The Gaming Den

If it offered that much protection against guns, why would they use guns against people wearing the armor?

Remember that the whole point of the exercise is to set it up so people DON'T use guns and do use swords?

Space Marine Armor is mostly Plate Armor with some joints for movement of course.
Getting under the Plates and INTO the joints is much easier to accomplish using blades and the such than using bullets and lasers.
And yes, the Imperial Military Grade Standard Flashlight is basically useless.
But it's dirt cheap and can hurt UNARMORED Targets often enough.
So it's good for beating down revolts of people, crazy chaos cultists that run at you full tilt and lowly ork boys what don't have any kind of armor. You will need to hit these a bit more often of course. And every last single one of them will stop you from shooting at the 10 boys behind him. and so on. untill you are now in melee range and oh look, suddenly, strength and toughness is more important than pulling the trigger as fast as you can untill you run out of high speed violence in a directed fashion.

souran wrote: in 40K you are likely to have 1 tank and 1 transport in a reasonable sized army.

Not in remotely recent editions you won't. For Space Marines of all flavours it has been "Each Tactical Squad is split into two Combat Squads. Each Combat Squad gets a Razorback." and lately, the addition of a couple of Predators. Granted, that's a lot of "transport with one decent gun", and little in the way of "main battle tank".

Some Marine armies might actually do the thing where they take 3+ Land Raiders, but it's rarely worth it. Yes, taking 2 Land Raiders, 1 cheap-ass hero and 2 squads of Scout Snipers is fucking hilarious in a 750 point game.

Chaos Meringues will take a bunch of Rhinos (which can now have about as many guns as a LMR tank, though admittedly they're weaker than LMR guns) and a bunch of Dinozords.

Sistaz obviously had eleven Immolators in a 1500 point battle.

An Imperial Guard army now has 3+ Vendettas (lascannon aircraft, "upgunned Valkries" but you could say they're as good as Vultures from Epic), 6+ Chimeras (Chimerae?) and probably 10+ from a combination of "LMR, Hellhound (and variants), Artillery Tanks, Hydras".

Before their most recent bookdex (7th edition has just hit now after 6th edition was a massive failure - I like to keep tabs on what happens in the game despite it being several years since I last played or purchased), every group of Orks was put in a Battle Wagon or Trukk or Buggy or something. And then you add the Killa Kanz, Deff Dredds and aircraft.

With their newest Codex, Eldar went "EVERYONE HAS A WAVE SERPENT NOW" because the WS forcefield is an insane weapon to use. Before that, you'd see any given force having 1-6 Serpents, 3 Fire Prisms or Falcons, and 9 Vypers.

I could go on. Basically, from ~5th edition onwards, TANKS EVERYWHERE. Towards the end of 5th they actually released a mini-supplement where you can field MOAR TANKS - Spearhead. But one guy at the store said "It's 40k as normal, but focused on tanks." My response was "So it's 40k as normal". 6th reduced that a little for some armies (or tilted it towards aircraft and main battle tanks), and 7th is heralding the return of METAL BOXES.

its GW as normal. They want to sell more to people who don't need more since you can use any marine as anything when they dropped the WYSIWYG bullshit of requiring a model to have melta-bombs if you wants it to ahve them in the game. it was killing the artsy side of the hobby anyway. so since people have plenty of footsoldiers, that means the rules had to have some way of getting people to spend more money... Apocalypse was fun...

NEW RULES: EVERYONE GETS THEIR OWN TANKS!

Armored Company and the 12 dread blood angels were just the beginning of $600 1500 pt armies.

Stahlseele wrote:Space Marine Armor is mostly Plate Armor with some joints for movement of course.
Getting under the Plates and INTO the joints is much easier to accomplish using blades and the such than using bullets and lasers.

At 6 inches of range I'd prefer a powder-actuated weapon over a blade. Firing a several inches-long hardened spike into their head or chest will probably slow them down some. At 25 meters I'd prefer an really big HEP round, since tuning their convex chest armor concave will probably be a serious inconvenience, not to mention blowing them off their feet makes it easier to get to them with my nail gun. Though if you did something fairly basic, like mount a visible laser co-axially, I suspect a laser weapon etc would be perfectly capable of shooting out many of the vulnerable points.

