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This is a bit similar to an older question from me regarding (background wise) sensible weapons options for an IG jungle regiment:

Does anybody have an idea how heavier weapons (so light-to medium artillery, lets say everything from an ordnance field gun up to an earthshaker cannon) can sensibly be transported, if your regiment is trained in and expects to fight in a jungle? How is this done/has this been done in regions on earth with a similar terrain? Maybe the whole WWII pacific war theater or the japanese attack on Singapore or modern world armies of South america, sub saharan africa and south(east) asia might be worthwhile, but before I do lots of research there, I thought I could just ask for your collective wisdom

So far I could see:
- tracked self propelled artillery => should have the power to go through undergrowth but the size might be problematic in between big trees, especially for artillery with long barrels
- suitable light trucks + towed artillery => I don't know, maybe?
- transport the stuff in parts on soldiers and pack animals and put it back together like the mountain troops do? => migth at least work for stuff that doesn't have one large barrel like the field Ordnance lascannon or maybe some rocket artillery
- mostly relocate it by Valkyrie/helicopter like thingies?

Any other ideas or real world examples how this did/does work?

WW2 island hoping is an example of real light infantry where most things have to be carried.

WW2 Burma is a good example of a more supported jungle campaign. Still foot slogging, but limited utility vehicles that could cope with the terrain and heavy use of pack animals. One side effect was attacking areas with established communication links was damn hard, as they would have far better artillery than you could bring up easily.

Today we love helicopters but they can't do everything, the backbone is still trucks and other utility vehicles and vicious battles over communication links, combined with constant attempts at light infantry infiltration.

Oh and cleaning. A lot of cleaning.

For an example of how open forest can be (it varies a lot) would be the film Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan. Where the aussies rely on fixed bases with artillery to support longer ranged patrols and a QRF of APCs. Though they were in an 'orchard' area which was populated with commercial use of the forest.

Conversely most Burma films emphasise the difficulties of movement, with something like The Bridge on the River Kwai showing its all about those lines of communication. Though of course it is historically almost a parody.

It’s going to depend force to force.

Specialist Jungle Fighters are going to be predominantly, if not solely, infantry and walkers, in the relatively safe prediction their mobility and familiarity with the environs will allow them to beat heavier units through traps, flanking etc.

Less specialised units, or woefully under prepared units? You’re down to brute force.

Deathworld veteran forces don't routinely use anything bigger than heavy weapons teams or Sentinels, the latter being used primarily as mobile heavy support rather than scouts. Man-portable firepower like demolition charges and special weapons are prioritised. The only artillery is generally mortar teams. These forces are specialised for fighting in deep jungle, particularly deathworld jungle.

Normal Catachan forces can include the full range of IG options incl. armour and self-propelled artillery regiments, so less dense jungle terrain is likely to feature such units.

It looks to be standard practice for deathworld jungle forces to create hardened strongpoints with heavy artillery and fortifications (like Cerberus base on Armageddon or the cities on Catachan itself) and then strike out with light infantry patrols into the jungle itself.


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Pack animals could be used to carry heavier gear for a set piece attack, but I imagine most pack animals do not last long in the vicious jungles of 40k.

We do have at least one example of an airmobile Catachan regiment that uses Valkyries for jungle insertions.

Similarly Valhallans are snow world fighters by preference. Put them in their preferred environment, and they can use that as another weapon in their arsenal, and may choose to deploy armour entirely differently to a non-specialist regiment.

Tallarns the same, but in hot desert environs.

It’s not so much those regiments don’t have the usual bells and trinkets available. Just that their specialist combat skills mean they don’t need them for a successful battle, ambush, assault, raid etc, because their combat doctrine teaches other, probably more practical, ways.

Catachans for instance are said to be adept at setting traps all but imperceptible to the foe. Stake traps, demo charges, pit traps, log traps etc. they’re all force multipliers, and even better? Don’t necessarily need your infantry to actually stick around. Use your Scouts and intimate environmental knowledge to predict enemy avenues of advance, trap it all, go attack something else.

Thanks already. I completely forgot the walkers. That sound's pretty doable. I mean in a sense of: if we need some portable heavy weapons but can't carry them that distance, what should we do? => a couple of Sentinels with chainsaws should usually be a good compromise.

