Boarding Action! How And Why ALL 40k Factions Boards Enemy Warships! Warhammer 40k Lore 

I feel like this would come up if they invaded a Votann ship.

While this is true, I can’t think of anyone really who would actually do this. The problem is that all the sides which would conceivably do that either want the ability to transport their own marines, or they have similarly large units they need to move around. I guess the Eldar might be the exception, but at least the dark eldar need to move cages full of variously sized animals and sometimes they capture Marines. It might make sense for some imperial ship designed after the Hersey to have small corridors connecting the important elements like the bridge and enginarium, but most of the imperial ships were designed during or before the great crusade when the idea of imperial ships fighting against space marines would have sounded insane. Chaos needs to move its own marines around and demons can get pretty big. They’re also mostly using imperial patterns of warships. Orcs would probably want space most of all given the large size of many orcs, plus they wouldn’t care about being boarded. Necrons don’t really need to board anything anyway, and their ships were designed long before Marines were conceived. The Nids have big numbers of small creatures, but they also have to birth and transport the big bugs.

Brother I am pinned here!

That's kinda moot point, because door and hallways tend to be death traps for attackers anyway, so boarders probably prefer going through walls.

MUD would stop a space marine lol.

Yeah I was about to say, I am pretty sure that theoretically the Imperial Navy and Space Marines, aswell as the occasional and ambitious/war-minded Rogue Trader would be capable of engaging an enemy ship in an old fashioned 'ramming' boarding action. One shouldnt forget that also the actual Boarding Parties and Armsmen aswell as any Ratings in the involved ship would probably put on Void-Suits as soon as the alarm sirens are to be heard.

You forgot teleporting the enemy ship into theirs somehow.

Also, *jumping* onto the ship. Because _orc._

Roman style baby

Don't forget leaping off their ship to leap at the enemies ship. It even works...Sometimes. And boarding torpedo's.

I really like the boarding action from the devastation of Baal and especially the one in the talon of Horus

They don't do anything that *we* know about. Remember, Orks are all latent psykers and have a tendency to frak about with reality if enough of them think about something hard enough. Could be possible in a large enough boarding torpedo they actually would "do something" if you had enough Orks convinced they did, in fact, do something.

Based Orks

common ork W

Well yes and no. Orks know from other factions what a boarding vessel is supposed to look like, so they perform their crude understanding of the 'rituals', without actually understanding what any of it is supposed to do. It looks correct enough to an Ork, and that fact alone is enough to make it work.

For Orks it was the intent for a fight.

How dumb do you have to be to board a Tyranid hive ship? Especially as a Dark Eldar? Do Tyranids even make for good torture slaves? I really doubt it... Maybe as an attempt to capture something homunculi want?

@@ActualDrunkAtheist For Orks, they just took the party over to another boat.

in the deamon kin codex there is a group that use warp talons to board hive ships and call in there force and dig in and get ready for a fight.

Just saying I like your Icon 😁😁😁

No party like a World Eaters boarding party!

@@Andri474 A World Eaters Boarding Party, Eh !!

That is the equivalent of that scene in Doom Eternal when the slayer loads himself into a canon. In both case, an actual spaceship grade weapon shot would be the more humane and least destructive option.

In the highly entertaining novel "Lucius: The Faultless Blade" we see an Emperor's Children warband (the Cohors Nasicae of Lucius the Eternal) *purposefully and unnecessarily* board a World Eaters vessel, partly to take all the mortals aboard (for various unspeakable purposes) and partly for the sheer gratification of humiliating and killing followers of the despised Blood God in close combat...

Sounds like he is just copying the orks

“Parry this, you filthy f’king casuals.”

Oh God; using the Obliterator Virus on Xenos and the 'Nids in particular seems absolutely horrifying...

Because its a genuinely dumb idea that works exactly once - because stopping boarding in SW is as simple as slapping automated missile pods on the hull.

