100 US Marines vs 5000 Alliance soldiers

[Surfd]

OP explicitly revoked the 40yd range restriction.

He can explicitly revoke the 40 yard restirction all he wants, that still isnt going to magically give all spells infinite range. Warlocks are not suddenly going to be able to hellfire things they would need binoculars to see. Mages are not going to be able to fireball things a mile away.

The whole discussion is borderline stupid anyway. There are FAR too many variables just left hanging in the air to make any kind of decent comparison. I mean, for one, at least we can accurately pin down the capabilities of the Marines, since we have real world values to work with. Even if you throw them a bone and say they have unlimited ammo to draw from, we can still quantify the effectiveness of their armament. An M16, a Mortar, a heavy portable assault gun placement. These all have real world statistical data to draw from.

You cant do that for "5000 alliance troops". What kind of troops? What breakdown? How many soldiers, how many archers, how many mages, how many healers? Do you allow specific classes, or just go with generics? Is a rogue in stealth completely undetectable, or just a really sneaky normal person with a big knife? Where do you peg the effectiveness of their "tech", considering that wow has everything from flintlock muskets and simple bows to gattling guns and magical crossbows all running in the same military. Where do you peg the effectiveness of their magic? Is a single fireball going to be a 1shot kill? Is a healer going to be able to instantly fix a minor laceration? What about an assault rifle slug through the lung? What about their armor? if "game mechanics" no longer apply, a chainmail bikini is going to be about as useless as it looks for protecting you from mortar fire. And a suit of full plate is going to be as heavy and cumbersome as hell. Same thing with longswords. Those things were HEAVY.

Even without the "40 yard" restriction, where IS the effective real world attack range on their stuff? If "game mechanics" do not SOMETHING still has to. I mean, take real world hunters. If they are using a Bow, even a good, modern compound bow, their effective range for maximum accuracy for a kill is actually somewhere in the area of 35 to 50 yards, and that is for a Large target like a Deer. Even world champion marksmen using olympic quality gear / skills are capping out around 80 to 90 yards, and you can bet that your average Alliance Archer grunt isnt going to have nearly that kind of skill / equipment.

[Warlord Booty]

Mages are not going to be able to fireball things a mile away.

Why wouldn't they be able to conjure a blizzard just past that tree line? Wait, they can and would.

[Surfd]

Why wouldn't they be able to conjure a blizzard just past that tree line? Wait, they can and would.

probably because the laws of magic wouldnt let them. The 40 yard / etc / etc restrictions exist not only for game mechanics balance purposes, but probably also because doing something like attempting to lob a fireball a mile away, or summon a blizzard over the horizon would probably cause their heads to explode, or magically fry them to a crisp for trying to channel that much power. Wouldnt make much sense otherwise, because if spellcasters were effectively limitless, every other profession out there would be effectively redundant. Why even have seige engines if your warlocks could just stand on a tower ten miles off and rain fire down on orgrimmar all day long? Why have archers if a mage with a telescope can kill you with 100% unavoidable magic missiles?

Hell, if "game mechanics" no longer apply, then nearly all magic spells would likely become dumb-fire, instead of the homing stuff we have in game today, since pretty much the only reason that all spells track their target is because the game was designed that way to facilitate gameplay in an environment where mele classes have good mobility.

Just because you can toss a fireball 40 yards, does not mean tossing one 4000 yards is going to be just as easy.

But then, that gets into rediculous meta discussions, like for example, why was there never an instance where a single level 50 spider from the old Western Plaguelands ever wandered into level 4-6 Tirisfal glades and absolutely destroyed everything in its path? I mean, you have swarms of monsters just on the other side of an imaginary line that could oneshot literally anything the zone next door could throw at it, and nobody bats an eye at this? Last time I checked, the jungle cats in North Africa were not 60x more deadly then the ones in South Africa just because they are on different sides of a few border lines.

