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After reading some of the fluff for the Elysian drop troopers i realised that they always seem to get their asses kicked. by Orks in Raid on Kastorel Novern and by Tau in The Taros Campaign.
Are there any stories where they actually win?

Elysian Drop troopers are purely meant to do 1 thing, Destroy/plant explosives/complete objective. So once they finish there job they have to hold out until a pick up or reinforcements arrive. Both armys from Forgeworld always suffer heavy casualties, but they end up have a minor victory.

Rarely do good stories involve the protagonists rolling face.

Its just not interesting.


So we never hear about when the Elysians dropped down, planted a bomb on a promethium refinery, and blew up half an Ork waaagh while taking only minor casualties.

I would agree with both the previous posters. Elysians are a weird army of IG that act like storm troopers or SM but with flak armour on. This leads to a Spec Ops type operating style where they either go in, everything goes as planned, and they get out having just beat the opposition mercilessly. The other more interesting story being they go in, something goes wrong, and they all die horribly. Now they may accomplish their goals but they still die horribly.

There is also an interesting split from IG with the elysians. The elysians cannot do what the IG are meant for, ie holding the line. Instead they fight hit and run actions. This means in a major war they make poor defensive troops and so they will loose ground to pretty much anyone. This creates a weird place in the fluff for them as they compete directly with the SM for shock trooper positioning but are IG so must take >75% casualties in any major conflict. It also doesn't help that most of their fluff is in FW books which are usually narrow victories that could go either way.

OK, where the Ellysians get narrow victories?

Taros: Failed to hold the water processing plant (OK, it was obviously the result of Cadians fault and overall bad DeStael stupidity), killed to a man, plant destroyed. Tau didn't give a damn about is, as they have their own personal water extractors and dont need tis pant anyway.

Tanakreg: Failed to defeat Word Bearers, killed to a man. They occasionally succeed to plant a demo charges on Gechemachnet, but it was too late.

Anaphelion: Failed to secure JURASIC PARK IN SPACE. Killed to a man.

Castorel-Novem: Failed to destroy ork empire, surprisingly NOT killed to a man. Managed to blow some factories and kill a lot of orks, but this matter a little, considering the speed with which orks reproduce and rebuold their stuff.

Betalys: Well, I don't read the IA, but for what I heared they get krumped really hard and failed to repell Eldar.

 Mezmerro wrote:
OK, where the Ellysians get narrow victories?

Taros: Failed to hold the water processing plant (OK, it was obviously the result of Cadians fault and overall bad DeStael stupidity), killed to a man, plant destroyed. Tau didn't give a damn about is, as they have their own personal water extractors and dont need tis pant anyway.

Tanakreg: Failed to defeat Word Bearers, killed to a man. They occasionally succeed to plant a demo charges on Gechemachnet, but it was too late.

Anaphelion: Failed to secure JURASIC PARK IN SPACE. Killed to a man.

Castorel-Novem: Failed to destroy ork empire, surprisingly NOT killed to a man. Managed to blow some factories and kill a lot of orks, but this matter a little, considering the speed with which orks reproduce and rebuold their stuff.

Betalys: Well, I don't read the IA, but for what I heared they get krumped really hard and failed to repell Eldar.

They appear in the Space Marines battle novel about the Iron Hands.

Sacrificed in a suicidal assault (and I do mean sacrificed) by the Iron Hands. The soldiers are butchered to the man just so the Iron Hands would fight a few less soldiers on the other side of the city. (Seriously, the Iron Hands are portrayed horribly in that book)


The Elysians when reading the fluff sounds like they are the US 101st Airborne (Air Assault now) Division or something but they never get the results the 101 had.

Normandy was complete chaos but the 101 still achieved a lot of their objectives and fethed the Germans up. They suffered a lot of casulties in Market Garden but took all their objectives and were relieved. Defended Bastogne like gods until relieved breaking the German assault.


In fluff it always seems like the Elysians are doing the role of Red Shirt duty to show how dangerous the enemy is

Missed a few losses; in the Kastorel Novem book it has a sidebar of famous Elysian regiments and with the exception of the 1st Elysian every single one had been wiped out in various ways. (losses, not even the satisfaction of Pyrrhic victories either)

I figure its a running joke or Forgeworld is trying to counter the self inflation writing of the codex's.

Vostroyans have the same thing going on. Their regiments tend to be whiped out.