@@AlvorReal the only factions that routinely used boarding tactics were pirates and the separatists, the pirates used them for obvious reasons and the separatists only did it because they used battle droids. But yeah, overall the factions in Star Wars will only do boarding actions if they have to but they were usually ready for them.

Aye. And for both it makes sense. The former would mostly be picking on merchants and civilian traffic, while the latter had as expendable an army as you possibly could. The tech in starwars just doesn't quite facilitate boarding as a common tactic, imo, not the least for the relative closeness of most battles. No boarding craft would go unnoticed and point defense guns would most likely shred them before any made contact... assuming the fleets weren't totally intermingled, which would only cause new problems.

@@AlvorReal especially given star wars fleets are both carrier heavy and not known for shoddy accuracy

Vong had a lot of capabilities that made that way more effective than anything the Empire managed to pull off. Especially those mini black hole shields making a joke of defenses. Though I did love the Spacetroopers from the EU, they were pretty awesome and served a similar purpose.

Terminators teleport onto the ship.

My favorite description of this is Arch's video on what happened to the Nightlords that attacked a Blood Angels successor chapter. I imagine they would've PREFERRED it to have just been Terminators, rather than 300 frothing Black Company SMs screeching about Horus.

How'd that work out for him?

They succeded well enough. Honestly Execution Hour and the sequel Shadow Point are well worth reading, with excellently written naval combat sequences.@@inquisitionagent9052

Never underestimate how remarkably expendable naval armsmen are. But yeah with the slave population of Chaos ships as long as you can deal with the occasional Chaos Marine and avoid ships with daemon shenanigans those would be good targets.

Ah, Ravenfield. A school computer room classic.

Hey can you upload it? I’m a raven field fan myself

So worst to fight would be black templars while best would be pretty much any other fist successors

I think you're forgetting the fact that your friends aren't spacemarines, they're just covered in armour. Spacemarines have vastly superior reaction times and dexterity. They're typically hyper-intelligent as well with decades or centuries of experience, of which is mostly training and combat and very little else. Imagine if all of your friends were almost twice as accurate and fast as a Olympic target shooter. They almost wouldn't miss, modern soldiers miss almost every shot they take, spacemarines would hit almost every shot they take.

At the time they were.

LUFT HURON DID NOTHING WRONG!

@@CallMeMrChainmail he did nothing wrong, until he did

@@mitchell3593 Dirty inquisition lies!

And then showing the Red Corsairs when talking about the heretics is even better

In the "Let The Galaxy Burn" omnibus, there was a story about boarding a hive ship, I believe.

Boarding a nid ship really just sounds like it would be a 3 day proctology examination

​@@krissteel4074Gotta pull the rubber gloves waaaay above the elbow for this sphincter examination

@@Yokoto12343 The idea of SM terminators wearing rubber gloves is pretty funny

This was the entire premise of Advanced Space Crusade back in the day.

Tyranid: ooohhhh, they do delivery here! Yummy!

That's a pretty ballsy move for the Tau, you'd think they would make drones for that, like ones filled with explosives and fired from a starfighter or something.

Aren't the Imperial Fists meant to be the naval experts of the Space Marines? They have the biggest star ship in the Imperium at least.

​@@imerror6224I never heard that they were naval experts

Because that is the job of the Imperial Navy. Space Marines are, despite their name, specifically meant for surface warfare.

True. It's implied that fleet-based chapters have such specialty by necessity, but the only chapters I can think of that are regularly credited with putting the "marine" in Space Marine are the Black Templars and Imperial Fists.

What is the point of creating the ultimate ground soldier, just to stick him in a position that a brain in a jar can do?

