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You know where you stand with Tyranids though. Death will come, whether or not it's in some acid pool or at the hands of a gribbly beast.

What I find truly terrifying are the Dark Eldar. You're never sure when they will come or where they will strike. You're never sure if death will be swift on the field of battle or if it will be lingering at the mercy of toxins. And then, if you survive the fight, you're going to be left at the whim of the most sadistic bastards in the galaxy. Your fate, in their hands, will most likely be the most agonizing and prolonged death anyone is ever likely to experience.

I'll take the Tyranids any day over the Dark Eldar. At least I know, when the sky blackens, death will most certainly arrive and that in itself is a giant comfort.

Agreed...better 'nids or 'crons than depraved space elves or pink traitors.

Another thing about tyranids, When they arrive to a planet, they use their psychic powers to block all access to the warp. No communications will go out.
They also use their powerful psychics to cast a sense of doom on the inhabitants of the planet. Even if you are one big bad@$$, the psychic cacophony that these aliens create is enough to drive any hardened veteran to the point of pissing himself from fright at the slightest noise.

I'd say a warpstorm is deff scary.

Better throw in my two cents.

Anything could be scary in the right circumstances, being a heretic faced with an Imperial invasion force would be fairly terrifying, the sheer number of drop ships lowering to the ground, along with the literal millions of men and thousands of battle tanks charging at you. Of course this wouldn't inspire such terror as a tyranid hive fleet.

Ok, I have made my decision. I will go with Chaos Space Marines... Kind of picturing something similar to Reavers from the series Firefly, but bigger, spikier and covered in Power Armour, screaming such obscenities as "Blood for the Blood God". Word Bearers would be my least favorite to face...

Dark eldar are pretty low for me marginally higher than ork. Sure it would sucK to get captured but there is the hope you can hide. Compared to the unrelenting terror of hell spilling forth its daemons or nids consuming your world, there pretty tame.

I can't figure out why some people find an immediate death 'more terrifying' than a prolonged and ultimately limitless session of torture. Each to their own poison, I s'pose.

Eiríkr wrote:I can't figure out why some people find an immediate death 'more terrifying' than a prolonged and ultimately limitless session of torture. Each to their own poison, I s'pose.

I agree... and if nids eat me wont I become a part of there living army?? DEATH NOM NOM NOM

Yeah, I agree that 'nids would be terrifying, those limitless numbers, horrific creatures, towering gigantic monsters and being eaten would be a horrific and painful end.
Most other armies just want you dead and you could look forward to quick end being shot or blown up. But the lingering slow deaths offered by 'nids, Dark Eldar etc are the most terrifying.

Id go with Crons, Guass Kinda well tear you apart atom from atom, thats kinda scary.

Night Lords hands down.

Nids, definitely. TBH you wont even get to fight them as most people will be destroyed by bio-spores from a orbital bombardment!

It's got to be daemons, they don't want to just kill you or torture you they want your immortal soul, they are manifestations of your worse nightmares.

DE are just a bunch of kinky freaks, plus my uplifting primer says they are puny. It wouldn't lie would it?

I'd say daemons. I mean if they were IRL they wouldn't be the little colorful models they are what we perceive them to be. They would be the most twisted creatures imaginable. Think the last time you saw something with its organs falling out (road kill) now imagine that road kill coming after you. Now imagine that's a person or a little plaguebearer with a rusty knife. Just picture something as fethed up as possible is my point.

Necrons... Just because there's not reason to it... No hope just the unrelenting silence of the legions, and when you think one of them is finally dead... It stands back up. That and I imagine a guass flyer is insanely painfull

Oldcrons.

The one foe that Ciaphas Cain, under no circumstances, wanted to encounter.

Squats. Because then, Emperor only knows what benighted, God forsaken universe you've ended up in.

Human opponents:
Facing down a Space Marine assault,
Or
a Massive Legion of Imperial Guard Tanks and men charging all at the same time.

Xenos:
Combat: Tyranids
Capture: Dark Eldar

Chaos:
Demons

Tyranids.

Sky turns black/red. You begin to cough and hack as micoscopic bugs tear you apart from the inside.

You turn on the TV and see the news "giant alien monsters are invading" and you go for your nearest weapon (while coughing up purple tyranid bugs/goo).

It's noon time and it's dark as midnight outside. Giant squid like things come crashing down out of the sky.

By the time you see your first non-microscopic tyranid you're already half dead.

You see an ocean of snake monsters eatting everything, making it's way closer to you.

You die from within having never gotten a chance to see something cool like a carnifex or lictor.

How is this even debatable when we have Daemons? :\

They kill you in a horrible fashion and then take your soul as a play thing for all eternity.

