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[Tack]

Lore or Table?
Edit: Ninjad

[Kot]

Space Marines were never meant to be the main force. Maybe the poster boys, but never the main force of Imperium.

Whereas Imperial Guard is the massive but blunt "Hammer of The Emperor", a fighting force that cannot be paralleled in terms of conventional warfare with anything in Galaxy (Tyranids might be numerous, but they lack technology, Orks might be numerous but they lack sophisticated tactics, Chaos is way too unorganized, Eldar are dying race and Tau don't matter on Galactic scale) in terms of sheer, focused strength, the Space Marines are the "Angels of the Emperor", a fast, light but well armed strike force that crashes down at the enemy when it seems everything is lost, and tip the balance of war. Where getting hit by Imperial Guard is like getting hit by a hammer to the face, getting hit by them is like getting a scalpel slammed into your heart by a raging gorilla.

Not even during the Horus Heresy, back during their brightest days when there was more of them in one place than there are now in whole sector, they were meant to be the backbone of the army. They were the tip of the spear, a wall that went through the whole Galaxy and picked off the most dangerous threats while Imperial Army mopped up the less important targets behind them.

Primaris Marines are... they are honestly in a bit of a weird place now. The Marine detachments were usually pretty small, up to patrols of literally one squad flying around a system, and it was incredibly rare (there are exceptions, of course) for a Chapter to focus all their combat might in one place, in which case also they usually enrolled local forces anyway, so they could return to their way of striking the death blow instead of getting tied in attrition warfare like Imperial Guard does.
Meanwhile, Primaris with their heavy stuff... it's... it's like sending M1 Abrams instead of a commando team to assasinate Bin Laden.

[Loud Whispers]

Tyranids might be numerous, but they lack technology

BIOTECHNOLOGY
MACHINES NOT NEEDED

Orks might be numerous but they lack sophisticated tactics

Dropping roks on planets is pretty sophisticated imo. I bet you don't like stab with pointy stick tactic either

Chaos is way too unorganized

Not really a weakness for chaos, plus Blood Pact chaos forces model themselves after the Imperial Guard very well. Also consider why Robutt Golliver created Space Marys, it was because he feared the CSM coming back in Legion strength. If only someone hadn't broken up the loyalist legions hmm....

Eldar are dying race

So are humans

Tau don't matter on Galactic scale

Just as a seedling isn't a tree

in terms of sheer, focused strength, the Space Marines are the "Angels of the Emperor", a fast, light but well armed strike force that crashes down at the enemy when it seems everything is lost, and tip the balance of war. Where getting hit by Imperial Guard is like getting hit by a hammer to the face, getting hit by them is like getting a scalpel slammed into your heart by a raging gorilla.

Getting hit by spehss mahrin is like a hammer dropping on your head. Getting hit by Imperial Guard is like a building dropping on your head. One causes considerably more collateral damage

Primaris Marines are... they are honestly in a bit of a weird place now. The Marine detachments were usually pretty small, up to patrols of literally one squad flying around a system, and it was incredibly rare (there are exceptions, of course) for a Chapter to focus all their combat might in one place, in which case also they usually enrolled local forces anyway, so they could return to their way of striking the death blow instead of getting tied in attrition warfare like Imperial Guard does.
Meanwhile, Primaris with their heavy stuff... it's... it's like sending M1 Abrams instead of a commando team to assasinate Bin Laden.

Really what I want to see with the Primaris Marines, now that that bottle of worms has been opened, is the competition between the Primaris and the Old Guard. Like the plot of Soldier 1998, where the genetically modified 1337 stronger, faster, smarter 2good4u Marines are certain that they're objectively superior to the SPEHSS MAHRINs in every way possible, yet through the flaws of humanity and much greater experience of only war, the SPEHSS MARHIN overcome foes and save humans their BOLD AND FOOLISH comrades in better armour cannot. Or even funner, the Primaris Marines see no reason to save humans, going the full step to declaring independence from both Chaos and Humankind. Ollanious Pious grand narratives in everything. EVERYTHING.

