While it looks cool, I think it's more suited to IG and Stormtroopers and such. Personally I tend to picture Astartes just wading across the battlefield with stuff chipping their armor and glancing/bouncing off.

A guy gets stepped on by a Titan in the 2E Wolves codex and lives ffs… Granted he's in Termie armor, but still. Who needs cover?

Trust in your wargear.

I think it is cooler if Marines are Fast and Skillful.

Marines are far quicker and much more agile and flexible than mortal men, and far from slowing them down their Battle Plate actually enhances their mobility.

And between hypno-instruction and training from the greatest warriors in the Imperium and centuries of constant practice, Marines are know a lot about fighting and are fully capable of stuff like:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j82GKTgVDkw

(Morpheus vs. Neo - 'I know Kung Fu' -

+++++When it begins, right after they enter the sparring program, Neo starts off using Karate. Morpheus kicks his ass with that, and they pause to get into another fighting stance. Neo assumes one of Jeet Kune Do, (I know there isn't a SET stance for JKD but it was the stance that is the most common) with two fingers extended and his hands slightly moving. Morpheus kicks his ass again, so Neo switches styles. Next, he assumes a Tae Kwon Do stance, and does a little better but still gets pummeled. The next pause they go into, Neo doesn't use any stance, and starts punching sloppily. I can only assume that this was the drunken boxing. He gets creamed really fast with that, and goes into what looks like a Kenpo stance. Neo is again beaten with that. The next one, Neo assumes a Kung Fu stance, I think, and then after that he uses sort of a mix of styles like Morpheus does, but he still leans toward Kung Fu. He is using a full mix when he defeats Morpheus, and it is then that Neo has learned to 'free his mind' from using one style of fighting.+++++)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7zvffHu_wo

(The Princess Bride - Inigo Montoya vs. Westley -

AluminiumWolf said:

Well they ARE. No one's arguing about skill, but they sometimes forget the fast part. Strength and control of one's body actually go hand in hand, in fact. I wager Sean Jonson, little as she is, could obliterate any of us in an arm-wrestling contest. Maybe she couldn't pull a Semi with her teeth, but her strength would be so much more versatile and useful in combat. Combine that sort of innate, full-body strength WITH the sheer power to pull a Semi with your teeth, and you've got someone truly dangerous, i.e. a Space Marine. THEN put him in Power Armor.

A Space Marine's double-enhanced strength and frame would allow him to do reversals, feints, and ripostes whose speed and velocity could straight-up dislocate the arms of a mortal, and probably look improbable in motion to the untrained eye. Watchin' Dante, etc. do their thing would be legitimately awe-inspiring. Paired with what No One Here said in another thread about Space Marines having battle reflexes, such things being so ingrained in their minds, that banter with an opponent worthy of such, or at least the intimidating calling out of litanies and such mid-battle makes plenty of sense.

To be fair, looking at the artwork, what Marines mostly do is stand there with feet planted wide apart firing a bolter one handed. And the minis tend to be in pretty static poses as well. So it isn't like you couldn't justify Marines having the same fighting style as Robocop if you wanted:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h16e5Bm2m3M

I just… I dunno. I think we can do better than that. We can have Marines who shoot and move like Chris Costa, swordfight like John Clements:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov_iVrHy4_A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v4j3mvrDyQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmoSedeqrHo

and perform hand to hand like this guy:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hXjr_7bSdg

delivering repeated kicks to the groin and punches to the head of a grappled opponent. And the flips and thows and whatnot - I particularly liked the bit where he climbs up the guy at about 0:59 to get more leverage (although moves like that would only be useful against Orks or similarly large and tough opponents). 

Is that not… Nifty?

All the reasons real shooters adopt these silly poses are made moot by the Astartes physique, training and gear. If this Costa guy could fire a miniaturized semi-automatic rocket launcher from the hip with perfect accuracy while clad in armor that makes him impervious to small arms fire, you can bet he wouldn't do all this posing.

Astartes are so skillful they literally cannot give any fucks about stuff that normal soldiers have to bother with. Such is their brand of coolness.

AluminiumWolf said:

Personally, I attribute the speed, power and sheer unstoppableness of an astartes a fighting style that cannot be emulated by any human ever. Hence the concept of transhumanism. To me, being attacked by an astartes is like being hit by a locomotive that can dodge.

My Dark Heresy players once were attacked by a Khornate berzerker. They first knew of its presence when I described their attacker as , "Something red, something moving too fast to follow, something impossibly large.".

To me, astartes fight by turning everything up to 11. They don't perform fancy martial arts, because they can punch through plate steel. They don't go into a combat crouch, because they can move out of the way of any weapon heavy enough to not be ignored. They might shoot like robocop, but they move like a well aimed, malevolent car accident and you are the innocent bystander.

