Warhammer 40K Fluff Discussion XIV: The Emperor Floats Those Who Float Themselves

[GolemsVoice]

So, one question I just had about the setting is this: is 40k inherently materialistic or idealistic (in the philosophical and not moral sense)?

Because of chaos and all, the setting often seems to border on the idealistic. There are supernatural beasties from another plane that manifest and do stuff to mere mortals all the time. At the same time though, we are almost constantly presented with an Immaterium which depends on the beliefs of physical piles of meat to exist.

On an entirely other hand, does 40k simply dissolve this duality in that both the immaterial entities from the Warp can influence the physical world and that the supernatural depends on the physical world? Does it even matter if the universe depends on whether matter or ideas come first?

In a sense, you could say WH40K universe is hyper-platonic. Not only is there a realm of "ideal ideas", but they can manifest there, and, sometimes, even in the material universe. In that sense, daemons for example explicitly dissolve that duality, since they are nothing but idea-stuff, given physical form, and their physical form depends entirely on supernatural forces continuing to power them.

Also, keep in mind, in WH40K, the soul is very much a thing that can be lost, used or converted.

[Cheesegear]

the Imperium then set an entire sector of space on fire just because they could and still had the bulk of their reinforcements en route.

It's important to remember that the Imperium could have done this at any time. They had the Sector of Space Annihilator in their hands the entire time.
The only reason they didn't open with that is because the Mechanicus didn't have the weather manipulation tech yet.
The only reason that igniting space became a viable option, was because Battlefleet Ultima was needed elsewhere and couldn't be bothered with one planet anymore.

[Forum Explorer]

The same way Baneblades and Knights used to be only in Apocalypse/Epic? I'm afraid the age of division-by-scale has ended, we're now well into the age of bring-what-you-want.
The only thing directly above Hive Tyrants in the Tyranid web are the Norn Queens, and they never leave their Hive Ship. So the Swarmlord is as Primarch-ish as you can really get.


Have you read any of the Shield of Baal stuff? Anrakyr has a Transcendent C'Tan in that, and when he orders it to attack it starts by solo-ing a Hierophant biotitan. Anrakyr is constantly nervous about it because of the danger using one on the battlefield poses: they're literally considered a doomsday weapon by the Necrons. If you want a Primarch-tier Necron thing (eg, human shaped super-dude), C'Tan shards are definitely the way to go.


In no particular order:
1) They have no way of dealing with hordes of light infantry.
2) They have one useable(ish) unit in each slot.
3) They have only three usable weapons (splinter cannon, blaster, dark lance), and only one of them isn't outclassed by the standard equivalent (dark lance).
4) Their HQs are a joke, providing buffs that are mostly useless, apply to only 1/3 of the army, and don't function inside transports.
5) Their special characters are as bad as the standard ones, but also twice the price.
6) GW can't decide if they should be a swarm or an elite force. So they get priced as an elite force, with the fragility of a swarm.

No, the same way you still don't see Warlord Titans outside of Apocalypse. And while the Swarmlord is the only thing currently like that, I'm saying it shouldn't be, or it should receive an upgrade. Basically the Hive Mind encountering Primarchs (both Daemon and otherwise) and going 'I need something to counter that' and evolving something new.

I never read it no. I heard it was pretty bad all things considered. Also I'm more a fan about the Silent King showing up instead.

1) I disagree with that. They have lots of stuff that throws out tons of attacks in order to do damage. Besides just their basic infantry, you've got Venoms, Scourges (without blasters), Hellions, Mandrakes in CC, Incubi, and even Reavers.

2) Hmm, HQ they have nothing. Troops they have Warriors. Elites they have Incubi, Mandrakes, and Trueborn. Fast Attack they have Scourges and Reavers, maybe Hellions (I haven't tried them yet). Heavy Support they have Ravagers. They also have flyers. Oh, and if it can take a transport, it pretty much needs a transport. So Raiders and Venoms.

3) Standard equivalent? But yeah, I pretty much agree. Sure they have different forms of Splinter weaponry, but it's really more of the same as the cannon, just different ranges and shot amounts.

4) Such a joke. I agree 100% here.

5) Yeah, more or less.

6) Eh, they've always had the shtick of being super fragile elites. It's just a matter of finding a way to make that actually work.

7) I'm going to add this one in, they can't actually put their characters in transports without booting out someone important. Transports are directly the same as the squad size, so you either lose a Cannon for a Raider, or have to take an Auxillary detachment. Or a Venom for just your characters.

It's important to remember that the Imperium could have done this at any time. They had the Sector of Space Annihilator in their hands the entire time.
The only reason they didn't open with that is because the Mechanicus didn't have the weather manipulation tech yet.
The only reason that igniting space became a viable option, was because Battlefleet Ultima was needed elsewhere and couldn't be bothered with one planet anymore.

And they only needed to because they put an incompetent in charge on the ground. 'Artillery (and scouts) are for *******, I'm just going to send wave after wave in because an Imperial Guard General has all the tactical brilliance of the average Ork. It's not like we literally have units dedicated to being mobile artillery, or scouting things out.'

The Imperium did themselves a favor when they left him to die.

[Cheesegear]

And they only needed to because they put an incompetent in charge on the ground...

They actually didn't. The guy in charge was the guy in space. Troskzer was incompetent and also didn't do any fighting at all, was never on the ground, and eventually got coup-ed when Hawke was sick of his ****. Starkzahn, the guy actually on the ground, was actually pretty sensible. At times, ignoring his commands from space, because they were dumb. Starkzahn could've been one of the first ones off planet, but he chose not to be.

I actually remember the Lord of War that I wanted the Tau to have;
Sternshield in a Stormsurge.

[lord_khaine]

I never read it no. I heard it was pretty bad all things considered. Also I'm more a fan about the Silent King showing up instead.

Hmm.. i dont think The Silent King is a good choice for that though. Well i can see him as a great leader. I just cant see any reasonable explanation for why he should be orders of magnitude more powerful than a Necron Pharaoh or C'tan shard in physical combat.

And at the same time, Necrons already have the C'tan to fill the god-like monstrous create slot. While the Silent King has been been described as anything besides a leader. And a rather poor one at that, considering where his people are now.

