There's actually a million space marines in total (IIRC), one thousand chapters with one thousand members each. Some chapters have more than a thousand due to some loophole in the rules, but as it stand, the number stands at about that many.
not even close. You have to understand that most of humanity is evolved tougher and stronger than the humans of today. Catachans have been known to hold bulkheads open barehanded in some book and thats meant to hold out vacuum and boarding parties with breaching charges. Also they regularly "play" with ogryns think ogre sized beings incredibly stupid and considered intelligent when they can make a logical conclusion to bring a medkit to an officer by dragging a tank 200 meters through heavy enemy fire. Now Catachans are outliers but not insanely so. There are also humans that can survive in t-shirts in arctic temperatures and consider anything above freezing to be sweltering heat.
Slade is just far outmatched here.
A lot of chapters get wiped out or go away due to faulty gene seed. Even at a million space marines its still an insanely low number compared to any other faction including the Eldar.
Last edited by Uriel005 on May 17th, 2013 at 04:57 AM
Well, I agree with what you said there, it's insanely small number, especially as there's far more than a million worlds, that'ls like 1 space marine per several planets in the imperium.
Any book that had Catachans holding open bulkheads and wrestling Ogryns was a terrible book with a writer that should be shot in the balls before being decapitated by a shovel.
As for the assassins, physically they are actually similar to Marines in strength and toughness, but much faster and more skilled on average. Vindicares have hax as **** guns and ammo as well.
Not really. Their armour, which can withstand monomolecular-edged chainswords wielded by Space Marines (Who, in armour, are about class 10ish or so, depending on what you are reading), is too big an advantage.
Their speed varies a bit. Generally, bullet-timing feats among named characters are pretty standard, faster than the human eye can accurately perceive is almost universal, and the best Space Marine speed feat I've seen was in Know No Fear. A Sergeant swings his sword for a finishing blow when he sees an opening, that lasts a microsecond. This is, at worst, a mach 3,000 feat.
There some impressive shit. Can anyone recommend me a good book to start reading the lore? Like a good set or trilogy? I just played the video games but I do enjoy the background.
I would start with an Imperial Guard book like Ciaphas Cain then move on to the more elite Imperial Guard books like Gaunt' Ghost then to something of the Inquisition like Ravenor or Eisenhorn. Then after finishing a few Space Marine books (I liked the Ultramarine Omnibus), you can start moving into the Horus books (or anything with the Primarchs in it w/c is a great read).
I feel like reading the WH40K fluff thru a progressive growth of forminability as perceived by current populace allows one to feel the general awe/fear felt by the normal populace with regards to the Space Marines. That's how I would do it anyway.
That's actually my first WH40k book, others would recommend differently, I guess. But it really paints a good picture of what life is like for the regular military in WH40k and how the Space Marines mythos is taken by the general populace. It also paints a less serious and less morbid picture of what is actually a very very depressing place to live in.
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May 17th, 2013 04:54 AM