K wrote:The trick is to have a reason. For example, there was one setting where spaceships are super-fragile and running around with guns would kill everyone in the ship and irreparably harm the ship.

It really could be as simple as "we have armor that resists bullets super well and blades really badly" without having to go full Dune force-shields.

In Legend of the Galactic Heroes, they forced the use of melee weapons in boarding actions (vibro axes, mainly) by flooding spaceship corridors with explosive gas, so any attempt to use ranged weapons would result in boom.

The idea is that the defenders had a home team advantage which would nullify the inability to use guns. And it also led to battle scenes where the badass Imperial officer in his dress blacks holds off an elite raider captain (in his boarding armor and tomahawk) with a knife.

shadzar wrote:when they dropped the WYSIWYG bullshit of requiring a model to have melta-bombs if you wants it to ahve them in the game.

Pretty sure that rule was never dropped, or is back. Or it might just be for any kind of custom stuff. That said, they don't require Wissy-wig for anything that is automatic - so you don't need every Tactical Marine to actually have a Bolt Pistol and Boltgun - you can't not have them in the rules (other than swapping the Bolter for a special or heavy weapon). Similarly you don't need to add regular grenades as the squad comes with them and can't trade them out.

On the other hand, a squad of Chaos Marines needs to WYSIWYG because any model could have:
-A Boltgun and Bolt Pistol
-A Close Combat Weapon and Bolt Pistol
-A Boltgun, Bolt Pistol and Close Combat Weapon
And that's before special/heavy weapons, or "These are Noise Marines so some of them can also swap the Bolter for a Sonic Blaster".

NEW RULES: EVERYONE GETS THEIR OWN TANKS!

Yeah. Tanks and Aircraft. Except Daemons (who have flying monstrous daemons, and a mecha) and Tyranids (who can fuck off, according to GWget monstrous creatures, including flying ones). So Orks get aircraft with "hilarious" rules for just firing everything then crashing and exploding. Necrons get aircraft with death rays, and hover-tanks. Eldar get hover-tanks (okay they always had them, but they really emphasise them now) and jet fighters. Dark Eldar get jet fighters (which suits them) and... to be fair their hover-tank is still really fragile so it doesn't feel out of place. Marine heavy tanks aren't usually very good but they have them. And aircraft. Chaos has more in the way of dinozords but still has tanks.

Their other big push recently is "big mecha, usually it's a Monstrous Creature rather than a Walker, because MCs with an Invulnerable Save are harder to kill".

So Eldar have the new Wraithknight, which is like a giant Wraithlord that you pilot. It's big, has many pieces, and costs a lot of money. Tau have a new super Crisis Suit. It's big, has many pieces, and costs a lot of money. Grey Knights have the fucking stupid Dreadknight. Orks now have the Gorkanaut and the Morkanaut. And Space Marines have this:

Yes, the helmets are normal Space Marine ones, to give you an idea of their size.

Armored Company and the 12 dread blood angels were just the beginning of $600 1500 pt armies.

As if you could get a 1500 pt army that cheap.

That looks like a Mix between a Dreadnought and Tactical Dreadnough(Read Terminator) Armor O.o

kzt wrote:

Stahlseele wrote:Space Marine Armor is mostly Plate Armor with some joints for movement of course.
Getting under the Plates and INTO the joints is much easier to accomplish using blades and the such than using bullets and lasers.

At 6 inches of range I'd prefer a powder-actuated weapon over a blade. Firing a several inches-long hardened spike into their head or chest will probably slow them down some. At 25 meters I'd prefer an really big HEP round, since tuning their convex chest armor concave will probably be a serious inconvenience, not to mention blowing them off their feet makes it easier to get to them with my nail gun. Though if you did something fairly basic, like mount a visible laser co-axially, I suspect a laser weapon etc would be perfectly capable of shooting out many of the vulnerable points.

