But the variations on war games are limited only by your imagination.” “After all, chess is played on a board that never varies, with the same amount of men every time. “We think the war game is superior to chess,” one of the dedicated hobbyists explained. In January 1965, Sports Illustrateddevoted a lengthy feature to men who waged war with historically accurate miniature troops. Wells’ publication of Little Wars, a plan for “a game for boys from 12 years of age to 150 and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys’ games and books.” In it, the English author lays out rules for a strategic version of toy soldiers-the number of moves required “to pass a fordable river,” “to embark into boats,” and “to unlimber guns.” Over the course of the last century, more tabletop war games sprouted. The hobby side of war gaming didn’t really begin until 1913, with H.G. “In a way, running a TOC is as close to hobby war gaming as it gets in the military.” “In the movies when you see the room/tent with all the maps, projection screens, and radios with guys moving icons around on a map board-that’s the TOC,” he said in an email.
His responsibilities included developing battle plans from the tactical operations center. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Carey served as an operations officer (an S3, to be exact) for an infantry battalion. Inevitably when you place what is effectively a Demi-God of War next to a Rank and File Solider, there's going to be a clash of personalities.Elements of gaming are still present in modern warfare. Guardsmen on the other have none of this maybe one or two guys live long enough to see an officer Comission and some very rare cases get Juve-Vat treatments, but otherwise the average Guardsmen is just as disposable as a bolt round. And to top it off they live hundreds of years to fight in countless battles against uncountable numbers of enemies, spit acid, shrug off life-crippling wounds, have memory absorbing zombie-powers and if necessary can survive in the vacuum of space temporarily. They are trained and enhanced to perfection in the crafts of death and have endless strength and stamina, in turn they are armoured and geared with divine weaponry made of the best technologies and mythical artefacts. They live to fight and die in the name of the Imperium. But Generally Marines are built for one purpose - as weapons of war / mankind. It's anyone's guess since it varies from marine to marine. Some (Lamenters, Salamanders) hold human life as valuable and try and protect and preserve as much as they can. Most show disinterest (Blood Ravens, Ultramarines) - if they can preserve life they will, if they have to sacrifice it, so is the way of things. Some outright disregard the value of human lives (thinking Grey Knights here) - they only care that humanity as a whole survives if you need to kill a hundred million, so be it. Depending on chapter, doctrine, birthplace, training and so fourth. So when they finally meet and see one there is inevitable awe (Marines are what lions are to cats and adults are to children) but also a natural fear (holy crap why are they here). To many Imperial Guardsmen, Space Marines are myths, legends and for all intensive purposes - both divine saviours (showing up and kicking ass) and Bad Omens (stuffs so FUBAR the Astartes are needed) at the same time. Imperial Guardsmen are these same citizen, and even for them it's very unlikely to come across a Space Marine unless they are on some Crusade, Happen to respond to aid request, or in a messed up situation enough to warrant the Astartes to show up. The average imperial citizen only hears the tales and the (false) Imperial Propoganda / Rumours about Space Marines through their entire lives. However in the general "setting" of 40K encounters with Space Marines are meant to be ludicrously rare (discounting those who "share" a planet / system with a chapter, but even then, statistically this is a tiny fraction of the Imperium's population). You have to take into account that the fluff you read features alot of Guard and Space Marine encounters.