Although 40k jungle is going to tend toward the cinematic 'dense undergrowth' stereotypes, realistically that kind of ground cover is often only found in young woodland or at the edges. When really big trees have had time to mature and form a canopy, the ground may be surprisingly clear with large gaps between trunks. This is because the trees block out a large amount of the sunlight and not much grows below them. Mud and roots are more likely to be the big issues and tracked vehicles can sort-of deal with them.

Still, you're likely to see them trying to get any vehicles as light (or with as low a ground pressure) and narrow as possible. That means no sponsons on tanks, armour stripped to a minimum, side skirts being removed, and more light-weight variants of everything being favoured.

Another option is to make use of water-ways to get heavy equipment as close as possible and only force it over-land the last bit. This can either mean watercraft transports or amphibious units. Chimeras were noted as being amphibious, I believe, and so it may be that some vehicles using the same chassis come in amphibious variants.

Or you could get really friendly with the Ad-Mech and see if they will lend you some walkers and hovercraft.

I think it depends on your regiment itself and what they are based on. Are they a more "modern" (as in real life current era) style regiment or are they more futuristic or do they have a historical analogue? You don't want a modern take on jungle fighting from an aesthetically feudal regiment.


Jungle fighting is real tough, but those that succeed are from areas they are bred from. As others have said, light infantry is the name of the game. Wet, damp conditions with heavy tree cover is a nightmare for lugging heavy materiel. Look at the Ukrainian bezdorizhzhia and the difficulties of moving anything during the mud season.

Look at the tactics of the Portuguese army during their African Colonial War or the Gurkhas throughout their formation from the late 19th century.


Platoon level heavy weapons that are man portable are more likely to be used than heavy artillery pieces. What would you be attacking to warrant them? If the jungle planet you're fighting on has built up areas then close air support will serve you better. Are you trying to crack a fortified location or are you tackling guerillas?

If you're certain on using them, then that's what the Basilisk gun carrier is for.

@ Perfect Organism: good point. It also helps, that I find the idea of a brown water navy quite attractive anyway (from a fluff perspective)

@ Olthannon: they are feral/feudal tribesmen from a civilized world. So in my image something like tribal warriors that got some training on the usual basic IG weaponry and do their best to improvise. See what works and what not, hence my question. Therefore I think the figthing style would lean into what the japanese did in Singapore and the british chindits/ghurkas in WWII as well as a page or two from the book of the Vietcong (like traps etc).

As mentioned: some valuable input for my fluff, thanks a lot.

Chimeras are indeed amphibious, which also suggests a good ability to cope with muddy conditions. However, they are quite wide at 5m and will struggle with mature trees that are too closely packed. Twin heavy flamers would be well suited to the close terrain.

To my knowledge, none of the variants based on the Chimera chassis are also amphibious, although they can probably be modified to be so.


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 Olthannon wrote:


Platoon level heavy weapons that are man portable are more likely to be used than heavy artillery pieces. What would you be attacking to warrant them? If the jungle planet you're fighting on has built up areas then close air support will serve you better. Are you trying to crack a fortified location or are you tackling guerillas?

This assumes you have access to close air support- never a given when that has to be negotiated with the Imperial Navy. In addition, the enemy may have strong aerial assets themselves or good aerial denial.

An enemy strongpoint can be very difficult to assault if surrounded by dense jungle, sometimes lugging artillery and hiding it in the woods is the only option.

As others have mentioned, it will depend on a lot of factors. Assuming a "vanilla" guard force that is assigned to fight on a jungle world regardless of their expertise? I imagine they'd do something like:

* Burn away all the foliage through frequently traveled paths using hellhounds or infantry flamers. Maybe even flatten some of the surrounding area with artillery or orbital lance strikes if it's more convenient.

* Hitch some sort of trailer loaded with weapons or weapon components to a chimera. I can't think of a reason this wouldn't be a common use for IG tanks given that mag clamps appear to be relatively common tech.

* As others have pointed out, chimeras are amphibious. If waterways are conveniently located and relatively safe, I imagine you'd load the passenger space up with kit and boat the supplies into position.