 The Grumpy Eldar wrote:
Vostroyans have the same thing going on. Their regiments tend to be whiped out.

A vostroyan commander who doesn't wipe out his regiment was not zealous enough and will be court-martialed upon return.

Its the Airborne curse, win big or lose big, it may also have something to do with a typical combined guard command structure, not really knowing how to use the elysians.."hmm what?!, no tanks..no artillery..no huge waves of troops...what the hells am I supposed to use these troops for...hmm that objective way over on the other side of the map looks good..you guys have aircraft right...go get em boys!"

Kinda like the Red devils in ww2 in market garden, bravely fighting the odds, but getting beat down, that being said, I love my Elysian wannabes troopers, and all the hardluck stories, maybe for once this is fluff imitating tabletop, since my Elysians always take nasty casualties.

Forgeworld hates the Imperium, lol.

Paratroopers are suppost to cause disruptions and buy time. What typically happens in 40k fluff is the elysians go in like the 101, the regular IG does't capitolize on their attack, and they wiped out because of a lack of reinforcements. Just imagine market garden or Bastogne if the allied forces left the germans go at 101st for another week or so before being relieved. Men are just more expendable in 40k than they were in the ww2 red army.

The best thing to do is to pretend that the events of IA8 never happened. The entire plot is so utterly stupid that it should be treated like the bad fanfiction it is.

 Galdos wrote:
Betalys: Well, I don't read the IA, but for what I heared they get krumped really hard and failed to repell Eldar.

Exact opposite, actually. The Elysians only get a brief mention near the end (they're held in reserve for most of the book) and accomplish their mission without any problems. The main IG forces are Cadians and local Cadian clones.

Also, the IG actually win the war in IA11, though at extreme cost. The Eldar only get a strategic victory because they had a secret objective of retrieving a lost phoenix lord and were willing to sacrifice their entire conventional army as a distraction to achieve that goal. Their success in that goal isn't really an IG failure since there was no way anyone could have known that some obscure mining outpost far from the main battle was the real objective.

 Peregrine wrote:
The best thing to do is to pretend that the events of IA8 never happened. The entire plot is so utterly stupid that it should be treated like the bad fanfiction it is.

 Galdos wrote:
Betalys: Well, I don't read the IA, but for what I heared they get krumped really hard and failed to repell Eldar.

Exact opposite, actually. The Elysians only get a brief mention near the end (they're held in reserve for most of the book) and accomplish their mission without any problems. The main IG forces are Cadians and local Cadian clones.

Also, the IG actually win the war in IA11, though at extreme cost. The Eldar only get a strategic victory because they had a secret objective of retrieving a lost phoenix lord and were willing to sacrifice their entire conventional army as a distraction to achieve that goal. Their success in that goal isn't really an IG failure since there was no way anyone could have known that some obscure mining outpost far from the main battle was the real objective.

Whats so horrible with IA8?

Isn't IA8 the one where Necrons politely ask people to leave their planets before moving onto extermination?

IA8's the one with the ork factory, actually.

Bödeln wrote:
Whats so horrible with IA8?

The real question is what isn't so horrible with IA8. The whole premise of the plot is that the orks have taken over a planet and are building a gargant, and the Imperium wants to stop it and kill the mek and warboss leading the local waaagh. But, rather than just nuke the construction site from orbit and move on they decide to send in the Elysians and Raven Guard to assault the site and try to kill the ork leaders. And, taking this to an extreme, there's a fight where the Raven Guard are trying to destroy some fuel tanks. But, rather than just bomb it from orbit they send in drop pods full of marines to walk over and place demo charges on the tanks. Meanwhile the Imperium attacks with nowhere near enough forces to overwhelm the planet full of orks, and the Elysians are quickly slaughtered without ever coming anywhere near their objective.

Happens with Krieg, to a lesser extent, but so far they've ''won'' once and lost once. At least in the FW books.

If you go with novels, add one loss and one book where the Poseurs Korps of Kreig show up.

 Peregrine wrote:

Bödeln wrote:
Whats so horrible with IA8?

