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[Tack]

... Valhalla's principle export is meat. They have too many men to even train properly. The logistics of building minesweepers is ludicrous.

I wouldn't call that specific tactic "silly", more "practical outcome of a galactic, scarcity society"

[milo christiansen]

I just finished the Commisar Cain books again. They have way, way, too much foreshadowing, but otherwise they are by far my favorite 40k books. The hero is likeable, and the grimdark is kept on a tight leash.

[Hanslanda]

Cain kinda reminds me of Felix Jaeger. " if I had only known what I was getting myself into..." Abounds.

[LordBaal]

Easy readings and audio books are the Ciaphas Cain HERO OF THE IMPERIUM ones. They set a good tone and are easy to read. It's like the apetizer for the heavier dinner.

[Grim Portent]

What irritates me though is that sometimes the setting is so grimdark that the characters go beyond stupid. Like, oh I am a general and muh army is made of expendables?! Why don't we throw hundred soldiers in that minefield, let them die, and then throw some new troops?! Who needs explosive-detection devices when you have fresh meat?! Also, FUCKING KUBRIK CHENKOV!

Guardsmen usually have less monetary value than their gear does and are substantially more expendable. Individual planets can have hundreds of billions of humans on them and the Imperium has 1 million+ inhabited planets. Unless the guardsmen belong to the minority that are actually trained veterans then their lives have so little value that a single bullet fired by a space marine is considered harder to replace than a thousand humans. If the Imperium needs a guard regiment they basically throw a net in an underhive and press gang anything that doesn't manage to run away. They value guardsmen so little that they often feed the dead ones to the living ones.

Using them to blow up minefields, build ramps of corpses and drown the enemy guns in meat is actually quite sensible provided you can keep them from rebelling successfully.

[nenjin]

What irritates me though is that sometimes the setting is so grimdark that the characters go beyond stupid. Like, oh I am a general and muh army is made of expendables?! Why don't we throw hundred soldiers in that minefield, let them die, and then throw some new troops?! Who needs explosive-detection devices when you have fresh meat?! Also, FUCKING KUBRIK CHENKOV!

I think you feel this way because you haven't really let the grimdark in to your heart and mind. You can't look at 40k from the perspective of someone today. You really have to see the writing from the point of view of the people of the universe. Technology is a mystery, barely reproducible in many circumstances. Warzones are fronts that span continents. The armies are so large they could consume an entire real world country and not leave a spec of it left.

When an Imperial general callously throws tens of thousands of soldiers at a problem, they do so literally not caring what the manpower cost is. Humans, every human, is expendable in 40k to some degree. It's hard wired into the psyches of lords, generals, officers, grunts, workers, even farmers. They all expect to die and expect their commanders to throw their lives away. There is no greater act of service in the Imperium than sacrificing your life for the Emperor's domain.

If you're new to 40k, yeah the grimdark can seem campy, almost schlocky at times. You gotta read it with the mindset that this is actually how people think, that the value of human life to the average 40k human is worth less than a bullet, a few dozen pounds of steel or food. The one single resource the Imperium has that is nearly inexhaustible is people. It's not quite to the point of strapping people to tanks to use as armor plating (that's a chaos thing). But rendering poor people down in to food (a lovely little food staple in the Imperium called "corpse fiber"), grinding the populace to dust in mandatory factory employment jobs, and yes, cannon fodder are all part of the Imperial mindset.

Another place this comes up is when people new to 40k read about the Imperial Guard or Inquisition nuking an entire planet and its population. "Why don't they just go fight the enemy or selectively bombard it or (x)." The answer is always that the the threat is too great to take the chance. Better to destroy it all and deal with the loss than risk missing something or someone and putting the greater Imperium at risk."

[Loud Whispers]

Guardsmen usually have less monetary value than their gear does and are substantially more expendable. Individual planets can have hundreds of billions of humans on them and the Imperium has 1 million+ inhabited planets. Unless the guardsmen belong to the minority that are actually trained veterans then their lives have so little value that a single bullet fired by a space marine is considered harder to replace than a thousand humans. If the Imperium needs a guard regiment they basically throw a net in an underhive and press gang anything that doesn't manage to run away. They value guardsmen so little that they often feed the dead ones to the living ones.
Using them to blow up minefields, build ramps of corpses and drown the enemy guns in meat is actually quite sensible provided you can keep them from rebelling successfully.