You're forgetting that the necrons have canoptic scarabs, which if they don't want to actually capture the ship in any way shape or form would double as quite possibly double as resources ready for extraction after the battle. Those rams on the front of imperial ships as well as their superstucture that's the skeleton of the ship are made of a very useful metal indeed Edit: also I think they would understand that doing this would double as a terror weapon on the people manning whatever systems are nearby

Tau use special XV46 Vanguard Void Battlesuit for boarding action rather than drones, breacher squads or XV8. Crisis suits are somewhat big for a range of aisles and corridors. Also Tau drones aren't small enough to be putted in swarm-like quantities inside most transports without sacrificing other troops. Moreover, Imperial Navis Void-Jammers can use EMP devices on their Gheistkulls to easily disable drones en-masse and damage electronic systems in battlesuits, combat armour and energy weapons to a point of inoperability.

Actually the best tactics to kill a hivefleet is to try and kill the huge storage ships they have usually near the centre of the fleet and just watch the fleet starve to death. There are essentially two ways to do this: either through concentrated volleys of heavy firepower on extremly long range (which is gonna be hampered by every single hiveship even remotely in the path of the volley trying to through itself in the way to stop it) or by suicide runs just trying to bullrush your way to the storage ships (which is gonna be difficult because every single hiveship even remotely in your path is gonna try and stop you). Actually the Tau may have the best chance to kill a hivefleet exactly because of their specialisation in long range firepower. Though they simply lack the numbers to actually pull it off.

Having played a lot of BFG, I'm not sure boarding happens enough to get a phase, I played Imp Navy vs mainly Orks and Chaos and although I always took the Sharks I don't think I ever used them, bombers and normal torps were just a better method of delivering damage, as for the Orks and Choas players, I never really had an issue getting boarded, decent use of fighters stops most boarding pods or torpedos and by the time vessels were close enough in for the other methods one or the other was usually about to explode due to all the broadsides and ordnance. Boarding happened to be sure, it just tended to be very situational.

Well, I also would like to make crews (as well as Squadrons) more integral to the game. To include Officers (for those duels) Aces and Heroes as well as crew tokens (using a single 40k model for one crew or officer unit) to add in more personality to the game. Correct me if I'm wrong but the only hero character in the 1st ed. is just Abbadon.

@Marinealver Honestly, that sounds a lot like the fantsy naval game Man-O-War (which Im only passingly familiar with, it was on its way out when I started seriously in the mid-90's) it had crew tokens and I believe functioned in the kind of way your describing, BFG was tbh didn't really fit that sort of personalised scale, it was very much in the Andy Chambers philosophy of 'Balance is all'. Personally, I'd of liked a larger, more active role for strike craft, but they were limited in scope due to that balance philosophy. Tbh, the character tended to be more in the fleet lists themselves, so a Segmentum Solar fleet looked different to a Gothic Sector or Cadian Sector fleet. As for named actual characters, each fleet had an Admiral equivalent, but they were iust a stat line, it was more on the ships, so there were a few uniques like Terminus Est, Planet Killer etc. unfortunately, stuff like the surviving Gloriana's wouldn't be introduced till long after BFG had faded... I think there were a few bits in the Warpstorm semi-canon supplement like that (it was a 'offical' collection of White Dwarf and citadel journal BFG articles and rules) but I can't remember for sure.

@@maddlarkin I think it would be cool to have characters like Admiral Spire and Da Black Barron in the game.

@Marinealver maybe, but I'm not sure it would be BFG, the personalised scale or special abilities just wouldn't 'feel' the same, practically I gotta think the truly huge ships like Maccrages Honour, Phalanx or a Ramilies Class Star Fort would be a nightmares to keep track of... that said a Patrol game using BFG models, something akin to kill-team focused around a small group of ships like a single cruiser and escorts these ideas would be really cool in

Hey, they were criminals anyway.

