Astartes Power Armored Martial Art

[Paladin777]

This is starting to get a little off-topic, but there are also certain weapons that are designed for a single person to fend off a significant amount of people and defend a single point without getting bogged down. Specifically greatswords (6' long, 6-7 pounders).

 

I remember hearing about one account of a Portuguese ship being attacked by pirates. They were losing until the 1st mate joined the fray with his greatsword, and singlehanded turned the tide of the battle because of the sheer amount of ground he could control. 

 

Even multiple opponents struggle to fight against a weapon with such a significant reach and power advantage. 

Edited December 31, 2023 by Paladin777

[Colman]

One of the signature ba gua weapons is a 6’ sabre.
 

But that brings up a good point - most martial arts we have these days concentrate on side arms or honour weapons rather than battlefield weapons, which were generally pole arms of some sort. 
 

I’d give our assault marines full height eviscerators rather than relatively short chain swords. Chain halberds. 

[Paladin777]

I would agree, except for space marines having rapidly firing (not to be confused with 'rapid fire') hand weapons (bolt/plasma/etc. pistols). The combination of those two weapons would realistically make a space marine who can use them together to their full potential much nastier than one that has a single melee weapon. 

Edited December 31, 2023 by Paladin777

[mel_danes]

Agreed, the side arm combination with a melee weapon anyways struck me as odd when I was young. Then I saw a video of why officers had them in the military, and was like oh...

 

On the point of not hurting those that can't hurt you, in practice, in the real world this is of course the only outcome. I'm not advocating or promoting unjust violence.

 

In this shared setting we all enjoy the world of the 41st millennia is filled with asymmetrical conflict, those with power, those without, Eldritch horror, and brutal combat over resources.

 

Astartes enter this as elite combat units not meant to hold ground, for long, but to take it from those that have it.

Or to mount a defense when other troopers would fail.

As devastating surgical weapons they will be faced with horrific choices and will always need to consider their mission. I suspect even the most enlightened marine is capable of incredible cruelty, should the situation merit it.

 

Sorry if my replies ramble.

 

Another bit comes to mind.

There was a short paragraph story in a chaos codex that helped form this idea of fighting styles based on the opponent, and the wide variety a marine will face.

A heretic Astartes was in melee combat with a loyalist. He had gained the upper hand and used a finishing move developed specifically for fighting an augmented opponent. I don't recall the exact language but it involved piercing the armor in such a way that it used a joint, or plate location that allowed the power sword to piece both hearts killing the opponent immediately.

 

This would only be required against power armored augmented foes. The Heretic seemed quite smug in its execution and viewed his opponent with contempt, considering the hundreds or thousands of years of combat he had, and the number of times he has used this technique.

 

Thanks again to everyone that has weighed in on this topic.

[Dracos]

11 hours ago, AutumnEffect said:

 

I'm going to come right out and say I'm not a martial arts historian, so all of what you've put forward could be true, but I'm a bit skeptical. A lot of information about martial arts schools and styles from 'Ye Olden Days' was, well, marketing. 

I can only vouch for my experience. To get my blackbelt I did have to fight four people at once. You're focus though is just surviving.
Granted the situation was different; neither me nor the people involved were armed, we weren't trying to kill each other, we all had various levels of training, etc.

Suffice to say, I would personally discount reports of eight to one fights as being propaganda for that school. 
Even if they are peasants and you're armed, eight people is too many. You'll die.

But hey, just one guy's opinion on the internet. 

Side note:
I also have a suspicion about the myth of the 'poorly fed' peasant that often comes up in discussion about medieval and early modern periods. Yes there were famines and no, peasants probably didn't have a regularly full tummy. But these were also people who regularly performed demanding physical labor and they weren't in a constant state of near-starvation. 
After prolonged periods of starvation your body will start to burn muscle as fuel. But starvation will make your peasants angry and desperate before it makes them weak.

I find your anecdotal experience interesting because my school of Tae Kwon Do had similar training and testing of multiple opponents that were 4 vs 1. My amusing observation during each was a lot depended on the perception/reputation of the 1 person and the mindset of the 4.  
 

I can imagine a trained swordsmen in the right terrain being able to have a chance versus 8 lesser trained individuals with lesser weapons and armor. In the open and the 8 acting in coordination, no way. 
 

 

I think an Astartes who was in combat with an opponent whose weapons had AP would develop a martial style different as each level of AP and or Str increased. 

[N1SB]

What a great litmus test this was.  The question is valid, but the difficulty to answer it is itself an answer.

 

On 12/31/2023 at 5:14 PM, mel_danes said:

Question for the trained armed frater. In your training with a weapon I presume there is an ebb and flow of attack, defend and such. If you find yourself in a scenario where defense is not needed, IE your opponent cannot hurt you, you could just go through a series of attack stances/maneuvers.

 

Essentially all out attack.

 

I imagine Assault Intercessors in combat with chaos cultists.  The cultists have make shift weaponry, the Astartes will have chain swords.

 

The chances of a cultists actually causing injury is near zero. So if the Marines don't need to worry about parry or blocking and just go ape, that would be a thing? I presume there are forms of just sustained assault.

