) ever had issues of scale, ever, and since…

As for cool Guard gear, fooey on not getting the good stuff! The farther you are from administrative command, the more, um, options you have for culling and using captured and oddball gear. Of course, I'm American, and the British classically hate that business ('a messy battlefield'). Fooey on them! What other country would produce nutballs that would overarm aircraft to the point where a simple field modification becomes sort of standard issue? (The B-25.)

I could easily see an experienced unit, far from administrative command, hauling all sorts of stuff - hey, I even still have lead models of Space Marines with shuriken catapults!

Something else to bring up…

Not getting 'the good stuff' doesn't mean it will be a bad game. A different tone. But not a bad game. Thinking new toys (Or levels, or skills, or whatever) are the only things that make a game fun or good is… not the best attitude. I imagine we'll see something similar to DW Requisition and such. But seriously, equipment doesn't have to escalate into 40k "Magic Items" to be a fun game. A lot of fun could be had by being a Lasgun toting regiment for a whole campaign if you ask me. It just changes the focus a bit on what makes for 'advancement' and that's OK!

Dulahan said:

True, I wholly agree, and still expect a great game. My fear stems more from the fact that, while Space Marines start with good stuff, and can requisition better stuff, the Guard start with a gun that works because it never jams, can be recharged by pissing on the power cell, and is only efficient in HUGE quantities, and armor that is not particularly effective against most of the critters they'll be fighting. Add to that most Guardsmen won't requisition better stuff; they have what their superiors believe they need, and if they die, there's always more Guardsmen, and 100 year wars are not rare. I don't want to seem like I just want nice toys, and awesome Skills, but I fear that they will remain mediocre, as that's what Guardsmen are. I hope, and again expect that they'll put my fears to rest, but with so little for info given, not knowing how they will do this is making me edgy.

Also, I'm not so sure how they'll set up "objectives" in Only War. Again, the IG forces rarely get newer, or better stuff, they die in droves, and a war that drags on for decades, or even a century, and only being one of numerous such campaigns around the galaxy, is a common occurence. That being said, I really want to know how they plan to set this game up, and make the characters feel relevant and rewarded over the course of a campaign. If only they'd just give us some more material to peruse.

Can't argue with that. The 40k previews the past year have just… sucked. We used to get almost weekly ones. Deathwatch and Black Crusade had a bunch of previews by this stage. Yet only war? Just the blurb. It's starting to feel like we might not get anything before the Free RPGday adventure. And lots of us won't even be able to get that (My store doesn't have a big enough RPG scene to be willing to pay for the package) for the week or two it takes before it shows up on PDF (*IF* it does!).

But yeah, something like a setting preview, or overview of the way they intend to handle themes, or anything really, would be wonderful. Even just saying the last 4 specialties!

Now it's like they announce stuff, maybe drop one preview, then nothing until suddenly it is in stores. Not that previews are mandatory, it's just nice, and sad to see the 'candy' gone after so long of getting so much awesome 'candy'. Heck, Honour the Chapter, for instance, one preview so far, and the third quarter is rapidly coming to an end. Yet even that one preview was a safe one, we knew something like that would be there. Ditto Tome of Fate has had one more, maybe, but still isn't in stores.

Yeah, it's just very noticeable how we used to get 3-4 really good previews for any major book, and now we're lucky to get 2 very vague ones. Let alone how we got a plethora for the Corebooks, and so far next to nothing for this one.

venkelos said:

This kind of viewpoint tends to homogenise the Imperial Guard, and while that works when regarding them through the context of a unified army book, it barely matches the background beyond that context. There are countless different regiments, serving countless different roles, in countless different warzones in countless different wars across the history of the Imperium. Certainly, there are those regiments that are fed into the meatgrinder in generations-long wars of attrition, but there are also those whose objectives and conflicts are brief and laden with urgency. Some regiments are trained and/or equipped better or worse or simply differently to others.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

This is a good point. Even in the Ghosts and Cain books there are plenty of named regiments that aren't just standard IG style ones. Mention of Tithed groups from extra wealthy worlds or near forgeworld style worlds that have MUCH better equipment than a standard guard unit, and are in turn let keep them instead of using the Flashlight. Fortunately, those units from worlds whose PDFs still use Muskets or sword and board still get uptrained and armed with the standard guard kit (though the latter may still be used by a wise commander for duties where Melee might be more likely, especially if they keep their swords…)

Granted, this can lead to weird mixtures of units. And just because they're equipped in such a way as to make the average Storm Trooper regiment seem poorly equipped doesn't mean they won't be assigned to scouting or trench holding duties. (Just like the Light Infantry Ghosts get assigned to Take and Hold or Trench duties at times)

Wasn't there even one regiment that had genuine power armor mentioned in one of the books? Or was that just a bodyguard element of said regiment?

I believe a maxed out veterans squad from the codex is something like a Sergeant and Nine troopers. All wear carapace armour. The Sergeant has er, can he buy a plasma pistol and a power fist? There's one dude with a heavy flamer and two guys with plasma guns. Another two troopers man a lascannon and the other four are armed with lasguns or shotguns.

Or if the Sergeant has progressed enough to be a Special Character, he might be a gunnery Sergeant ramboing a Heavy Bolter, or carry a hot-shot laspistol and a power sword.

Or Sly Marbo (just a trooper, but a particuarly 'ard one) carries a Ripper Pistol ("It fires a hail of poisoned metal shards at the target but in a highly accurate way. The initial wounds caused by the shards allow the venom to enter the victim's bloodstream and cause death.") and a poisoned knife.

Captain Al'rahem (a Platoon commander) carries the Claw of the Desert Tigers, a master crafted power sword encrusted with emblems of the desert which inflicts instant death regardless of the victim's toughness. Which is nice.

Mogul Kamir (leads a squad) rides a cyber-steed with a fearsome charge.

That's… enough cool stuff to be going on with right?