[Bluesftw]

out of those 5000 man im pretty sure there would be at least 100 mages, /cast blizzard over the mountains , pick up marines popsicles...hard fight

[Sal the Shieldhog]

probably because the laws of magic wouldnt let them. The 40 yard / etc / etc restrictions exist not only for game mechanics balance purposes, but probably also because doing something like attempting to lob a fireball a mile away, or summon a blizzard over the horizon would probably cause their heads to explode, or magically fry them to a crisp for trying to channel that much power. Wouldnt make much sense otherwise, because if spellcasters were effectively limitless, every other profession out there would be effectively redundant. Why even have seige engines if your warlocks could just stand on a tower ten miles off and rain fire down on orgrimmar all day long? Why have archers if a mage with a telescope can kill you with 100% unavoidable magic missiles?

Hell, if "game mechanics" no longer apply, then nearly all magic spells would likely become dumb-fire, instead of the homing stuff we have in game today, since pretty much the only reason that all spells track their target is because the game was designed that way to facilitate gameplay in an environment where mele classes have good mobility.

Just because you can toss a fireball 40 yards, does not mean tossing one 4000 yards is going to be just as easy.

But then, that gets into rediculous meta discussions, like for example, why was there never an instance where a single level 50 spider from the old Western Plaguelands ever wandered into level 4-6 Tirisfal glades and absolutely destroyed everything in its path? I mean, you have swarms of monsters just on the other side of an imaginary line that could oneshot literally anything the zone next door could throw at it, and nobody bats an eye at this? Last time I checked, the jungle cats in North Africa were not 60x more deadly then the ones in South Africa just because they are on different sides of a few border lines.

For one, we aren't completely sure how the rules of magic are in Warcraft. Blizzard has never gone into explicit detail; all we have are bits and pieces that they've given us in the games or books.

For that matter, yes, it'd be difficult for a single caster to hit something that far away. However, it's not impossible to think that a few mages working together could do something like that - given the size of the military force, there's likely to be a sizeable population to do it.

Things like that have been done before, mind you. Portals are difficult things to create, and the Highborne all worked together to create and sustain the one that summoned the Burning Legion, as an example.

You're right in that a single Mage couldn't, but you haven't thought of everything!

In response to your earlier question, they aren't used this way because they're too valuable and too few, comparatively. A single warrior requires maybe a year or two (at most) of training, if not less. A Mage or warlock requires far more time, effort, and money to be created, and they're not as numerous as WoW would have you believe.

[-Superman-]

The Alliance. And here's why.

War would be PvP. PvP is broken. Would take one shadow priest, to hit them all with Psychic scream, Warlocks to dot them, and rogues to finish them. Modern day tech would stand zero chance against a mythos power as our tech is limited to known science and physics.

[zura]

both of the alliance and the marines armies invade lands to enslave its population and steal its recources, they should form a dark powerful alliance instead of fighting each others

[-Superman-]

both of the alliance and the marines armies invade lands to enslave its population and steal its recources, they should form a dark powerful alliance instead of fighting each others

Not really the place to make a biased political statement. It's a fan site, and a hypothetical situation for people having fun playing the What If game...

[Verdugo]

and a hypothetical situation for people having fun playing the What If game...

Says the person that contributed with "game mechanics lolz me funny!"

[Aeryana]

Alliance just based on sheer numbers of this scenario. Alliance vs. any modern military (with actual freaking support)? I don't care if you choose Ethiopia, Ethiopian forces would conquer Stormwind within 3-4 days. We outnumber them and I honestly get the feeling you people place too much stock in magic. I swear I've seen this same scenario posted before.

Next up: Zerg vs. Scourge

Or Burning Legion vs. Earth (hint, magic is still overrated)

[-Superman-]

Says the person that contributed with "game mechanics lolz me funny!"

I answered the OP. I think it was pretty solid and kept to the topic. PvP has issues. War is just like PvP. Here's how I would see the fight going...

I didn't roll in here with some weird propaganda on a fan site. Aside from the Revolutionary War and Civil War, you'd be hard pressed to find another full-scale war in which we fired the first shot.

[Verdugo]

I answered the OP. I think it was pretty solid and kept to the topic.

You missed this part.

GAME MECHANICS DO NOT APPLY.

But of course, you propably just ignored it to make that lame joke we see thrice on every page.

[roahn the warlock]

We're talking 50-1 here. With the ability to rain down fire and ice with the wave of a hand, the mages are pretty much the biggest problem. The other issue is that every shot that isn't a kill shot, results in a healer healing that soldier, who then rejoins the fray.