 

 

All Out Attack Stance

 

We have an All Out Attack stance in Kendo, the Jodan Stance.  You stand with your sword already raised over your head.

 

It's simply like your sword is already locked & loaded.  You see this on Sisters Repentia.  You also kinda want to fall forward.

 

However, the sword strokes are still the same ones.  You just have less lead-lag time from having to raise your sword to bring it back down.

 

Kendo is already pretty much optimised to stop your foe with maximum efficiency.  My professor actually sidled up to me, he's really a good teacher, he knows I'm Chinese, and he just opens up, "You know, we really just took about 12 (or 16) strokes from Wushu and optimised them."  That says a lot, not just about Kendo, but also about his character, and his philosophy.  Efficiency IS effectiveness.  But it's like, there's no real point to further overclock it.

 

So my friend, ControllEric, a 40k player who also spent time in Japan, said it best, "You can't improve on a Japanese system.  You can only dilute it."

 

In this context, it means, stick to the normal moves, just do them faster I guess XD.  Maybe efficient use of energy, no movement wasted.

 

 

All Out Sword Stroke

 

This is theoretical for me since we don't use it...but I turn to my saber fencing Frateri for maybe an answer.

 

The Cavalry Sword.  You ride on a horse and you're rushing archers or something, you do this sideways figure-8 stroke constantly.

 

The idea is you send out the cavalry against lightly armoured targets in the back, and you run them down, just continuous strokes.

 

Translated into 40k, in your example, an Assault Intercessor would just wade into a crowd of Cultists doing this sustained sideways figure-8 motion.

 

 

Alternative Take

 

Another thought came to me.  In the scenario that you imagined, it's no longer martial arts, it's like slaughtering livestock in a charnel house.

 

The word "slaughter" is used as a turn of phrase for brutal combat, like Khorne, but it's actually a technical term.  You slaughter defenseless livestock.

 

It's a job, a chore.  It's systematic, professional.  I used to work on a chicken farm and we'd gas chamber chickens with argon.

 

I'd actually turn to our Brothers who worked in food processing...and that's what this is, you're processing Cultists into corpses, for insight please.

 

 

The Antithetical Part of the Question

 

 

It's actually difficult to answer this question of techniques against a defenseless opponent.  The tricky part is that it's kinda paradoxical.  Martial arts as self-defense isn't just marketing, nor just philosophy, it's practical.  But even the inability to answer is very telling, and a credit to everyone here.

 

The punches and kicks and sword strokes are just tools, used against a threat.  When something's not a threat, they're simply the wrong tools.  There's a lot of mental training on recognising threats and ways to deal with them, including de-escalation, if only because no one ever walks away unscathed in a fight really.

 

I see in our Brothers' responses above EXACTLY how well-trained and restrained martial artists SHOULD react, like Error: Does Not Compute.  It's like asking them, "What is the square root of negative potato?"  It goes beyond like it's dishonourable, it's the whole way we're wired doesn't know how to deal with that question.

 

There's also a thing, the quote in Kendo is, "In victory, tighten your helmet."  It's not about being humble in victory, it's that when you THINK you won, when you THINK you're safe, that's exactly when you let your guard down and thus endanger yourself.  There's never a time when you're truly against a defenseless enemy.

 

The Cultists might be Genestealer Cultists actually and have a Demolition Charge hidden on 1 of their guys, Mortal Wounds!

 

So I think it'd be like the Astartes knowing exactly how much or how little force is needed to deal with a Chaos Cultist vs. a Heretic Astartes.  Like conserving their energy for when the inevitable Chaos Lord or Daemon Prince jumps in from nowhere.  Same fundamental moves, just apply force accordingly.

[Paladin777]

The counter to you're comment about not being able to improve on a japanese system comes from an anecdote I heard about a Hema practitioner who had a substantial kendo background. 
 

this Kendoka/Hema practitioner (henceforth known as the kendoka for the sake of brevity) had incredibly fast strikes from above, and he was wrecking in a tournament he was in. 

 

However, the guy I was talking to (his name was Jason) had watched the kendoka's fights and knew his playbook. So when it came time for them to fight, Jason fought the whole match from a guard called einhorn (which is a high, very forward guard) that was a hard counter to the strikes from above. Jason very handily beat the kendoka as he neutralized the moves he was best at.
 

So I guess what I'm saying is that a limited moveset will always have a counter. 
 

Since most of us who study martial arts are normal people who have limited time, it's only natural for us to focus on a handful of moves that work best for us. For Space marines, however, combat is their life. They all have a genius level intellect, and the time to perfect multiple styles, so I highly doubt that they'd ever be content to allow themselves to be limited.

Edited January 1 by Paladin777

[Colman]

Marital arts are of their times and technologies, and even then they disagree in all sorts of ways - there are many, many schools of kenjutsu all with differing philosophies and different movements. Sometimes it was personal preferences, sometimes it was down to a teacher's personal physical/mental characteristics, sometimes it was just politics.  Sometimes it was different applications - there are two main schools of the iaido lineage I practised: one seems to be a bit showier, possibly for the nobles, and one cleaner and more applied, possibly from their bodyguards. Not even the Japanese thought you couldn't improve on Japanese systems.