[Blackhawk748]

Spoiler: The Response

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Yeah, no. If you can't break the speed of light you literally don't exist on a galactic scale. Tau don't even have very long lifespans, so any army you dispatch will mostly be dead by the time they get anywhere.

Your not wrong. I think it was Glyph who figured out last time that their entire Empire would have to fit in a little over the distance between earth an Alpha Centauri, which is insanely tiny.

And they only needed to because they put an incompetent in charge on the ground. 'Artillery (and scouts) are for *******, I'm just going to send wave after wave in because an Imperial Guard General has all the tactical brilliance of the average Ork. It's not like we literally have units dedicated to being mobile artillery, or scouting things out.'

The Imperium did themselves a favor when they left him to die.

This is insulting to your average Ork, they understand the joy of a simple artillery barrage.

Hmm.. i dont think The Silent King is a good choice for that though. Well i can see him as a great leader. I just cant see any reasonable explanation for why he should be orders of magnitude more powerful than a Necron Pharaoh or C'tan shard in physical combat.

And at the same time, Necrons already have the C'tan to fill the god-like monstrous create slot. While the Silent King has been been described as anything besides a leader. And a rather poor one at that, considering where his people are now.

"Primarch Tier" doesnt automatically mean "Instant Death Beatstick" Guilliman gets that as a bonus. The King would clearly buff his entire army and probably be S6 and T6 and his Warscythe (cuz he'd have one) would easily bump him to S8 and probably do 3 damage with like -4 AP, he'd be plenty of a threat.

As for him being a lousy leader, he was drifitng in space for gods know how long, he only came back cuz he saw the Nids and went "Nope, i am not having this" and came back to wake up his army, and then he realized that Necron Sicarius Imhotek had most of the Crons under him and that he wouldn't listen to him, so now he has to swipe Dynasties.

[Forum Explorer]

They actually didn't. The guy in charge was the guy in space. Troskzer was incompetent and also didn't do any fighting at all, was never on the ground, and eventually got coup-ed when Hawke was sick of his ****. Starkzahn, the guy actually on the ground, was actually pretty sensible. At times, ignoring his commands from space, because they were dumb. Starkzahn could've been one of the first ones off planet, but he chose not to be.

I actually remember the Lord of War that I wanted the Tau to have;
Sternshield in a Stormsurge.

I actually don't remember the guy in space doing anything order wise. He just put Starkzahn in charge, and told him to go win a war. I also remember Starkzahn explicitly NOT being sent a shuttle. He wouldn't have taken it anyway, but it was never an option.

But mostly I'm complaining that the height of Guard tactics seems to be 'send in the next wave'.

Hmm.. i dont think The Silent King is a good choice for that though. Well i can see him as a great leader. I just cant see any reasonable explanation for why he should be orders of magnitude more powerful than a Necron Pharaoh or C'tan shard in physical combat.

And at the same time, Necrons already have the C'tan to fill the god-like monstrous create slot. While the Silent King has been been described as anything besides a leader. And a rather poor one at that, considering where his people are now.

He is the guy that backstabbed the C'tan and freed his people. It's a pretty impressive feat all things considered. But no, he wouldn't be a big monster guy. He'd be like Vect, an individual with powerful rules and equipment.

[Voidhawk]

Your not wrong. I think it was Glyph who figured out last time that their entire Empire would have to fit in a little over the distance between earth an Alpha Centauri, which is insanely tiny.

That was me actually, right here. You simply can't do space travel without FTL.

[deuterio12]

The Tau barely captured one world of significance to the Imperium; even then it was being contested by two legendary Space Marines and their companies, a number of other Space Marines Chapters, a legendary Imperial Guard Tank commander with 3 super-heavies and a mass of other tanks under his control, the Adeptus Cybernetica and associated Skitarii, an Imperial Knight house led by a nigh-legendary Saint, the Tau had their Pope murdered, the Imperium then set an entire sector of space on fire just because they could and still had the bulk of their reinforcements en route.

Read War Zone: Damocles in full; Farsight openly admits that he only shows up to help because he knows it's a death sentence for his species if he doesn't. The Tau sphere expanded into empty space, and they stopped dead at the very first roadblock. Agrellan was not a victory for the Tau.

1-You forgot to mention that when all those forces failed, the Imperium also brought a full set of super assassins (you know, something they only do when they consider the opponent as dangerous as Horus himself), each armed with weapons each more valuable than a planet and 75% of them died while failing to kill their targets. And that Tau pope was pretty incompetent and was quickly replaced by an AI hologram superior in every way, so good riddance.
2-If the Tau no longer have FTL in 8th edition, then Farsight showing up to help also has been retconned out of existence, simply because the fighting would've been over before Farsight ever got the message, let alone travel there. You can't have both. Either the Tau have FTL, or they kicked the imperials out of the planet without even need of the fancy sword dude.
3-This is 40K, holding the planet in one piece and living to fight to another day is already more than victory. This is, when Cadia was destroyed loyalist scum were all "the planet broke before we did so everything is perfectly fine".

They specifically don't. The first thing the Imperium knew about the Tyranids was when dozens of worlds went completely silent and, when investigated, were found to have been stripped bare; the Shadow in the Warp prevents anyone from knowing about it until it's too late. And don't tell me "ah, if worlds stop talking suddenly then THAT is the obvious sign that it's tyranids!" because that's ignoring a dozen other reasons as to why it might have happened.

By all means name one dozen that can simultaneously and completely silence multiple planets. And then explain why neither of them should be a big warning sign that something nasty is coming and the Imperium needs to do something about that.

Plus you forgot the bit where the Tau crippled the Imperium's armies so much that Abaddon finally cracked Cadia.

Similarly, Genestealers are one of 40k's ur-examples of insidious, secretive infiltrators; them not giving you a sign of their existence is their most consistent MO.

Alas, as mentioned earlier, the imperium has super duper alien detection tech, so any genestealer cult will have to be awfully lucky to get anything done as long as the Imperium bothers to do routine medical checks in their population, which they want to do anyway or suffer extreme epidemics without even need of Nurgle doing anything.

Plus you know, a whole branch of the Inquisition dedicated to rooting out foul xenos.

EDIT: Speaking of tyranids and setting sectors on fire, I just realized something:
1-The Imperium can set sectors on fire.
2-When tyranids attack, the Imperium never ever bothers to set the sector on fire.
3-When Tau attack, the Imperium actually sets the sector on fire to cover their retreat after losing half their deployed chapter masters, 3/4 their assigned super assassin forces and the bulk of the rest of their forces.

