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I know the Tyranids go out of their way to avoid Necron worlds, so this made me wonder which other factions try to avoid conflict with each other, or rarely fight for other reasons.

Do the Eldar and Dark Eldar rarely clash due to kinship? Do Chaos and Tyranids ever fight? I can't see what either would gain from that. Chaos and Orks? How often do Humans and Eldar clash in reality?

Tau-Eldar conflicts are rare.

Did Eldar create tau without souls to fight Necrons or Slaanesh?

Both, either or neither. The theory that the Eldar (specifically Harlequins) created the Tau isn't well supported by the newer fluff, but is quite well supported in the older fluff and surrounding ''Semi-Cannon'' stuff such as Fire Warrior game and Xenology. As for who it's meant to be against? I couldn't tell you, however the Harlequins have a bias against Chaos.

Tau rarely fight Chaos, because Chaos is generally on the other side of the galaxy.

Tau rarely fight Guard, because there's no Crusade or Expansion going on.

Tau rarely fight Dark Eldar, because Dark Eldar don't fight, they just appear, steal stuff, and vanish again.

Tau rarely fight Eldar, because Eldar rarely do anything at all. If you see an Eldar, it's because they have Plans For You, and you should give up and go along with it - whatever you do, if it's not what they want, you'll be stopped.

Nids don't fight anyone. They love everyone equally and just want to absorb their biomass to make everyone understand the truth. The great hive mind knows all

Eldar and Dark Eldar have agreed Eldar lives are too precious to waste fighting each other.

Tau only fight who they have to, they don't go to war with another faction because they're there.

Orks will do no such thing and fight anyone because they're there.

Mechanicus Generally avoids whoever they can, as the lives of those pledged to the omnissiah must seek knowledge, not war. (Although some Magi believe there is much to be learned in war)

I've seen fluff examples of Chaos Daemons vs Tyranids, Chaos Space Marines vs Tyranids, Tau vs Dark Elves (Cultural exchange, lol), Tau vs Necrons, Tau vs Guard (why was this brought up? Lots of examples of Tau vs Guard today, crusade or not. It's stated several places that the Imperium breaks the peace treaties tons of times and Tau seem to be having a new sphere expansion every edition), Eldar vs Dark Eldar (one example being Eldar trying to stop a Dark Eldar raid cause it'll lead to the Imperium hunting down more Eldar), etc.

I don't think there's EVER been an official fluff example of Tau vs Craftworld Eldar, though. I could be wrong but I don't recall ever seeing any mentioned anywhere in any codex, novel, message board, or wiki.

Of course, many of the newer mini-factions (Well, I call them mini factions due to their lack of models etc) like the Harlequins and Mechanicum have yet to have fluff examples of fighting various races but they're new so lack of specific fluff examples should probably not be evidence for anything for them.

There is an example where Tau fight Eldars on an exodite world, and a craftworld come to help. Eventually, the Tau win if I remember correctly.

Eldar-Dark Eldar fights happen, but are pretty rare, and never really go beyond small raids. Chaos and Tyranids have fought (both deamonic and mortal forces) and Chaos and Orks fight often due to the fact Orks are everywhere and fight everything. Humans and Eldar fight each other quite frequently.


Tau have never fought Chaos in canon fluff (disregarding the video games) afaik.
I don't recall Tau fighting Necrons or Eldar either, altough they did have a 'cultural exchance' with the Dark Eldar .
I also don't know if Chaos and Necrons have ever fought.

Furyou Miko wrote:Tau rarely fight Chaos, because Chaos is generally on the other side of the galaxy.

True, very few known incidents. I recall a particular WD that included Kroot eating defeated Emperor's Children and things going seriously wrong. The report indicated that the Tau beleived they had actually killed 'Slaanesh', the leader of these CSM weirdos.

A BL book based on a marsh/jungle world had an Ethereal seriously freaking out when confronted with daemonic possession.

Tau rarely fight Guard, because there's no Crusade or Expansion going on.

They're consistently expanding into Imperial territory. And there is plenty of evidence of an escalation in conflict in preparation for a massive crusade.

Tau rarely fight Dark Eldar, because Dark Eldar don't fight, they just appear, steal stuff, and vanish again.

Cultural Exchange.

Tau rarely fight Eldar, because Eldar rarely do anything at all. If you see an Eldar, it's because they have Plans For You, and you should give up and go along with it - whatever you do, if it's not what they want, you'll be stopped.

Corsairs count, I guess. Plus the Craftworld Eldar pretty much (or literally did) laugh in the Water Castes face when offered to join. Iyaden was one of the first approached, as I recall.

Iron_Captain wrote:Tau have never fought Chaos in canon fluff (disregarding the video games) afaik.

See above

I don't recall Tau fighting Necrons

Ultramarines and Tau buddied up on a waking Tomb World.