I agree. Astartes would be virtually unstoppable in close combat with "normal" humans. As we're sharing videos that give a flavour of how effective they'd be, check this bonecrunching, totally unsuitable for work  video out. (the actual video is embedded on the linked page.) it's Thomas Jane's self-funded attempt to reboot the Punisher franchise. Skip to 6 minutes in for the action.  

Watch that, then imagine someone as skilled and vicious as this, but far larger and equipped with body armour that enhances their strength. It would be a terrifying prospect.    

 I completely disagree with Astartes not optimizing shooting positions, they are consummate, efficient killers. Better trained, better equipped and stronger & faster than anyone else, but that doesn't make them stupid. If shooting right increases your chance to hit then you do that regardless of how badass marine you are and firing from the hip is rarely very optimal, just take the fact that the black carapace allows them to move in such a way that their war plate don't' make them hulking… I'm just saying.

UncleArkie said:

Thing is, if the reasons for a particular position are no longer relevant, then the position itself is redundant. Bringing a weapon up to your shoulder and holding it with both hands for stability is made irrelevant by the strength of a space marine and the stability his armour imparts. Aiming down the sights is made irrelevant by the autosense links in the weapons that allow the firer to see from the weapon's perspective.

In essence, what's been said by myself and a few others in this thread is that many of the reasons that humans have for employing particular techniques and styles of fighting are pointless frivolity to a Space Marine, whose innate strength, speed, reflexes, coordination and durability are such that human-derived martial styles and tactical positioning are superfluous. The specific techniques and styles that the Astartes do possess will focus on dealing with foes with inhuman capabilities - creatures with strength, resilience and/or speed that approaches or exceeds that of the Astartes themselves.

Alien species function in the same way - an Ork won't fight in a way that a human can easily replicate, because the Ork's combat prowess is an instinct rather than a learned skill, and because the Ork's natural ferocity and resilience are inhuman capabilities that a human does not possess. The Eldar will not practice martial arts that resemble those of humans, because the Eldar possess inhumanly quick reflexes, astounding coordination and exceptional awareness of their surroundings.

 But brining a weapon to your shoulder to fire it is not just about stability, it's also about firing a weeping in a straight line from eye to target via the weapon, you do't get that when shooting from the hip.

As someone who knows something about weapons and martial arts I always found it irritating when people who write about it has no idea, if you write about combat know something about it, don't just think cool. It's like when there is no science in sci-fi.

UncleArkie said:

Space Marines do. As I've mentioned at least twice in this thread alone, Astartes ranged weaponry incorporates auto-sense links that allow the warrior to see from the gun's perspective via his armour's in-built Autosenses… before you consider any other targeting-aid systems within the armour.

This is the point of all the genetically-enhanced warriors the Emperor created - to exceed the limitations of human soldiers, to fight in a manner that mere mortals cannot.

As someone who knows a little about fiction, I always find it irritating when people bitch and whine about realism when dealing with settings where reality is a vague suggestion at best. It's like when there's no fiction in sci-fi.

I deal with reality on a daily basis, and it's boring and annoying and frequently inconvenient. Why would I want to emulate that?

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Because if fiction doesn't in some way related to reality, let us take something with us, teaches us something then it has very little validity as fiction. Escapism can really only carry you so far and I am saying that it has to be absolute, but have to be realistic and consistent. The best sic-fi like Arthur C. Clarke, Charlie Stross and Ray Bradbury all had elements of realism, they knew something about tech, about the way it functions. Even the magical realism of Allende or the full-blown fantasy of Meville or Gaiman invokes lessons that can be applied to real life, gives us something to aspirer to because there are kernels of truth and realism in there, things that we can relate to. If all you do is escape then you're not developing as a person or as a writer.

There is a massive difference between "realistic" and "believable".  My group prefers to keep our game "believable" (im an 8ft warrior god who can cleave through thousands of normal men without breaking a sweat) rather than "realistic" (I could not physically exist).

What No-1 has said over and over again is Space Marines are not normal people who need to bring a gun up to eye level to shoot it properly. They basically look out the barrel of their weapons all the time due to technology. That is why the don't need to bring a weapon to their shoulder. They also don't have any concern over controlling the weight or recoil of their weapons.

The best part about your argument is that the tech to hold a gun around a corner and shoot it relatively accurately exists and is in use around the world. The problem people have is that humans are not strong enough to keep a weapon from moving due to recoil, whereas an Astartes is.

Stop trying to ascribe human frailties to Astartes and just sit back and enjoy the madness that is 40K.

FailTruck said:

Most Space Marines are only a bit over 7 ft actually.