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This is the battle which they did that apocalypse book about involving the tau.

At the end of the apocalypse book they mention that the Imperials are preparing some "inevitable counter attack" but I was surprised that in the new Astra Militarum codex they once again move the timeline further on and give details about the scale of this counter attack.

Along with titans, fleets and a few space marine chapters it says that this force consists of 1000 regiments of Imperial guard. Now, to put that into perspective, the Damocles Gulf Crusade where they reach as far as Dalyth had only 19 regiments of guardsmen.

So, to me, that implies that this new crusade is aimed at not only driving the Third Sphere Expansion and Shadowsun back but the complete destruction of the Tau Empire. Just 19 regiments was able to push as far as the first sphere world of Dalyth. The descriptions given in the Farsight Enclave book about the campaign imply that it was taking most of the resources of the entire empire to hold back the Imperial advance. Even if you argue the Empire is a lot stronger than it was then, I doubt it could have changed that much in 250 years.

Its especially interesting that in the Warzone book Shadowsun is actually badly defeated by the Imperials who only had two regiments of guardsmen with them. So, things are looking pretty dire for the 3rd Sphere and the Tau Empire at the minute. This is clearly a "you woke the dragon" moment. I certainly don't think they would stand a chance at holding Agrellan after the problems Shadowsun has already encountered against relatively paltry Imperial forces.

Do you think this is something GW might expand on later in the lore? Or is this just a "feel good moment" for the guard? Personally I felt the Tau victory on Agrellan was such a "feel good moment" but to my surprise they went on to continue the story they began in the tau codex and now seem to be further adding to it in the new guard codex. I'd definitely be interested in them writing about that. I do like these efforts to add more of a timeline and inter related events to the story.

Also, 1000 regiments and only 19 in the old crusade? Do you think this is just bad writing? I am pretty sure even Armageddon and Cadia didn't have too many more regiments in their armies.

That actually speaks volumes about the sheer badassery of the Tau.

That's almost 5 times the amount of regiments seeing action on Armageddon (ork suck-streak strikes again). And it's close to the amount of regiments fighting at Cadia.

My guess is that a Tyranid fleet will arrive, force a temporary cease-fire, and the Tau will survive another day.

But 1000 regiments really isn't surprising. You'd need that many to take on any campaign where you'll be fighting on multiple planets.

 Grey Templar wrote:
My guess is that a Tyranid fleet will arrive, force a temporary cease-fire, and the Tau will survive another day.

But 1000 regiments really isn't surprising. You'd need that many to take on any campaign where you'll be fighting on multiple planets.

Actually this is one complete force intended purely to retake Agrellan as its first objective. A single fist. They already have a series of armies and reinforcements in the region fighting on separate planets. Including several companies of raven guard, a company of white scars, regiments of catachan and cadian fighters; plus a full house of Imperial knights. At least.

1000 regiments? I'm not sure the one writing that fluff is aware of the scale, unless the Imperium really DOES want to wipe the Tau off the map of the galaxy. Bigger question is, if the fluff writer was aware of the scale of those numbers (which again, s/he might not have been), then with that many regiments already at Cadia and elsewhere in these end times, where and how did the Imperium get able to muster up a force like that for the Tau? :O

Well, it's nice to see a small part of the timeline advancing some where, at least.

Actually they're just now getting a sense of scale.

1000 is like the bare minimum.

TiamatRoar wrote:
1000 regiments? I'm not sure the one writing that fluff is aware of the scale, unless the Imperium really DOES want to wipe the Tau off the map of the galaxy. Bigger question is, if the fluff writer was aware of the scale of those numbers (which again, s/he might not have been), then with that many regiments already at Cadia and elsewhere in these end times, where and how did the Imperium get able to muster up a force like that for the Tau? :O

Well, it's nice to see a small part of the timeline advancing some where, at least.

In 5th ed Codex Imperial Guard, the IG had Billions of regiments.
1000 of them isn't hard to muster.


They said: get off the Emperors lawn. Someone didn't listen....

1000 regiments is only about 8,000,000 men using Creed's Cadian regiment of 8,000 as a standard. On a galactic scale that is tiny when hive worlds have populations in the literal hundreds of billions.