 

I'd expect each marine chapter/legion to have its own forms and favoured weapons, and probably have different sub-schools that disagreed bitterly on exactly what was the correct way to do things, except when they met marines from another chapter with whom they could disagree even more bitterly. 

 

3 hours ago, N1SB said:

The punches and kicks and sword strokes are just tools, used against a threat.  When something's not a threat, they're simply the wrong tools.  There's a lot of mental training on recognising threats and ways to deal with them, including de-escalation, if only because no one ever walks away unscathed in a fight really.

 

Except for the execution/suicide assistant forms from iaido. And the ones that are obviously assassination forms.

 

Astartes wouldn't, in general (exception here for Ultramarines :-) ), be practicing what we're taught to think of as the (Japanese) "-do" type things that talk about self-improvement, they'd be practicing the "-jitsu" forms that were about effective technique in the service of your master's orders, whatever those orders were. So cutting down crowds of humans with maximum efficiency and minimum ammunition wastage would very much be on the agenda.

[AutumnEffect]

Brother N1SB expressed my thoughts a lot more eloquently than I. Also, I wasn't meaning to cast any aspersions on you or your question, Brother mel_danes. 
My meaning for it being antithetical was simply that, as Brother N1SB said, you don't train to fight someone who can't harm you. Or, at least, I haven't. Saying it's like a computer responding "Does not compute." Sums it up pretty well for me.

Edited January 3 by AutumnEffect

[Paladin777]

That may be true, but when you train to fight someone who can hurt you, dealing with people who can't (or more accurately aren't likely to...) becomes even more trivial. If you happen to find yourself heavily outnumbered, being able to deal with individuals in a rabble more efficiently makes you more able to deal with an entire rabble, which is something space marines deal with.

Edited January 3 by Paladin777

[jaxom]

Im happy to have found this thread after being off-board for the holidays. I have really enjoyed reading through it. I'm a Fiore scholar (a subset of Italian historical martial arts), Seido karate dude, and studier of biokinetics and kinesiology.

 

On 12/31/2023 at 4:14 AM, mel_danes said:

Question for the trained armed frater. In your training with a weapon I presume there is an ebb and flow of attack, defend and such. If you find yourself in a scenario where defense is not needed, IE your opponent cannot hurt you, you could just go through a series of attack stances/maneuvers.

 

Essentially all out attack.

 

I imagine Assault Intercessors in combat with chaos cultists.  The cultists have make shift weaponry, the Astartes will have chain swords.

The chances of a cultists actually causing injury is near zero. So if the Marines don't need to worry about parry or blocking and just go ape, that would be a thing? I presume there are forms of just sustained assault.

 

Thanks again for the inside peek into your years of knowledge.

 

On 12/31/2023 at 9:29 AM, AutumnEffect said:

 

If I understand you correctly Brother mel_danes, I do not know of any martial arts that trains or considers how to best attack people who are helpless or defenseless.
It isn't necessary and, in my opinion, antithetical to martial arts. 

 

AutumnEffect's comment reflects the current wider world of the art and science of close combat. Even in combat arts developed and used by police forces and militaries, there are two major assumptions: 1) stay alive, and 2) escalation of force. The latter is more important in policing actions and tends to be most applicable with "stay alive" is assumed. The idea is that if you are not in danger, then you should be using the minimum amount of force required to control and resolve the situation. The harder the opponent fights back, the greater force you should use (possibly up to and including lethal force depend on the organization/situation).

 

Historically, however, this has not been the case. I won't go into details because I don't want to accidentally break board rules, but there's two general cases. In the sack of a city, armies would either run rampant (think Flesh Tearers) or organize its depopulation (less common, think Iron Hands).

 

The neat thing is, we can do some extrapolation to determine what an "all out attack" martial form might look like. The basis for all working martial forms is efficiency-in-context. As @Dracos noted, humans are all built along the same lines and we function the same mechanically. The context here is the quickest way to deal with non-threats. A Space Marine is very strong; they can rely on brute force in a way human martial techniques cannot. For example: a short, sharp diagonal blows along the line of the cranium-neck-collar bone would either kill an opponent or drive them to the ground at which point treading on them with 400+ kg of Power Armoured Astartes will finish the task. If dealing with a large group of opponents then we're looking at something along the lines of an horizontal arc. Again, the sheer strength of an Astartes does a lot of the work; anyone whose chest cavity wasn't completely caved in, or didn't end up with ruptured internal organs, would end up on the ground and then can be tread upon. Alternating between arms in either case would be most efficient because chainsword or pistol whipping are interchangeable in this context.

 

Note that "basis" is the not the same as what ends up getting used. Astartes tend towards spiritualism of one degree or another, and martial forms are often influenced by non-physical considerations. A White Scar or Salamander might aim for less brutal executions, a Blood Angel might aim to minimize blood loss or maximize it depending on the Thirst.