Xhydralisk said: Being a Guardsman AUTOMATICALLY qualifies you to be a badass (until you are "punished" for desertion).
That is not true unless your homeworld is a deathworld like Catachan; remember that oftentimes IG soldiers are conscripted. If you survive like three major battles with your platoon, now that is serious badass material.
Shinji being a Guardsman is a million times more badass than him being... well... whatever the hell we can classify him as in the 'Shinji and Warhammer 40K' fic, nowadays.
Because this Shinji has to work hard for his badassery, that's why! He's Badass Normal, that's why!
...Kaworu as a (beheaded) Chaos fiend is a nice touch, BTW.
Astana said: That is not true unless your homeworld is a deathworld like Catachan; remember that oftentimes IG soldiers are conscripted. If you survive like three major battles with your platoon, now that is serious badass material.
Not quite, PDF mainly takes conscripts, but the Guard takes the best PDF platoons and trains them up.
A lot of worlds have good Guards groups, and even the PDF, in theory, can hold their own. The idea of the guardsman being cannon-fodder has been inconsistent throughout the history of the fluff, and basically the guardsman are a group of hopeless cannon fodder soldiers or a group of highly-experienced and trained badasses.
Or bits of both.
Also note, there are penal/conscript groups within the Guard, which are always cannon fodder.
That is not true unless your homeworld is a deathworld like Catachan; remember that oftentimes IG soldiers are conscripted. If you survive like three major battles with your platoon, now that is serious badass material.
Or Mordia, Valhalla, Elysia, Tanith, Armageddon, Krieg, Vostroya, Steppe Planet (can't remember the name, famous for their Rough Riders), etc. And surviving three battles with your platoon is impressive, but your regiment surviving a campaign virtually intact means it either had A) A cushy deployment(unlikely) or B) You are a regiment made entirely of badasses.