What would Guard do if 40k was real?

[Myu]

I was thinking ages back, given the resources a Guard Commander can have to work with and/or alongside (units from Guard Codex, 40 technology, Spacemarines potentially, Imperial Inquisition), what would they do if an enemy army came at their world? Although all units have their use on the tabletop (some being better than others) this is conflicted by the differences between what can be done in fluff and the current set of games mechanics.

I'm curious as to how the commander would go about several things:
1) Determining who's attacking (the initial attack might leave no witnesses)
2) Where they have attacked might might target next
3) Where they are
4) How to find out their strengths and weaknesses (or any strengths and weaknesses)
5) What would be the appropriate counter
6) How to get your counter to where they are (transport / orbital bombardment)
7) How to determine if your counter has worked based on either complete or partial information

It's a big list, but I'm curious to see how someone given the resources would use them. I'm imagining it's a forest world with mountains and the enemy will turn out to be in both environments.

[sangrail777]

Might I recommend a couple of books to give you some ideas: First and Only
Dead Men Walking
These two deal with incursions on Gaurds, the second has the Gaurd already at a planet when it is attacked and how they deal with finding out who it is.

[Myu]

Hmm.. I have first and only, but haven't read it in ages, must re read it. Haven't heard of dead men walking though, I'll have to buy and see.

I wonder what a modern day general would do. My only experience of war is videogames and documentaries (thank goodness) so although I and authors can guess what war is like, I'd imagine real commanders and/or soldiers would have a better idea. Unless those authors in question HAVE had combat experience or interviewed people who have anyway.

It must be a crazy world where cavalry, trenches, machine guns, bipedal transports, inter-continental missiles, ultra tough giant robots and orbital weaponry are ALL relevant in some form.

[Cherub]

this black library author is a soldier.
http://www.blacklibrary.com/Authors/Henry-Zou.html

the second book in his series is about a guard regiment. its a good read

[Myu]

Do I need to read the first before the second, or are they unrelated?

[TSINI]

I think general protocall is to dress a guardsman in white sheets, record him saying "help me obi WAN kenobe" and fire the recording to the nearest adeptus astartas fortress monestary. Then adopt the tried and tested position.

Tuck your head between your legs, and kiss your butt goodbye!


To be honest it would depend on why they were there, who else could come to the rescue.

Most IG regiments would just dig in and wait for help. The navy orbiting would be the first line of defence, the guard on the ground just defend the strategic points. Generally of course.

[Cherub]

Do I need to read the first before the second, or are they unrelated?

unrelated. Well sort of. All 3 books tell the story of the bastion war but the books are on different planets, covering different topics with different players involved. He is a very good author imo and I am looking forward to reading more of his work.

[sangrail777]

Ok so ya want realistic, Well I'm not gonna get into details but I'll give general answers:

1) Determining who's attacking (the initial attack might leave no witnesses)
Recon: via scouts, special ops, drones, something light and expendable
2) Where they have attacked might might target next
By the analyzing the initail attack, draw up a list of potential reasons/incentives/goals of the enemy. Determine mostly likely course needed to full fill these goals. Plan accordingly to dissrupt/stop objectives from being met.
3) Where they are
Analyze recovered foriegn equipment from engagements. (guns leave shells/energy weapons leave burn marks.etc..)
4) How to find out their strengths and weaknesses (or any strengths and weaknesses)
Kill/capture enemy operative. Anaylyze effectivness of diffrent weapons/squads/units/equipment effects in engagments. Recon.
5) What would be the appropriate counter
By analyzing/anticipating/(gambling) on knowing the enemies plans/objectives and bringing the availible/appropriate forces to respond.
6) How to get your counter to where they are (transport / orbital bombardment)
That completely dependes on the armies resources or resourcefullness
7) How to determine if your counter has worked based on either complete or partial information
analyse all availible information and determine if your own objectives have been met ie: Is the city under your control? Do you posses the starports on the planet? Do you have FOM (Freedom of Movement)? Does the enemy have FOM?
Basiclly for (7) you would need to determine what your own objectives/tolerances/capabilities are to determine what is considered a success/win on your own terms.


Is this more of the answer you where looking for? I did't get into the varied amount of nastyness that ocuppies a 40k battlefield but I would use them in their variesess forms to fullfill the roles to accomplish my objectives.
My own real life war experience is a cumiliation of well over 5 years spent in combat zones.

[Turner]

I agree with sangrail777, from what I read from the black library that's seems to be fairly accurate. They frequently work with (or frankly just commandeer ships) and use whatever resources are available. Remember it is the future, the far far future, where satellites, drones, radar are super advanced along with space ports just hanging out above or on the planet.

As for where the might target next I suppose that sort of thing depends on the commander himself. Reading one of the Ciaphas Cain novels, Cain was on a world where a Hive Fleet would be arriving soon and he had to hold on as long as possible. They bulked up their forces in several key locations (the capitol, large hive cities) and would send forces out to support where the hive fleet landed and began their assault.

Lots of what they do is based on exactly sangrail777 said, scouts, drones, and whatever they can muster. Radar, satellites, space ports, or just basic troopers with a vox.

[Myu]

@Sangrail

I suppose I meant in terms of the units of the codex, such as using Sentinels or aircraft to scout or chimeras to move armies about.

Say you have a Guard army with all the options the book attacked by either Traitor Guard or Orks.

The friendly guard are positioned in cities across the planet while the orks are spread among various forests and mountains. The friendly Guard have no idea there's an Ork presence until some patrols and/or an outpost go missing in the forest.The commander I'm guessing would be asking himself the questions I mentioned in the original post or already knows the answers to them.