And if you have even worse luck you somehow survive initial contact and get to deal with the stuff that makes DE feel sick.

I would say Nids because of the sheer numbers.

nidz.

I say 'Nids as well.

There is a reason that the movie Alien was so viscerally terrifying.

These... Things... are so alien, so utterly bizarre to you, as (assuming we are a) lowly Imperial Guardsman, that you have no idea what their weapons do, though their teeth/talons/claws are pretty self-explanatory. Watching men you served with for years butchered by legions of gribbly insects and devoured has got to drive you mad.

But apart from that, here's a clincher. There's something inherent in human minds that makes insects generally repulsive to most people. I'm no arachnophobe, or anything of the like, but if you're just chilling outside at night and some giant beetle, attracted by the light, suddenly lands on your bare skin, clinging with its tiny little claws, it makes your skin crawl. Even wasps - a relatively tiny insect - can make a grown man leap out of his chair and swat the air like a little girl, for fear of its sting. Or try watching a bug, like a mantis, on Youtube, chewing apart another insect with its distorted little mandibles and scaled down incredible strength.

Imagine experiences like that, but with massive creatures from god-knows-where. Hell even Hormagaunts would be repulsive, let alone the mantis-like Lictors and vaguely human Genestealers.

Edit: I propose a challenge. If you want to experience this gribbly, "Oh hell no" feeling, look up "giant centipede" on youtube. These things kill mice/snakes/bats. Look at one of those and imagine it x100 and you basically have how a Tyranid would make you feel.

Nids undoubtedly. It's most likely that the stock standard IG from Bumhick VII has never heard of Dark Eldar, and wouldn't think of them as anything more then another enemy to shoot when their encountered. Fear may grow later on, but I think the initial encounter would be seen just like anything else.

Tyranids now... even if you'd never heard of them before they showed up on your planet, the endless waves of these grotesque monstrocities would be enough to make the bowels shift. Especially when you see the larger ones.

While Dark Eldar probably take the biscuit, don't forget what it's like to fight regular Eldar:

Their basic weapon, the shuriken catapult, is designed to cut flesh up like confetti. Rather than killing efficiently, it seems to emphasise killing in a graphic and obvious way: no small hole for a wound, or localised section of burnt flesh but slices of meat everywhere.

The deathspinner style weapons puts a goo on that works against any struggling instinct: the more the victim struggles, the more it damages by lopping off limbs and heads.

Banshee masks drive directly to the nervous system leaving the victim helpless as they are chopped up along with their comrades.

Shrieker ammunition is designed to cause someone to explode from the inside, by their own body. The explosion causes the toxin to spread, causing a chain reaction of exploding bodies.

 Daba wrote:
While Dark Eldar probably take the biscuit, don't forget what it's like to fight regular Eldar:

Their basic weapon, the shuriken catapult, is designed to cut flesh up like confetti. Rather than killing efficiently, it seems to emphasise killing in a graphic and obvious way: no small hole for a wound, or localised section of burnt flesh but slices of meat everywhere.

I have power armor.

The deathspinner style weapons puts a goo on that works against any struggling instinct: the more the victim struggles, the more it damages by lopping off limbs and heads.

I have power armor.

Banshee masks drive directly to the nervous system leaving the victim helpless as they are chopped up along with their comrades.

Space Marines have augmented nervous systems.

Shrieker ammunition is designed to cause someone to explode from the inside, by their own body. The explosion causes the toxin to spread, causing a chain reaction of exploding bodies.

I have power armor.

Note this is based on fluff, not TT rules.

But we're assuming it's as a human / guardsman. Besides, Space Marines "Know no fear", right?

I'm still not convinced at anything comes even close to Daemons.

Shuriken catapults pale into insignificance when compared to hell let loose.

Think you can defend yourself with your trust lasgun or bolter? What about when your shorts pass through the ghostly apparition that's just cleaved through your mates? Or covered them in an acidic bile? Or plucked their soul from their body.

Where the laws of physics need not apply (if your really unlucky on a mass warpstorm/incursion)

When the stench of death and decay and screams f the dying are ever present despite being hidden and alone.

Or when where moments before was your daughter, she grins. With a mouth no human should have, scratches out her eyes and grows a 2ft tongue and horns before trying to eat your soul.

Every other race you shoot, you can drop your target. You have a fighting chance. Against daemons its you against reality as well.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
But we're assuming it's as a human / guardsman. Besides, Space Marines "Know no fear", right?

*Human spits out curse in daemon-cant* *eyes glow and body writhes and levitates* *explodes* daemonettes pop out and tear Eldar to pieces - Space Marines watch from a distance and call in an artillery barrage.

I would say tyrannids