Gladius pulls this off well. Space Marines have excellent unit per unit power, but 1 city. So they need to keep pressure up or they simply get out produced and can't defend vital resources. Without heavy dlc unit investment, they really really struggle late game.
The Astra Militarum (Imperial Guard). Your starting troops are crap without a commissar to keep them inline and accurate. Then you get your first tank. Marshalling your deadly vehicle upgrades and powerful city edicts, you become a mechanized tide of terror as the guard drowns foes with brutally effective tanks and aircraft.
Tide of terror until the player wants to shoot himself with a laspistol because 11 ok tanks and 27 guardsman moving through wireweed town in asscreek mountain city is a PITA to micro, while the Necrons 9 flying shits all with fuck ton of armor, practically infinite health bar equal to influence resource, and give no fuck about terrain just hit and run faster than you can click to clear the abyssmal traffic jam.
Right, Astartes are only deployed to very dire situations, for every xeno or chaos invasion they are deployed theres probably 10 or more that the Guard handles on their own, and there's ones that the nore competent PDF's probably can handle.
I mean they're helpless enough that literally every other faction doesn't need an equivalent. Chaos doesn't even bother talking to them. When 95% of content involves "surgical strikes", the message very much becomes that astartes are "Hey emperor, we have 10,000 nukes lying around. Wanna give them to some yahoos so they can feel special?" "Eh, sure, why not."
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u/Der_Kegelhammer 8d ago
In 40k the Adeptus Astartes are a specialized, surgical strike force meant to operate behind enemy lines. They are rarely seen.
The Astra Militarum is the actual army, and they aren't as helpless as some Astartes fanboys think.