I would think that Dark Eldar and Tyranids would be among the rarest. They have such different aims that it's hard to imagine anything other than a diversionary attack.

By the standards of Orks vs Imperial Guard vs Tyranids being the "normal" battle, everything rarely fights everything else.

 Polonius wrote:
I would think that Dark Eldar and Tyranids would be among the rarest. They have such different aims that it's hard to imagine anything other than a diversionary attack.

There are several mentions of Tyranid creatures being hunted down and captured for use in the Wych Fighting Pits. I guess it would be entertaining to see just how many human slaves one genestealer could take on it's own.

And the chaos of a Tyranid Invasion would probably open up a lot of targets the DE raiders would have previously considered impregnable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:
By the standards of Orks vs Imperial Guard vs Tyranids being the "normal" battle, everything rarely fights everything else.

I would say Imperial Guard vs Rebels (chaotic or otherwise) is on a similar scale.

 Humble Guardsman wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
I would think that Dark Eldar and Tyranids would be among the rarest. They have such different aims that it's hard to imagine anything other than a diversionary attack.

There are several mentions of Tyranid creatures being hunted down and captured for use in the Wych Fighting Pits. I guess it would be entertaining to see just how many human slaves one genestealer could take on it's own.

And the chaos of a Tyranid Invasion would probably open up a lot of targets the DE raiders would have previously considered impregnable.

Sure, but during an invasion, the DE wouldn't exactly be fighting the nids, would they? Mostly raiding the defenders and avoiding the actual tyranids.

Slave Pit Fighters are probably the only thing the nids have that the DE value, aside from maybe some of the organic toxins. Either way, virtually every other race, aside from the Necrons I suppose, have more to offer a raiding/pirate culture. And since the DE don't exactly dig into planets, they won't be attacked much by Nids.

So then, the main battles in the galaxy are;

The Imperium, Orks and Tyranids fighting each other over territory
Chaos fighting the Imperium and/or Eldar over philosophy

And everything else is just the occasional skirmish or rare large-scale battle?

Hierophant wrote:
So then, the main battles in the galaxy are;

The Imperium, Orks and Tyranids fighting each other over territory
Chaos fighting the Imperium and/or Eldar over philosophy

And everything else is just the occasional skirmish or rare large-scale battle?

Marines, Eldar, and Tau are incredibly rare-- Marines the most of. There's more battles involving the Imperial Guard and Orks every day than the Marines participate in every century. Necrons... I'm not sure how much more common they are than before, but they're also much rarer.

Pick any average battle, and those three groups are massively unlikely to be involved.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Eldar-Dark Eldar fights happen, but are pretty rare, and never really go beyond small raids. Chaos and Tyranids have fought (both deamonic and mortal forces) and Chaos and Orks fight often due to the fact Orks are everywhere and fight everything. Humans and Eldar fight each other quite frequently.


Tau have never fought Chaos in canon fluff (disregarding the video games) afaik.
I don't recall Tau fighting Necrons or Eldar either, altough they did have a 'cultural exchance' with the Dark Eldar .
I also don't know if Chaos and Necrons have ever fought.

Farsight's fluff is that he broke from the etherals while fighting a demonic incursion. I think a bloodthirster ended up eating the ethereals he was supposed to be protecting anyway though.

 Melissia wrote:
Marines, Eldar, and Tau are incredibly rare-- Marines the most of. There's more battles involving the Imperial Guard and Orks every day than the Marines participate in every century. Necrons... I'm not sure how much more common they are than before, but they're also much rarer.

Pick any average battle, and those three groups are massively unlikely to be involved.

I understand that, but I just included the Eldar vs Chaos as a regular battle as the Eldar seemingly exist only to fight Chaos in a lot of instances, and as a martial culture, I imagine a large proportion of their race does nothing but that.

Hierophant wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Marines, Eldar, and Tau are incredibly rare-- Marines the most of. There's more battles involving the Imperial Guard and Orks every day than the Marines participate in every century. Necrons... I'm not sure how much more common they are than before, but they're also much rarer.

Pick any average battle, and those three groups are massively unlikely to be involved.

I understand that, but I just included the Eldar vs Chaos as a regular battle as the Eldar seemingly exist only to fight Chaos in a lot of instances, and as a martial culture, I imagine a large proportion of their race does nothing but that.

Ulthwe seems like one of those Craftworlds that spend endless amounts of time fighting Chaos.

Ulthwe could spend every moment of existence fighting chaos and it would be an unoticeable blip

The vast majority of fighting is between guardsmen and rebels/heretics/orks

Even the nids are still so new that they are fought rarely compared to those above, whatever the nids total threat is it hasn't gotten close to fully emerging yet

GAdvance wrote:

The vast majority of fighting is between guardsmen and rebels/heretics/orks

The OP question is not "Which factions are the most the most common opponents" but "Which factions rarely fight each other?"

