The Dropsite Massacre by John French

[Astartes Consul]

GW / BL have always had a weird approach to scale. Some publications will have an Imperial Guard force of a few regiments defending a whole world. Many cooks, and all that. Even the far more grounded Imperial Army books suffered from

this a bit.

 

I generally never thought the Heresy series suffered that badly from it though. Certainly not enough for me to stop suspending my disbelief about genetically engineered child soldiers fighting 30,000 years in the future! My personal bugbear is when a Space Marine manages to reload a bolster while simultaneously wielding about ten other weapons at once. 

[StrangerOrders]

1 hour ago, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

I read "Fulgrim" before the "The Vietnam War". The EC have conquered the planet of the Laerans in a SINGLE MONTH while being the smallest Legion. Completely ridiculous and because of that one of the worst books in the HH series. 

 

The transhumanism of the Astartes is for nought when fighting other Astartes. And when they fight aliens it doesn´t mean it will turn out to be a one-sided war as those foes had impressive tech too. Your power armour means nothing when your position gets shelled by artillery or tank shells. Engagements contain several hundreds of troops so the few power-armoured marines will be outnumbered and thus slaughtered.

 

And another aspect has never come up in the few HH novels which have read so far which is the aspect of friendly fire. According to Oliver Stone, Vietnam War veteran and director of "Platoon", friendly fire caused about 15-20% of all casualties the American troops suffered. Meanwhile during the Horus Heresy everything goes according to plan unless some sort of betrayal comes up. I can´t believe this for a second.

Problem there is that you can't really say 'for nought' when most of the factors I said don't relate to direct combat. Two monkeys fighting in the vines doesn't mean their conflict is equivalent to two crabs.

 

If anything it goes to show how bloody weird a battle between two Astartes forces would be because their tempo, considerations and rates would look nothing like two conventional armies. To give credit, the first Black Book did this very well with commanders being jarred by how cumulatively quick and difficult to unengage from Astartes v. Astartes warfare turned out to be. As well as how hard it is for one side to meaningfully erase the other without ending up playing whack-a-mole (given the difficulty to permanently kill, starve or mentally break both sides are).

 

As far as Xenos, we know alot actually from the books, and I think there is a risk is assuming frequency and other considerations. Including our letting ourselves be tricked into thinking the Imperium is more primitive than it actually.

 

Still room for very interesting directions.

Edited 6 hours ago by StrangerOrders

[Robbienw]

2 hours ago, Scribe said:

....

 

Isnt the Heresy....over? lol

 

It’s a setting.

[Scribe]

7 minutes ago, Robbienw said:

 

It’s a setting.

 

It was (is?) a series, as well.

[soviet1337]

I recently read Fulgrim and thought it was excellent, and that it did a good job of capturing the dropsite massacre in a short span of pages. The brevity underlined the shock of it.

 

That said, I see the reason to do this book. I haven't read anything by John French so I don't know how good he might be.

 

One thing is 100% sure though - this book is going to have a whole load of super-sized Saturnine guys in it. 

[Marshal Loss]

Wonderful news, keen to get my hands on more heresy from French. Praetorian of Dorn, Slaves to Darkness and Solar War are three of my all-time favourites in the setting. 

 

edit: Just noticed:

This novel – combined with the

second Journal Tactica – will provide the most comprehensive view yet of the infamous bloodbath.

 

I thought the second journal tactica was Saturnine themed, so perhaps this is a reference to a second dropsite massacre journal (part II) coming around the same time.

Edited 4 hours ago by Marshal Loss

[SalamandersBro]

Getting

[Commissar Greif]

For about a fraction of a second I thought the article meant John French as in the British general from WWI and my brain just sort of accepted it like "Yeah, I feel like he'd know a thing or two about massacres."