How does it deflect bolter fire? Never heard of anything like that Orks can survive quite a few bolter rounds and keep fighting, Eldar there are cases where their armor actually has stopped it. Tau, Well yeah.
as much as i know that Gameplay > lore. seeing every guardsman i the game equipped with special weapons and melta/plasma pistols would make me cringe beyond believe and probably want to uninstall the game. the stubborn 40Ker in me just cannot look past such a blatant disregard for the lore like that. unless every player was a sergeant(and even then it's really rare for them to get such weapons, btw IG don't even have access to melta pistols..) i really rather it not happen. and even if that were the case, pistol have inferior range, accuracy and shot capacity they'd still be at a huge disadvantage. heavy weapons are definitely the way to go to take down something the size of a marine as a guardsman(just a huge amount of guardsmen, but even on the scale this game wan'ts to be, you won't be seeing that) but you still need 2 people to carry the thing around and(well not really but still..) operate it. the only way around that is to have a NPC companion to walk around and help you. i'v said it a bunch of times but there simply isn't a way to properly put the guard in without either: A. making them balanced thus completely butchering the lore. B. making it unplayable due to them being closer to lore.
I agree, I think the solution is equipment cost, the more fragile the unit you are playing the cheaper it is to equip him. So for the same resource price a mrine gets his power armour, a bolt gun and a standard close combat weapon, the guardsman gets a selection of grenades, a special pistol (plasma/melta) and a heavy weapon. The guardsman is still going to be very breakable and casually single shot killed but his strength is in his equipment and if he can tactically deploy it in the right spot at the right time he'll take down a marine with ease, if he makes even a slight mistake he a gonna. I think the IG have the potential to pack the biggest punch in the game but be the hardest and most complicated race to place because they cannot afford to take even a glancing hit.
Still, unless the bolt round would explode next to you, as in mere millimeters next to your ear, the small shockwave may make you dizzy, but nothing more. Otherwise, a very special type of crab could turn divers into red goo.
Well, the point was more how the armour would be designed. If it was rounded it would be possible for the round to kind of slide off of the guardsman, and hopefully not exerting enough force on it for it to explode. Like I said, they probably came up with different justification in the codex, however I have not read the IG codex. I was just giving a somewhat plausible explanation for a guardsman not exploding at the slightest touch. As for Orks and Eldar, Orks aren't much tougher than humans, and their armour mostly doesn't exist. And with Eldar, I wasn't talking about aspect warriors, and things like that. I was talking about their basic infantry with the paper armour.
I still think the issue is with the number count. What in the hell would 7 guardsmen being doing with a assault squad of Space Marines? REAL players just couldn't meet that quota. Perhaps they could add a F2P portion for being who want to fight for the Imperium and allow them to be guardsmen? Or why would they even be fighting. That would be heresy.
The codexes have changed in the last few editions, you're right about the melta pistols, but a unit of 7 guardsmen can upgrade 3 models to special weapons before adding any officer to the unit. The point of the plasma pistol isn't for range, but because pistols are also close combat weapons (which is why marines carry bolt pistols with their power weapons to give them an extra attack) and they don't require the model to have any physical strength. True but even on the table top a heavy weapons unit is 6 guradsmen and 3 weapons (split into groups of 2) and you can have 1 HW unit to 2 units of standard troopers.
the whole special weapon thing could be overlooked and would pretty much have to be in order to make them a valid playable option. isn't that the same as i said? 2 guardsman per HW? only i was suggesting that the other HW operator be a NPC so you don't see a single guardsman lugging a lascannon on his back or the need for another player(which would be very boring)
So WHAT would the guardsmen be doing on the planet? Why would they be fighting Imperium forces? That is a pretty flimsy pretense for fighting over a planet.