What unit/s should be used to investigate and why? When the enemy is found, what other ways, if any should be used to find any other possible enemy locations and army composition. E.g. jungle fighters? Satellites?

If for example the enemy has a wide variety or ork units (but no big super heavies or at least not yet) how should they be engaged? How does terrain and distance between each detachment of friendlies to enemies affect the decision? Mobile artillery might flatten large mobs of boyz, but is it close enough to make a difference or should other forces be employed? Should bombers be sent instead?

That kinda stuff. I'm basically curious as to specifics of what a commander would do. A combination of what, why and how.

Edit:
Just an addition, when playing the Role playing game rifts, you're given a fairly limited range of skills and equipment to interact with the world once you've chosen a class to play as. So you have to get really creative with all that stuff and used them in ways people wouldn't expect normally. In a situation of life and death, you'd have plenty of incentive to think hard about what you've got and how you'll use it. On the surface the solution seem either clever, bizarre or stupid - but if it works it works. This body of "unexpected" lore is also what interests me as well.

[Colonel Bindoff]

So you're asking how a war is fought in 38,000 years time? quite a broad scope, but like the question

The PDF would be the ones on station, rather than the guard, who as I understand it are used more to reinforce systems under attack and prosecute campaigns as with the sabbat worlds. PDF are very similar to guard, but lack combat experience, especially against xenos.

If you lost a patrol, first step would probably be a search and rescue: these guys are probably not expecting any hostile response beyond some spook smugglers or whatever, so maybe a combat search an rescue team on a valkyrie or something. If that goes missing, or if further patrols lost, or if something suspicious found, I'd imagine the next logical step to be a recce in force: perhaps platoon level, probably veterans or storm troopers, looking for intelligence not a fight. Presumably this continues until the bad guys are found and someone reports back, whereupon the PDF mobilises against them. Or panics and calls the Imperial Guard for help.

The build-up from there depends what is available I guess. You have Titans, you send them in. Leman russ battalions? Artillery? I'd imagine a nominally peaceful world would have more in the way of infantry and chimeras etc rather than strike assets like heavy armour though.

[Myu]

@Colonel Bindoff

I suppose Guard are currently stationed there due to the end of a recent war or are mustering for something other war. I'm mostly curious to the use of forces, rather then back story, though I could make one if it helps focus the scope of the question

[Kiarr]

The thing about guard is that they are a lot of them and awfull lot of them - I would suspect that like real armed forces quite a lot of the troops will never see action in a war - main reason for this is that you need to look at the size of the Imperium and how long it takes to get around - a fully trained guardsman will only most likely be of fighting age between 18 and 45 a gap of only 27 years for an unmodified human and most warp travel takes weeks or months to get between star systems in the core worlds its most likely that they only enemy they will see will be orks (because we know their spores get everywhere) and they would get purged on a regular schedule and chaos cultists which are most likely to get killed whilst still in a small cult stage.

A lot of guard will be stationed around important facilities such as forge worlds (yes I know they can deal with things themselves but the high lords know that they too can be corrupted and need to be kept an eye on) and as such will be kept to the more core regons of space.

In comparison space marines are started at around age 10 then 8 years for the basic implants and decades after that before actully becoming a full marine - marines last hundreds of years and a lot of that time is spent training and meditating at their fortresses or guarding their relics not fighting on the front line - a marines job is to hit the enemy hard and fast at the hardest targets and win then leave the guard to sort the mopping up operation afterwards whilst they swan off to go pray to the Emperor thanking him

The reason I mention this is that this is will have been the same for thousands of years and as such the Imperial guard will most likely have very specific training methods dependant on where they are - for example the worlds nearer the eye of terror will most likely know what to look for in a chaos space marine attack - looking for markings and blasts that are consistant with bolter fire but will most likely have no clue what to look for in a Tau attack as they are very unlikely to have ever been near to the planet I would suspect that the commanders and inteligence officers would have access to a library of information collected from around the imperium about how to indentify and deal with the threat

1) Determining who's attacking (the initial attack might leave no witnesses)
Pretty easy really - were they detected approching the planet - most planets with IG garrisons would have posts to see what is comming if not the garrsoned troops will probably know whats there as its likely to have happened before - orks get regular purges on infested planets partially to keep them from becoming a threat and partly for practice, native wildlife most likely some killed, eldar - theres a gate on the planet and the dammage to the casulties, dark eldar - a lot of missing troops and toxins in the left corpses.
It is also highly unlikely that the defenders would manage to not get a signal off - the armys these days are considering perminent uplinks to soldiers so the commanders back in their own contries can see exactly what is happening (most famous one was the raid on the compound last year) its only a matter of time before the standard troops get that.
Dependant on the threat then other parties will get informed as needed - Inquisitor for chaos incursions every time - or xenos inquisitor for major incursions also if there is a Marine chapter Nearby you could always call for advice I think I have read before that sometimes the marines assist purely with tactics with taking only a couple of marines to assist several regiments
2) Where they have attacked might might target next
Consult with the imperial tactica libary

3) Where they are
Scout parties / aircraft / satalites

4) How to find out their strengths and weaknesses (or any strengths and weaknesses)
Consult imperial library if its a new threat - drilled in if encountered before

5) What would be the appropriate counter
Imperial tactica

6) How to get your counter to where they are (transport / orbital bombardment)
Most lkely there are large air transports that arent mentioned in the fluff to get hundreds of men / tanks around

7) How to determine if your counter has worked based on either complete or partial information
Scout parties / aircraft / satalites


Ok I rambled a bit - hope this makes a little sense :D

[gingerkid]

Argue