To say Ulthwe 'rarely' fights Chaos is incorrect. You'd probably be right in saying that, compared to the sector-spanning bloodbath's between the IG and Chaos, the interventions of Ulthwe are miniscule (regardless of their tactical/strategic significance). But for the purposes of this thread, we're looking to identify the factions that rarely fight, or even actively avoid, each other.



So far we have (in rough order of rarity):

[1] Tyranids vs Necrons
-Lack of Biomass obvious reason
-Fluff goes so far as to say hive fleets actively divert away from Tomb Worlds
-Despite that you have clear fluff incidents of conflict between the two (BA team-up time being the most notorious).

[2] Necrons vs Dark Eldar
-Little to no opportunity for slaves
-Might be different with new fluff looking at subjugation of lesser races not extermination by some dynasties.

[3] Tyranids vs Dark Eldar
-Again little opportunity for slaves
-Fluff does mention Tyranid beasts are prized captures for the gladitorial pits
-Another justification being Tyranid Hive Fleets swarm such a massive area of space DE raiding parties may have little choice but to punch through to the safety of the webway

[4] Orks vs Dark Eldar
-I know it happens, but I'm not aware of any specific event mentioned. Or even if the average ork slave is valuable next to the average human slave.

[5] Eldar vs Dark Eldar
-As far as I know, this is always on the Eldar's terms in an attempt to stop a DE raid or other action with dire consequences.
-I don't know of any instances of DE actively raiding Eldar Craftworlds (or even Exodites), though there was that Kabal that dicked around with a specific Craftworld for their entertainment.

Overall, it seems the faction that has the smallest conflict with others is the Dark Eldar. This is almost certainly because they get to pick and choose their fights with impunity and, unlike the Eldar, they fight for things of material interest to them instead of trying to twist fate.

The big Valedor campaign was an entire campaign of Eldar Dark Eldar Harlequin team-up against Tyrannids for um... reasons.

(to stop two fleets from merging and protect exodite worlds, IIRC. I forget what rewards/incentives were given to the Dark Eldar to get them to come along)

Dark Eldar of some types do seek out fights with the Eldar, Incubi need to kill an aspect warrior as part of training but i'm not sure on how common Incubi are or how they go about fighting them

 Humble Guardsman wrote:

[4] Orks vs Dark Eldar
-I know it happens, but I'm not aware of any specific event mentioned. Or even if the average ork slave is valuable next to the average human slave.

The 5th DE codex goes into a lot of detail about the Panacea Wars, which was basically a three way conflict involving an STC between the DE, Orks, and Imperium (orchestrated by the DE).

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Panacea_Wars

 Humble Guardsman wrote:
The OP question is not "Which factions are the most the most common opponents" but "Which factions rarely fight each other?"

And I answered.

Marines, Eldar, and Tau rarely fight anyone-- by the standards of the setting.

 Melissia wrote:

Marines, Eldar, and Tau rarely fight anyone-- by the standards of the setting.

Sure they do, the only difference is scale of the conflict.

 Melissia wrote:

 Humble Guardsman wrote:
The OP question is not "Which factions are the most the most common opponents" but "Which factions rarely fight each other?"

And I answered.

Marines, Eldar, and Tau rarely fight anyone-- by the standards of the setting.

They are constantly fighting. Marines spend 90% of their lives fighting. Less fighters =/= less occasions of conflict, simply a decrease in scale. OP asked which factions [i]rarely[i/] fight, not which factions' fights make minimal impact on the galactic scale. In Warhammer 40k, Space Marines and Eldar are constantly fighting, therefore, they count in this discussion (though Eldar are mostly scheming, and, if they get in a fight, it's just so that they can bring a really long-sighted scheme to fruition). Tau, less so.

Not really.

Space Marines will often not fight Imperial Guard. Even if a planet is in rebellion and its PDF/Guard along with it, it's rare for SM to get involved. The Guard is more than capable of handling it 99.99% of the time.

Space Marines will often not fight the Sisters of Battle. It's not *that* common that a Chapter goes rogue/heretical and tries to hold its homeworld, allowing for a Dominica-pattern pod assault to smash into the Fortress-Monastery and vaporize the Chapter Master with close-range multi-melta fire.

 dusara217 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Humble Guardsman wrote:
The OP question is not "Which factions are the most the most common opponents" but "Which factions rarely fight each other?"

And I answered.

Marines, Eldar, and Tau rarely fight anyone-- by the standards of the setting.

They are constantly fighting. Marines spend 90% of their lives fighting.

Irrelevant. They can fight the entirety of their existence, but as far as the sheer numbers of battles go, they're a rarity that is a non-issue in almost all battles.