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It sometimes works well, yes.

Not always.

Yep. Lets go have peace talks with the Necrons! *gets obliterated*
Believe it or not the tau have tried that before.

If the tau focus on imperial worlds and other small species like kroot and vespid, then they should do just fine.

Without a doubt, the Imperium of Man are gonna win. They survived the Macharius Heresy, countless Cardinals rebelling and destruction in their wake, Black Crusades and worst of all the Horus Heresy, they even survived the Emperor nearly dying

The imperium is in a slow state of decay, even the emperor will die eventually. Yes, the imperium has survived everything thrown at it, but they lose a little more land and resources every time.

There's arguments abound that once the Imperium loses a certain amount, they'll reach a point where it becomes much easier for htem to defend what they have.

Asherian Command wrote:Yep. Lets go have peace talks with the Necrons! *gets obliterated*
Believe it or not the tau have tried that before.

Looking at it from a players perspective, ie omnipresent, we don't have the narrow view that the races themselves would have. The necrons had just saved them from a Tyranid invasion, now, if you had no prior knowledge at all about the necrons, would you start shooting at those who just saved you?

@Retribution:
necrons look like skeletons (undead') and humans would not trust such creatures.

Mr Nobody wrote:Everyone seems frown upon the tau's piecful approach, but it works very well on imperium worlds in the fluff. If you can conquer a world without a shot fired, then you have saved alot of energy and resources.

Piece ful? ok R.I.P Tau . the only peace you'll have in this 40verse ( if youre lucky and chaos is still uninterested..)

Mr Nobody wrote:If the tau focus on imperial worlds and other small species like kroot and vespid, then they should do just fine.

Making a major power in this Galaxy angry gets you far? Sorry if the Imperial warmachine catches up steam theyre faster going extinct than GW can delete any records of their existence...

Mr Nobody wrote:The imperium is in a slow state of decay, even the emperor will die eventually. Yes, the imperium has survived everything thrown at it, but they lose a little more land and resources every time.

Would it be Grimdark with an active Emperor?
If a Imperium survives a civil war, (consuming half his military strength), still exists no matter how hard orks, elfs and bugs try to ruin it, why do you think there is anything to fear?
Most of the threats aim at the IoM as its the biggest target, now if it isn't there what do you think happens to all these small xeno empires when the
necrons, bugs and orks look for some new grounds to play?
The combined might of the Imperial armies can stem the tide. But i doubt any of the oh so advanced xenos survive a single year without the IoM around.

If the story really did continue, humans would go the same way as the eldar, and a new empire would rise (tau?), and the cycle would happen over and over again.

sorry its the same uninspired story everytime.

Elfs / space elfs leave the games universe wherever you look at. Not specifically GW, everywhere.

Humans don't. There here to stay. Maybe be the poor ones to suffer, maybe have no special abilities but still survive.

End times to its fullest = Mankind extinct.
Imagine GW dropping 60% of the background. Oh, not much left to carry on?

/ 40k.

Retribution wrote:

Asherian Command wrote:Yep. Lets go have peace talks with the Necrons! *gets obliterated*
Believe it or not the tau have tried that before.

Looking at it from a players perspective, ie omnipresent, we don't have the narrow view that the races themselves would have. The necrons had just saved them from a Tyranid invasion, now, if you had no prior knowledge at all about the necrons, would you start shooting at those who just saved you?

Sorry but the fleet you had that you lost contact with just prior to them coming is not evidence enough that they are going to kill you? And its in 40k universe everything is hostile.
Women = hostile
Dogs = hostile
Guardsmen = hostile
Civilian = hostile
everything else = hostile
The Tau are tree huggers in the best sense of the word. And they are peaceful which will be their down fall

Even the fire caste doesn't like the peace talk policy.

Asherian Command wrote:

Retribution wrote:

Asherian Command wrote:Yep. Lets go have peace talks with the Necrons! *gets obliterated*
Believe it or not the tau have tried that before.

