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Cyrus said so in DoW II:

"Imperium doesn't have shortage of deadly enemies. But they all pale in comparison to Tyranids."

Cyrus said so because Cyrus was in the Deathwatch fighting Tyranids. Of course he's going to say that.

It's like the Chapters holding sentinel near Cadia to guard the Eye of Terror will say that all the Imperium's enemies pale in comparison to Chaos. Because to them, fighting Chaos is the important fight, because to them, Chaos holds the greatest threat.

Last time I checked: you can reconquer planets from the Chaos and restore them to Imperial order ( Armageddon ).
With Tyranids you don't have anymore planets, only lifeless rocks with no use at all.

Tyranids are more akin to a primal force of nature (except on a massive galactic, world-eating scale). But humanity, if nothing else, is very good at exterminating species that are not our own. Chaos is more insidious, representing the darker reflections of humanity. You can conquer planets, aye, but there will always be a human weak-willed enough to fall to Chaos' lure and depravity. So there's nothing stopping Chaos from regaining a foothold on a restored planet either.

Also, last I checked, Daemonworlds are almost impossible to bring back to Imperial order as well. Ask the Eldar about their Crone worlds

Brother Coa wrote:Last time I checked: you can reconquer planets from the Chaos and restore them to Imperial order ( Armageddon ).
With Tyranids you don't have anymore planets, only lifeless rocks with no use at all.

Actually the worlds are still useful as they provide more space to build more weapons.

I always saw Tyranids and Chaos as the two big threats. Chaos is the threat within, Tyranids are the threat without. Tyranids drive at the galaxy from the very outside, seeing as they're no from this galaxy at all. The threat without.. Chaos, while Abaddons black crusades successes are debateable, they make the Imperium do quite a lot of damage to itself, by infecting it inside its own territory and population. The threat within.

The other races lack the focus, drive or just plain population to conquer the galaxy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

xxmatt85 wrote:

Brother Coa wrote:Last time I checked: you can reconquer planets from the Chaos and restore them to Imperial order ( Armageddon ).
With Tyranids you don't have anymore planets, only lifeless rocks with no use at all.

Actually the worlds are still useful as they provide more space to build more weapons.

Yet, they lack any resources to make more weapons. All useful minerals and metals are broken down as well. Every lost planet to the Tyranids is literally lost, there's nothing that can be done with it or any resources it once had.

Imports?

Tyranids

They will consume not only the Imperium of Man, but all other races in the galaxy, including the deamon worlds.
They will do so with a singularity of focus that no other faction can even begin to comprehend.

xxmatt85 wrote:Imports?

When you start losing planets, you start losing resources to import.

I'm going with Eldar because I'm a crazy eyed Wild card.
Also, I could see Eldar pushing things in their favor to lead CSM to Terra to a final point where they self destruct.

I could see an opinion on each of these races, though the means they would use to achieve it would have to differ greatly.
Tyranid and Necron are still pretty much doing their same thing, simply having it that they choose to attack now rather than later.
Orks would need nothing more than a single Ork with a grudge against Terra and the size to stay alive to reach it. One misplaced Waaagh and IoM goes down.
Chaos is something the imperium at large barely understands but the lords of Terra and the like have been particularly adamant at keeping them at bay. I would imagine being the truest most OBVIOUS threat to the emperor himself they'd actually have a harder time than most getting Terra under control. Though the rest of the IoM would fall in minutes (provided the avoid or plain orbital bombard SoB populated planets, ^_^)
The Eldar, Dark eldar, and Tau aren't quite capable at this point of standing toe to toe with IoM, but they wouldn't choose to anyway. Subterfuge, stealth, speed, and planning are their tools for defeating the IoM since technological advancement is our greatest failure. True we have some fancy machines but nothing akin to the "advanced" races of the galaxy. They may already have a strike team on Terra right now, waiting for the opportunity to put a lance through the emperor's braincase. And we'll think it was nothing but the wind.
In addition, the Adeptus Mechanicus might decide to step on some toes and remove the nigh useless human factor of humanity. They might not kill the God-Emperor thanks to the astronomicon, but I'm sure they've got a earth destroying superweapon or two hidden somewhere on mars.

Necrons however seem to be the likeliest choice in my opinion. The nids are vast but we aren't sure yet if they're just the beginning, or all that remains of their kind. The orks have maybe a .000001 percent chance of actually getting together and pointing at earth again, and the others probably don't risk destroying the only thing keeping the rest of the universe busy and off their backs. But the Necron? they are here, they are ready, they are willing, they just need to stop hitting the snooze button.

otakutaylor wrote:Necrons however seem to be the likeliest choice in my opinion. The nids are vast but we aren't sure yet if they're just the beginning, or all that remains of their kind. The orks have maybe a .000001 percent chance of actually getting together and pointing at earth again, and the others probably don't risk destroying the only thing keeping the rest of the universe busy and off their backs. But the Necron? they are here, they are ready, they are willing, they just need to stop hitting the snooze button.