Suppose it depends upon guard units too. Lasguns and flak armour are probably cheaper than guardsmen, and are reusable where guardsmen normally aren't (though they can be re-purposed as servitors upon first death). It is worth mentioning that the Guard's specialty is attrition warfare. Clearing minefields by stepping on them is more the Ork's style with gretchins, Chenkov aside of course. And you might think this is terribly inhumane, but it neglects to mention the combined arms of the Imperial advance.

One of the most important things about the Imperial Guard is unlike the Eldar or Space Marines, they are not a terribly mobile army. They cannot both shoot well and move well at the same time, thus that means in order to move within effective shooting range - they must first advance under fire. This entails taking casualties, yes - but it will also mean they're moving closer to the enemy, closer to capturing objectives, and giving more room for their heavy weapons teams, snipers, artillery and armoured units to really begin delivering the heaviest of pain upon the foe. Keep advancing, keep taking casualties, if your enemy cannot continue retreating then it is simply inevitable that they will be worn to pieces by the relentless guardsman push. The guarantee of victory will in the long term minimize human casualties, all built on the sacrifice of the guard. And if they're penal units or conscripts then the administratum isn't all that bothered using them as the forlorn hope of this guardsman push. Put another way, while you have the main bulk of your forces marching through minefields, razor wire and enemy fire, armed only with lasguns, grenades, faith and shovels, you can force the enemy to redirect their forces to face the guard or be overwhelmed, allowing the guard's more mobile armoured/walker elements or combat engineers to take out the most threatening elements of the enemy. Or, in accordance with human wave tactics, just continue pushing regardless. If you attack the enemy everywhere and continue advancing, accepting that casualties will be great, even if you fail to defeat your enemy in battle - your forces elsewhere will have captured the enemy's territory, and they will be an army without a state.

Chenkov for example, is not as insane as he may first seem. In one particular war against the tyranids, fielding conscripts who ordinarily would only help the tyranids by providing biomass, Chenkov was capable of drowning the tyranids under boots and tank treads. The sum of the whole is greater than its parts, and billions of untrained humans are going to wear down superior foes simply by merit of chipping away ceramite armour bit by bit until it's broken. Just think, how would the guards be able to defeat a foe like a chaos space marine army? One that is faster, hits harder, whose every soldier is a fearless walking tank? The answer is you keep sending troops at them. Their endurance is inhuman, but after weeks of sending guardsmen at them non-stop they need to sleep, and will begin growing weary. If they are unable to disengage then the guardsmen will begin inflicting serious casualties upon them, if they withdraw then the guardsmen secure the planet. If a single chaos space marine is killed costing 100 guardsmen lives, that is the loss of a 100 20 year olds at the cost of a 10,000 year old warp-powered warlord, and is easily a trade-off the Imperium can afford, and one Chaos cannot.

[Grim Portent]

Suppose it depends upon guard units too. Lasguns and flak armour are probably cheaper than guardsmen, and are reusable where guardsmen normally aren't (though they can be re-purposed as servitors upon first death).

The basic Cadian pattern guard kit consists of a lot more than is on the normal models if I remember right. It includes several sets (2 as I recall) of fatigues, a knife, field rations (usually corpse starch or similar in a self cooking package,) a canteen, a backpack, several small storage pouches, 1 frag grenade, a bedroll, boots, and of course the most important thing: toilet paper the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer. Lasgun/lascarbine, flak vest, shoulderpads and helmet of course, with 3(?) las cells.

Optional additions include com beads/portable vox, additional frag grenades, krak grenades, auspexes, weather protective clothing, protective/augmentive goggles, grav chutes/parachutes, rebreathers/gas masks, blah-de-blah-de-blah. Tons of stuff that some regiments issue as standard, but Cadia and imitators usually don't bother with.

As much as we often imagine guardsmen being deployed as modeled on the tabletop they do actually have a bunch of junk that you'd expect a soldier to have. Usually leave it stowed on transports or in camp if allowed, but it's still issued.

A drafted ganger, prisoner or feral tribesman is probably worth less than even the standard loadout, partly due to being a drain on resources normally. There's plenty more just like them where they came from and despite often already being decent combatants they're still 50 to a penny as it were.