Looking at it from a players perspective, ie omnipresent, we don't have the narrow view that the races themselves would have. The necrons had just saved them from a Tyranid invasion, now, if you had no prior knowledge at all about the necrons, would you start shooting at those who just saved you?

Sorry but the fleet you had that you lost contact with just prior to them coming is not evidence enough that they are going to kill you? And its in 40k universe everything is hostile.
Women = hostile
Dogs = hostile
Guardsmen = hostile
Civilian = hostile
everything else = hostile
The Tau are tree huggers in the best sense of the word. And they are peaceful which will be their down fall

The fleet...that was lost to the Tyranid invasion? And no, everyone is not hostile, as evidenced by the fact that the Tau have numerous friendly and allied races. And i don't see how tree hugging comes into play here, seeing as these "tree huggers" practice a very predatory style of warfare, and have no qualms about genocide when they deem it necessary.

well unfortunately for the Tau the 40k universe's story is built 100% on war, I cant imagine the imperium is going to be to happy if the Tau start influencing their more important worlds. I can picture the Inquisition as labeling it as heresy.

im a SM player but i have to say nids

Zarynterk wrote:however with The Imperiums ability to completely nuke planets from orbit... the Nid threat can be dealt with.

Cheers!

However with the nids ability to spawn a bioship capable of BITING the ENTIRE MIDDLE of a space marine BATTLE BARGE out and omnomming it...... The nuke the can be dealt with

NeedsMoreDakka wrote:Im not really familiar with Imperium lore but if they can nuke planets like that then why the hell havnt they done it already?

They have. Many times

Mr Nobody wrote:Everyone seems frown upon the tau's piecful approach, but it works very well on imperium worlds in the fluff. If you can conquer a world without a shot fired, then you have saved alot of energy and resources.

Ding ding, we have a winner. In most books I've read, the Tau like to pull the whole cultural conquest thing. This lack of direct violence actually makes them semi-tolerated on worlds. See the Ciaphas Cain Omnibus for details.

The war best won is the war not fought.. or something like that

Tyranic Marta wrote:The war best won is the war not fought.. or something like that

pfff, I'm afraid you're in the wrong galaxy sir.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Tyranic Marta wrote:The war best won is the war not fought.. or something like that

pfff, I'm afraid you're in the wrong galaxy sir.

Damn straight. While humans aren't the most peaceful of species at the best of times, I'm reasonably certain that their current state of mind re: inter-species relations is largely because the major races of the galaxy want to torture mankind, eat mankind, reduce mankind to constituent atoms, batter mankind with rusty metal, feed off of mankind's pain, warp mankind into fleshy-portals or use mankind as a giant meat-shield. It's not a friendly galaxy, and diplomacy is not going to fly with the Orks, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Chaos, Necrons, Tyranids, Enslavers, Umbra etc.

A hand extended in friendship is less likely to be shaken as it is to be torn off and used as decoration/lunch/a club.

Not during the great crusade, there were a lot more friendly species at that time, but the imperium killed all of them. We could have tried playing nice, but the emperor said no.

and he was right to.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:and he was right to.

I don't know...

Don't get me wrong there are some alien folk but there are also many that can single handedly destroy the Imperium. Tragically "Kill-all-Xenos-on-sight" remains the best policy in 40K.

115th Cadian Shock Troops wrote:

NeedsMoreDakka wrote:Im not really familiar with Imperium lore but if they can nuke planets like that then why the hell havnt they done it already?

They have. Many times

Not to mention you only want to nuke so many planets. You need to leave some to inhabit, based on how valuable and tactically friendly the planet is they will either vaporize the surface (based on infection, cult size, invasion size, etc.) or continue to have skirmishes to recapture the planet. Like Macreage, the space marines faught the 'nids until the last because of how valuable it was.

Imperium wins in the end. In last resort the Adeptus Terra would gather as many supplies and people as they could and collapse in towards Terra. If mankind pulled every person they could conscript and gave them a lasgun they'd outnumber even the nids 2 to 1.