Let us examine the kills: Xenos: killing Xenos is always good. The crew: it is better to die for the Emperor than to live for yourself. The legion: They have found redemption through this sacrifice.

pretty baffling this "40k expert" didn't know they exist. they, and the Breachers are made for this. typical imperial fanboy

The Red Baron would play orkz wouldnt he. Red ones go faster 😎

I loved the Falchions but I could never quite find a niche in my fleets for the other Voss ships cool as they were

@@maddlarkin I use them extensively in BFGA 2, especially with admirals with fast burn torps, Good for eyes and setting up melta torp runs on unsuspecting enemy ships

I would like to see "Alterative Space Hulks" which keeps the same formula like Space Marine Terminators vs Genestealers but changes the factions a little Tau Battlesuits vs Orks Eldar Aspect Warrior Exarchs vs Chaos Daemons

How the fuck did a tau manage to board a space marine ship

@@moxtordoki96 plot armour invisibility. And more sales.

Farsight went from low key stereotype breaker to colossal plot armour arsehat. Thanks GW

@@moxtordoki96 Plot armour mostly. It was the Commander Farsight, using the first ever made Coldstar Battlesuit, flying into the Battle Barge (?), being ignored by point-defence somehow and then getting inside the ship through one of it's mass driver cannon barrels just as it was being reloaded. Then, without triggering any ship-wide alarms, he managed to get into many corridors practically unnoticed (or, if noticed, ignored) until the Coldstar couldn't fit in the narrowed corridors towards the gellar field generator. So he went on foot from there. Picture the image in your head, a semi naked Tau elder adorned in a anime tight-fitting pilot-suit, walking around Imperial corridors with naught but a Pulse Pistol.... It's kinda ridiculous, but arguably really fun to read.

That would be hell. That said, Deathwing see exists so they could rip plenty from it.

Orc boarding defense tactic: None. The orcs welcome any and all boarders and every single ork within the vicinity will just happily and recklessly without even the slightest hesitation charge the boarders with whatever he may have at hand at the moment.

Well yes, but ONLY shotguns runs into the problem of those long corridors of murder.

Those are for urban fighting tho. Not boarding

@@johnj.spurgin7037 you realise shotguns have an effective range of over 200 meters right?

@@bartomiejboguski9676 they're for close quarters in general

I know they can@@Azorees-oj5zr, but this is a tau energy weapon (not a kinetic shotgun, ) and according to the stats on the tabletop they have dramatically diminishing potency as range increases, unlike kinetic shotguns. Hell, the Pulse Blaster's range is shorter than a pistol!

real

Here here!

Since the late 80's. Been a thing since Space Hulk.

I don't think a meltagun could do all that much harm to the outter hull of a ship that is meant to absorb and resist the energy of what amount to supernukes impacting it. Not even a puncture. I imagine you'd need very specialized equipment to start even attempting to puncture the hull. The danger of heavy weaponry aboard a ship is less puncturing hulls and more about damaging critical equipment or starting a fire that would sap the oxygen around you (and kill you in the heat of the room, even if you were away from the fire the heat would absolutely start to cook you inside your spacesuit)

It’s so annoying. At least back in the day, genestealers were this mysterious threat and comparatively small in numbers, making them frightening and somewhat believable of a threat. Now with them just as part of the tyranid swarm, it makes you wonder why they don’t just make all genestealers considering the sheer variety and level of power.