The only logical conclusion is that the Imperium themselves consider the Tau a greater threat than the Tyranid themselves. Space bugs are not worthy of using their "set sector on fire" weapon, but the Tau are. When ultrasmurfs will rather fight nids than Tau, it's because the nids are indeed deemed an easier opponent by loyalist scum.

[Blackhawk748]

Alas, as mentioned earlier, the imperium has super duper alien detection tech, so any genestealer cult will have to be awfully lucky to get anything done as long as the Imperium bothers to do routine medical checks in their population, which they want to do anyway or suffer extreme epidemics without even need of Nurgle doing anything.

Plus you know, a whole branch of the Inquisition dedicated to rooting out foul xenos.

Do you have any concept of how absolutely, idiotically large the Imperium is? They claim like 60% of the galaxy. The control literally millions of planets and systems, they may very well have a population measured in googols. Attempting to test any appreciable percentage of that is a waste of time.

EDIT: Speaking of tyranids and setting sectors on fire, I just realized something:
1-The Imperium can set sectors on fire.
2-When tyranids attack, the Imperium never ever bothers to set the sector on fire.
3-When Tau attack, the Imperium actually sets the sector on fire to cover their retreat after losing half their deployed chapter masters, 3/4 their assigned super assassin forces and the bulk of the rest of their forces.

The only logical conclusion is that the Imperium themselves consider the Tau a greater threat than the Tyranid themselves. Space bugs are not worthy of using their "set sector on fire" weapon, but the Tau are. When ultrasmurfs will rather fight nids than Tau, it's because the nids are indeed deemed an easier opponent by loyalist scum.

Im fairly certain the only reason that sector was able to be lit on fire is because the Damocles Gulf has some very strange properties that make travel through it difficult. So no, it has nothing to do with the Tau being a "threat". Frankly the Imperium could just crusie through firing off a couple of dozen Vortex missiles and Exterminatus the Tau in a month or so. The only reason this doesnt happen is cuz GW is making money on them and they promised to never squat an army again.

[DaedalusMkV]

Frankly the Imperium could just crusie through firing off a couple of dozen Vortex missiles and Exterminatus the Tau in a month or so. The only reason this doesnt happen is cuz GW is making money on them and they promised to never squat an army again.

True, in the sense that if the Imperium was willing to completely strip all of the defenses of Ultima Segmentum down to the bone they could overwhelm the extremely potent defenses the Tau have on their core worlds and wipe them out, in exchange for taking ruinous, unsustainable casualties and crippling their fleets for decades or centuries, followed by the loss of dozens or hundreds of star systems to the numerous non-Tau threats that suddenly find themselves all but unopposed by any sort of Imperial military force, and quite possibly a complete collapse of Imperial dominance in that chunk of the galaxy.

Or at least, they could have back before Chaos buggered up the Galaxy and turned Ultima Segmentum into a broken mess with half its territory completely cut off from the Astronomican and launched a massive incursion that is completely tying up every single asset the Imperium has in a desperate attempt to stem the tide (and basically removed two Segmenta from the Imperium entirely, in a move that... Might not be getting anything approximating the attention it deserves in current fluff). At this point, wiping out the Tau would require the Imperium to metaphorically shoot themselves in the gut repeatedly and just kind of hope that it all works out in the end.


Remember, the Imperium tried the 'they're just a minor Xenos empire, we'll just fly in and wipe them out right quick' strategy once before. It failed, because the Tau core worlds are very closely clustered together and extremely well fortified. The Tau are terrible at force projection on an interstellar scale, to the point that anything more than twenty or thirty light-years away from their current borders is pretty much totally safe from them. Slow FTL will do that. But once you get into the heart of their empire you run into planets with immense, heavily defended orbital infrastructure and a fleet that's extremely well equipped to support those orbital defenses. There's a reason nobody's wiped them out yet; simply put, their relative handful of planets is not worth the very disproportionate effort it would take for the Imperium to overwhelm them. Hell, they stalemated in Warzone Damocles, despite that conflict being at the very edge of the Tau logistical chain and only partially fortified following its acquisition by the Tau in the first place. Trying to take Dal'yth or Vior'la? That would be orders of magnitude more difficult. Even securing the orbitals to Exterminatus it would be ruinously costly in Imperial ships and lives.

[Kris Strife]

I've seen something, and it may have been in an earlier thread, that the tau keep getting retconned to do better in their first encounter against the Imperium with each edition. Going from 'losing until the Imperium has to pull their forces back' to 'stalemate until the Imperium has to pull back' to 'actively fighting them off until the Imperium backs off to regroup.'

[Wraith]

1-You forgot to mention that when all those forces failed, the Imperium also brought a full set of super assassins (you know, something they only do when they consider the opponent as dangerous as Horus himself)

Except for all those times when they sent an Assassin after a fat, arrogant old man who thought he was the next Sebastian Thor, but turned out to be such a minor inconvenience that it wasn't worth sending more than one person to kill him before he actually managed anything interesting?

That's the Night Lords trilogy, by the way. There are literally more examples of Assassins being sent to kill a deluded mortal idiot than there are examples of them being sent to kill someone "as dangerous as Horus". Hyperbole is fun!

And that Tau pope was pretty incompetent and was quickly replaced by an AI hologram superior in every way, so good riddance.

You're moving the goal-posts. When a minor Imperial commander falls you crow about it, but the Tau Pope being murdered in his own command centre is "he's useless, good riddance" - you can't have it both ways. Similarly this "superior AI" you're talking about hasn't yet been proven anything of the sort; so far, all we've seen is a video of Aun'Va being played on a loop. The Tau equivalent of Photoshop.

2-If the Tau no longer have FTL in 8th edition, then Farsight showing up to help also has been retconned out of existence, simply because the fighting would've been over before Farsight ever got the message, let alone travel there. You can't have both. Either the Tau have FTL, or they kicked the imperials out of the planet without even need of the fancy sword dude.

I have no idea why you're telling me this - I never said anything about FTL. You're also wrong - Farsight can still show up when he needs to, all he needs to do is either a) travel faster than light or b) travel a short distance. And Voidhawk already quite extensively established that the latter is very, very likely.