Yet the necrons are now a bunch of fragmented empires without a singular goal. They're not going to be toppling the Imperium anymore.

You can kill every bug, you can slay every heretic, but how do you stop the spore growing green tide?

Sanchez01 wrote:You can kill every bug, you can slay every heretic, but how do you stop the spore growing green tide?

With lot and lot of fire?

Have you seen the size of the main body of tyranids !!!!

Chaos cannot be destroyed by nuclear weapons or star cannons.
It cannot be purged.
It's a part of the human psyche itself. The Imperium could exterminate every xenos in the galaxy and they'd still be vulnerable to chaos.

If say the Eye of Terror was permanent, no way to ever seal it, Chaos would continue to be a major threat.

You can kill every nid out there, one at a time, and they share the same threat as orks, if they all attacked at once, the Imperium would be goners.

Necrons look to be another major player, though I have not read much of their new fluff, I know that in the old, they would wipe out life one planet at a time.

Can the nids enter the realm of chaos and destory it? Then the biggest threat would be nids...? Baring the Nid's destorying chaos, chaos won't be stopped by the IOM.

Are there any hints that this is Primarch at all?

Considering every Hive Fleet so far has ultimately been massacred by whatever makeshift flotilla or handful of warships happened to be waiting when it showed up, and their only victories have been over fairly remote backwaters and isolated hives or forgeworlds, Tyranids can't be considered too much of a threat, for all that they've destroyed a few hundred human worlds that they took by surprise.

Necrons were a reasonable threat, since their total numbers were entirely unknown, and they acted as a singular, monolithic entity incapable of suffering casualties. Now they're a broken, scattered lot, with a total population less than a single craftworld's.

Tau have an overall military presence around what Armageddon recruits on an annual basis, and control fewer worlds than have been eaten by Tyranids, with only a handful of those having any appreciable population.

Orks far outnumber the Imperium, but they lack any degree of organization at all, and so can't pose a coherent threat on a large enough scale to make a dent in the Imperium.

The Craftworld Eldar have a total population, including noncombatants, around that of the Guard, and a reasonable Navy, made all the more powerful by their access to the webway. They're not unified, and lack any great desire to war with the Imperium, however, and so aren't much of a threat.

The Dark Eldar have a similar population, comprised mainly of combatants, and boast the most advanced technology in the setting since the Necrons were Wardified. They are, however, not unified, and are entirely occupied by their 24/7 Space Partying, only occasionally stopping for a relaxing slave run into realspace, to walk off their giant Space Hangovers.

The Traitor Marines boast the single smallest and most poorly placed military in the entire setting, except perhaps for some of the minor species that have a only line or two mentioning their existence. Chaos and Treason on a larger scale are pretty much the only credible threat, and they're both dealt with swiftly and brutally, in a sort of neverending giant game of whack-a-mole.

So Chaos, with the caveat that they still don't pose a realistic threat, only more of one than anything else.

Tyranids. When the only way to stop an attacking force is to glass planets in their path, you know you are in trouble.

Tyranids. From my understanding, the tyranids could wipe out chaos (in material space) and the IoM quite easily

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Considering every Hive Fleet so far has ultimately been massacred by whatever makeshift flotilla or handful of warships happened to be waiting when it showed up, and their only victories have been over fairly remote backwaters and isolated hives or forgeworlds, Tyranids can't be considered too much of a threat, for all that they've destroyed a few hundred human worlds that they took by surprise.

Internet hyperbole is the best.

Behemoth was stopped by the combined arms of the Ultima segmentums fleet, auxilliary Guard forces and the plot armoured Ultramarines.

Kraken was stopped by again the plot armoured Ultramarines, as well as combined Guard and Space Marine chapters around Ichar IV and Prince Yriels entire pirate fleet at Iyanden.

Leviathan hasn't been stopped at all (one small tendril was diverted by Kryptmann into the Orks at Octarius, which is making both sides stronger - good job!), and is still rampaging around the galaxy.

Nice to know you consider the entire combined arms forces of a heavily populated segmentum to be a 'random flotilla' though. Shows a lot of faith in the Imperium right there. No wonder they're constantly losing ground.

