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The Astartes don't need to confront the Tau directly. They'd just cut the Tau defenses, supply and communication lines, and deliver the 'killing blow' to the Tau Command. Mop up and consolidation can be left to the Imperial Guard.

Which is more or less the way the Tau deal with human armies.

Go figure.

Ironic isn't it? But that's how Astartes do things. All in a day's work for a Space Marine, I guess.

No reasonable Tau fan (of which I consider myself one) would expect that the Tau could withstand a concerted effort by the Imperium to wipe them out. The Imperium are the big kids on the block and, with the possible exception of the Tyranids and the Orcs, the Imperium can crush any other faction in the galaxy through a combination of endless numbers (Guard), elite forces (Marines) and massive war machines (Titans).

However, I think no reasonable fan of the Imperium should think that the Imperium is concerned enough about the Tau to do anything about them at this point. The Emperor may finally fully expire, the forces of Chaos are popping up everywhere, Orks are rampaging across entire sectors, Necron Tomb Worlds are awakening below their feet and the Tyranids are poised to wipe out all life in the galaxy. That ignores heresy and treason, internal division, a bureaucracy gone mad and the annoyances of pirates and Dark Eldar.

So could the Imperium crush the Tau? Most definitely.

Will the Imperium crush the Tau? I suspect if you asked the leaders of the Imperium the answer would probably be "The who?" or "Can't you see I'm busy with more important things?"

So the Tau, like the Eldar, will continue to exist if only because the Imperium can't afford to put the time and effort into eliminating a sizable, but finite force that doesn't pose a significant military threat.

I see the tau-iom war as something like the eastern front during world war 2. Only with the tau being the size of luxemburg. And the soviets like the size of the rest of the world. The only thing is is that aliens are attacking and the soviets cant bring the full force to bear.

And you really dont even need the astrades. Catachann, eleysian, and harkonian style regiments can provide all of the mobile elelments and then some. I mean the Imperial Guard only provides like 99.99999999999999999% of the Imperiums fighting forces, at least planet side. Let the ultrasmurfs do more important things. Like polishing their armor...

Tadashi wrote:Ironic isn't it? But that's how Astartes do things. All in a day's work for a Space Marine, I guess.

It's not to surprising though. Of all the armies, the IoM and the tau are most alike. You know something funny though. I can't think of any time that the IG beat the tau by themselves. It seems like only SMs can beat the tau.

Poorly trained pdfs are not the ig. Also the tau attack where they have outnumbered the ig regiments significantly. Except for the damoas gulf crusade, which was poorly organized and executed, and was small. And the only reason the iom lost was that the nids where attacking. Give athe iom a proper crusade, ie sabbot worlds or similer and the tau are no more. However the tau have like 16 worlds. Hardly worth noticing.

Yeah, so far in the Fluff the tau have demosntrated repeated superiority over the Guard through mobility and firepower. They've even been known to crack Titans.

So far, only the Marines have shown the right combination of attributes to make things happen. The Tactical Acumen and Mobility to force the Tau to stand and fight, the Firepower to hurt the excellent Tau Battlesuits and Vehicles, and the Protection to move through the Tau firestorm and land telling blows.

But it does make sense when you think about it. The Tau are essentially guard who traded numerical superiority for technological superiority. The Marines are superior fighting men who happened to be equipped to a similar level (though not exactly the same) as the Tau. So for the Tau it's like facing themselves, but only better.

If you look at the attributes of a Marine, they can all be found in a Tau force, but no 1 unit has more than 2 of them.

For Examle:
WS 4 - Kroot
BS 4 - Not organic to any unit but the HQs, but several of them can be upgraded to it (if only temporarily).
S 4 - Kroot again
T 4 - Battlesuits and the Vespid
I 4 - Drones (Kroot Hounds and Vespid are I 5 though)
Ld 8 - Battlesuits and squad leaders only
Sv 3+ - Battlesuits only

So a Space Marine can be certain of being superior to any Tau unit he encounters in all but a couple of measures. It's no wonder they fair so much better against them than the Guard.

It would also help if there was more tau fluff then what is in the tau codex. And if the go to guys to be gw whipping boys weren't the flannerized version of the ig.

If you look at stats the ig out range the tau on most weapons. Most tau weapons cut off at 36in tops. While the majority of guard weapons are atleast 36in or greater. I used to piss off this one tau guy because every thing but my lasguns out ranged him.

Only on tabletop is there a big distinction between IG and marines. They are both "imperium" they act as one force.
"Right so there's a Tau stronghold there. Shall we send in the IG to get butchered or shall we send in the marines who'll win with minimal casualties?"
Also, the news that space marines are superior to ordinary imperial guard troopers is not news.

