Poll: Would you join the Space Marines?

[Sam Warrior]

The tau are perfectly happy to accept anyone wishing to serve the greater good, including humans they quite readily accept imperial guard regiments and give them better armour and weapons, so id take that over a space marine. sure still more likely to die, but way less likely to die than the imperial guard, tau don't believe in cannon fodder.

 

[BlueMage]

The tau are perfectly happy to accept anyone wishing to serve the greater good, including humans they quite readily accept imperial guard regiments and give them better armour and weapons, so id take that over a space marine. sure still more likely to die, but way less likely to die than the imperial guard, tau don't believe in cannon fodder.

Yeah they do - that's what the human irregulars serve as.

 

[Skulltaker101]

HA! Foolish mortals! You cannot stand against the might of CHAOS!!! Seriously, join Chaos Marines. We have spider tanks with artillery cannons in their chests, and daemons....and of course daemonettes.

 

[Slaanesh]

Well lets have a rundown of the 40K factions(I'll try to keep this unbiased):
Imperium of Man-Space Marines are brutal psychopaths, Imperial Guardsmen are cannon fodder, Inquisition is just a bunch of pricks.

Eldar- A bunch of fruit-loops who spawned a Chaos god. Who then proceeded to rape their souls.

Dark Eldar- Sadists that torture a bunch of people cause they want to. Also, they're "awfwaad of Swaneesh," so they brutally steal other people's souls. The pussies.

Orks- Cool bros, live to fight. And totally not religious like dem Space Marines.

Necrons- Machines that only exist to kill every-fucking-thing. No real purpose. They're also ugly mother fuckers.

Tau- They're like door-to-door Jehovah Witnesses. Only on a galaxy wide scale, and with billions and billions of members and deadly fire weapons.

Tyranids- The coolest and undeniably the strongest race in 40K. They have a single goal in minde, and its to have everyone join them in their gene pools in order to evolve into the single most superior sentient being in all the universe(with long flowing blonde hair and washboard abs, like mine). Also, they have the fucking Swarmlord.

Chaos- Hipster Space Marines who thought the Imperium was too "mainstream", so they left.

 

[Outcast107]

The 40k universe is not a place I would want to live in by any stretch. Space Marines are post-human tools of war that go through a horrific process of transformation.

For me, I rather be a Tech Priest of Mars. Becoming more machine and having extra servo arms that possible holds extra weapons and you get a cool looking ax to hold (At least from what I seen from DoW 1.)

The cult of the machine are just pawns of the C'tan.

Oh I know that. But who isn't a pawn in the 40K world?

 

[Venats]

Oh I know that. But who isn't a pawn in the 40K world?

Not many, some of the less liked Chapters of the Marines tend to be the more individualistic and as such... less liked but the orthodoxy. The more modern incarnations of the Blood Angels are so despised and in disarray that they'd probably count as not pawns because they are to unstable to rely on as anything other than fodder.

Then there's Ciaphas Cain, now that's a Marine worth emulating... if you ever become a marine. He's the most open minded, free thinking individual you'll ever encounter in the 40k written lore, and he's a coward to boot!

 

[Hollock]

Hell no, I wouldn't be a boy scout, let alone a space marine. I'd be a kroot.

 

[Valkyr71]

Yes, and id be a Space wolf or black templar. Would love to be a grey knight too.

 

[Scytail]

Yes, and id be a Space wolf or black templar. Would love to be a grey knight too.

I support that last option too. Grey Knights are bad ass. Hell, their leader went toe to toe with the daemon prince Mortarion and carved their former leader's name into his heart.

 

[Valkyr71]

Yes, and id be a Space wolf or black templar. Would love to be a grey knight too.

I support that last option too. Grey Knights are bad ass. Hell, their leader went toe to toe with the daemon prince Mortarion and carved their former leader's name into his heart.

Caldor Draigo is a badass, He took on a 10000 year old Chaos Corrupted Primarch. A Primarch. Yeah nuff said. A spacewolf because i'd love some canis helix, and BT because well They tell the imperium to fuck off and pay pretty much zero attention to the codex astartes.

 

[The-Epicly-Named-Man]

No, because I'm not religious and despise monarchies.... and I'd probably never make it through the training.

 

[Scytail]

Yes, and id be a Space wolf or black templar. Would love to be a grey knight too.

I support that last option too. Grey Knights are bad ass. Hell, their leader went toe to toe with the daemon prince Mortarion and carved their former leader's name into his heart.

Caldor Draigo is a badass, He took on a 10000 year old Chaos Corrupted Primarch. A Primarch. Yeah nuff said. A spacewolf because i'd love some canis helix, and BT because well They tell the imperium to fuck off and pay pretty much zero attention to the codex astartes.

Course I think we are also forgetting Adeptus Custodes. To be created from the Emperor's own genetic stock (supposedly) would be awesome, not to mention their guardian spears.

 

[Valkyr71]

How true how true

 

[plugav]

People have already pointed out that you don't really "join" the Space Marines. But would I like to be one? Not really. Yeah, they're pretty awesome on the battlefield, but I don't have the right mindset to find myself in that sort of role.

I can picture myself joining the Inquisition, on the other hand. Where's the video game adaptation of Dark Heresy, I ask!