Necrons have the super-special-light show-board of star eating though, don't they. So couldn't they just snuff out Terra by making the sun go super-nova

TheAngrySquig wrote:Necrons have the super-special-light show-board of star eating though, don't they. So couldn't they just snuff out Terra by making the sun go super-nova

The old school Necrons had no issues getting to our solar system, with their extremely advance spacecraft with inertialess lightspeed drives. The new Necrons lack those drives, and get around using the webway. They'd find it very difficult now getting close enough to do it.

-Loki- wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Considering every Hive Fleet so far has ultimately been massacred by whatever makeshift flotilla or handful of warships happened to be waiting when it showed up, and their only victories have been over fairly remote backwaters and isolated hives or forgeworlds, Tyranids can't be considered too much of a threat, for all that they've destroyed a few hundred human worlds that they took by surprise.

Internet hyperbole is the best.

Behemoth was stopped by the combined arms of the Ultima segmentums fleet, auxilliary Guard forces and the plot armoured Ultramarines.

The Ultramarines were slaughtered and fled, the fleet was destroyed by a single battleship, and the forces on the ground butchered by the PDF.

Kraken was stopped by again the plot armoured Ultramarines, as well as combined Guard and Space Marine chapters around Ichar IV and Prince Yriels entire pirate fleet at Iyanden.

A handful of naval vessels and a few regiments of Guard, together with the pathetic forces Calgar could muster, slaughtered half of the largest (by that point) fleet, while the other half was butchered by a craftworld.

Leviathan hasn't been stopped at all (one small tendril was diverted by Kryptmann into the Orks at Octarius, which is making both sides stronger - good job!), and is still rampaging around the galaxy.

It hasn't been stopped because it showed up at the effective "current point" in the fluff.

You also left out Jormungandr, which was destroyed by a ramshackle flotilla of merchant vessels led by a cruiser, or Gorgon, which faltered against the Tau, who are smaller than a single Craftworld in terms of military capability and population. Or Naga, which was hunted down by a small expeditionary force of Eldar.

And let's not forget examples from Black Library, like two regiments of Guard stopping a splinter fleet, and the like.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:The Ultramarines were slaughtered and fled, the fleet was destroyed by a single battleship, and the forces on the ground butchered by the PDF.

The fleet was on the verge of defeat, and won the day with a deus ex machina. The PDF were slaughtered along with the Ultramarines, mop up was done after the the fleet battle, and Macragge is still infested at its polar caps.

Not to mention, Behemoth wasn't entirely destroyed. There's mention in recent fluff of olnly 'several tendrils' of Behemoth being destroyed, and the fact that it was the hive fleet that took part in the Medusa campaign shows it's still alive and kicking.

A handful of naval vessels and a few regiments of Guard, together with the pathetic forces Calgar could muster, slaughtered half of the largest (by that point) fleet, while the other half was butchered by a craftworld.

I won't argue the defense against Kraken. There's little information at all stating what the Imperiums actual defense consisted of, though Iyanden lost 80% of its population, which can't be considered a victory.

It hasn't been stopped because it showed up at the effective "current point" in the fluff.

Irrelevant. You said

every Hive Fleet so far has ultimately been massacred by whatever makeshift flotilla or handful of warships happened to be waiting when it showed up

You also left out Jormungandr, which was destroyed by a ramshackle flotilla of merchant vessels led by a cruiser, or Gorgon, which faltered against the Tau, who are smaller than a single Craftworld in terms of military capability and population. Or Naga, which was hunted down by a small expeditionary force of Eldar.

No arguments there. Cruddace had an axe to grind and wrote some particularly ebarrasing defeats into the codex.

And let's not forget examples from Black Library, like two regiments of Guard stopping a splinter fleet, and the like.

Lets not forget the Black Library also had a Guardsman firing an assault cannon from the hip, Lasguns taking the heads off Chaos Marines, Guardsmen completely unprotected in the warp, and other such nonsense.

The Black Librarys stuff isn't considered canon for a lot of reasons.

-Loki- wrote:

TheAngrySquig wrote:Necrons have the super-special-light show-board of star eating though, don't they. So couldn't they just snuff out Terra by making the sun go super-nova

The old school Necrons had no issues getting to our solar system, with their extremely advance spacecraft with inertialess lightspeed drives. The new Necrons lack those drives, and get around using the webway. They'd find it very difficult now getting close enough to do it.

Yeah but doesn't the Silent King have a board that makes stars go super-nova?

I voted Nids because there is just too many of them. And every planet they eat makes them stronger. That and their ability to adapt really, really quickly.

Yeah, I'm missing the IoM on this list, too.