Warhammer 40k Imperial Guard vs Space Marines

[Mathak]

The Ork snipers would win, of course. Always bet on the Ork snipers.

 

[Easton Dark]

I believe it's 11 barrels of hell! [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMW7j47eSaE]

It's been awhile since I played, all right? *bashes self*

 

[veloper]

Adaptus mechanics will beat the IG and SM both. They have a true monopoly on the tech that every human army needs. They have all the factories and equipment and they have titan legions unique to them.

 

[Findlebob]

Real men wear flak jackets.

 

[Griffolion]

So my buddy and I were debating who would win in a all out war. Who would win in a galactic war all the Imperial Guard or all of the Space Marines?

Space Marines win any specific engagement due to being a much more powerful fighting force. Imperial Guard win the war due to attrition and being better supplied.

Basically this. IG would win in the end as Marines can't replenish their ranks as quickly as IG will be able to over an extended period.

 

[Evil Alpaca]

Easy, IG has Commissar Cain. He accidentally wins the war while trying to find a nice whorehouse.

 

[Clearing the Eye]

Pfft. They both lose when the true badasses rock up!

 

[Slycne]

..you don't call on the Green Beret to say siege a town.

No, you call them to assassinate the mayor and blow up the supply depot. By constant use of disruption and irregular warfare an elite group could run circles around a big bloated army. The Space Marines would never just stand there and let themselves be overwhelmed. Titans and a trillion men are all well and good, but what happens when the transport ships are sabotaged, the plans intercepted, the lines of communication cut? The compact nature of the Space Marines is an asset against against a force as cumbersome as the I.G..

Those actions won't ever win you a war on their own though, at the end of the day you need to be able to take and hold territory lest you be forever at risk of becoming enveloped.

Also it should be noted that only a single Space Marine chapter, Raven Guard, fights like how you mention. Unconventional tactics and guerrilla warfare are viewed as beneath most space marines, some like the Black Templars don't even have scouts.

 

[kingthrall]

I am sure the Imperial guard have some sort of deep secret lore thingy nobobdy has every heard about as a failsafe gene to exterminate the Space-marines, but has said nothing for the fear of causing such a civil war.

So imperial guard wins..

 

[Frankster]

Ain't much of a discussion, sm ain't meant for long drawn fights and don't have the numbers.

Sm would win the first few engagements and then drown in a tide of ig infantry and tanks and artillery.

Meanwhile orks watch the whole thing and feel insulted that no one invited them to join the fun.

 

[The_Lost_King]

Well in Dawn of War 1 the imperial guardsman get demoralised so easily they would just get roflstomped by the Space Marines who can just rally and get their morale back.

 

[Dogstile]

I think the main problem would be finding the space marines. In canon they have a history of being notoriously hard to kill and the guards numbers mean nothing if they can't land the troops.

 

[GenericAmerican]

1,000 chapters with 1,000 marines, roughly 1,000,000 Marines. Versus Trillions of guardsmen.

If each Marine took a thousand guardsmen to his grave, they still wouldn't have killed all the guardsmen.

There is also the fact that the guardsmen can recruit from anywhere, in great numbers, and quickly.

The marines, need very specific individuals to be trained for years. . .and they might not make it.

This isn't even a "special forces" vs "Regulars" Debate. This is more of a WWII style Germany vs. Allies. Germany, ferocious fighters with extremely well made (for the most part) technology. Against . . .well everything.

No matter how good your weapons, how skilled your fighters. . .none of it matters when your drowning in enemy soldiers, and you ran out of ammo 5 days ago.

 

[Nouw]

It's been awhile since I played, all right? *bashes self*

Haha I'm not too sure myself, I just wanted to share that video .

Real men wear flak jackets.

I concur. [http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/20348346.jpg]

 

[Agayek]

So my buddy and I were debating who would win in a all out war. Who would win in a galactic war all the Imperial Guard or all of the Space Marines?

Depends on which version of each you're using.

If the forces involved are as depicted by Our Spiritual Liege, then the Space Marines would win easily, with absolutely no fatalities, since the single casualty would be interred in a Dreadnaught.

If we're using the Caiaphas Cain or Gaunt's Ghosts novels as base however (read: something moderately "realistic"), then it'd likely go to the Guard.

Believe it or not, the Imperial Guard is the single most effective military force in the 40k galaxy. Each individual guardsman is kinda pathetic in the grand scheme of things, but there's trillions upon trillions of them, with the logistical infrastructure to match. They can and will kill anything and everything in the galaxy in a straight 1v1 fight, over a long enough period of time.

Well they essentially are(minus any augmentations) but do a vastly specialised and different job. While the Marines are just a general kill shit and the SoB can be this too they tend to be a lot more used against Chaos.

Yes and no. The Sisters of Battle were originally conceived as the Ecclesiarchy's answer to a restriction that banned them from employing "men at arms". The short version is that one of the High Lords of Terra dicked over the entire Imperium and nobody wanted to see it happen again, so they banned the Ecclesiarchy from having a military force. They got around the ban by hiring women instead.

As part of being a member of the Ecclesiarchy (read: The Church), the Adepta Sororitas primary function is to suppress/find/destroy heretics. As a consequence, they almost exclusively are used against Chaos worshipers. They rarely, if ever, intentionally see battle against any of the Xenos.

They're also a lot less effective than Spehss Mehreenz, due to the lack of augmentations. They get power armor of a similar level, but that's about it.

 

[v3n0mat3]

Space Marines. As mentioned before, the Imperial Guard really have no means of defending themselves in an all-out assault vs the Space Marines. They simply are superior all the way down to their genes. And having space ship support brings the Space Marines at a, simply put, unfair disadvantage.