This one is small. That one is far away. Small. Far away. Are you following me, Dougal?

3-This is 40K, holding the planet in one piece and living to fight to another day is already more than victory.

Probably true, but again; the Imperium set the planet and all of the space around it on fire, and the Tau had to evacuate at the cost of hundreds of ships whose improved anti-burning-space shields failed.

And your definition of "perfectly fine" needs a little bit of fine tuning.

By all means name one dozen that can simultaneously and completely silence multiple planets. And then explain why neither of them should be a big warning sign that something nasty is coming and the Imperium needs to do something about that.

That's not what I said. You were arguing that a Tyranid invasion eating a solar system in a matter of days should immediately be noticed by the Imperium, and I was saying that the Imperium has so very many more urgent things to worry about than "these guys aren't complaining about something". The old adage "No news is good news" certainly applies, when everyone else in the galaxy is screaming for help from Orks, and Chaos, and worse.

But sure, reasons as to why a planet might suddenly and abruptly stop communicating that aren't Tyranids: The Necrons rising out of the ground and sterilising the planet, the Enslavers wibbling in from their weird brain-dimension and eating everyone's brains, Dark Eldar raiders descending upon a populous and taking them all in a single days's orgy of violence, new formed warp storms blocking the signal, catastrophic failure/death of the Astropathic choir due to daemons/being over-stressed/executed because they were stressed and threatening to summoning daemons, deliberate refusal to broadcast by an insurrectionist, xenos tech such as the Pharos being switched on and intercepting all of the signals... Will that do?

Plus you forgot the bit where the Tau crippled the Imperium's armies so much that Abaddon finally cracked Cadia.

The Tau at Agrellan fought the White Scars, Raven Guard and about 40 companies of various Imperial Guardsman. The Chaos forces at Cadia fought primarily with the Space Wolves, the Black Templars, the Imperial Fists, the Dark Angels, the Sisters of Battle and 612 regiments just of Cadians, let alone the dozens of other IG elements.

The two conflicts also occurred on the opposite ends of the galaxy; the Ultramarines, for example, are not expected to run off and join in every single fight that happens in Segmentum Pacificus, because it's a ridiculously long journey and it's not worth their time to sit in transit for two years to turn up to a war already lost.

It doesn't matter how much you keep repeating it: The Siege of Agrellan is not related to the Fall of Cadia in any meaningful way whatsoever beyond the fact that the Imperium was involved in both. Following your logic, the Orks won at Cadia because they were probably fighting some Imperial forces somewhere and thus their distraction amounted to victory.

Alas, as mentioned earlier, the imperium has super duper alien detection tech, so any genestealer cult will have to be awfully lucky to get anything done as long as the Imperium bothers to do routine medical checks in their population, which they want to do anyway or suffer extreme epidemics without even need of Nurgle doing anything.

You're right - IF the Imperium tested everyone all the time, genestealer cults wouldn;t be a thing. The very same conversation that you have linked to points out that the Imperium can find traces of genestealer DNA if they go looking for it, but they generally don't because they have a thousand trillion inhabitants to look after, and the resources to perform that many tests every decade - let alone every year - do not physically exist.

Plus you know, a whole branch of the Inquisition dedicated to rooting out foul xenos.

See above. there's more than a million inhabited planets in the Imperium, which in turn have their own separate city states, hive stacks and so on. How many Inquisitors would the Imperium need to be able to keep tabs on ALL of them, ALL the time, and that's assuming that they were just going to ignore any heretic or chaos cult that they uncover in the process in order to hunt genestealers specifically? (Hint: The Ordos Xenos absolutely does not just ignore heretics and Chaos cults when they find them.)

The only logical conclusion is that the Imperium themselves consider the Tau a greater threat than the Tyranid themselves. Space bugs are not worthy of using their "set sector on fire" weapon, but the Tau are. When ultrasmurfs will rather fight nids than Tau, it's because the nids are indeed deemed an easier opponent by loyalist scum.

You're forgetting that this is exactly what the Imperium DID do to fight the Tyranids; it was called the Kryptman Gambit, and they stopped doing it because he was burning planets at a a rate so fast that the Imperium - that, is the guys who you just accused of being too eager to kill their own guys - considered it an unsustainable loss of life and resources.

Similarly, Agrellan is a backwater colony world on the furthest edge of Imperial space, whereas Macragge is the capital world of Ultramar and arguably the single most politically and culturally significant planet in the Ultima Segmentum; "easy" doesn't come into it, when what they're protecting is orders of magnitude more valuable. I don't think it needs to be explained why the Imperium thought it was okay to obliterate one in flame and not the other?

[Cheesegear]

Except for all those times when they sent an Assassin after a fat, arrogant old man who thought he was the next Sebastian Thor, but turned out to be such a minor inconvenience that it wasn't worth sending more than one person to kill him before he actually managed anything interesting?

Assassins kill anyone and everyone that the High Lords deem need killing, up to and including Horus. Not Horus exclusively, 'cause that's stupid.
Aun'Va insulted the entire Imperium, and thus, had to die.

Similarly this "superior AI" you're talking about hasn't yet been proven anything of the sort; so far, all we've seen is a video of Aun'Va being played on a loop. The Tau equivalent of Photoshop.

It's not AI at all. It's one of a dozen or so Ethereals, with CGI plastered on their face to appear as Aun'Va using MoCap. We can do that now. And we're in M3, and not even Tau.
deuterio is flat out wrong when he says the 'current' Aun'Va is an AI.

all he needs to do is either a) travel faster than light or b) travel a short distance. And Voidhawk already quite extensively established that the latter is very, very likely.

If you consider that the T'au Empire is small, nothing in the story changes except to highlight their naivete; A relatively small area containing a many number of planets, is quite literally the center of their universe, and the T'au literally can't comprehend the scale of the area outside of it. Like when they kill a Chapter Master, they think they've basically toppled the Imperium.

I see no flaws in considering that the Empire is small. The T'au are irrelevant to anyone outside the Damocles Gulf and immediate surrounds. They have a very small spatial footprint, and they consider it their greatest achievement because they actually have no idea about what real stellar conquest looks like. Simultaneous arrogance and naivete. Classic Tau. It totally fits within the rest of the context of 40K.