* Generally, I'd think tanks would be pretty good at rolling through undergrowth. Most trees could just be burned/knocked down with heavy weapons as needed to clear a path. If the "jungle" really is full of enormous trees that can't be efficiently cleared with heavy bolters and whatnot, then I'm not sure you want to try lobbing artillery shells through that terrain anyway.

* Presumably you had to use flyers to get your equipment planet-side in the first place. Presumably you could use flyers to pick most of it up again and drop them off in a new area provided there's a place to land. Which, ship guns can probably blast a workable landing zone into existence. Flyers in 40k seem to be able to land in lots of random places, so I don't think they strictly need a dedicated landing strip or what have you to touch down.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
As others have mentioned, it will depend on a lot of factors. Assuming a "vanilla" guard force that is assigned to fight on a jungle world regardless of their expertise? I imagine they'd do something like:

* Burn away all the foliage through frequently traveled paths using hellhounds or infantry flamers. Maybe even flatten some of the surrounding area with artillery or orbital lance strikes if it's more convenient.

* Hitch some sort of trailer loaded with weapons or weapon components to a chimera. I can't think of a reason this wouldn't be a common use for IG tanks given that mag clamps appear to be relatively common tech.

* As others have pointed out, chimeras are amphibious. If waterways are conveniently located and relatively safe, I imagine you'd load the passenger space up with kit and boat the supplies into position.

* Generally, I'd think tanks would be pretty good at rolling through undergrowth. Most trees could just be burned/knocked down with heavy weapons as needed to clear a path. If the "jungle" really is full of enormous trees that can't be efficiently cleared with heavy bolters and whatnot, then I'm not sure you want to try lobbing artillery shells through that terrain anyway.

* Presumably you had to use flyers to get your equipment planet-side in the first place. Presumably you could use flyers to pick most of it up again and drop them off in a new area provided there's a place to land. Which, ship guns can probably blast a workable landing zone into existence. Flyers in 40k seem to be able to land in lots of random places, so I don't think they strictly need a dedicated landing strip or what have you to touch down.

I imagine tanks are likely to get stuck in mud in jungles. Someone earlier said vehicles with low ground pressure with be better for mud and undergrowth and I agree with that.

And unlike helicopters I can imagine Valkyries easily crushing small trees and bushes so it'd be easier to pick an LZ with them than just about anything else the Navy has.

Also an agent orange type of chemical fired from orbit or fired from banewolfs can take care of trees without causing rampant fires, if the Imperium has anything like that which it definitely does

There used to be support sentinels with rocket pods that would fit the mobile light artillery role. A paired sentinel team with one having a large calibre mortar and the other with the chainsaw and ammo racks would make a nice wee thematically attractive unit.

@ Flintry: fitting, as I currently have 3 Sentinels in my backlog that I intended to build as 2x Support Sentinel with a missile pod aimed in the air and 1 Sentinel Powerlifter lifting a treetrunk.

@ Chimeras: even if they are amphibious they might have trouble going long ways along the streams. But fluffwise I could see the Administratum/Astra Militarum having some cheap patrol boats or build them onworld for this. Nothing fancy, basically just some light surface ship made from wood, plastic or whatever is cheap. Doesn't have to be fast or beautiful, just able to carry some weapons and ammo.

I think the first question is why they're fighting in a jungle at all, in a setting where "just exterminate them all and move on" is standard practice instead of a war crime.

If there's nothing of value in the jungle and the enemy just happens to be there then blow it up from orbit and move on, no troops would be on the ground at all.

If the goal is to defend important targets (mining operations, important roads, etc) then you'd likely have heavy equipment brought in by air or road to specific fortified positions around the important targets. There would probably be an emphasis on artillery that can hit a target from miles away, covering an entire region of combat from safely behind the walls. Units in the field would likely be light infantry acting as little more than a tripwire for the real defenses, relying on support from the big guns if they encounter anything more than an enemy light infantry force. They would probably only carry special weapons, not heavy weapons. In terms of a 40k battle where you want the big guns to be present on the table you'd probably want to set your battle at one of these fortified bases with one table edge having walls and heavy weapon emplacements protecting a strip of clear terrain and the rest of the table set up as the dense jungle.