I think a lot of people are trying way to hard with this. 40K is 8 times further in the furture than all of current human history. Yes, in the real world we cannot make armor that makes knives a bigger threat than bullets. Further, based on what we know about how warfare works the idea that you could make a bunch of guys armed with swords and pistols (although some 40k pistols are more like smgs) more dangerous than a bunch of guys with assult rifles is illogical to us.

However, regardless of how we preceive it, in the 40k universe its true. Its a fact. They have siad its the armor, or its how crazy tough/fast/smart the aliens are or whatever, but in the end it just is. You don't have to like the explanations, but arguing the advantages of pistols and firearms over knives and swords will never make your point valid for 40k because it has literally been defined as the opposite of what you are saying.

I know thats also crappy, but in the end it also applies to a lot of settings, like Dune for instance, where things that are counter to our experience have been defined as the way things. Your earth logic cannot shift it when it is defined as the truth.

Koumei wrote:Not in remotely recent editions you won't. For Space Marines of all flavours it has been "Each Tactical Squad is split into two Combat Squads. Each Combat Squad gets a Razorback." and lately, the addition of a couple of Predators. Granted, that's a lot of "transport with one decent gun", and little in the way of "main battle tank".

Some Marine armies might actually do the thing where they take 3+ Land Raiders, but it's rarely worth it. Yes, taking 2 Land Raiders, 1 cheap-ass hero and 2 squads of Scout Snipers is fucking hilarious in a 750 point game.

Chaos Meringues will take a bunch of Rhinos (which can now have about as many guns as a LMR tank, though admittedly they're weaker than LMR guns) and a bunch of Dinozords.

Sistaz obviously had eleven Immolators in a 1500 point battle.

An Imperial Guard army now has 3+ Vendettas (lascannon aircraft, "upgunned Valkries" but you could say they're as good as Vultures from Epic), 6+ Chimeras (Chimerae?) and probably 10+ from a combination of "LMR, Hellhound (and variants), Artillery Tanks, Hydras".

Before their most recent bookdex (7th edition has just hit now after 6th edition was a massive failure - I like to keep tabs on what happens in the game despite it being several years since I last played or purchased), every group of Orks was put in a Battle Wagon or Trukk or Buggy or something. And then you add the Killa Kanz, Deff Dredds and aircraft.

With their newest Codex, Eldar went "EVERYONE HAS A WAVE SERPENT NOW" because the WS forcefield is an insane weapon to use. Before that, you'd see any given force having 1-6 Serpents, 3 Fire Prisms or Falcons, and 9 Vypers.

I could go on. Basically, from ~5th edition onwards, TANKS EVERYWHERE. Towards the end of 5th they actually released a mini-supplement where you can field MOAR TANKS - Spearhead. But one guy at the store said "It's 40k as normal, but focused on tanks." My response was "So it's 40k as normal". 6th reduced that a little for some armies (or tilted it towards aircraft and main battle tanks), and 7th is heralding the return of METAL BOXES.

I agree with a lot of what you are saying from a tournament standpoint.

However, in practice this is STILL NOT TRUE of how the game is played. The "secret" balance factor for 40k has ALWAYS been money.

Yes, the plastic kits for transports cost only about $30 dollars each now. So you see a lot more transports. Additionally, everybody has an air support vehicle now. If you don't you lose. Thats fine. Generally, people have 1-3 other vehicles.

This is true because a typical 1500 point army is made of between $500-$750 dollars worth of models.

The armies you are talking about are the ones that often cost $2K-$3K. Those armies, while effective and often making appearances in tournament play, are NOT regularlly fielded fighting forces at most FLGS locations that have the typical 1-2 dozen playerbase. There may be one grey-haired old guy who can afford to do that but you just don't see those fighting forces on the table in common play.

Honestly, most people end up playing fighting forces made up of a lot of basic troops supported by a few cool things, and when played like this the balance of 40k is actually not totally terrible either.