Frankly Depends on the opponet and enviroment. If one imagines a guardsman as a baseline. The only "hand held"weapons they can potentially use in close combat is melta weapons / charges and lascanons (might be another but i cant remember) The armor prevents anything smaller from being effective. The "energy " shield of terminators also prevents the "usefull weapons" from killing the marine from time to time. A terminator also has better auspecs and the marine has faster reflexes allowing them to outshoot most ambushes or just plant himself and setting up a corridor of fire and simply shoot anyone stupid enough to peak. Also due to the teleportation tactic of the T800 marines. An enemy would have to anticipate the teleportation of the terminators , and reserve a lot of their heavy weapons to anticipating them. Ofc terminators are not used willy nilly , they are used in very important actions (survival of the chapter for example, or quieting down heavy weapons untill the rest of the marines arrive) , missions that only they can complete (a very hot/radioactive area), as a final hammer blow. At range however a termi is open to a lot of shit unless he is at extremely long range so only the longer range artillery can shoot at them , rocketlaunchers, artilery , aircraft, tanks , a lot of heavy weapons at extreme range ecc. In close , a terminator is the biggest fish in the sea (barring primarchs and some tyranids). Most combat (especially modern combat) relies (optimally) on combined arms , a terminator by it self is not that great but combine it with regular marines running wild, heavy weapons, tanks , artillery, guardsmen ecc. Basically if all you have is a potent lasgun, frag grenades , a chainsword , (hell even a heavy bolter mounted down a halway) you can not sucesfully engage a terminator in close and win you need to get a guy with an antitank weapon that can (unlike a rocketlauncher) be used up close and psyche him up enough to actually try.

@@JB-ls5pq Any sort of heat/krak explosives should be able to take down a space marine I would think. All they would have to do is get close to a regulars marine and boom that explosions is going right past the marines armor and pulping anything inside. These weapons are hand held like grenades or small rocket launchers. Because of how how heavy terminator armor it is cuts the marines movement and reaction speed in half basically. Giving them less time to react to sudden changes that are common in up close scenarios. Compared to range where the added sensors can track enemies from father away while also giving the marine more reaction time. Even the teleportation tactic makes more sense if you were gonna say port the marines into an open area with little cover thus reducing the risk of teleporting them into the wall of a cramped ship that they dont know the layout of, which would not only kill the marine but ruin the armor. Teleporting them in an open area means that its less likely the enemy will know where exactly they got teleported to as well. A terminator may be open to more attacks at range but the attacks themselves should be less effective compared to a group of people being able to literally run up right next to him and just explode.

@@GiRR007 who (besides an ork, a marine or a krieger ) would fire an explosive warhead at close range hoping that the terminator doesnt pull the trigger of his storm bolter before you can fire (a terminator might not turn as fast as his other bretheren , or parry as well but he can make minor aiming adjustements and pull the trigger just as fast hence holding angles/corridors and moving in a squad of termis to cover more angles, preferably supported by normie marines) also for rocket launchers, backblast can be quite an issue inside a building for anyone not in a fully enclosed suit (there are vids from the middle east and backblast is very lethal , they are ways to mitigate it such as salt water plugs in the exaust part of the tube butveven then you can not use it safely in every room) , one tactic that is basically available only to terminators is engulfing the area in flames and simply walking through (make the enviroment so hazzardus that nobody else but the termi can survive, or even moving through a heavily irradiated area where the enemy will have a difficult time of flanking you because they simply can not go many places) . And in order to commit to a possible suicide by explosive tactic(depending on the lenght of the corridor might not be suicide, but then again i do not know exactly how powerfull krak grenades for grenade launchers are but it seems like it could work, and if the first one doesnt do it , shoot him again) you need to have at the very least a grenade launcher loaded with krak grenades (not super rare but most of your boys will be running with different stuff) and if you blind fire kraks , you have probably missed him and the termi knows exactly where to send his high explosive shells thorwards (or his autocannon) . What makes terminators quite effective (THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT) is the fact that they are ussually deployed (by vehicles or teleportation) into the location where the enemy does not expect to fight tanks (inside their own trench , bunker, building, gunline). They are not immortal and require spacemarine support to be effective outside of small scale engagements. Onto the grenades : In modern day at least most grenades for a grenade launcher need to cross a certain distance before the explosive is armed , it is a safety mechanism that exists to prevent you from accidentally hitting a wall near you and injuring your comrades through stupidity (40k OSHA might not be that strict however so it might not be a problem, or at least your problem anymore ) Problem with fighting a marine of any kind is that he has stupidly powerfull weapons that dont even have to hit you directly while most of your weapons (quantity wise) are near useless against them. Thing of The concept of severe overmach where the opponet has such advanced weapons , skills ecc. That you basically have to get lucky to take him out, imagine a bunch of spitfires going up agains an f22, technically they can hit him or make him run out of fuel and turn tail but it is not a good time for the poor sods piloting a spitfire , ofc you throw the dice enought times you are bound to get lucky , one example of that is a parachuting american pilot (ejected out of his aircraft) killed a japanese pilot (still in his plane) with his pistol but i wouldnt bet on similar situations happening often enough to be an issue. I did forget to mention plasmaguns, dont know how effective those would be but i imagine quite effective at least at damaging the armor if not outright wrecking the marine inside (just reading from the 40k wiki, they can damage ork nobs quite heavily, a terminator is much better protected but a high powered shot or multiple hits by various weapons ought to do it). A terminator is a specialist that can either lock down a corridor , suprise the enemy by "spawing" a "tank" among them or supress a lot of the guns by just being there (nobody wants to get shot at by an autocannon ) and drawing fire from the heavyer ones till his quicker bretheren can close the distance. A terminator withouth proper deployment is dead weight and a massive waste of resources.