[Tack]

I'm frankly already annoyed to see that Primaris are lacking in gene-seed quirks.
Takes all of the flair out of them, along with the flaws.

As for Kot's diatribe, the Imperial Guard aren't the "righteous hammer".
They're the wall before the tide, eroding before the inevitable threats on all sides.
Or were. The Imperium was objectively stated to be slowly dying before Rawbooty woke up and killed it a whole lot faster.

[Dorsidwarf]

I'm frankly already annoyed to see that Primaris are lacking in gene-seed quirks.
Takes all of the flair out of them, along with the flaws.

As for Kot's diatribe, the Imperial Guard aren't the "righteous hammer".
They're the wall before the tide, eroding before the inevitable threats on all sides.
Or were. The Imperium was objectively stated to be slowly dying before Rawbooty woke up and killed it a whole lot faster.

The Imperial guard is multipurpose. They're the wall being chewed away, and they're also the building-sized rocks being dropped on the chewing things from the top of the colossal bulwark they pose. The guard really never runs out of men, there's always more manpower available - it's simply whether the manpower will be available in time. When the guard has enough time, enough morale, and enough logistical support, they can grind virtually any foe under the churning treads of a hundred thousand tanks and the boots of a hundred million soldiers. A full campaign (A fall of the Emperor's Hammer) by the Guard is basically unstoppable in conventional warfare.

of course all three of those elements are in constant short supply in this dying imperium.

[Loud Whispers]

Or were. The Imperium was objectively stated to be slowly dying before Rawbooty woke up and killed it a whole lot faster.

It's be pretty hilarious if all the Nids arrived and just went around guardsmen world because it really wasn't worth the effort. This could potentially genuinely occur once the Tyranid swarm (the true, main galactic swarm) consumes its splinter fleets and learns that every time the swarm fought tooth and claw for a planet, the humans just blew it up.

[Dorsidwarf]

Guardsmen world

Spoiler: I'd go around it too (click to show/hide)

[Tack]

Sounds like a whole lotta biomass.

[Loud Whispers]

That's a guardsman singularity

[Trekkin]

That's a guardsman singularity

Assuming a Guardsman and kit collectively weigh ~70 kg, that's (very briefly) a sphere of guardsmen of radius roughly 2100x that of observable Universe.

[sprinkled chariot]

Or were. The Imperium was objectively stated to be slowly dying before Rawbooty woke up and killed it a whole lot faster.

It's be pretty hilarious if all the Nids arrived and just went around guardsmen world because it really wasn't worth the effort. This could potentially genuinely occur once the Tyranid swarm (the true, main galactic swarm) consumes its splinter fleets and learns that every time the swarm fought tooth and claw for a planet, the humans just blew it up.

Kind of worked with one admech forgeworld, techpriests bunkered down and kept sending waves of servitors with flamers and multimeltas, hivemind counted gains and losses, and went, nah, cogbois cheatin, lets get to world with fair game.

[Kot]

Assuming a Guardsman and kit collectively weigh ~70 kg, that's (very briefly) a sphere of guardsmen of radius roughly 2100x that of observable Universe.

Drowning Imperium's enemies in bodies gets a new meaning.

[GiglameshDespair]

70kg for man and kit must mean guardsmen are super skinny.

[LordBaal]

How do the Tau stack up against the Eldar in terms of armies?

They both are filthy xenos that will be crushed under the righteous might of HIS wrathful imperial armies. So the question is moot.

Please present yourself to the nearest reeducation center citizen.

[Trekkin]

70kg for man and kit must mean guardsmen are super skinny.

Yeah, I assumed Ratlings were numerous enough to drag the average down more than Ogryns brought it up, and you have to assume the Munitorum can't get corpse starch rations through a hundred trillion light-years of densely packed corpses and soon-to-be-corpses*, so the ones in the middle are probably significantly malnourished anyway.

*I believe the Imperial unit of measure for this many bodies is the "Chenkov-day".