But sure, reasons as to why a planet might suddenly and abruptly stop communicating that aren't Tyranids

The Howling was pretty great.
The War of the False Primarch.
Nova Terra was a thing for 900 years, ending in Cataclysm of Souls.
Reign of Blood was fun time.

And, how could we forget?

Noctis Aeterna. The Astronomicon went out for 35 days. Only one of the single biggest events to happen in recent canon. It's literally the headline of 8th Ed; Dark. Imperium. Leading to a little thing, called the Great Rift, where one side of the Imperium can communicate, but the other can't...But it's actually all a Tyranid plot, right?

The Tau at Agrellan fought the White Scars, Raven Guard and about 40 companies of various Imperial Guardsman.

The Tau at Agrellan fought 8 Chapters of Space Marines. Though who the other six are, and what their order of battle/contribution was, we're literally never told.

The two conflicts also occurred on the opposite ends of the galaxy; the Ultramarines, for example, are not expected to run off and join in every single fight that happens in Segmentum Pacificus, because it's a ridiculously long journey and it's not worth their time to sit in transit for two years to turn up to a war already lost.

I'd just like to remind you that Deliverance is located in Segmentum Tempestus, but that didn't stop the Raven Guard from showing up at Damocles.

Following your logic, the Orks won at Cadia because they were probably fighting some Imperial forces somewhere and thus their distraction amounted to victory.

New canon; Orks were responsible for the Fall of Cadia.

[Grim Portent]

New canon; Orks were responsible for the Fall of Cadia.

Abaddon is three gretchin in a suit confirmed.

[Wraith]

The Tau at Agrellan fought 8 Chapters of Space Marines. Though who the other six are, and what their order of battle/contribution was, we're literally never told.

They fought elements of 8 Chapters. The impression that I was under, is that the Ravens and the Scars made up the significant bulk of the Astartes presence (at least they did until Kor'Sarro got 'hundreds' of his guys killed in an ambush...) but overall there were almost certainly way more Dark Angels at Cadia (10 companies) than all of the Astartes at Damocles combined.

Saying "White Scars and Raven Guard" was short hand for "a couple of reasonably-sized Astartes forces" without implying that the entire Chapter turned up, because they obviously didn't.

I'd just like to remind you that Deliverance is located in Segmentum Tempestus, but that didn't stop the Raven Guard from showing up at Damocles.

I didn't forget - we savagely criticised them for that during your Let's Read, because not being a fleet-based Chapter and wandering that far out of your 'territory' is a stupid idea.

Not to mention, Cadians at Damocles and Thracians at Cadia.

Having said that, there were Raven Guard fighting at Cadia too so we can sort of maybe give the RG a bye because turning up in unexpected places is more or less their M.O., and they weren't completely abandoning the other important battles that were happening closer to home in doing so.

[Drasius]

deuterio is flat out wrong.

You could all save yourselves a lot of time by just reposting this everytime he launches into his latest line of insane troll logic since he never seems to listen even when the entire thread painstakingly points out the multitude of ways that his version of 40k has no semblance to canon.

With respect to [random chapter] showing up half-way across the galaxy from [home planet], it can kinda be justified sometimes, even for non fleet based chapters, since if you go chasing off after [your choice of Chaos Warband/Xeno Slavers/Various Flavour of Traitor Guard/Ork Waaaugh/Other serious threat with space assets], especially if you've sworn an oath to hunt them down (unless you're Korsaro Khan 'cause Oaths are hard work), it'd be easy to follow them a good distance from your homeworld and then continually get dragged into the latest crisis that your astropath picks up and only your company can get to in time or you get tragged way off track by warp storm or other warp related shenanigans, or you get specific orders from a battlegroup because your command/company/chapter fought this specific deadly enemy previously and had unparallelled success. It's still a bit fishy, but it can reasonably be explained away sometimes. Obviously they'd better have some defences left at home or you'll get a repeat of the Marines Errant or similar and get your homeworld trashed while you're off galivanting around crusading for great justice!

Alternatively, penance crusade for making the Chaplain lose count on his Hail Mary's Emperors for the third time in one day.

[Platinius]

You mean like these boys?

BTW, I theorize that those are FC Hairgel and Sergeant Thaddeus doing their penance crusade. That way almost any ending in Retribution is possible while still having this moment.
In fact, it makes it all the more meaningful because it means that the Blood Ravens made mistakes (as erring is human and all that) but are trying to make up for them. To me personally, it is the hidden story telling high point of the game, they transmit so much meaning in only 5 words.

"None shall find us wanting." :'-)

EDIT: to something different, I recently (and finally) got to play DOOM
Now I know what a Champion of Korn feels like...

EDIT2: For those who don't know already, a new podcast episode is up. Enjoy!

[Brookshw]

Anyone know why the barrels on Leman Russ' are so big? Seems disproportionate compared to RL tanks. Just how big of a shell are they firing?

[Wraith]

You could all save yourselves a lot of time by just reposting this everytime he launches into his latest line of insane troll logic since he never seems to listen even when the entire thread painstakingly points out the multitude of ways that his version of 40k has no semblance to canon.

I like recounting the stuff I've picked up over the years, and reading Lexicanum and 40kWiki when I come across something I don't know. It's not so much that I'm correcting deuterio, but that I might be helping others who might make the same mistake.

Anyone know why the barrels on Leman Russ' are so big? Seems disproportionate compared to RL tanks. Just how big of a shell are they firing?

A Leman Russ' Battle Cannon is a 120mm smoothbore gun. You are correct; the dimensions depicted on the miniature are wildly disproportionate to the actual specifications, and this is because tabletop =/= fluff. Primaris Marines are probably the first example of GW making a large-scale attempt for their miniatures to be correctly to scale, and even that is a bit hit-and-miss.

[Drasius]

Anyone know why the barrels on Leman Russ' are so big? Seems disproportionate compared to RL tanks. Just how big of a shell are they firing?

Because it looks cool and 40k is basically fuelled by Rule of Cool (and Human Souls).

[deuterio12]

Except for all those times when they sent an Assassin after a fat, arrogant old man who thought he was the next Sebastian Thor, but turned out to be such a minor inconvenience that it wasn't worth sending more than one person to kill him before he actually managed anything interesting?