@@JB-ls5pq Id imagine anyone who is about to be gunned down by a bolter would try and take the chance to kill the thing that's about to kill them so quite alot of characters. Minor aiming adjustments and faster trigger pulling sounds like something that would be better suited for further ranges where you have a longer line of sight. And yeah true back blast is more of a problem in confined spaces making it less likely rocket would be used but as I said there are other armor penetrating tools that can be used used such as what basically amounts to an anti tank sticky grenade or what amounts to a bomb on a stick that you poke them with.

@@GiRR007 I have read the lexicanum just now and (this could easily be a case of writeritis) but apparently the chestpiece (thickest part) can survive a krak missle, even if we assume that a krak missle would go through the chest (and by extention the thinner parts) , that still ends up making krak nades less usefull (not completely, any piece of gear will eventually start falling appart given enough aplication of firepower, historical example is of one tigertank being disabled not by being penetrated but by being hit somany times most of the shit on it didnt work properly anymore, jammed turret, destroyed tracks ecc), melta would probably work but those are rare (not plasma rare but still rare), and finding a melta gunner willing to duel a marine instead of reloacating to another position with more firepower is difficult, and emperor help you if you do not hit the chest or the head (a "disarmed " marine is still a marine, and now he is pissed). flamers do not work at flushing them out, blowing up your previous position means it is now permanently abandoned and might not actually kill the bastard. like a lot of things in war the point is to make you abandon your previous position (for example: the position raining heavy bolter fire over normie marines) and make the enemy pull back, and not to slaughter every living breathing enemy (unless xenos or chaos are involved), (A bit of a digression here) a chaos marine will likely outmanouver a terminator so they work, while a chaos cultist is unlikely to have a meltagun but might have krak grendes and krak rockets of sorts (not terribly effective but can kind of work) . eldari likely have a lot of shit to kill a terminator or a marine, tyranids rip a terminator bit by bit (or with one gigantic claw), orks are orks and can either hack a terminator in a swarm of greenskin or splode a lot of shit untill something fails, the atrition of terminator suit is slightly below their production, a lot of suits (relative to their production) are lost , a lasgun (most common human gun besides an autogun) can technically kill a marine given enough volume of fire while it stands no chance against a terminator and a large portion of your manpower is useless against them, big explosive charges(traps for example) can kill a marine but a termi has a good chance at surviving, engulfing an area in promethum will kill/disable a marine while a termi can walk through. you limit the options of your enemy when it is very important to do so. and even with very sparring usage a lot of suits (and by extention marines in them) are being lost because they are the only ones who stand a decent chacne at succeding at certain very dangerous tasks. example of the calculusof terminator usage is "i have an x chance of loosing 2 terminators at worst or I am almost guarantied to loose 5 marines at best" which one should I choose?