explain that IG will never be an indipendent faction. maybe one day they will add some special character (commissar, ogryn ratling, sactioned psyker) that figh with the space marine OR in a separate "all star of the imperium" whith sister of battles inquisitors baneblades and titans: so only few selected element of the imperial guards. the imperial guards the base soldier etc etc will be present like the tyranids as NPC to kill for chaos and xenos, because are too weak for be a playable class.
...I'm trying so hard to not say anything, also this thread should die, we've done this a dozen times this past half a year, two dozen times probably total, everyone has put their two cents and then their paycheck into this, it has been resolved, IG won't be making an appearance, at least anytime soon, and when/if they do, it'll be in a limited capacity unless things should change that allow for IG to do something besides getting their niblets eaten by Nids. Zatoichi, sure, it'd be kinda fun and all that, blah blah blah, but unless you're attempting to pull a Dark Crusade/Soulstorm everyone wants to kill everyone, which wouldn't go over well, then that means Imperial forces are together, Chaos forces are together, Eldar...are just Eldar, Orks are supposed to be plenty numerous, the not so obvious point is that you're suggesting the player population be heavily slanted towards Imperials, which last I checked it already was(this doesn't take into account those, like me, who'll be playing every faction, but picked a main faction). So unless every other faction had another side faction thing, that was appealing and somewhat balanced, then you're simply giving Imperials a curb stomp fest against the other factions, even if Nids were solely attacking Imperials. This also screws with the idea of the Orks being the largest faction, which again, last I checked was the whole point of the free to Wagghh, so trying to make the Imperial guard twice as big as most other factions is rather ridiculous, unless you wanted to drastically changed what has been and will be presented to us, the founders, and to everyone else who has kept up with it. Look at the bigger picture, whether it has to do with marketing, GW, ability and time of the team, technology, and so on, there are numerous reasons as to why it shouldn't/won't be happening, at least as how you described in it the OP, I admittedly skipped 15 pages, read Nathan's post and then commented. Nathan's post gives you all of what you need on the matter based on his current observations and what he and co. intend to do based on what they want/can/will do at this point in time and you can crawl up a hive tyr...whoops, need to stop watching Alfa, seems it ended up in my typing. Edit: Ah, I forget I was supposed to say "...read Natan's post, then over to here, then commented.", guess I start to lose track after the ninth line DAMN you all for inspiring me to comment!!!
Actually you are both right, yet both wrong. The lore and background in the Rulebook and Codexes are the primary background material for 40K. This is mainly because new parts of the Universe usually turn up in them first. It's also where old parts get retconned. Both Black Library and Forge World write background for 40K, but because of the primacy of RB and Codex their lore can become outdated if GW publishes new lore that contradicts it. Plus third-party producers and licencees take a back seat to GW, BL, and FW when it comes to Lore. This is why you should look at the most recent Codexes and rulebooks for background information.
They are the most big and powerful army in the universe because of massed armor and massed infantry that largely counts as gunfodder. The terms are not mutually exclusive.
All of them are well-trained soldiers, which justify their guardian status. The problem is, that they must fight against giant daemons, super-people with two heats and power armor etc. And they forced to fight a crowd. But they are not gunfodder. Give guardsman some plasmagun or hell-shot lasgun - and he can kill some chaos-marine with due luck.
They aren't well trained at all, by and large they have a 15 hour life expectancy and 3 million of them dying in the first 24 hours of an invasion is considered a massive success. Often things like the Penal Legions are called in, which are little more then a collection of murderers and rapists with explosive collars strapped around their necks. Cadia, Catachia, Tanith, Krieg all these Imperial Regiments are the cream of the crop and indeed highly skilled, but they also expect heavy casualties. If a thousand of them die in the opening salvos of a gunfight with a much smaller foe then their superiors will hardly bat an eye, because you are, after all, expected to die for the Emperor. Even the material they give you, the uplifting primer, is filled with outright lies and useful information scattered out with pages best used as toilet paper. If you are fortunate enough to live, then your honors might be awarded posthumously. Because if you've seen a Daemon then expect a mind scrub at best, an on the spot execution at worst, because if you go back home then the wider Imperium might learn about it. They are gunfodder, to the Imperium your life is cheap.
only the lasgun have more value for the imperium that the life of a guardsman, even a trained guardsman, humans are almost free for the imperium, they cost only the fuel to bring them form their planet to the battlefield. give to all of them a hellgun or a plasmagun is waste of resource, because there is no sufficent number of that weapons so are reserved only when really needed or for trained troops. you can go to a hive world or a penal world recruit 30-40 millions of soldier and nobody will complain, you give them all lasgun or a autogun because these weapon are cheap and easy produced. People that have some value don't end in the imperial guard there is so many organization in the imperium that require special skills and capacity.
I suppose it's not surprising that the vision would change when the leadership changes, though I do have to say I am disappointed that you're letting the MEQ-creep proceed to such a degree. Guess Tau are screwed too. Unless you're also making the mistake of confusing "IG troops" with "IG conscripts": they're two very different things. Despite what some of the anti-IG trolls try to claim here though, nobody is asking for IG to be implemented *before* launch. All of these discussions have a much longer horizon than that. I'd like to encourage your team to keep some ideas on the back burner to develop later, rather than just tossing the faction entirely just because some SM players are too stuck-up to share a planet with "mere" humans. I'd also recommend playing a few TT games with IG army lists, to get a better feel for what makes the faction tick. Then take some time to occasionally re-visit those ideas as the game develops, to see what doors are opened or closed by the changing state of the game. A running casualty counter on the website totally needs to be a thing whether IG get in or not though.
I'd be okay with this. As much as I want to see IG as a playable faction, unless they basically make a game map just for them vs weaker orks or something it aint happening.
This makes it seem like it would be a good way of doing a ftp option if they were so inclined. With enough people playing ftp it would replicate their massive numbers, but with weaker units they'd die fast too. As far as the penal colonies, would be a novel way of handling temp bans, instead of not being allowed to play, you just get forced to be a guardsman for a while. Heck, even have the collar blow them up if they do anything that would be considered ban worthy while being a guardsman.