Or if the commander was even halfway competant. Use the artillery of the guard to pound it to dust. While the armor then blitzes, with infantry support. The guard is alot more then mass infantry waves.

Joey wrote:Only on tabletop is there a big distinction between IG and marines. They are both "imperium" they act as one force.
"Right so there's a Tau stronghold there. Shall we send in the IG to get butchered or shall we send in the marines who'll win with minimal casualties?"
Also, the news that space marines are superior to ordinary imperial guard troopers is not news.

Answer seems to be argue about it long enough for the Tau to slip away, send their special forces into the Imperium's rear areas to interfere with his logistics, chain of command and the morale of his troops while the main force arranges an outflanking manoeuvre.

Who really cares? the Tau are a race in the GAME, and I'm pretty sure they are here to stay. really though? if the Imperium put their full might into it they could steamroll quite a few races. that would be tactical suicide though. Given that, I think the Imperium would take some large casualities.

KingDeath wrote:
The Astartes lack the numbers for any kind of serious warfare on their own..

Zeist Campaign.

Tau get steamrolled. Imperium lingers for a millennium or three.

Brother Coa wrote:

KingDeath wrote:
The Astartes lack the numbers for any kind of serious warfare on their own..

Zeist Campaign.

They still didn't do it on there own. They where sent in as reinforcements and support to local forces. SM can win battles, but not wars. They just don't have the numbers. It was like in that one thread 25 blood angel predators Vs 25 hammerheads. It's about even, but the blood angels only have about 25 predators. SMs can't wage a full war by there own.

Apparently on Zeist they had. Baddab war to.

Not all Chapters have only 25 Predators. Some Chapters have more. Don't know which ones, but it says so in Codex: Space Marines 5th Edition.

Space Marines fight entire, planet-spanning wars all the time. Often you'll find not even an entire Chapter, but just a company waging war against an entire Xenos-race, spanning sometimes multiple planets or systems.

Does it make sense from a "realistical logistical perspective"? No. But if you try that approach, you're most likely wrong in 40K anyhow.

Also, a thousand or even a hundred Space Marines defending (or attacking) entire planets isn't such a stretch anymore, if you consider that guys like Maugan Ra have been known to do it singelhandedly, solo! "Real-world" logistic would most likely have crushed Maugan Ra from the very beginning simply by the amount of ammunition he would need to carry.

Anyhow. "Planets" in 40K aint astronomical "real" planets either. They are "Star-Wars"-planets, consisting usually of one (and only one!) iconic environment/weather-condition and one or two "set-location", usually a human captial/inhabitation and some Xenos/Chaos/something-else-counterpart.

If the conflicts were restricted to relatively equal numbers, the tau would have the upper hand.

They control space combat, only boarding actions tend to have the desired effect against tau ships.

If the whole of the imperium were to attack the tau... wait that's impossible. That means all the orks, nids, dark eldar, necrons, chaos stuffs and eldar would have a complete field day for years until the fleets came back.

So you mean to tell me we are discussing what would happen if the whole of the imperium fought the tau? Well railguns miss sometimes, so...

However, all those forgeworlds, gone. Hive worlds, gone. Marine recruitment worlds, gone. Agri worlds, in ruins. Shipyards, destroyed.

Is it really worth it? In the end, the imperium would have wrecked the tau, and themselves.

Not really. The Tau control at most a hundred worlds, and their warp technology is incredibly primitive. They couldn't strike a million worlds. At most the Imperium would lose several worlds, but the Tau would be...obliterated. After all, if a ground campaign is too expensive, all the Imperial Navy has to do is to hold the line long enough for several Strike Cruisers to get into position for exterminatus.

Brother SRM wrote:Your post assumes they have forces of relatively equal size. The full might of the Imperium wouldn't be Rocky vs. Apollo Creed, it would be an ant vs. a sledgehammer. The Tau are a VERY small race in the scheme of 40k. Humanity is described as having "millions of millions of world" and "to be a man in such times is to be a man of untold billions" while the Tau just control a few planets in the Eastern Fringe. The Tau would not stand a chance against the Imperium in all their might.

The imperium has one million worlds and the nids are nom them.

As an avid tau player/fluff reader, I agree that the imperium, at significant strength, would be like steamrolling a cracker. The tau are (for the time being) unable to use warp travel at all (they are a psychically dead race; not immune to the warp, but unable to manifest any powers of their own or feel the warp)
In equal numbers, its anyone's game. The imperium sent greater numbers against the tau in the Tauros campaign, and lost due to a lack of cohesiveness, and trying to fight a battle of attiration against an army with very little sense of that form of battle. In the damoclies crusade, the imperium had basically hit a stalemate, and would have had to either commit more forces to the crusade, or call it off. The only way to break the stalemate would have been to commit another crusade-sized force, which was impossible.

