gw: hire someone who knows military strategy!

[theirkin]

i'm sure this has been covered before, but here's my rant of the day:

why does gw (and their sister companies: i'm looking at you forgeworld) not employ even one vet or military history buff with a decent grasp of games theory to help them write their campaign accounts? or their fluff that obliquely references campaigns? i'm paraphrasing here: you don't grasp why he broke out? because he loves the feel of his enemies being ground underneath his treads. what kind of militarily meaningless bull**** is that? that's taken from imperial armour volume 11, the box of flavor text on page 75 after the description of the cadian 6th's battle honors. and as i read more of the book, this blatant disregard for games theory (in the military sense, not as in rules mechanics). come on gw, you've almost got me, but being a vet i know that any instructor would at least have a better explanation than that.

what do you guys think?

joe

[eldargal]

I think you are overstating things dramatically.

For a start, would you ask a Roman military strategist to lecture at modern miltiary academies? Two millennia seperate us and look how much has changed. Thirty nine millennia seperate us from 40k times, so why should military experts today presume to dictate what would or would not work under those circumstances?

Secondly, the piece you cite mentions other factors in the decision to leave the Port, namely Eldar superiority in Firepower, they could just sit back and destroy the city without engaging. By leaving the safety of the walls the IG at least has a shot of engaging the Eldar where their own tanks have room to maneuver. The rest, about tank commanders digging there way through fortifications to get into their tanks was just patriotic, idelogical nonsense that most militaries still lvoe to fill their soldiers heads with to some extent, even more so under ideological governments. Ever watched the Chinese military news channel?

[theirkin]

eldargal: to your first point, i would argue that while specific tactics change, there is still a wealth of military knowledge that can and has survived millennia, hence the use of military texts from the roman era still being used as part of a course of instruction in military theory today. i'm not saying that the tactics haven't changed, but certain principles of generalship have endured changing battlescapes (in this specific example, one must look at cavalry forces from the time of alexander the great and their need for room to outmaneuver still being true in today's conception of armor tactics, and also supposedly being true in the 40k universe). moreover the warfare of armies in 40k generally fall somewhere in the spectrum from early modern warfare (turn of the 20th century) to present day tactics, and the interplay that those tactics and situations might have induced. so to a great extent, the warfare of the 41st millennium rarely deviates from warfare that a military historian would recognize and be able to comment on.

to your second point, yes, it does mention the superiority of ranged firepower of the eldar, but the reason given for the breakout was to take the fight to the enemy, rather than the sound military tenet of having room to maneuver alluded to but brushed aside. my complaint comes from the fact that a military instructor is shown to have no grasp of the intention himself, ascribing it to a simple instinctual bloodthirst that would be the hallmark of a terrible commander, rather than the methodical tactical genius described in other places.

i can't say i'm not being dramatic, but i would argue that i'm being dramatic for the sake of drawing out a flaw that i haven't seen addressed comprehensively (although i'll be the first to admit that this is a part of a forum i rarely visit, so it might be old news to most).

i hope i better explained my position.

joe

[Kataklysm]

As a combat veteran also having the uniquely specific experience of being a 13B (mobile artillery) I actually am with eldargal on this one. In a painfully simple and short explanation why:

"This is 38 thousand years from now. No contemporary tactica make sense, why, because its 38 thousand years from now."


regards,

kataklysm

[theirkin]

kataklysm: but that's not true at all. all warfare in the 40k universe can be understood by critically analyzing the information given. heck, eldargal said that the general was trying to escape being trapped and destroyed within the city. i don't disagree with that. it's the lack of explanation of the reason behind, or any kind of critical analysis apparent on the writer's end as to why a commander would do that that i take exception to. there were glimmers of hope, specifically in dan abnett's ghosts series, at least until blood pact (when the series as a whole fell off for me because it veered away from larger scale military engagements). and saying, "it's 38 thousand years from now, we can't understand it" is false. if we can do it with military campaigns that actually happened a thousand years ago fragmentary evidence, why wouldn't you expect it from fictitious campaigns? it's sloppy writing that, as i look deeper into the campaign analyses given throughout various gw sources, seems endemic. i would argue that we can in fact create reasons for the decisions of these fictional commanders and should expect a better, explicit line of reasoning. in a lot of ways 40k fluff has been and is continuing to be better written, but i'm saying that there is a lot of room for improvement and i want gw to do sooner rather than later.

maybe i should jump off of my soap box, but i would hope that other people seeing this might think the same, and maybe we can some day influence the writers of these bits of fluff.

joe

[Sindamar]

Hmm, I can see a bit of merit in both sides points of view. Specific aspects of modern tactics may not carry over into far future warfare, as can be seen from elements of past military tactics (ie Vegititus would not be a good source for discussing chemical warfare), but more general points, such as the aphorisms of Napoleon (except for the awful one about naval warfare), and the concepts of Sun Tzu, have relevance to modern warfare and will almost certainly have to warfare into the far future. To be fair to GW and the Black Library, sometimes they do use aspects of past military theory and writings... some of the quotes they use for their generals are reminiscent of those of historical figures

[TSINI]

I'm sure I remember reading an article or foreword by jervis Johnson about how he loved going to tank museums and learning about Mechanised tactics. I'm pretty sure these guys arent ignorant to historical warfare, but perhaps because their audience might be they keep it toned down

[DrLove42]

I;d love to know what the Art of War has to say about defeating an invasion from a swarm of high powered fighter aircraft that outmatch you in every way.

[theirkin]

Sindamar: i do know what you mean, and those quotes are nice and all, but they are ultimately shallow.

Tsini: now there's something i wasn't aware of. But then i have to ask why? By toning it down (assumingnthey do) they aren't making things more palatable for the less militarily inclined. In my opinion. All they're doing is alienating their audience that looks beneath the surface. Ifthey do have unseen military insight, i'd be curious to see the product of them letting themselves go buckwild.

Joe

[DarkLink]

I;d love to know what the Art of War has to say about defeating an invasion from a swarm of high powered fighter aircraft that outmatch you in every way.

Run.