If the goal is a special forces operation to capture vital intelligence or similar then you'd have an air cavalry force deploying by Valkyrie and supported primarily by aircraft (Vultures/Thunderbolts/etc). Moving big guns or tanks through such challenging terrain would be far too slow and awkward for such a fleeting target, by the time the attacking force arrived from its bases miles away the target would most likely be gone. The goal would be to deploy an elite infantry force, hit any enemy heavy units with air strikes, and be gone ASAP.

In the image I personally have for my Regiment (it's only fluff anyway) they are not "Catachan, everything is out to kill you" jungle regiment. Just normal dudes that are most accustomed to this terrain, as are Tallarns in the desert or Valhallans on ice.

Basically we still see land wars in the setting for various reasons. A dedicated jungle force could bring to the table:
a) attacking trough parts of the frontline the enemy thought were unpassible (WWII japanese attack on Singapore, chindits campaign)
b) secure installations/airfields that should not just be nuked from orbit in jungle terrain (a bit like the WWII islandhopping. And the Navy fighters seem to still need some kind of facilities to work)
c) Fight back insurgents in your own jungle terrain, where you also don't want to just nuke everything to the ground (here I see the brown water Navy part of the Vietnam war and also all the sides involved in the french indochina to Vietnam war area and region)



Besides from that more "mid 20th century" vibe. Does anybody know how current countries (so early 21st century) with heavy jungles go about this? I think Australia has quite some rainforests at the coast and they maintain modern weaponry like Boxers, Bushmasters and Abrams tanks. Have they tried to drive those there?

123ply wrote:
I imagine tanks are likely to get stuck in mud in jungles. Someone earlier said vehicles with low ground pressure with be better for mud and undergrowth and I agree with that.

Tanks don't necessarily have worse ground pressure than trucks, or even infantry (and science-fiction walkers). Tracks do a really good job of distributing the weight across a broad surface compared to wheels and legs (even large numbers of wide wheels, or numerous legs with big feet). That's exactly why they use them for really heavy vehicles which need to go over rough terrain, like tanks. An M1 Abrams exerts about 15 psi (fairly typical for a heavy tank / MBT), significantly less than a light truck or (standing) horse, and comparable to a fully loaded infantryman's peak pressure while walking (when almost all the weight is put onto the front half of one foot).

Wyldhunt wrote:As others have mentioned, it will depend on a lot of factors. Assuming a "vanilla" guard force that is assigned to fight on a jungle world regardless of their expertise? I imagine they'd do something like:

* Burn away all the foliage through frequently traveled paths using hellhounds or infantry flamers. Maybe even flatten some of the surrounding area with artillery or orbital lance strikes if it's more convenient.

* Hitch some sort of trailer loaded with weapons or weapon components to a chimera. I can't think of a reason this wouldn't be a common use for IG tanks given that mag clamps appear to be relatively common tech.

* As others have pointed out, chimeras are amphibious. If waterways are conveniently located and relatively safe, I imagine you'd load the passenger space up with kit and boat the supplies into position.

Yeah, Chimeras can tow. They have tow hooks as standard that can pull trailers- FW even produced a few different trailers at one point. These were mainly intended for the Trojan, but most Imperial Guard vehicles could tow them if needed. Would probably need special amphibious trailers if you wanted to tow up rivers though.

* Generally, I'd think tanks would be pretty good at rolling through undergrowth. Most trees could just be burned/knocked down with heavy weapons as needed to clear a path. If the "jungle" really is full of enormous trees that can't be efficiently cleared with heavy bolters and whatnot, then I'm not sure you want to try lobbing artillery shells through that terrain anyway.

I don't think flamers would be very efficient at clearing mature trees- that is a LOT of wood to burn through. Chain equipment or demo charges would probably work better. Mature trees are just a pretty substantial obstacle though. I think a jungle is likely to feature a mix of plant sizes, depending heavily on the flora of the world.

Artillery shells can be very effective firing into forest- the tree trunks create a lot of wood splinters as extra shrapnel. You wouldn't want to fire into heavy canopy above your artillery for fear of a premature detonation though.