Now, with money you can shatter the game to tiny little pieces and invaldiate whole armies and this is what happens in tournament play.

However, the one advantage that miniatures games have over CCGs is that rushing to copy tournament winners is a losing propsition becuase the cost to do so is so large. You can't replicate a total cheese army overnight becuase your mom won't give you $1400 to spend on plastic space mans.

I guess that's mostly true. There were actually quite a few people at the store I frequented, back in the day, that actually did spend ALL THE MONEY. One guy liked to talk at length about all the Forgeworld stuff he had ordered (and to be fair, that wasn't empty bragging - he brought it to games. Being fair here is still insulting him). One guy had nine superheavy tanks ($150+ each) and about thirty LMR tanks (though a couple were made out of plasticard, using spare weapons and treads). But I guess most kids there had Marneus Calgar, five Terminators, a Land Raider, and thirty Tactical Marines (with 1-2 Rhinos). Chuck a Dreadnought in there I guess.

Yep, and eldar armies tend to be 1 squad of aspect warriors in a wave serpent, a farseer and warlocks, a bunch of guardians with weapons platforms, a fireprism and a wraithlord.

I guess since I just played among friends I didn't ever get the madness of having to have the exact mini. We just used whatever minis most closely approximated what we wanted. Usually fairly close but we would sometimes use minis that we're not 40k minis.

And on one end of the extremes we sometimes had the "mt dew can land raider" as a beloved recurring "alt mini". Not at all proportionally accurate, often forgotten (stealth mode), and later remembered after it had been moved out of turn accidentally (random warp movement).

Souran wrote:I think a lot of people are trying way to hard with this. 40K is 8 times further in the furture than all of current human history. Yes, in the real world we cannot make armor that makes knives a bigger threat than bullets. Further, based on what we know about how warfare works the idea that you could make a bunch of guys armed with swords and pistols (although some 40k pistols are more like smgs) more dangerous than a bunch of guys with assult rifles is illogical to us.

This kind of rationalization doesn't wash. Many troops in 40k are primitive or unarmored. And running in and chopping them up with a sword is still a preferred military tactic.

This is because 40k runs on "rule of cool" and is actively against making any fucking sense at all.

-Username17

Koumei wrote:Fine. It gives a really stupid explanation that is not supported by its own lore and is simply "a justification for the fact that when miniatures start 3' from each other and can shoot only twice as far as they can move, you end up with everyone piling in and being able to swing weapons faster than they can tap a trigger".

But it is technically an explanation at all.

I haven't read the whole thread, so maybe there already was an explanation, but I'll give my own anyway.

I'm currently playing a Chaos Space Marine sorcerer in the Black Crusade game. I soak 18 points of damage with my armor and toughness.
A lasgun does 1d10+3 damage. It's literally impossible to wound me with the lasgun, and even if I don't wear my power armor, I only take wounds half the time.
Space Marine bolter does 1d10+9 damage, and has a Tearing quality (roll damage twice, take the highest).
A chainsword wielded by the average space marine does 1d10+13 damage.
A power sword does 1d10+16 damage, and destroys most weapons on parry attempts.

erik wrote:I guess since I just played among friends I didn't ever get the madness of having to have the exact mini. We just used whatever minis most closely approximated what we wanted. Usually fairly close but we would sometimes use minis that we're not 40k minis.

And on one end of the extremes we sometimes had the "mt dew can land raider" as a beloved recurring "alt mini". Not at all proportionally accurate, often forgotten (stealth mode), and later remembered after it had been moved out of turn accidentally (random warp movement).

sadly many people, ven in areas where no tournmanets exist are hardvore rules fanatics, even if they don't know the rules. otherwise known as assholes.

mt dew can LR, seems fine as long as there is proportions. i would prefer a shoebox myself for LOS reason. pair of legs on a base is close enough for mt since the base would be there for LOS for any foot soldier.

