ebony14 said:

That I can agree with as is mentioned in the fluf (IG Omnibus, 15 hours) the writers and reporters for the newletters generally have a habit of "twisting" the story around to make it sound more palettable when you're fighting a seemingly loosing battle with 10 million orks on all sides and fronts.

The fluff states that there are two types of COMMANDERS, not two types of IG. In most of the fluff, the IG are a well-trained, ddisciplined fighting force. Sure, they're only human, but then again, so are the SAS...

There are those "commanders" that view their men as something to throw down the throat of the enemy and hope there's enough of them to make him choke, and if there isn't, just send more. These are what is colloquially known as "bastards" and they tend to have got their post through connections, family, money or some combination thereof. They also tend to lose battles against anything smarter than a three-year-old cactus (or another commander of this type).

Then there are those who actually know how to command an army. They tend to lead a force rather than just obstruct it. There are a lot more commanders of this type than you might think, but not as many as the other (because of the unique way the Imperium is funded by you, the citizen). These commanders are those who have either A) come up the ranks and so know what the hell they're facing, B) have actually paid attention in Officer training, C) been born in and raised to a martial standard that implies that living and fighting for the Emperor is a lot better than just dieing for him, or finally D) got lumped in with a bunch of Veterans and survived the hazing and/or horrible situation they'd been tossed into.

Does anyone else give their Acolytes bonuses for the IIUP? One of mine used the diagrams in his to make a rather good trap, which delayed pursuit of his band long enough to escape.

foxfax said:

In some of the background, certainly... but that doesn't account for natural regional variance - afterall, even in the modern world, some soldiers are better than others. Not everyone is SAS material...

As for those types of commanders... I think the line blurs between them quite a bit.

Take, for example, the Death Korps of Krieg - perhaps the finest siege troops in the Imperium, raised in a militant culture that emerged from a century-long planetary civil war that was equal parts World War I trench warfare and Nuclear Holocaust. In short, a conflict that makes any war in human history to date look like an afternoon spent paintballing.

The Krieg forces are utterly devoted to the Imperium, and the world produces dozens of extremely high-quality regiments a year (because, being a world covered in irradiated trench networks that span continents, it has nothing else to give, and because the people of Krieg see military service as penance for the rebellion that all but killed their world). Their speciality is attritional siege warfare akin to that which ravaged their world - brutal, bloody and unforgiving conflicts that in many cases can kill thousands of men a day. Their culture and faith emphasises sacrifice for the Imperium as noble, and consider it their duty to die for the Emperor.

Army groups consisting entirely of Krieg regiments (non-Krieg forces find the morbid, stoic nature of Krieg regiments to be demoralising), overseen by specially-briefed Commissars (whose job isn't so much to keep the men in line as to keep them from getting themselves killed needlessly) are hurled into brutal sieges against entrenched enemies in conflicts that will take years, even decades to win.

And they do win, even if it costs the lives of millions of them to do it - there are always more to take their place, and they gladly throw themselves into the meatgrinder to secure victory in His name.

Officers who care about their men need not apply - the generals needed for such a fighting force are as much mathematicians as anything else, planning campaigns years in advance, meticulously calculating expected casualties per day and per week and ensuring that the reinforcements keep pouring in, determining expected rates of advance in centimetres... so that when the war begins, it simply becomes a matter of adjusting for variables, done from a comfortable stateroom a sector away.

They throw away lives, certainly, but in such cases, it isn't carelessness so much as callous indifference to the plight of the soldiers.

The Imperium contains a thousand different kinds of warzone, each requiring different approaches and different methods. What works for one will not necessarily work for another, and different kinds of general are required for each of those methods. Sometimes, leading from the front and inspiring heroics will only get you shot in the face, just as sometimes the "men into the meatgrinder" approach just results in a lot of dead men (as opposed to a lot of dead men and a victory).

On a world swarming with Orks, demonstrating yourself to be a valiant and heroic leader of men will often draw the attentions of all the largest Orks within a thousand mile radius, so they can prove "dat dey's da biggest an' strongest, cuz dey smashed da humie boss".

And, of course, within all the different kinds of leadership, there are the competant and the incompetant. The incompetant behind-the-scenes mathematician-strategist will throw regiment after regiment into the fire because he sees them as good for nothing else (the better ones will see their worth and account for it in their calculations of the cost of victory)... while the incompetant hero-officer will soon get ripped up in his quest for glory, or survive to a ripe old age against the odds and lead his men on a foolhardy quest in a last-gasp attempt to show just how damned good he really is...

There are a lot of variables in the Imperial Guard, from the distant odds of being sent to the wrong world because a scribe miscopied one apparently meaningless number amongst trillions, to post-campaign execution because they've faced the forces of Chaos and the taint cannot be permitted to spread, to misfiled requisition reports that give a unit rations made for the deathworld veterans in the next camp which are toxic to most men, to the difference between men raised to serve and fight for the Imperium and those who were farmers six months ago because reinforcements were that desperately needed, to the zeal and manner of Commissars (the best are genuinely respected by the men under their charge, whose presence is inspiring and encourages real loyalty and courage... the worst are borderline psychotic with a tendancy to execute men for the tiniest infraction). At one end of the scale, you get the brave men and woman of Cadia's Kasrkin, and the Schola-raised Stormtroopers - the 41st Millennium equivalent of the SAS and any other elite Special Forces unit you care to consider ... at the other, the 14th Jumael Volunteers (from Fifteen Hours ), a green and unready company of agri-world conscripts, on the wrong world due to clerical error, slaughted by Orks within the first 24 hours of arriving on the world...

The problem I see with the guard is that their training and equipment is on par with the level of training and equipment of today.
Now when faced with your standard human forces e.g. rebellious planets/chaos cultist, the guard wins out every day, but the guard doesn’t always fight those types of forces.
From what I can gather from the fluff general speaking the guard is almost like a defense army and is mostly sent to either defend an imperial position or to recapture rebellious imperial worlds.
now these men and women will be we trained and well supplied and probably been in the guard for quite some time but I feel that we get the idea of the guard being poor when there is a major situation that happens to the Imperium.
like the Sabbat worlds crusade or the black crusades or the Armageddon wars, hive fleets... this is when the guard goes all soviet army and just does a mass recruitment drive and just floods the battlefield with raw recruits.

Ignayus said:

Failure to produce your Primer on request carries the death penalty, as does damaging morale by disparaging its contents .

Failure to produce your Primer on request carries the death penalty, as does damaging morale by disparaging its contents .

Happily, veterans are rather seldomly requested to produce their Primer. Conscripts wouldn't get away with modifying their guns either.

I think that, in general, the IG are largely competant and professional. However, look at it like this.

Take a fire-team of modern day Marines that have all been through and survived urban combat (generally regarded as the worst thing one can be sent into today... probably because we just don't do jungle combat anymore). Now, drop a gene-stealer on them. How do you think they'll take that? My guess is not too well, and men that would have chewed through 10 times their number of regular opponents will probably all die horribly, or if they get lucky or are made of unusually stern stuff, may win out with "just" heavy losses. The IG are percieved as much weaker than they are simply due to the insane enemies they frequently end up having to face.

Aureus is correct. The way most regiments are protrayed is as highly professional and well-trained militarymen, probably much more so than any of our modern day armies. In fact, some would argue that some regiments are trained like today elite formations would. It is testament to the utter lethality of the enemies they face that they still often need massive numbers or very heavy support to overcome their opponents.