Re: [Epic] Re: [EPIC] Epic 40k stats/pre-sale

From: Howard Liu <h2liu_at_...>
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 10:45:47 -0800

>Shock troops such as the marines have historically made big differences in
>entire wars, let alone certain battles. Look at some of the feats performed
>by the French Foreign Legion, the U.S. Marines, the Buffalo Soldiers, or any
>number of elite units throughout history. The German shocktroops in WWI
>were one of the few effective troops in trench warfare, they were just too
>little, too late. A year earlier in their development, and they might have
>turned the tide.

But Marines are just not that good in the game. If you take 20,000 points
of Marines (a whole Chapter, possibly), and compare it to the numbers in a
20,000 point Imperial Guard army, then a thousand Marines per Chapter seems
out of whack. The Imperial Guard is supposed to number over the trillions,
but in the 20,000 point example, they won't outnumber the Marines by more
than 10 or 20 to 1. In 40K, a Space Marine is only three times more
expensive than an Imperial Guardsman. I'm not saying that an elite unit
couldn't make a difference in a war, or a battle. Maybe it would be
possible for a million men to make a difference in a universe with a
population in the thousands of trillions, but they'd have to be good, and
you would have to make sure to always use them in the right place and at
the right time. I'm saying that a thousand Space Marines, as presented in
Epic and 40K, aren't the elite unit that's going to do it, nor are they
priced as if they were. To make a thousand Marines even remotely
believable, you'd need a situation like in OGRE, a lone squad of Space
Marines taking on all comers in Epic scale, and winning more often than not.


Howard
Received on Mon Mar 03 1997 - 18:45:47 UTC