when you mix something like miniatures with a game, and then force a singular artistic style onto people you are going to have problems. that is a case where they should ONLY make and sell specific minis like DDM did where you have NO say in what changes. the problem with 40k is that you CAN swap out stuff and they expect you to buy new minis to represent EVERY fucking variation. that is called a scam, not a scheme.

sure you might jsut need the Abbadon mini, but you are only allowed one, so ANY Abbadon mini should be the one listed in the army roster. no matter what the fuck it looks like or equipment the mini has.

and since older minis are still allowed my metal termagaunts with a smaller size and castly different weapons are NOT getting modded to fit new rules as they are antiques. nor would i change my carnifex (though i think they brought grabby back as plastic)

this is where the army roster comes into play. you can mark a base with a sticker dot to say which thing it is on the roster, or a dot of paint for those that don't flock their bases. then put the same mark on the army roster and you can know and compare. it isnt like the army roster is allowed to be kept secret so anyone asking can looka t the roster to know which mini is marker how and know exactly what it has. aside fromt he fact that who the fuck wants to know every little bit to be a specific thing. bolter, bolt gun, those are enough info to know. melta bombs, frag grenades.. they all the the same to me! well not actually, but i dont care which is which and will put what i think looks best on the mini even from other army sprues as it is MY mini, not GWs!

it really is jsut like D&D, one cahracter one mini. you only need to know which character sheet goes with each mini. and with so many troops being the same with only the few that can change it isnt that damn hard o figure out the special ones with different things.

I just used legos. Getting things roughly to scale wasn't too hard.

John Magnum wrote:Remember that the whole point of the exercise is to set it up so people DON'T use guns and do use swords?

But if no one uses guns, there's no point to wearing armor that's great against guns! It would be strategically useless! Then everyone would abandon the armor, and guns would come back again.

If the armor is a counter to guns, that wouldn't lead to an abandonment of guns. It would lead to a equilibrium state in which people sometimes wear that armor and sometimes use guns.

Occluded Sun wrote:

John Magnum wrote:Remember that the whole point of the exercise is to set it up so people DON'T use guns and do use swords?

But if no one uses guns, there's no point to wearing armor that's great against guns! It would be strategically useless! Then everyone would abandon the armor, and guns would come back again.

If the armor is a counter to guns, that wouldn't lead to an abandonment of guns. It would lead to a equilibrium state in which people sometimes wear that armor and sometimes use guns.

The best armor against guns can still be the best armor against swords too.

Swords become the best weapon when they are the best weapon against all the armor options. You really can have some sci-fi armor that all but nullifies guns, thus making swords the preferred weapon because your sci-fi armor is only a little better against swords than all the other armor options.

Or other factors. Say your anti-gun armor is really just anti-environmental-factor armor that happens to be good against guns, while your anti-sword armor is heavy and limiting and not good environmental protection.

Fuck, there's plenty of leeway in this sort of thing. How about: the fabric that's cheapest to manufacture and also the most fashionable also happens to be really good against guns (but not swords). There are all sorts of reasons people might wear good anti-gun armor even without guns being a popular weapon.

Shadowrun modeled this to an extent with the ballistics/impact rating of armor.

The mechanics of how any wearable armour can stop a bullet but not a sword is difficult to envisage. I mean, it exists. It's easy. It's called "two metres of water." A sword can go through that but pretty much every bullet will be stopped by it. However, wearing that around everywhere is going to be difficult.

You may be best off just accepting that since your primary motivation is the rule of cool and not any desire to accommodate suspension of disbelief, your best course of action is to take the player squarely by the lapels and say "it works because we say it does; buy into the premise or go elsewhere."

Kevlar?
Without plates it's not that good at stopping pointy metal bits that don't deform like the smaller flying ones.

I was going to mention that 'bullet - proof vests' work by dissipating kinetic energy. A knife, which is pushed with constant effort will continue through more layers until eventually overcoming the armor. A bullet may have more kinetic energy when it leaves the muzzle, but it won't have any more added - when it is gone, it's gone. A knife has additional force added as it meets resistance.

I'm not saying you can't chop down a tree with an automatic weapon, but a saw will actually work a lot better.