That said however, GW has frozen the timeline and shirks back from any real advancement so we are unlikely to ever see anything come of this supposed counterattack, especially when one considers the fact of the 13th Black Crusade being underway. Remember that for all their local strength, the Tau are tiny on the grand scale and the rest of the Imperium likely either does not know or care about the Tau's advances or would protest diversion of resources away from other immediate threats. Taking the time to attack the Tau for the rest of the Imperium is like re-arranging the furniture while the house is burning down (i.e. a low priority).

Again given how GW is not going to really wipe out any existing Codex faction, I suspect that even if they were to somehow develop this counterattack further, it would be to the advantage of the Tau. Likely some form of extenuating circumstances will drastically diminish the threat, such as politics leading to a downscaling of the counterattack, other threats drawing off forces, or the Tau managing to destroy a lot more of these forces while they are helpless in their transports. In other words, GW will not let the Imperium steamroller the Tau, but allow enough to get through to preserve the whole "eternity of war" thing.

Oh, hunh. Guess I got my sense of scale inverted because of my flawed assumption that the original was the correct one. Interesting.

At any rate, I don't think anyone is expecting the Tau to actually die. It's just nice to see something on-going as opposed to something like the Eldar codex which introduced nothing.

GW's older numbers were always way too low. Unless regiments with many millions of soldiers were the norm.

I think they might finally be coming to the realization that you'd need thousands of times more troops to take a single planet than they've had take over dozens.


If I were writing the fluff, the original Daemocles Gulf Crusade would have been over a hundred million troops plus the equivalent of a full Marine chapter. This new fluff would be several billion strong and 6 full chapters of marines along with 2 entire Titan legions.

I definatly think this might mark the start of the IoM taking the Tau seriously. the IoM has always seen the Tau, so far at least, as a "regional nusience" no differnt from the hundreds of "name drop races" mentioned in various codexes as occupying the various SM chapters etc.

Now I think they're clueing in that the Tau while not a galatic level threat like most of their other foes, are something that needs to be addressed.

weather or not the IoM will have the power to destroy the Tau is one thing, but I suspect they're at the least going to make a show of force nesscarily to shock the Tau into realizing the scale of the IoM and cow them into behaving

Well, technically, they've always downplayed the number of actual regiments when you consider the size of the populations of various worlds. Armageddon was said to only have 1/5 of those total numbers being assembled. Battles like this and Cadia are portrayed in the lore as the largest conflicts in the galaxy so anything in that league is meant to be taken seriously.

For example, in the apocalypse book warzone damocles, theres only two regiments, one catachan and one cadian, plus two companies of space marines and a few knights involved defending a major hive world of 16 billion people. Obviously they have PDF but these are largely paperweight units.


Also, if they did go with this storyline, bearing mind that the Tau just suffered a major defeat at Voltaris, its much more likely that it would be the tau as protagonists and that they would actually win. Although they could act like they did with the Tyranid invasion of Octarius where everything on Agrellan is left "in the balance" as the two huge armies battle it out. Although ideally I would prefer to see a black library book about Shadowsun bouncing back from her defeat to face down this Imperial juggernaught.

Its interesting what would happen if the Imperials lost and didn't manage to push them back over the Damocles gulf. Taking Agrellan as a gateway world means that they could strike across the Eastern Fringe.

BrianDavion wrote:
I definatly think this might mark the start of the IoM taking the Tau seriously. the IoM has always seen the Tau, so far at least, as a "regional nusience" no differnt from the hundreds of "name drop races" mentioned in various codexes as occupying the various SM chapters etc.

Now I think they're clueing in that the Tau while not a galatic level threat like most of their other foes, are something that needs to be addressed.

weather or not the IoM will have the power to destroy the Tau is one thing, but I suspect they're at the least going to make a show of force nesscarily to shock the Tau into realizing the scale of the IoM and cow them into behaving

It's not a question of the IoM having the power to destroy the Tau, as it certainly does, it's mustering that kind of power when they have so much going on, that's the issue.

There are a lot worse things in the Eastern Fringe, than the Tau, that's for sure.

Actually one outcome (assuming GW ever chooses to flesh it out further) that hasn't really been raised is some mass defection by the Imperial Guard regiments.