* Presumably you had to use flyers to get your equipment planet-side in the first place. Presumably you could use flyers to pick most of it up again and drop them off in a new area provided there's a place to land. Which, ship guns can probably blast a workable landing zone into existence. Flyers in 40k seem to be able to land in lots of random places, so I don't think they strictly need a dedicated landing strip or what have you to touch down.

Imperial Guard dropships tend to be very large- at least enough to transport an entire company of tanks or infantry. They can probably land more or less anywhere with sufficient flat space, although I can vaguely remember a story of a dropship landing on a "grassy clearing" that turned out to be a swamp. These could be used for a beachhead, but are generally to large, ungainly, and vulnerable to enemy fire to be used for frontline combat insertions. An orbital strike could clear a space (more on that later). There are smaller vehicles and other options for combat drops that will be able to deploy into dense terrain, like grav chutes, the Arvus lighter, or the anti-grav cones used in some orbital assault craft.

123ply wrote:Also an agent orange type of chemical fired from orbit or fired from banewolfs can take care of trees without causing rampant fires, if the Imperium has anything like that which it definitely does

Amti-plant munitions have been in the lore since at least 2nd edition. They have had rules in several places, such as as an Apocalypse strategem for removing plant terrain features (Anti-plant barrage).

Pyroalchi wrote:But fluffwise I could see the Administratum/Astra Militarum having some cheap patrol boats or build them onworld for this. Nothing fancy, basically just some light surface ship made from wood, plastic or whatever is cheap. Doesn't have to be fast or beautiful, just able to carry some weapons and ammo.

There is some mention of patrol boats being used in the 3rd War for Armageddon on the waterways of that world. I am pretty much certain the Imperium uses these and they would be pretty cool.

ThePaintingOwl wrote:
If there's nothing of value in the jungle and the enemy just happens to be there then blow it up from orbit and move on, no troops would be on the ground at all.

If the goal is to defend important targets (mining operations, important roads, etc) then you'd likely have heavy equipment brought in by air or road to specific fortified positions around the important targets. There would probably be an emphasis on artillery that can hit a target from miles away, covering an entire region of combat from safely behind the walls. Units in the field would likely be light infantry acting as little more than a tripwire for the real defenses, relying on support from the big guns if they encounter anything more than an enemy light infantry force. They would probably only carry special weapons, not heavy weapons. In terms of a 40k battle where you want the big guns to be present on the table you'd probably want to set your battle at one of these fortified bases with one table edge having walls and heavy weapon emplacements protecting a strip of clear terrain and the rest of the table set up as the dense jungle.

If the goal is a special forces operation to capture vital intelligence or similar then you'd have an air cavalry force deploying by Valkyrie and supported primarily by aircraft (Vultures/Thunderbolts/etc). Moving big guns or tanks through such challenging terrain would be far too slow and awkward for such a fleeting target, by the time the attacking force arrived from its bases miles away the target would most likely be gone. The goal would be to deploy an elite infantry force, hit any enemy heavy units with air strikes, and be gone ASAP.

These are all good options, if your forces are in a dominant position. They are basically the US in Vietnam (with more genocide), but often Imperial forces are the Vietcong or are in more of a peer-to-peer fight.

Orbital support is never guaranteed for the Guard, they have to negotiate for it from the Navy or other allies, the Navy has to be available, and the enemy has to not have defenses against space attack they can bring to bear. This also applies to aircraft- the majority of air assets are controlled by the Navy, with Guard-controlled Valkyries being very rare (only scions and droptroop regiments routinely have them). Enemy air defenses may be substantial. In addition, orbital strikes are not going to guarantee annihilation of an enemy unless you are devoting enough resources that you are starting to risk the habitability of the planet. Orbital anti-plant barrages are also a thing to deny cover.

Often a Guard force just gets dropped off, and the Navy leaves to go do other things. In that case, the Guard must use its own firepower to deal with problems. Or it is a garrisoning force, and has no choice but to do what it can until off-world support arrives.

Perfect Organism wrote:

123ply wrote:
I imagine tanks are likely to get stuck in mud in jungles. Someone earlier said vehicles with low ground pressure with be better for mud and undergrowth and I agree with that.

