Re: [Epic] marine chapters (was: Orks with LandRaiders)

From: Chris White <chris_at_...>
Date: Tue, 02 Sep 1997 12:29:36 -0700

At 12:08 PM 8/31/97 -0400, you wrote:
>On Sun, 31 Aug 1997, J. Michael Looney wrote:
>
>> <rant>
>> Going purely by GW rules, some of the things that are forgotten seem to
>> be things like rifles that can shoot more than 50 meters or so, artillry
>> with a range that out ranges small arms and auto fire weapons that don't
>> jam after about 30 rounds. Assuming that the WH40K rules are correct on
>> the weapon systems in use your average Space Marine Chapter (1000 men)
>> would be killed to the man by a 1914 era World War One British Infantry
>> Company (about 100 men) in about 10 minutes, much less vs. any thing
>> with any "good" weapons like, say a US Army force from Desert Storm,
>> never mind the USAF.
>>
>> Yeah, Space Marines are brave to the point of stupid, but so where the
>> French in WWI or Iran in the first Gulf War. They both charged machine
>> guns. They died. Given how SM are normally played and that they can't
>> seem to spread out (That got to stay within 2" rule in WH40K, 4" if your
>> real lucky) they would have problems in any war fought on Earth after
>> 1860 or so and would be totaly useless in any thing after 1914.
        <snip>

        I think that has more to do with the realities of table top warfare. If
one side has an average of forty or so individual models (talking WH40K
here) and you don't want them shoulder to shoulder, you have to come up
with some kind of arbitrary rule like that. (What am I doing, defending
GW?!? Must...get...medical...attention...)

        <snip>
>> All of this is of course because GW writes rules to re fight Waterloo,
>> regardless of the back ground fluff in question.
>> </rant>
>>
>It's not even much of a rant. It's pretty clear to even a casual observer
>that there is a strange mixture of high tech talk, with low tech walk.
>Sure, there are things like Emporer class Titans, which are obviously
>ahead of our current technology, at least as far as the MIU goes. But the
>weapons mounted on such a platform should hit on a 2+ on a d10. Compare a
>Land Raider to an Abrahms, and you'll see that the Abrahms has an AT shot,
>and can shoot on the move, with little impact on it's accuracy. And
>can shoot far, far further than 1.5 times the range of small arms
>fire. Where are the avdvanced computer targetting systems you would
>expect to see in such an eliete forse as the Space Marines?
>
        <snip>
        
        Or for that matter, automated anti-missile flechette firing systems, or
cruise missiles? And most air-to-ground attacks (from jet planes, at least)
takes place at ranges and speeds that would be most realistically
replicated as an off table effect.



Nickles
        <snip>
>
>--Ken Taborek oberon_at_...
>"Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change."- random fortune
>
>
>
Received on Tue Sep 02 1997 - 19:29:36 UTC