In Deathwatch, all Marines have Unarmed Master as core, meaning they're extensively trained in hand to hand combat to the degree that their hands are deadly weapons.
Is there a section on kung fu in the Codex Astartes? Do Astartes have kung fu tournaments? Do different chapters have different martial arts?
The Adeptus Astartes don't need your fancy-pansy martial arts. Those are only needed by the slim, quick, elderly little men.
The Adeptus Astartes are neither small nor old. They're eight-foot-tall muscle mountains that will simply beat the everloving shit out of you with their bare hands and knees and occasionally foreheads.
Probably not for the same reason medieval martial arts manuals focused on grappling instead of striking in terms of unarmed combat
If they're in a situation where they need to attack with their fists (vs a chaos marine or something) then wrestling is to immobilise before a quick killing blow with a backup weapon
Ehh, thats what a big portion of Jiu Jutsu was invented for. (Twisting armored wrists and elbows for disarming or takedowns) Just because you're bulky and grappling doesn't mean you cant have a martial art for it
What if they're completely disarmed and fighting a Chaos Marine?
Space Marines don't need kung fu. Most Astartes hand-to-hand fighting revolves around getting close enough to the target so they can kill it with their power weapons, or beat it to death with their bare hands.
Space marines in-universe are 8-foot tall hyper-muscular giants that weigh 800 lb. without their amor (similar weight and dimensions to a modern-day Polar bear), and around 1100 lb. their armor and gear. Astartes can also run somewhere in the neighborhood of 35-45 mph, probably faster in armor but the fluff (as always) is inconsistent.
I know Veeky Forums dislikes some of the Horus Heresy fluff, but the practice cages (which are huge metal cages that have a half-dozen servitors with close-combat weapons) is considered light practice for most Astartes, being used as a type of calisthenic warmup to real exercise (sparring with other Astartes).
Horus Aximand has a great term to describe the feeling normal humans get when facing astartes; transhuman dread. It's when their mortal opponents sort of lock up and can't fathom fighting something that's that big moving that fast. Astartes in close quarters can move faster than human eyes can track them, they're just seen as huge blurs right before they die. Why would you ever need kung fu when you can literally punch through a dude and rip out his spine, then beat his squaddies to death with the spine?
Then they would attempt to grapple them into a position where they can snap the neck or gouge the eyes, using punches as gentle persuasion.
They are already dead
Unless for some reason the chaos marine too is completely unarmed???
in what scenario is a fight with an isolated marine and someone of equal physical strength with no weaponry going to take place
then they rush in and punch the fucker to death.
You don't need it if you get run through with a chainsword for trying
I'd imagine it looks something like Pankration.
Lots of wrestling and hand strikes. Probably some disarm techniques mixed in there too. But most of it's gonna be about opening a soft spot in armor/hide to shoot/stab into.
Look, it doesn't take relatively long to learn how to use your body more efficiently, which is the goal of most martial arts. Yes, they can already punch through a wall, but proper hip twisting, weight distribution, and forearm rotation, they can definitely remove that Primitive quality.
The damage boost could be from muscle memory propelling those huge meaty paws along sharper angles, slipping in blows to less armored areas, or cuz fuck it, if you're fighting hand to hand you should know you're about to die anyway.
Commorragh, probably pretty often too.
They probably practice pankration
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I can't help but imagine when people say Kung Fu the first thing that comes to people's minds is doing the typical kung fu nonsense you see in movies. Punching and kicking are generally the same no matter what fighting style you learn from so if anything the sort of fighting style the marines would be using while obviously inspired by Chapter culture would be a culmination of hundreds of thousands of years of fighting and for them suited for fighting in power armor against other powered armored opponents.
Its times like these were we forget that they can just simple spit acid with their Betcher's Gland,
This happens all the time. The Space Marine just punches the power armor until it breaks and crushes the Chaos Marine's skull.
>Do different chapters have different martial arts?
PROBABLY not, but I love the idea that they do. I'd like it best if it was something stemming from the Earth culture that their Chapter's culture is based upon.
a city fight where one combatant runs out of ammo and surprises the other by charging him through a weakened wall and disarms him.
at the height of a siege when both combatants have had their weapons torn from them by close proximity to artillery shells.
???
I don't think OP is talking about movie kung-fu, but the unarmed combat which accompanies every self-respecting martial art like european swordsmanship. Real Shaolin monks used even firearms.
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Space Marines probably have techniques to account for the traits of power armor, like energy redistribution and the shoulders.
Black Templars could very well train with spiked shields like in the professional legal duels of old.
Cato Sicarius is described as a "Martial Artist" in his fluff, but i don't know if hand to hand is practiced.
I really can't see how a group of people who spend all their time training together for combat haven't at least come up with some common moves to use based on the foes they usually fight.
I mean, that just seems like something that would naturally happen, if only to give them a method to practice with each other out of armor.
Maybe they receive basic combatives, which combines with their ridiculous size and strength rather than real martial arts training. The rule itself only means their fists do 1d10+S damage. It doesn't have to be plied into "space marines doing tai chi and applying catch and hold to their opponents."
In the first Eisenhorn book, a Deathwatch marine squares off with a traitor marine. They were in some kind of Warp-infused alien planet and the Deathwatch marine wasn't used to the disorienting environment yet, so his aim was off.
He basically tackled the traitor marine and started throwing hands. The fight was pretty awesome. The human soldiers on both sides had to basically fight around the two, since it was like two cars slamming into each other. When the Deathwatch marine won, the morale boost swung the larger firefight.
In setting it's treated as a sort of modern military martial art, more like the Marines combat system or something similar or more advanced.
The Codex Astartes may likely cover it, but each chapter is likely to adapt it to fit their own chapter's weapons of choice or necessity.