 

[Trillovinum]

snip

Look at all the speical ops in this world. How many of them wash out due to the training being to hard for them to pass. Now, lets take that into the future where its actually due or die every..single..day.

You are attack on all fronts daily. You have to worry about Orks that out number you 100:1. You have to worry about the forces of chaos and their daemonic horde that ravage whole systems. You also got to worry about the eldar or worst the Dark Eldar and how they come to worlds and snatch people up to be their play things until they are bored with them.

So the Space Marines HAVE to be the best. That means no room for 2nd guessing about a soldier. You have to make sure they are fully commented to the task of being a soldier full time and can actually deal with all these threats and not tired.

I expected this kind of response. And yes, modern special forces like for example the SAS (who have a 70% washout rate) have only a small portion of their recruits join them.

the major difference is that those washouts don't die during training (accidents not included of course). Their recruits are also volunteers so basically everyone can try. whereas the spacemarines have to select their recruits.

Regardless of the way you see things. modern special forces have an easier time finding recruits than the spacemarines.
...
also you mentioned chaos. I've always wondered where those guys come from. If they are indeed fallen space marines, they have had to have gone through the same training as their regular counterparts but (as an added obstacle) would have had to have fallen to the "dark side". this would mean that those guys would have even more trouble finding recruits than the regular space marines.

 

[Trillovinum]

Am I the only one who thinks that training regime to be absurd?
I know it's supposed to be cool for people reading about it and all.
But consider the sheer stupidity of any organisation that requires specially selected recruits and then subjects them to a training regime with a mortality rate that (judging by these other comments) approaches 90%. those that survive that have to survive as scouts before they can become full space marines. (I'll go with a 50% chance of that happening. but I fear I'm optimistic)

Let me do the math. for one space marine there were two scouts for those two scouts were twenty recruits.
this may not look like much but consider that during battle you will have to factor in losses and those need to be replenished. Given that the space marines are in constant battle we are talking about the requirement for a continuous stream of hundreds of recruits.
Where do they keep coming from?

(I am no Warhammer fan)

from the worlds that the imperium owns duh. Where talking about an empire that owns millions of star systems where single planets have populations upwards of 6 trillion and to wipe one of these planets of the map isent worth the paper the order to destroy it was written on

Its all very grimdark is it not hell the losses a space marine chapter which is only a thousand guys are nothing persentage wise compared to the millions of guardsmen that get thrown in to the grinder on a daily basic

I also saw this one comming.

Which brings me to my next argument.

the spacemarines can't possibly keep control of all these worlds. They don't have the numbers for that and their chapters are too isolated. A single chapter of about five hundred marines (I don't know if that's the actual number but I'm just guessing after I read a wikipedia article saying each chapter has about a few hundred actual marines and thousands of support personnel.)

My point being that (due to their scattered chapters that never work together) they'll never be able to find all the recruits they need. If you have to go searching for "one in a million men" among trillions, you'll be occupied for quite a while and most likely turn up very little.

the space marines would need a full staff of people just looking for these recruits.
(the only way you can find the kind of people they want is by searching on the scene)
so sorry that I find killing off more than half of these people the marines spent so much time looking for, a little stupid.

 

[theonecookie]

Well That's right the space marines don't have the numbers to control all the worlds of the imperium hell even the recruiting worlds will have an imperial guard garrison of some sort even if its just in the local subsector

Also I think your overestimating the number of casualty's the space marines due to them being one in a million augmented power armored badasses they tend to stick around for a fair amount of time upwards of 200 years if their good so in reality normal a few marines training new recruits to make up for the losses and yeah they would have people working under them informents and such to help them find these recruits. It wouldent be to hard to find these recruits as thay tend to come from feral worlds where strength is power and so such

 

[ChupathingyX]

I also saw this one comming.

Which brings me to my next argument.

the spacemarines can't possibly keep control of all these worlds. They don't have the numbers for that and their chapters are too isolated. A single chapter of about five hundred marines (I don't know if that's the actual number but I'm just guessing after I read a wikipedia article saying each chapter has about a few hundred actual marines and thousands of support personnel.)

My point being that (due to their scattered chapters that never work together) they'll never be able to find all the recruits they need. If you have to go searching for "one in a million men" among trillions, you'll be occupied for quite a while and most likely turn up very little.

the space marines would need a full staff of people just looking for these recruits.
(the only way you can find the kind of people they want is by searching on the scene)
so sorry that I find killing off more than half of these people the marines spent so much time looking for, a little stupid.

You seem to be forgetting one very important group...The Imperial Gaurd.

When the Adeptus Astartes aren't available the Guard do their best to fight back the hordes of...everyone else. Most IG regiments and battalions are just made up of conscripts and cannon fodder, there are also many elite troops and armoured columns to support them, and this...

And if all else fails, well then you go to plan B...​

 

[Hamish Durie]

only if i can paint my armour red

 

[FenrirsWilly]

I've read the backstory for various Space Marine chapters (yes I play W40K), they will recruit adults as well, or at least in the 20s range of ages. You don't have to be a hulking slab of muscle, they do that to you. You just have to be clever, brave and be able to survive whatever they throw at you to test you. The Ultramarines would be far easier to get into than say the Space Wolves or the Blood Angels.