The Tau militarily are a minor power in the grand scheme though a local regional power, and one which arms its troops with superior technology compared to the bulk of Imperial Guard regiments. However the true threat of the Tau to the Imperium is not so much military force but the ideological threat. The Tau are not one of those small alien empires that does overtly nasty things to the human populations it conquers. It promises a more materially prosperous life to all those that submit, even if this is a paradigm in which the Tau are first among equals in what is an unequal arrangement. For the humans of the Imperium which have known only brutal discipline and oppression or material starvation and a subsistence life, this arrangement would exert appeal. This is cited as one of the reasons that Imperial worlds started trading with the Tau, and this is further backed up with the example of Taros (from the Imperial Armour books) where the rulers of the planet traded mineral wealth in return for little consumer goods and luxuries that made life on their scorching desert world a little more bearable.

We know Imperial regiments defected after the first Damocles Crusade. For all the attempts at indoctrination and the threat of the Commissars, Imperial Guard are still normal average humans identifiable to the average reader/player, and humans will be humans, such as looking out for their own welfare. If the Imperium's propaganda were totally effective, there would never be rebellions or defections, but clearly there have been. Also despite the constant drumbeat of xenophobia and hate that the Imperium promotes, we see also that the ruling classes frequently have under the table arrangements with alien powers or hire alien mercenaries or simply dabble and collect alien goods and luxuries. The true threat of the Tau to the Imperium is the lure of worlds willingly choosing to join the Tau, not in the Tau's threat of military conquest.

It depends.

The thing about the tau is that they are completely united as a race (farsight enclave excepting) and aren't fragmented like the Imperium. Most of the other powers are in far smaller empires of at most a few systems. Chaos warbands, necrons overlords and Ork Empires being the most common. Many of these will often fight eachother just as much as the Imperium. Even the eldar and dark eldar are largely broken down into warring and disparate cabals or craftworlds who all act independent of eachother. The only two partial exceptions to this are the Imperium and the Tyranids. Even then, most tyranid hive fleets, though massive in scale, ultimately have acted independently with their own local objectives and were fairly limited in scope; possible exception of leviathan which WAS a galactic invasion. The Imperium on the other hand is, owing to problems in communication and travel; is also in practice broken down into smaller units and sub sectors. Each of these is usually the subject of its own grand struggle which the Imperial center is feeding what mobile resources it has into the fight; so in effect the Imperium is hugely limited to what it can do. Its essentially a series of planetary governments with only a feudal sense of loyalty to the Imperium and end up merely playing host to whichever regiments or chapters are able to reach the warzone.

Basically, this makes the tau a much larger threat than they appear on paper if you compare the number of ork worlds to the number of tau worlds. They are one single, powerful empire, in one place and with a single objective. Frankly, only in certain instances like Hive Fleet Leviathan, the 13th Black Crusade or Armageddon to the other races ever get this kind of pooling of resources and territory acting towards one goal. Most of the galaxy is just tin pot empires and fiefdoms that the tau would dwarf many times over; even in the Imperium. How often does it happen in the lore where whole sectors "go missing" and are left unprotected? So the tau are huge threat to the eastern fringe and certainly more powerful than the local imperial resistance in the eastern fringe (Ultramar excepting) and it says a lot that the Imperium is funneling such a huge external army of reinforcements to the region.

I also think this is a minor retcon to put the 3rd Sphere Expansion and in particular Agrellan as being in the same category of threat to the Imperium as the 13th crusade, Leviathan and Armageddon; though obviously it would only rank below the first two.

It shows that the Imperium is now getting slightly cheesed off with the Tau.
Such a force would be enough to utterly crush the Tau Empire and its memory into space-dust.
Of course that is not going to happen though. GW will never advance the plot that far. And if they actually decide to surprise people and do it; the Tau will survive because of some deus (or maybe xenos) ex machina.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
It depends.

The thing about the tau is that they are completely united as a race (farsight enclave excepting) and aren't fragmented like the Imperium. Most of the other powers are in far smaller empires of at most a few systems. Chaos warbands, necrons overlords and Ork Empires being the most common. Many of these will often fight eachother just as much as the Imperium. Even the eldar and dark eldar are largely broken down into warring and disparate cabals or craftworlds who all act independent of eachother. The only two partial exceptions to this are the Imperium and the Tyranids. Even then, most tyranid hive fleets, though massive in scale, ultimately have acted independently with their own local objectives and were fairly limited in scope; possible exception of leviathan which WAS a galactic invasion. The Imperium on the other hand is, owing to problems in communication and travel; is also in practice broken down into smaller units and sub sectors. Each of these is usually the subject of its own grand struggle which the Imperial center is feeding what mobile resources it has into the fight; so in effect the Imperium is hugely limited to what it can do. Its essentially a series of planetary governments with only a feudal sense of loyalty to the Imperium and end up merely playing host to whichever regiments or chapters are able to reach the warzone.