As for the rest of that, yeah pretty much. The guard are the Hammer of the Emperor after all. Brute force and weight of numbers eventually solves most problems. Provided you have the ability to reinforce your guardsmen, which is surprisingly uncommon because of how much the navy has on it's plate, you can throw an arbitrary number of men at any problem.

[Archibald]

Well, now that you mention it, it seems that in this universe quality is a quantity of its own taken up to eleven. But someone also mentioned the Exterminatus (which is something similar to turning the planet into a sun, only with orbital strikes). Yeah I was about to say, is the Imperium aware that if they keep cleansing the planets like that they will eventually run out of them? I get that there are trillions of them, but suppose that on average day at least ten are cleansed just in one small part of the galaxy. How much years until most planets became as useful as space junk?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You underestimate the size of the galaxy considerably. People also like to exaggerate the frequency of exterminatus, it is mostly used against tyranid-infested worlds, daemon worlds, and tomb worlds. All of these have little other recourse but total destruction.

[nenjin]

Provided you have the ability to reinforce your guardsmen, which is surprisingly uncommon because of how much the navy has on it's plate, you can throw an arbitrary number of men at any problem.

At least until plot happens, at any rate. Another enduring theme of the Imperium is that it's stretched thin. Major crusades have millions of soldiers ready to deploy but smaller actions often face many limitations. Plot reasons such as losing part of the fleet in the Warp, getting cut off from orbital support, Chaos Magick, reinforcement times due to Warp travel and other plot devices are used to raise the stakes when, in theory, you're supposed to have limitless amounts of soldiers to address any situation.

You underestimate the size of the galaxy considerably. People also like to exaggerate the frequency of exterminatus, it is mostly used against tyranid-infested worlds, daemon worlds, and tomb worlds. All of these have little other recourse but total destruction.

Also true. If we could count the total number of times Exterminatus has been used in officially published 40k stories and lore, it's easily not even in the 4 digits. So if we extrapolate how much it might happen in total across the universe, it's still probably less than 1% of all Imperial worlds to date.

[Grim Portent]

Exterminatus takes several forms, some more severe than others.

The lightest is just bombarding the planet until everything dies. Basically like when a giant asteroid strikes a planet and causes 90% of life to die, but with thousands of space ship guns. The planet can be inhabited again pretty quickly, a few decades or centuries is usually enough, sometimes less.

Then there's cyclonic torpedoes, which shatter the tectonic plates and cause the planet to become a magma strewn hellscape. A special variant of cyclonic torpedoes makes the planet break apart. Others cause the atmosphere to leave the planet or vaporise the entire crust. They basically wreck everything and make the place uninhabitable for more or less forever.

Then there's Virus Bombs, which cause all organic matter exposed to the life eater virus to rapidly decay into oxygen and flammable gases, which are then ignited by lance strikes causing vast chunks of the atmosphere to catch fire if there's enough biomass. The planet is left barren and lifeless, with a toxic atmosphere for millenia, but eventually it is safe but unpleasant to live on the planet.

Usually exterminatus is reserved for worlds with lifeforms that threaten the entire galaxy on them. Large Tyranid invasions, big Daemon incursions and a very small number of minor xenos who pose existential threats to humanity are the main targets. The Imperium doesn't kill planets lightly, though it will happily devastate entire populations and ship in a new one from elsewhere, the planet itself is usually to valuable to destroy.

[90908]

You know, this whole conversation has reminded me as to why I like 40k so much.

On one hand its a stupid, edgy wankfest where the word of the day is "Overkill."

On the other, it plays itself straight, looking as to what exactly this brand of hell looks like from a human perspective. Practicality reigns in endless war.

And on the other, probably phallic "Hand," there are the moments that border on self parody. Orks come to mind mostly.

[Kot]

Since it's 2 AM and I can't be bothered to read all those heretical posts for once...
Well, I only can say that regarding WH40k books - I find a fair amount of them in Polish libraries, even in complete backwaters. Either WH40k is way more popular that I'd have thought, or they are actually pretty common.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I think Warhammer is just atypically popular in Poland. I've heard several times that Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay long eclipsed DnD as the primary tabletop game in Poland, and so 40k stuff is probably similar.