The real question is what isn't so horrible with IA8. The whole premise of the plot is that the orks have taken over a planet and are building a gargant, and the Imperium wants to stop it and kill the mek and warboss leading the local waaagh. But, rather than just nuke the construction site from orbit and move on they decide to send in the Elysians and Raven Guard to assault the site and try to kill the ork leaders. And, taking this to an extreme, there's a fight where the Raven Guard are trying to destroy some fuel tanks. But, rather than just bomb it from orbit they send in drop pods full of marines to walk over and place demo charges on the tanks. Meanwhile the Imperium attacks with nowhere near enough forces to overwhelm the planet full of orks, and the Elysians are quickly slaughtered without ever coming anywhere near their objective.

Aa yes i found that part wierd aswell.

I think that FW IG suffer from the "Not Cadians or Catachans" syndrome. Elysians are described as being able to deal with raiders quite well (according to the IG codex at least), but I don't find any mention of them doing anything else.

As for IA? I think FW doesn't really take IG seriously, or maybe we're so used to reading about a TACTICAL GENIUS beating whole Eldar warhosts and Chaos Marine invasions with a single company of recruits. I'd like to think it's the latter if only because IA shows the giant difference between IG and every other army. Small, elite groups of Guard should be built into a larger army and used that way, not used piecemeal like they have been.

A lot of people say the Elysians appear to be based on modern French paratroopers. So yeah, you've got the cool premise of guys free-falling into battle, but it's not very helpful when they're a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

From the original fluff, they are more marines than paratroopers, trained in ship-to-ship combat first, planetary landing second.
I think the "French" comparison comes chiefly from how FW makes them look in their books, specifically their lasgun design which looks a lot like a FAMAS.

Anyways, according to this article on GW's old Armageddon 3 website, it seems the 22nd Elysian "garnered great fame and respect in the Cathalin Crusade", and its commanding officer - a Colonel Prinz - was promoted to Warmaster for that campaign.

 Sturmtruppen wrote:
A lot of people say the Elysians appear to be based on modern French paratroopers. So yeah, you've got the cool premise of guys free-falling into battle, but it's not very helpful when they're a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

I love how that stereotype has no real reason to exist, yet it just won't die.

 motyak wrote:

 Sturmtruppen wrote:
A lot of people say the Elysians appear to be based on modern French paratroopers. So yeah, you've got the cool premise of guys free-falling into battle, but it's not very helpful when they're a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

I love how that stereotype has no real reason to exist, yet it just won't die.

It won't die because it's too busy running away from whatever wants to kill it!

 motyak wrote:

 Sturmtruppen wrote:
A lot of people say the Elysians appear to be based on modern French paratroopers. So yeah, you've got the cool premise of guys free-falling into battle, but it's not very helpful when they're a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

I love how that stereotype has no real reason to exist, yet it just won't die.

I know, it makes no sense. Me and my friend are always trying to argue with another friend that the stereotype makes no sense.


But thats getting off topic.

Tibbsy wrote:

 motyak wrote:

 Sturmtruppen wrote:
A lot of people say the Elysians appear to be based on modern French paratroopers. So yeah, you've got the cool premise of guys free-falling into battle, but it's not very helpful when they're a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

I love how that stereotype has no real reason to exist, yet it just won't die.

It won't die because it's too busy running away from whatever wants to kill it!

Except that, in the totality of its history, you won't find a more successful military than France, with the possible exception of the British.

 Psienesis wrote:

Tibbsy wrote:

 motyak wrote:

 Sturmtruppen wrote:
A lot of people say the Elysians appear to be based on modern French paratroopers. So yeah, you've got the cool premise of guys free-falling into battle, but it's not very helpful when they're a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

I love how that stereotype has no real reason to exist, yet it just won't die.

It won't die because it's too busy running away from whatever wants to kill it!

Except that, in the totality of its history, you won't find a more successful military than France, with the possible exception of the British.

Indeed. And they are once again "America's oldest ally"

The Revolution certainly would have had a much different ending had the French not bailed us out.

cheese eating surrender monkeys!! lol.

 Psienesis wrote:

Tibbsy wrote:

 motyak wrote:

 Sturmtruppen wrote:
A lot of people say the Elysians appear to be based on modern French paratroopers. So yeah, you've got the cool premise of guys free-falling into battle, but it's not very helpful when they're a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

I love how that stereotype has no real reason to exist, yet it just won't die.

It won't die because it's too busy running away from whatever wants to kill it!

Except that, in the totality of its history, you won't find a more successful military than France, with the possible exception of the British.

Yeah, you're either exaggerating, or you're not much of a military history buff.

I mean, I agree the French get a bad name, but let's not get carried away.