Now, things may change if the makeup of the marines consists of more than just infantrymen. If they have mortar of their own, machine guns, access to explosives, that sort of thing...

Still, at the end of the day, 50-1 odds are pretty hard to overcome.

you also have howitzers, tanks (the machine), machine guns, grenades, mortars, ballistic armor, armor peircing rounds.

Only question, in gorilla warfare, marines win. If it's open field combat? casters have the advantage. You're talking deathknights spreading plague, warlocks cursing entire battalions, mages raining shards from the sky.

- - - Updated - - -

I answered the OP. I think it was pretty solid and kept to the topic. PvP has issues. War is just like PvP. Here's how I would see the fight going...

I didn't roll in here with some weird propaganda on a fan site. Aside from the Revolutionary War and Civil War, you'd be hard pressed to find another full-scale war in which we fired the first shot.

Well, "War"... but uhh "Conflicts" we usually do fire the first shot

[Kuja]

A single flamestrike would take care of majority of the marines, while a warrior covers the mage with bulwark :P

[Deleted]

It depends on Lvl.

Lvl 1-85 marines don't stand a chance vs 90 lvl epic geared 5000 soldiers. Too many misses and glancing hits. Works both ways XDDXDDD

PS

It's "guerilla warfare". Gorillas can be seen in Zoo

[Warlord Booty]

why was there never an instance where a single level 50 spider from the old Western Plaguelands ever wandered into level 4-6 Tirisfal glades and absolutely destroyed everything in its path?

How do we know there wasn't? One went over, tasted a level 6, said it wasn't ripe yet, came back and told everyone. Simple.

It's all magic, that's why they can take 2 seconds to sling some shit. Casting blizzards in tanaris or flamestrikes in Icecrown. They wouldn't all line up and then suddenly "hey, you are limited to x spells, but don't have a distance limit". As the OP removed the 40 yards, they didn't add a new distance, and did not say they were no longer "homing", just that magic users couldn't kill ALL marines with one spell.

Therefore, magics at some sort of "max" distance, lay down layer upon layer of blizzard to flush out the marines and when exposed, the "alliance" takes advantage. It is by no means a landslide, cuz those savage marines would take out a few each.

[Laz]

The major thing that folks are forgetting: Alliance ALWAYS has to have overwhelming numbers to win, they cheat way too much otherwise and can't fight to save their lives

[Thelxi]

Resurrect and heal OP

[-Superman-]

You missed this part.

But of course, you propably just ignored it to make that lame joke we see thrice on every page.

Ok, Let's leave out the game mechanics. Let's go strictly on Lore and the known abilities of the Alliance Army. 5000 to 100. Removing the zeros makes it 50 to 1 odds. Even the best soldiers in the world would struggle against those numbers when met head on. The military would be unsure about these people, and their capabilities. Without introducing "Game Mechanics", we can agree that some element of magic and tech would exist. Even if we only drew from NPCs and not the playable characters.

However, should magic not exist during combat, the marines would still be hard pressed if there are Night Elf Hunters with Bows stalking them in the woods. Even the best trained soldier seldom stands a chance against an elf. Not to draw on too much Anecdotal evidence and Hollywood hype, but if we go back and look at LotR, Two Towers or Return of the King, there were hundreds of thousands of Orcs, ogres, and giants in that army, and Legolas alone brought down 2 huge elephants and a couple hundred orcs.

This entire theory is based completely on undefined variables, in an undefined space. At this point, every guess is a spitball. Ultimately, I would still see the Alliance winning out. Nothing against well trained Marines, but when you have a Gnome infront of you with a chicken launcher, you would probably be distracted just long enough for someone else to get the drop on you... or suffer being turned into poultry.

- - - Updated - - -

The major thing that folks are forgetting: Alliance ALWAYS has to have overwhelming numbers to win, they cheat way too much otherwise and can't fight to save their lives

I would imagine the numbers game is hardly native to just the Alliance.

[warlocx]

We are talking about regular marines not swats vs regular footman, not hero's. I think marines would be overwhelmed.