Basically, this makes the tau a much larger threat than they appear on paper if you compare the number of ork worlds to the number of tau worlds. They are one single, powerful empire, in one place and with a single objective. Frankly, only in certain instances like Hive Fleet Leviathan, the 13th Black Crusade or Armageddon to the other races ever get this kind of pooling of resources and territory acting towards one goal. Most of the galaxy is just tin pot empires and fiefdoms that the tau would dwarf many times over; even in the Imperium. How often does it happen in the lore where whole sectors "go missing" and are left unprotected? So the tau are huge threat to the eastern fringe and certainly more powerful than the local imperial resistance in the eastern fringe (Ultramar excepting) and it says a lot that the Imperium is funneling such a huge external army of reinforcements to the region.

I also think this is a minor retcon to put the 3rd Sphere Expansion and in particular Agrellan as being in the same category of threat to the Imperium as the 13th crusade, Leviathan and Armageddon; though obviously it would only rank below the first two.

There is one problem with this though.
The Imperium is so decentralised because it is so large, it spans almost the entire Milky Way. Trying to rule it all centralised from Terra would be impossible. Think of at the mess the Administratum, but 100% worse.
The Tau can be so unified because they are so small. But as they grow larger, this will no longer be possible as they will grow too large and diverse to be ruled centrally. They will either have to decentralise, with the Septs becoming more autonomous; or they will go down in rebellion and secession wars. We already see this process beginning with the Farsight Enclaves.

Well, part of the reason for the mess is that the Emperor died and the adeptus mechanicus lost a lot of its infrastructure and technology. One of the main points of 40k s that the Imperium has been dying and in a state of terminal decay for 10,000 years. The tau simply aren't, as their technology is constantly advancing and they don't rely on one god-like guiding figure. Farisght was a great man, but he was replaced by Shadowsun pretty easily and Aun Va easily filled the shoes of the previous ethereal.

Also, the Imperium is in a constant state of war and is assailed on multiple fronts. This really limits what its armies can do. Its a bit like the Roman Empire. Even though it had far more and better soldiers than any tribe of barbarians; they couldn't be everywhere at once in such a vast territory. It was always possible for one tribe or another to enter and take a single province for its own. The Vandals are a good example. Just one tribe, but they were able to move through the empire and take north africa with relative impunity.

I prefer the Krieg numbers for regiments, with a regiment being 100,000 to 400,000 men. So 1,000 regiments is 100-400 million soldiers. Now that sounds like the Imperial Guard I know.

Like that's the sort of formation size I'd expect to see attacking a sector. It would take tens of millions of soldiers to overwhelm a properly populated planet. 400 million could attack a dozen star systems at a time and grind their way through the sector.

8m men isn't a lot for the Imperium, they have dedicated 2m men to one specific warzone/battle on one planet before without much hassle.

 Col. Tartleton wrote:
I prefer the Krieg numbers for regiments, with a regiment being 100,000 to 400,000 men. So 1,000 regiments is 100-400 million soldiers. Now that sounds like the Imperial Guard I know.

Like that's the sort of formation size I'd expect to see attacking a sector. It would take tens of millions of soldiers to overwhelm a properly populated planet. 400 million could attack a dozen star systems at a time and grind their way through the sector.

IMO that sort of regiment size does make a lot more sense for the setting.

My general impression is that:

Armies from hive worlds or big industry worlds have huge regiments so 100,000-1,000,000 men such as

- Steel Legion
-Death Korps
-Valhalla

I'd say that professional or military regiments from fortress worlds are meant to be better quality and so have far less soldiers. Probably around 10,000.

-Cadia
-Mordian
- Vostroyan

Whilst you then have the ultra elite warriors which usually operate in small groups and are from planets with very low populations. Likely only a thousand at full strength.

-Tallarn
-Gaunts Ghosts (gaunt states that he knows the names of all of his men and even know a little bit about them)
- Catachan
- Elysium

Every number value for troops in the Imperium should just be multiplied by ten across the board; they would make more sense that way.

