However I can't help but get the impression that the shovel memes glorify the Kriegers, which is something I don't sympathise with. I just see the memes as being as stupid as the Guard itself.
i find them funny. Absurdly funny.
I'm gonna try to rationalize it.
as italian, i'm well aware that when italy entered WWII, Mussolini made a famous speech, exalting an army of "
8 millions bayonets", putting an emphasis on courage over equipment. The courage would have compensated anything else. (the mentality "The bayonet is a hero and the bullet a coward").
We all know how it went.
SO, in a universe as deadly as 40k, to have memes about the imperial guards charging enemy's titan with bayonets, or Krieg infantry fighting a greater daemon with a shovel, are funnily absurd.
Because only in the foolishness of the 40th millenium lore, you could base the main tactic of your army into sacrificing millions of troops and get away with it.
It's the "quantity has a quality of its own" taken to the extreme and then pushed even further. It just cannot work.