That's the Night Lords trilogy, by the way. There are literally more examples of Assassins being sent to kill a deluded mortal idiot than there are examples of them being sent to kill someone "as dangerous as Horus". Hyperbole is fun!

Four, not one, the full set. One is enough for deluded mortals, but when they simultaneously send four to a single location is a clear sign the Imperium is deadly serious. And 3 of the super assassins got themselves killed for their trouble.
Plus you know the Tau being busy with all the other imperial forces in the planet. Do the assassins in those night lord trilogies have 8 chapters worth of sphece merines and knights/guardsmen waves distracting the opposition?

You're moving the goal-posts. When a minor Imperial commander falls you crow about it, but the Tau Pope being murdered in his own command centre is "he's useless, good riddance" - you can't have it both ways. Similarly this "superior AI" you're talking about hasn't yet been proven anything of the sort; so far, all we've seen is a video of Aun'Va being played on a loop. The Tau equivalent of Photoshop.

As Farsight shows, Tau society can work just fine whitout ethereals. Thus yes, I consider the Tau pope more useless than a "minor imperial commander" (even if I can't specifically recall complaining about that). Really he doesn't do anything useful in the books and is often an hindrance to the Tau themselves, thus the hologram has proved superior so far by not trying to get in the way of the Tau doing the actual work.

I have no idea why you're telling me this - I never said anything about FTL. You're also wrong - Farsight can still show up when he needs to, all he needs to do is either a) travel faster than light or b) travel a short distance. And Voidhawk already quite extensively established that the latter is very, very likely.

Even then we would still be talking about weeks/months, and the Tau sucessfully repelling the Imperium's combined might. The humies could simply stream reinfocements a lot faster, and yet failed.

That's not what I said. You were arguing that a Tyranid invasion eating a solar system in a matter of days should immediately be noticed by the Imperium, and I was saying that the Imperium has so very many more urgent things to worry about than "these guys aren't complaining about something". The old adage "No news is good news" certainly applies, when everyone else in the galaxy is screaming for help from Orks, and Chaos, and worse.

But sure, reasons as to why a planet might suddenly and abruptly stop communicating that aren't Tyranids: The Necrons rising out of the ground and sterilising the planet, the Enslavers wibbling in from their weird brain-dimension and eating everyone's brains, Dark Eldar raiders descending upon a populous and taking them all in a single days's orgy of violence, new formed warp storms blocking the signal, catastrophic failure/death of the Astropathic choir due to daemons/being over-stressed/executed because they were stressed and threatening to summoning daemons, deliberate refusal to broadcast by an insurrectionist, xenos tech such as the Pharos being switched on and intercepting all of the signals... Will that do?

You forgot the "And then explain why neither of them should be a big warning sign that something nasty is coming and the Imperium needs to do something about that." bit. All of those are signs that something big and nasty is coming and the Imperium needs to get ready, not spend weeks/months failing to conquer a single planet from the Tau.

The Tau at Agrellan fought the White Scars, Raven Guard and about 40 companies of various Imperial Guardsman. The Chaos forces at Cadia fought primarily with the Space Wolves, the Black Templars, the Imperial Fists, the Dark Angels, the Sisters of Battle and 612 regiments just of Cadians, let alone the dozens of other IG elements.

The two conflicts also occurred on the opposite ends of the galaxy; the Ultramarines, for example, are not expected to run off and join in every single fight that happens in Segmentum Pacificus, because it's a ridiculously long journey and it's not worth their time to sit in transit for two years to turn up to a war already lost.

It doesn't matter how much you keep repeating it: The Siege of Agrellan is not related to the Fall of Cadia in any meaningful way whatsoever beyond the fact that the Imperium was involved in both. Following your logic, the Orks won at Cadia because they were probably fighting some Imperial forces somewhere and thus their distraction amounted to victory.

It was cheesegear who claimed the Imperium had to retreat from the Tau to reinforce Cadia. Seems like he was just wrong again, thank you for pointing it out.

You're right - IF the Imperium tested everyone all the time, genestealer cults wouldn;t be a thing. The very same conversation that you have linked to points out that the Imperium can find traces of genestealer DNA if they go looking for it, but they generally don't because they have a thousand trillion inhabitants to look after, and the resources to perform that many tests every decade - let alone every year - do not physically exist.

See, now that's moving goalposts. You can't simultaneously claim genestealer cults are everywhere and are super dangerous then claim it's not worth for the Imperium investing in the tech that can root them out before they become too dangerous.

See above. there's more than a million inhabited planets in the Imperium, which in turn have their own separate city states, hive stacks and so on. How many Inquisitors would the Imperium need to be able to keep tabs on ALL of them, ALL the time, and that's assuming that they were just going to ignore any heretic or chaos cult that they uncover in the process in order to hunt genestealers specifically? (Hint: The Ordos Xenos absolutely does not just ignore heretics and Chaos cults when they find them.)

Hint: the opposite also happens. Planetfall has a ordo Hereticus Inquisitor finding out a genestealer cult and instantly changing objectives to wipe them out at all costs.

You're forgetting that this is exactly what the Imperium DID do to fight the Tyranids; it was called the Kryptman Gambit,

Wasn't that Kyrptman pointing the nids at the orks and letting them kill each other?

and they stopped doing it because he was burning planets at a a rate so fast that the Imperium - that, is the guys who you just accused of being too eager to kill their own guys - considered it an unsustainable loss of life and resources.

Funny you mention that, since the Ordo Hereticus inquisitor I mentioned above is too late in wiping out the cult and the main nid fleet is coming. His solution? Leave a lot of guardsmen as snacks defense in the planet. Slowed down the nids for 5 hours. May've as well set the place on fire and at least denied them the bio-matter.

Plus, the Imperium clearly didn't consider it "an unsustainable loss of life and resources" to use it on the Tau, despite having a significant number of imperial troops left in the area.

Similarly, Agrellan is a backwater colony world on the furthest edge of Imperial space, whereas Macragge is the capital world of Ultramar and arguably the single most politically and culturally significant planet in the Ultima Segmentum; "easy" doesn't come into it, when what they're protecting is orders of magnitude more valuable. I don't think it needs to be explained why the Imperium thought it was okay to obliterate one in flame and not the other?

Plenty of loyalist planets between Ultramar and everywhere else. They could've sacrificed one of the others before the nids got that close. And Agrellan was important enough to send 8 chapters worth of sphech merines, knights, imperial guard waves, assassins, etc.