*EDIT*

Numbers keep popping up as an advantage to the IG. Ok, fine. They have that advantage. Is that REALLY an advantage? The technological superiority, the sheer power, strength, and, lets face it, awesomeness of the SM against insurmountable odds really makes me lean towards them. The IG can be epic at times, but, at that point where it would be IG v SM, the Empire of Man would turn their backs on the IG. Loyalty without question to the Emperor and all that.

*EDIT v2.0*

I realize that my avatar is a Necron, and Necron use... well, numbers to their advantage. My judgement still stands.

 

[Agayek]

The Ork snipers would win, of course. Always bet on the Ork snipers.

My first reaction:


My second reaction:

"Oh wait, you weren't actually serious"

/self-troll

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

..you don't call on the Green Beret to say siege a town.

No, you call them to assassinate the mayor and blow up the supply depot. By constant use of disruption and irregular warfare an elite group could run circles around a big bloated army. The Space Marines would never just stand there and let themselves be overwhelmed. Titans and a trillion men are all well and good, but what happens when the transport ships are sabotaged, the plans intercepted, the lines of communication cut? The compact nature of the Space Marines is an asset against against a force as cumbersome as the I.G..

Those actions won't ever win you a war on their own though, at the end of the day you need to be able to take and hold territory lest you be forever at risk of becoming enveloped.

It all comes back to territory in the end. As kickass they would be on a tactical level, even in conquering entire systems, the Space Marines just don't have the numbers. I'm not even talking about a war of attrition; general consensus seems to be that there are about a million Space Marines. There just aren't enough of them to attack everywhere they would need to.

Let's assume that every system where the Marines are deployed or have a base joins with them, and the rest of the Imperium is IG (since they have regiments in basically every system), and that whoever is there gains control of the starships, factories, etc., and everywhere they are both deployed becomes a battleground. The Marines could cripple vast amounts of the IG-controlled Imperium, but there would still be entire subsectors that are behind the lines and producing the basic war materiel the IG needs: tanks, lasguns and warm bodies to operate them. The Marines could try and move from subsector to subsector, but given the travel times they would arrive in a new place and destroy it only to find that the where they just left has rebuilt.

Meanwhile, the Guard commanders know that there are very few places in the galaxy that are capable of supplying the Marines with new recruits and their specialized equipment. One million Marines could tie down BILLIONS of Imperial Guardsmen, and they would still be outflanked and have their (relatively) few supply bases destroyed.

Honestly, the only way that I could the Marines winning is if they went full Horus Hersey: spent decades building up troops and alliances, fomenting rebellion in loyalist areas, then launching a sneak attack against Terra and crucial bases like Cadia. They would doom themselves when Chaos forces ran rampant, then the Necrons showed up to reap souls, then the Orcs got pissy they weren't invited and hit hit everything they could reach, then the Tau showed up to conquer what's left, and then the Tyranids ate everything. Man, the whole universe is fucked six ways to Sunday.

 

[Malty Milk Whistle]

OK.
Space marines do NOT pilot ships.
They get bondsmen/serfs to do that for them.
You need roughly a thousand men to crew one of the lightest spacecraft, so assuming that the entire chapter decides to pilot this thing (If they even know how) as soon as they land, they either severely damage their capability(as someone would have to guard the ship) or leave it deserted for a few chimera's worth of guardsmen to sneak abord and blow the shit outa it.
So overall, guard.
But there's still to many unknown variables, such as the Adeptus Mechanicus and the titan legions.

Also, If this is all set on one huge Megaworld, and it's all on that, then Space Marine chapters like the Blood Angels, Space Wolves and other "RRRAAAAGH RUN AT THEM WITH SWORDS!" chapters will die like wheat, whereas any chapter that uses Hit'n Run tactics (Hint: There's only one or two) will last a bit longer, but will still die in the end.

Imagine you have a fist sized chunk of marble.
And now imagine you have a cliff of chalk.
No matter what, the small chunk of marble will be shattered first.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

So my buddy and I were debating who would win in a all out war. Who would win in a galactic war all the Imperial Guard or all of the Space Marines?

Depends on which version of each you're using.

If the forces involved are as depicted by Our Spiritual Liege, then the Space Marines would win easily, with absolutely no fatalities, since the single casualty would be interred in a Dreadnaught.

If we're using the Caiaphas Cain or Gaunt's Ghosts novels as base however (read: something moderately "realistic"), then it'd likely go to the Guard.

Believe it or not, the Imperial Guard is the single most effective military force in the 40k galaxy. Each individual guardsman is kinda pathetic in the grand scheme of things, but there's trillions upon trillions of them, with the logistical infrastructure to match. They can and will kill anything and everything in the galaxy in a straight 1v1 fight, over a long enough period of time.

Well they essentially are(minus any augmentations) but do a vastly specialised and different job. While the Marines are just a general kill shit and the SoB can be this too they tend to be a lot more used against Chaos.

Yes and no. The Sisters of Battle were originally conceived as the Ecclesiarchy's answer to a restriction that banned them from employing "men at arms". The short version is that one of the High Lords of Terra dicked over the entire Imperium and nobody wanted to see it happen again, so they banned the Ecclesiarchy from having a military force. They got around the ban by hiring women instead.

As part of being a member of the Ecclesiarchy (read: The Church), the Adepta Sororitas primary function is to suppress/find/destroy heretics. As a consequence, they almost exclusively are used against Chaos worshipers. They rarely, if ever, intentionally see battle against any of the Xenos.

They're also a lot less effective than Spehss Mehreenz, due to the lack of augmentations. They get power armor of a similar level, but that's about it.

Well that is what I meant by essentially but yes that is exactly what they are.