Chapter is currently 1000 marines- make that 10,000, with a company having a thousand men. Average legion is 100,000? Make it a million.

There is no "average" regiment size, but if we use Cadia's 8000 figure, 80,000 makes a lot more sense.

etc.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Also, if they did go with this storyline, bearing mind that the Tau just suffered a major defeat at Voltaris, its much more likely that it would be the tau as protagonists and that they would actually win.

Voltaris was just a minor defeat but Aun'va blew it out of proportions to put some burn on Shadowtsun.

Yeah 867 men seemed like...even the stuff Shadowsun killed on her own amounted to more than that.

TiamatRoar wrote:
1000 regiments? I'm not sure the one writing that fluff is aware of the scale, unless the Imperium really DOES want to wipe the Tau off the map of the galaxy. Bigger question is, if the fluff writer was aware of the scale of those numbers (which again, s/he might not have been), then with that many regiments already at Cadia and elsewhere in these end times, where and how did the Imperium get able to muster up a force like that for the Tau? :O

Well, it's nice to see a small part of the timeline advancing some where, at least.

The Imperium has millions of Regiments of IG. Sending 1000 of them to deal with the Tau is small-time.

And, yes, the Imperium fully intends on eradicating the Tau. Eventually. They don't want to share the galaxy with Xenos of any kind.

I am very happy GW is finally starting to give troop numbers that are in the general vincinity of what would be needed to accomplish anything. I kind of think they are setting up a new campaign and might keep moving this forward. Though I am sure the Tau will not get killed off and some intervention will stop the IoM from going all the way, probably a Tyranid hive fleet.

The IG lost about 8-14 million guardsmen on Vraks alone, if 1000 regiments really = 8 million guardsmen, its not much to write home about

That number is a low ball estimate. Regiments can be 100,000 to 200,000 men as well. If we take a middle number of the extremes 1,000 vs 250,000 men then we get 125,000 men. This would put the number at 125 million guard.

Though even 8 million with vehicle support is a huge improvement over 15 regiments to engage over a planet or 100 astartes...

Iracundus wrote:
Again given how GW is not going to really wipe out any existing Codex faction, I suspect that even if they were to somehow develop this counterattack further, it would be to the advantage of the Tau. Likely some form of extenuating circumstances will drastically diminish the threat, such as politics leading to a downscaling of the counterattack, other threats drawing off forces, or the Tau managing to destroy a lot more of these forces while they are helpless in their transports. In other words, GW will not let the Imperium steamroller the Tau, but allow enough to get through to preserve the whole "eternity of war" thing.

Well, the next few entries on the timeline probably go a long way to blunting that massive Imperial force- Night of a Thousand rebellions and shortly after the Black Crusade are probably going to draw off much of that force.

Trouble is that its a lot easier to judge the scale of the tau forces. Unlike Imperial "regiments", we know that there are only 60 tau in a cadre and well theres actually quite a detailed breakdown of the army at Mugulath.

http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-mugulath-bay-expeditionary-force-codex-tau-empire-vs-korhal-scii-hots.269866/

This force is judged sufficient to take an Imperial hive world with tough defences and two companies of space marines n imperial knights.

You could say the third sphere includes a larger number of smaller armies but its hard to tell.

Goes without saying that most of that army was killed at Voltaris. I think I count around 15 cadres if 867 of them died and there are 60 soldiers in a cadre. So over half.

Also, you can actually see the breakdown of Shadowsuns cadre in the diagram for a reference and a regular one in the warzone damocles apocalypse formation.


Don't see how even at full strength that could fight 1000 regiments, even at a more conservative number for a regiment like 8000.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Actually they're just now getting a sense of scale.

1000 is like the bare minimum.

Indeed. One thousand regiuments was a drop in the bucket to the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, with over a billion guardsmen involved.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Sabbat_Worlds_Crusade#Forces_Involved

(also noted in the Forgeworld Sabbat Crusade Campaign book, which is official canon, and epic cool).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Every number value for troops in the Imperium should just be multiplied by ten across the board; they would make more sense that way.

Chapter is currently 1000 marines- make that 10,000, with a company having a thousand men. Average legion is 100,000? Make it a million.

There is no "average" regiment size, but if we use Cadia's 8000 figure, 80,000 makes a lot more sense.

etc.

I've always liked that mechanic.