Anyway the main point stands-the Tau are the only enemy the Imperium considers worthy of using their "set sector on fire" super weapon. It's not just exterminatus one planet at a time or scorched earth tactics, it's literally setting the void aflame so that even space ships can't cross anymore, and as far as I recall hasn't been used against any of the other many foes of the Imperium.

Against the nids it would be particularly effective because they have big slow fleets. You don't need to sacrifice planets, just detonate it in front of the nid fleet while in space and watch the fireworks.

[LeSwordfish]

You can't simultaneously claim genestealer cults are everywhere and are super dangerous then claim it's not worth for the Imperium investing in the tech that can root them out before they become too dangerous.

The imperium... making a poor decision... no... surely not ... how can this be????

[deuterio12]

The imperium... making a poor decision... no... surely not ... how can this be????

Exactly, that's another of my main points. Thank you for agreeing with me!

[LeSwordfish]

Exactly, that's another of my main points. Thank you for agreeing with me!

If your overarching point is "the imperium is bad at things" then that completely negates this specific point "if it's a REAL problem, why haven't the imperials solved it". You must be wrong on one of them.

[deuterio12]

If your overarching point is "the imperium is bad at things" then that completely negates this specific point "if it's a REAL problem, why haven't the imperials solved it". You must be wrong on one of them.

They are both valid points, just keeping track of all the things the imperium is bad at and just how bad they are at them.

Really one of the main appeals of 40K for me is how gloriously silly the Imperium of Man is and all the ways they're racing to screw themselves.

[Artanis]

Four, not one, the full set. One is enough for deluded mortals, but when they simultaneously send four to a single location is a clear sign the Imperium is deadly serious.

Or a sign that GW has something they want to shill



As a more serious contribution to the discussion though...

the Tau sucessfully repelling the Imperium's combined might. The humies could simply stream reinfocements a lot faster, and yet failed.


You forgot the "And then explain why neither of them should be a big warning sign that something nasty is coming and the Imperium needs to do something about that." bit. All of those are signs that something big and nasty is coming and the Imperium needs to get ready, not spend weeks/months failing to conquer a single planet from the Tau.

These two things kinda go together in my mind.

As far as I can tell, the Imperium can beat anybody, but they cannot beat everybody. If the Imperium brought its full combined might to bear - every soldier, every ship, every gun - nothing could withstand it. Not Chaos, not Orks, not Tyranids, and sure as hell not the Tau. The problem is that if the Imperium did that, it would leave everything else undefended to fall to the other threats. Every ship that gets sent to try to chase down Eldar corsairs is one less ship shooting torpedoes at an encroaching Hive Fleet. Every Guardsman that holds the line against a Black Crusade is one less Guardsman to slow down the latest WAAAGH. Every Astartes who goes to punch through Tau defenses is one less space marine to deal with the latest Necron shenanigans.

There is always something big and nasty that the Imperium needs to get ready for. And in many cases, they do get ready for it. But there's no way to get ready for all of the big, nasty things out there.

[Sinewmire]

As far as I can tell, the Imperium can beat anybody, but they cannot beat everybody. If the Imperium brought its full combined might to bear - every soldier, every ship, every gun - nothing could withstand it. Not Chaos, not Orks, not Tyranids, and sure as hell not the Tau. The problem is that if the Imperium did that, it would leave everything else undefended to fall to the other threats. Every ship that gets sent to try to chase down Eldar corsairs is one less ship shooting torpedoes at an encroaching Hive Fleet. Every Guardsman that holds the line against a Black Crusade is one less Guardsman to slow down the latest WAAAGH. Every Astartes who goes to punch through Tau defenses is one less space marine to deal with the latest Necron shenanigans.

There is always something big and nasty that the Imperium needs to get ready for. And in many cases, they do get ready for it. But there's no way to get ready for all of the big, nasty things out there.

Yeah, exactly right. Every day they're trading losing a little bit to everyone in exchange for not being wiped out tomorrow.

[Wraith]

Four, not one, the full set.

One, actually. The Eversor and the Vindicare were sent after Farsight (killing his second-in-command, destroying his command centre and gutting his Earth Caste R&D teams), the Callidus was sent after Shadowsun (killing her second-in-command) and the Culexus went after Aun-Va, successfully.

Six assassins from six Temples were sent after Horus; they killed his.... what, 13th-or-so in command and then slightly scratched the paintwork on the front of the Vengeful Spirit.

Plus you know the Tau being busy with all the other imperial forces in the planet. Do the assassins in those night lord trilogies have 8 chapters worth of sphece merines and knights/guardsmen waves distracting the opposition?

An entire world which had declared secession from the Imperium; PDF, Army, Ecclesiarchy Cults and all. She assassinated their new Pope on his balcony while making is inaugural speech as they paraded and showed off what big, cool guys they were.

As Farsight shows, Tau society can work just fine whitout ethereals.

Untrue; without the Ethereals, the Tau would still be stone-age savages, or have simply fought themselves into extinction. Ethereals are an integral part of Tau history and society; swapping one form of mind-crontrol for another (aka, the Dawn Blade) does not prove that the Tau can exist without either.

The humies could simply stream reinforcements a lot faster, and yet failed.

Which they did; they set an entire sector of space on fire, burning dozens of Tau ships as they tried to evacuate.

This is what I'm getting at; yes, the Imperium screwed around with an idiot in charge for a couple of months, but as soon as they realised that wasn't working properly they set fire to hard vacuum and all the Tau could do was run - how much bigger do you want them to go?
The Imperium could afford the delay, the Tau could not - it explicitly says in the book that Farsight intervened because he knew what the Imperium was going to do next and the Tau, despite their plucky underdog-ship so far, were poking the dragon and it was just a matter of time before the Tau were wiped off the map.

See, now that's moving goalposts. You can't simultaneously claim genestealer cults are everywhere and are super dangerous then claim it's not worth for the Imperium investing in the tech that can root them out before they become too dangerous.

No one said that Genestealer cults where "everywhere" and I didn't say that that screening for them wasn't worthwhile; I said that it's not physically possible to test everyone in the Imperium, all the time. I literally said it was physically impossible to do it everywhere.