Tanks don't necessarily have worse ground pressure than trucks, or even infantry (and science-fiction walkers). Tracks do a really good job of distributing the weight across a broad surface compared to wheels and legs (even large numbers of wide wheels, or numerous legs with big feet). That's exactly why they use them for really heavy vehicles which need to go over rough terrain, like tanks. An M1 Abrams exerts about 15 psi (fairly typical for a heavy tank / MBT), significantly less than a light truck or (standing) horse, and comparable to a fully loaded infantryman's peak pressure while walking (when almost all the weight is put onto the front half of one foot).

Yeah, pretty much. Not getting stuck in mud is part of what tanks were designed for (the Western Front in WWI). The ground pressure isn't the whole story though- a horse might sink quite deep into mud, but it doesn't get particularly encumbered by it, and I can tell you that I have more problems bringing a horse back from a muddy field than the horse does. On the other hand, barefoot humans are also a lot better at traversing mud than humans in shoes.

 Pyroalchi wrote:
Basically we still see land wars in the setting for various reasons. A dedicated jungle force could bring to the table:
a) attacking trough parts of the frontline the enemy thought were unpassible (WWII japanese attack on Singapore, chindits campaign)
b) secure installations/airfields that should not just be nuked from orbit in jungle terrain (a bit like the WWII islandhopping. And the Navy fighters seem to still need some kind of facilities to work)
c) Fight back insurgents in your own jungle terrain, where you also don't want to just nuke everything to the ground (here I see the brown water Navy part of the Vietnam war and also all the sides involved in the french indochina to Vietnam war area and region)

A and B make sense in the real world but are much less relevant in 40k. The concept of a front line matters much less when you can deploy a whole army via dropship anywhere on the planet. And securing airfields isn't very relevant when your aircraft all have enough range to operate from bases thousands of miles from the fight or from carriers in orbit. It's not like WWII where 500 miles was considered extreme range for aircraft and you needed bases close to the action.

C runs into the problem of 40k's (lack of) ethics. A jungle is by definition undeveloped land where you don't really have anything of value and there's no reason not to bomb it all flat to kill the enemy. It's not like you're concerned about civilian casualties, dead enemy civilians are a bonus because you don't have to kill them the hard way later. So in this case you'd be in the scenario of fortified bases protecting anything of value in the jungle and a whole bunch of empty terrain that is mostly ignored until it's time to call in an air or artillery strike.


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 Haighus wrote:
These are all good options, if your forces are in a dominant position. They are basically the US in Vietnam (with more genocide), but often Imperial forces are the Vietcong or are in more of a peer-to-peer fight.

If guard are forced into an insurgency against anything other than low-end PDF they're just plain dead. Hiding in the jungle is fine against 1960s era gear, it's not very useful against something like Tau automated surveillance drones that can instantly spot an approaching threat and call in a missile strike before the guardsmen even know they've been spotted or demons that literally don't exist in our world until they pop out of nowhere and start slaughtering. Guard need a dominant position because their entire approach to winning a war relies on attrition warfare backed by immense logistical capability. If there is no orbital support the supply of manpower and equipment rapidly ends and that's it for the war.

In the Pacific theater and for airborne forces, at least, I know that light howitzers like the 75mm pack howitzer saw a lot of use. As you noted, helicopters really opened up strategic mobility for artillery, particularly when heavy-lift choppers like the Chinook were introduced. Outside of that, aircraft can take some of the roles of artillery fires.

Ah FIWAF good times.

Heavy weapons: You simply need the ability to break down the larger weapons and distribute the parts among the fire team for transport, so a Lascannon Barrel on one man, capacitor on another etc. fighting in woods and forests means everything has to be man portable.

IFV and MBT: frankly these are terrible in such environments, the ability to throw a track get bogged down or fall into dead ground as the visibility is so low from such a vehicle in addition to the ease of Opfor to sneak up on you and disable or destroy you, better to use Walkers, Artillery and to a lesser extent air support (canopy problems).