Draglide12 wrote:Imperium wins in the end. In last resort the Adeptus Terra would gather as many supplies and people as they could and collapse in towards Terra. If mankind pulled every person they could conscript and gave them a lasgun they'd outnumber even the nids 2 to 1.

But what happens when Voidy breaks free and there's no Emprah to put him down again? What happens to the Imperium then? When the Machine God rises and Terra as we know it, and the Mechanium tears itself apart from the inside.

he runs out of batteries....... duh

This question can't be answered just by comparing the capabilities of each race against the others. In large part, it comes down to who fights who when (mostly, who bears the brunt of the 'nids).

For example, The Tau have a very good chance coming out on top, but only if the Tyranids have to deal with the Imperium and Orks first; and even then only if those races wear down rather than feed the 'nids. However, given that the invasion is coming from the galactic east, right in Tau country, they will probably be overwhelmed before the Tyranids can be bled sufficiently.

So, here's my list in least to greatest ascending order of likely survival/winning:

Eldar- These guys are dying out, no way around it. Best case scenario is they all die and form a new god to kill slaanesh, but even then they're all already dead, so no victory there.

Dark Eldar - Interestingly enough, these guys will probably end up helping whoever takes on the Tyranids, because if the 'nids win, there's no-one to harvest suffering from. But, even if they stay in their hidey hole, there's not enough of them, and they don't have enough conquest oriented ambitions to win an all out slugfest.

Tau- As in the above example, the Tau have alot going for them, but the order of conquest really isn't looking good for them. They're powerful, technological, and oddly tolerant in a good way for 40k, but just not big enough to take the 'nids first, by themselves.

Necrons- I dunno, the whole immortal deal seems to favor them, but I think numbers will be an issue. To 'win' they'd have to take out everyone else, and their bodies can only reassemble so many times before they're done for good. And no reproduction; once a necron soul is removed from its body, its gone for good, and no making new reinforcements (discounting pariahs, but they couldn't make enough of them fast enough to win).

Orks- Organization is what kills these guys, of course. Might have the power to win, but there's no way any one warboss could assemble all the orks and keep them on the right Waaaagghhhh path for long enough. As is, these guys are unfortunately just alot of really tough, powerful bio-material for the 'nids to add to themselves. They'll last a while, but can't win.

Chaos- Immortal daemons + space marines is great, but Tyranid 'shadow in the warp' or whatever its called seems to trump chaos power. I don't know exactly how the psychic vs. calming would play out, but I imagine the 'nids have the potential to seal up the Eye, win without much of a fight.


And its down to Imperium vs Tyranids. This depends entirely upon the actions of the Imperium. Their xenophobia, while justified, is also going to hurt them. They're so entrenched in it that they can't even bring themselves to manipulate the alien races into helping them beat the 'nids and then betray them later. It's impossible, but if they could get over that it would be a sure win in the Imperiums favor. They still have a chance though. If I recall correctly, in the Ultramarines novels at some point a fringe Inquisitor Lord says that if like 1/3 - 1/2 of the human race were given lasguns and sent to the frontlines against the 'nids, they'd be able to stop the invasion. If that's true, the imperium has the manufacturing and logistical prowess to throw enough bodies into the fight to win, even if bureaucracy betrays them at points along the way.

Tyranids don't need much explaining; they're brutal, they've got a good galaxy destroying track record, they're virtually numberless, and they turn every scrap of enemy and friendly dead back into more soldiers unless they're completely wiped out.

I think in the end, all things considered, Imperium has to win, albeit with a caveat that what's left isn't going to be much. Maybe Ultramar, the Solar System, some other strong pockets, and not much else left. And most of the galaxy is going to be either scoured dry by the 'nids, or virus bombed into oblivion by the Imperium, or both; so they won't be able to recolonize either. Kind of a Pyhrric victory, but win for humanity nonetheless.