Hint: the opposite also happens. Planetfall has a ordo Hereticus Inquisitor finding out a genestealer cult and instantly changing objectives to wipe them out at all costs.

Doesn't change my point. There's dozens of Ordos each with their own speciality even besides the big three and all of them will stop to fight any cut that they stumble across; there simply are not enough of any of them combined to be able to be in every city on every planet in all the Imperium, let alone to be able to identify each and every cult in that city.

Wasn't that Kyrptman pointing the nids at the orks and letting them kill each other?

You're right, the Gambit was when Kryptman and some Deathwatch guys kidnapped some genestealers and sent them to fight the Orks. What I was thinking of was the Galactic Cordon - which was also Kryptman's idea, wherein he killed more people "in a single action than any other since the Horus Heresy" and was excommunicated for it. Thank you for the clarification, but it's still pertinent; The Imperium sentenced him to death for killing too many of his fellow humans.

Funny you mention that, since the Ordo Hereticus inquisitor I mentioned above is too late in wiping out the cult and the main nid fleet is coming. His solution? Leave a lot of guardsmen as snacks defense in the planet. Slowed down the nids for 5 hours. May've as well set the place on fire and at least denied them the bio-matter.

So the best solution, is to do the thing that had the last guy to do it stripped of his authority and condemned to death? That doesn't seem like a smart career choice.

Plus, the Imperium clearly didn't consider it "an unsustainable loss of life and resources" to use it on the Tau, despite having a significant number of imperial troops left in the area.

Well, no, because they're Tau. The Imperials were told all about it and instructed to evacuate - the only ones left at the end where tau-sympathisers and Kor'Sarro Khan's White Scars, because he was busy being a psychopath and refused to leave.

Plenty of loyalist planets between Ultramar and everywhere else. They could've sacrificed one of the others before the nids got that close.

I think that you're underestimating the speed and strength of Behemoth. The Hive Fleet travelled roughly 1/5th across the galaxy in under a year, stopping to eat everything in it's path with such ferocity that Ultramar was the first place where the Ultramarines could muster a static, entrenched battlefield, let alone muster a fleet to chase it down and confront it in the void.

And Agrellan was important enough to send 8 chapters worth of sphech merines, knights, imperial guard waves, assassins, etc.

Not 8 Chapters - elements of 8 Chapters. The book doesn't list who was there and what they brought; the White Scars where there by the hundreds (at least to begin with) and the Raven Guard just had a couple of Companies, but others could just have send a Tactical Squad or two. Waves of Guards is not particularly remarkable.

Anyway the main point stands-the Tau are the only enemy the Imperium considers worthy of using their "set sector on fire" super weapon. It's not just exterminatus one planet at a time or scorched earth tactics, it's literally setting the void aflame so that even space ships can't cross any more, and as far as I recall hasn't been used against any of the other many foes of the Imperium.

Against the nids it would be particularly effective because they have big slow fleets. You don't need to sacrifice planets, just detonate it in front of the nid fleet while in space and watch the fireworks.

Now, y'see, here's the problem - I don't disagree with you, here. when Cheesegear did his readthroughs of Montka and Kauyon, this is exactly what he and we all said; if the Imperium can just set a sector of space on fire and solve all their problems with it, then WHY don't they do it all the time?

Tyranid fleet incoming? Set fire to space, they have no warp-capable craft so they'll either have to go through it or around it.
Tau getting uppity? Set fire to space, because they have no FTL (or, at least, really lousy FTL) and will be stuck on their little rock forever.
Orks taken over a solar system? Set fire to space, because if there's one thing that stops Orks from coming back, it's burning them out.
Eye of Terror erupting in another Black Crusade? Burn it. All of it. Why didn't we think of that in M33?

The fact is, the Set Space On Fire gun is a really bad Deus ex Machina that the writers pulled out of nowhere to let the Imperium get the last say in the matter, because if they lose then it raises too many questions like the discussion we're having now - the Imperium sucks, how can we think of them as a credible threat if they got beaten by some blue guys with like, 6 planets to live on? But if they win outright then there's nothing to stop them from Squat'ing all of the Tau with sheer numbers, and the most experienced Tau commander (Farsight) admits as much. It's never happened before, and I'm fairly confident in saying that it won't happen again, and it just leaves the whole conflict in a soggy mess of things that shouldn't have happened, or should have happened better.

[Saambell]

Now, y'see, here's the problem - I don't disagree with you, here. when Cheesegear did his readthroughs of Montka and Kauyon, this is exactly what he and we all said; if the Imperium can just set a sector of space on fire and solve all their problems with it, then WHY don't they do it all the time?

Tyranid fleet incoming? Set fire to space, they have no warp-capable craft so they'll either have to go through it or around it.
Tau getting uppity? Set fire to space, because they have no FTL (or, at least, really lousy FTL) and will be stuck on their little rock forever.
Orks taken over a solar system? Set fire to space, because if there's one thing that stops Orks from coming back, it's burning them out.
Eye of Terror erupting in another Black Crusade? Burn it. All of it. Why didn't we think of that in M33?

The fact is, the Set Space On Fire gun is a really bad Deus ex Machina that the writers pulled out of nowhere to let the Imperium get the last say in the matter, because if they lose then it raises too many questions like the discussion we're having now - the Imperium sucks, how can we think of them as a credible threat if they got beaten by some blue guys with like, 6 planets to live on? But if they win outright then there's nothing to stop them from Squat'ing all of the Tau with sheer numbers, and the most experienced Tau commander (Farsight) admits as much. It's never happened before, and I'm fairly confident in saying that it won't happen again, and it just leaves the whole conflict in a soggy mess of things that shouldn't have happened, or should have happened better.

I think the big thing was that they set fire to a Nebula. As in, a place filled with gasses and material that a special fire that doesn't need oxygen could latch onto and use as fuel. Empty void, yeah, cant burn. But the Damacles Gulf was right by a huge nebula which was what had before kept the tau back. The Imperium set that Nebula on fire to hold the tau back as the fire hid their paths through it. So, in all these other places where its "why don't they set fire to space" its cause there is nothing to latch that fire onto. If they get lucky and those threats are passing through a nebula, sure, fire the Space Burning Gun. But without that base nebula, its a little pointless to demand "fire the Space Burning Gun" as the actual target of that gun isn't there.