In all that rambling, the gyist is mainly that tau can kick imperial ass, but only on their own terms: they are simply incapable of fighting on a level equal to that of the imperium. This means no forge/fortress worlds, orbital disintegration, and precious few titans.

Old topic, back again.

Yes, the Tau would be obliterated but the Imperium would lose thousands to hundreds of thousands of worlds when they pulled enough resources from current conflicts to do it.

If you want an example, look at the Damocles Gulf; the imperial forces were in position to really take it to the Tau but they're stretched so thinly that the were forced to draw forces from the area to address a pressing concern in an area on the other side of imperial space. The result was, they sued for peace which the Tau were happy to grant (since they probably got the point that they were about to lose).

Economy of scale. There's really no difference between the Tau Empire and the Imperium; the imperium has greater numbers but a much larger territory to protect from a greater number of threats. The Tau inhabit a small but densely packed area of space with a larger than average number of habitable worlds (Tau codex).

It will be interesting to see what direction the fluff goes since GW has shown they have no problem retconning an entire body of fluff to shoehorn faction equality. If Necrons are any indicator, the Tau will probably no longer be the naieve race they are now nor will they be the tiny, inconsequential faction that you see now.

Tadashi wrote:Not really. The Tau control at most a hundred worlds, and their warp technology is incredibly primitive. They couldn't strike a million worlds.

It's not 'primitive' in terms of technology, but that their race is considered 'blank' to the warp and they simply do not understand what it is, being a race devoid of psykers.

After all, if a ground campaign is too expensive, all the Imperial Navy has to do is to hold the line long enough for several Strike Cruisers to get into position for exterminatus.

That would be improbable. Exterminatus is the tourniquet of the Inquisition for the Imperium of Man. They would not waste it on World's they wouldn't be attacking in the first place.

It's very similar to the ground campaign. The Imperial Navy simply does not have the resources to waste on protecting an Exterminatus Fleet that's trying (and probably failing) at destroying an unblemished Tau World.


There seems to be some mutual respect between the Space Marines and Tau.

Zweischneid wrote:Space Marines fight entire, planet-spanning wars all the time. Often you'll find not even an entire Chapter, but just a company waging war against an entire Xenos-race, spanning sometimes multiple planets or systems.

Does it make sense from a "realistical logistical perspective"? No. But if you try that approach, you're most likely wrong in 40K anyhow.

Also, a thousand or even a hundred Space Marines defending (or attacking) entire planets isn't such a stretch anymore, if you consider that guys like Maugan Ra have been known to do it singelhandedly, solo! "Real-world" logistic would most likely have crushed Maugan Ra from the very beginning simply by the amount of ammunition he would need to carry.

Anyhow. "Planets" in 40K aint astronomical "real" planets either. They are "Star-Wars"-planets, consisting usually of one (and only one!) iconic environment/weather-condition and one or two "set-location", usually a human captial/inhabitation and some Xenos/Chaos/something-else-counterpart.

Even the Babar war had a lot of non SM. I can't think of a war that included only SM. Can you?

nomotog wrote:

Zweischneid wrote:Space Marines fight entire, planet-spanning wars all the time. Often you'll find not even an entire Chapter, but just a company waging war against an entire Xenos-race, spanning sometimes multiple planets or systems.

Does it make sense from a "realistical logistical perspective"? No. But if you try that approach, you're most likely wrong in 40K anyhow.

Also, a thousand or even a hundred Space Marines defending (or attacking) entire planets isn't such a stretch anymore, if you consider that guys like Maugan Ra have been known to do it singelhandedly, solo! "Real-world" logistic would most likely have crushed Maugan Ra from the very beginning simply by the amount of ammunition he would need to carry.

Anyhow. "Planets" in 40K aint astronomical "real" planets either. They are "Star-Wars"-planets, consisting usually of one (and only one!) iconic environment/weather-condition and one or two "set-location", usually a human captial/inhabitation and some Xenos/Chaos/something-else-counterpart.

Even the Babar war had a lot of non SM. I can't think of a war that included only SM. Can you?

Horus Heresy anyone?

KplKeegan wrote:

Horus Heresy anyone?

Yeah, there were literally millions of IG involved in that. Unless you think marines were piloting the titans and tanks and shooting lazguns.

agnosto wrote:

KplKeegan wrote:

Horus Heresy anyone?

Yeah, there were literally millions of IG involved in that. Unless you think marines were piloting the titans and tanks and shooting lazguns.

1.The Imperial Guard don't pilot Titans.
2. Space Marines have tanks.
3. The Imperial Guard didn't exist during the Heresy. It was the Imperial Army.

All I want to say is that the Communist regime fell once and it will again. Only this time it will happen in SPACE!