FIRE!!!!!: is not your friend, this is the worst way to clear a way through dense undergrowth, its wasteful, unpredictable and slow, thats right trees funnily enough take a while to burn down completely then you have to go through an area with no cover, large amounts of particles in the atmosphere so low visibility when it gets churned up not to mention the fire itself could still be raging, the smoke, clearing a path through forests and jungles with fire is by far the most terrible idea one could have if they are fighting IN the forest.
the best solution here is topographical maps and good ol mk1 legs.

Air transport: where you gonna land mate, that is the major issue with this one, you already need boots on the ground to create a safe landing zone and when you do you now have a key location to be attacked as well as easily spotable air support moving to and from location, this allows the enemy to set up, with ease due to dense forest, man portable anti air assets, expect a constant battle for air superiority and constant patrols.

 Formosa wrote:

... and good ol mk1 legs.

Conveniently, the AdMech have some upgrades available on that front

Pack animals can definitely be an option on very rough terrain where vehicles are just impractical. I think even today, modern armies still use good old mules sometimes. And who knows what kind of beasties can be tamed in those 40k jungle planets?

Light tanks/armored cars would probably work, but I don't know how much of that is in the IG arsenal so sentinels are probably the closest thing.

I don't know if I want to get those models, but these here from Kromlech look kind of interesting. They would need much bigger feet though to reduce the ground pressure

You don't. Not in actual, thick undergrowth.

One of the biggest screw-ups GW has made is diluting the 'brand' of the specialized regiments over the years.

As a kind of aside?

I for one wouldn’t like to fight Eldar in a jungle environment.

Never mind the grav tanks, as their sheer size is still a drawback.

Oh no. It’s the Aspect Warriors being infantry based, Jetbikes which have a wider variety of attack vectors open to them, and of course they’re heavy weapons being mounted on Grav sleds.

Add in the horror of Shuriken weapons is magnified against light cover (spray and pray meaning quite a lot there!) and their generally better senses, pace and reaction time, and it’s massively Sod That for me.

Hmmm. New thread series potential - King Of The Battlefield - X. Where X, rather than being a rapidly failing social media platform, is a placeholder for specific environs.

I suppose an easy thing to do would be to marry up the Taurox kits with those new heavy ordinance weapons batteries.

Just a quick anecdote:

For many years I wanted an old Land Rover (the ones based off of WW2 American Jeeps), and a few months ago I finally got one; a Series 2a 109" in need of a full rebuild.

Anyway, turns out it was used in the closing days of Australia's involvement in Vietnam as a gun tractor- essentially hauling an artillery piece as a trailer around the periphery of jungle warfare environments.

 Pyroalchi wrote:
This is a bit similar to an older question from me regarding (background wise) sensible weapons options for an IG jungle regiment:

Does anybody have an idea how heavier weapons (so light-to medium artillery, lets say everything from an ordnance field gun up to an earthshaker cannon) can sensibly be transported, if your regiment is trained in and expects to fight in a jungle? How is this done/has this been done in regions on earth with a similar terrain? Maybe the whole WWII pacific war theater or the japanese attack on Singapore or modern world armies of South america, sub saharan africa and south(east) asia might be worthwhile, but before I do lots of research there, I thought I could just ask for your collective wisdom

So far I could see:
- tracked self propelled artillery => should have the power to go through undergrowth but the size might be problematic in between big trees, especially for artillery with long barrels
- suitable light trucks + towed artillery => I don't know, maybe?
- transport the stuff in parts on soldiers and pack animals and put it back together like the mountain troops do? => migth at least work for stuff that doesn't have one large barrel like the field Ordnance lascannon or maybe some rocket artillery
- mostly relocate it by Valkyrie/helicopter like thingies?

Any other ideas or real world examples how this did/does work?

The Viet Minh took apart and physically carried heavy artillery through jungle and up mountains to attack the French at Dien bien phu and really caught them by surprise because they didn’t think anyone would be able to do that, where there’s manpower and a will anything is possible.

https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/battle-of-dien-bien-phu#

difficult Terrain? What's that?



Seriously though, I imagine hover tanks would have similar pros and cons to helicopters. They would need a proper opening and would be a juicy target while they lift above the canopy. Battlesuits might be able to stay in cover more often, but are limited in the heavy weaponry they can carry. I wonder how adept their broadsides are at difficult terrain?