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Melissia wrote:

 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.

There will always be a Space Marine fighting something in the galaxy. Therefore, it is not a rarity for Space Marines to fight.

Psienesis wrote: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.

I said that Space Marines are constantly fighting. I didn't say that they're constantly fighting every faction in the lore, simply that they're always fighting someone.

Are you the OP? No? Two of those sentences provide answers to the OP. The Imperium isn't exactly "allied" in the normal sense of the word, despite what the Allies Matrix claims. "Divided We Stand" is a common trope in the Imperium, with every group keeping a suspicious eye on every other group.

 dusara217 wrote:
There will always be a Space Marine fighting something in the galaxy. Therefore, it is not a rarity for Space Marines to fight.

Irrelevant.

There's multiple billions, indeed, probably even trillions, of guardsmen fighting at any given moment. Same with Orks and rebels/heretics, too. Orks, for example, are the single most common race in the galaxy... and they're ALWAYS fighting something-- more than even Space Marines. There's many thousands of times more anything else fighting than marines. Marines fighting in any particular battle is a strikingly notable event because of its rarity-- if you see Astartes joining a battle, you know gak's going to get real or already has gotten real.

Based on my last reading of the fluff:
-nids v crons is rare because for the nids its a loosing proposition so they avoid tomb worlds.
-chaos actively avoids nids for very much the same reason the nids avoid the crons, loss of resources with 0 gain (Individual creatures in the swarm have no souls for chaos to use)

AtraUnam wrote:Based on my last reading of the fluff:
-nids v crons is rare because for the nids its a loosing proposition so they avoid tomb worlds.
-chaos actively avoids nids for very much the same reason the nids avoid the crons, loss of resources with 0 gain (Individual creatures in the swarm have no souls for chaos to use)

I just realized that I have never read a single piece of fluff in which Chaos took on the 'Nids. I think that we have winner for the two factions that fight eachother the least.

Melissia wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:
There will always be a Space Marine fighting something in the galaxy. Therefore, it is not a rarity for Space Marines to fight.

Irrelevant.

There's multiple billions, indeed, probably even trillions, of guardsmen fighting at any given moment. Same with Orks and rebels/heretics, too. Orks, for example, are the single most common race in the galaxy... and they're ALWAYS fighting something-- more than even Space Marines. There's many thousands of times more anything else fighting than marines. Marines fighting in any particular battle is a strikingly notable event because of its rarity-- if you see Astartes joining a battle, you know gak's going to get real or already has gotten real.

I'm done with this argument. You seem to be arguing just for the sake of arguing, and/or nothing that I say will convince you of your erroneous opinion. Either way, good day.

I'm arguing because I'm right.

Just because Space Marines fight all the time, doesn't mean it's actually common to see Space Marines fight, nor does it mean it's common to fight Space Marines.

Like I said, when Space Marines hit the battle field.... gak just got real, and everyone notices because HOLY gak IS THAT A SPACE MARINE?!? We're saved!/We're fethed!

FFS, I'm the first person to talk down the capabilities and strengths of the Space Marines, but you won't see me calling them mundane like you seem to be. Space Marines are incredibly rare, and make a sizable impact on any fight they join. They aren't an uber-common thing that everyone's seen before. Imperial Guard companies pass amongst each other legends and tales about the day that they worked alongside the Emperor's Finest. They don't just shrug and say "Meh, just another battle, oh hey look space marines, yawwwn".

That's what the players do, yes, but that's not what goes on in-universe. Space Marines in-universe are legendary, rarely-seen heroes, myths and legends to most worlds. Generations pass without a single Space Marine stepping on any given planet, and when they finally do arrive for whatever reason, people take notice.

Marines are not some common mundanity seen in almsot every battle. That's Orks, Heretics, and Guardsmen.

You're a bit too harsh, Melissia, but you're not wrong.

Dusara is right too, of course. In truth, you were just arguing different points that are both right. Dusara says that having Marines fighting is common (true, Marines are a million and they spend a significant time of their lives in combat, meaning at least one Marine probably always fights) and you say that Marines themselves and their battles are rare (self-explanatory.)

So, shake hands, agree that you are both right, and move on!

I agree with Melissia. If you picked 1000 battles out from the galaxy at random, Space Marines would only be involved in five of those. ~80% of all battles is Guard versus rebelling humans/Orks. It's just the way the numbers work out. Though, I suspect in M42 Guards v Necron conflicts will start becoming much, much more common.

 Psienesis wrote:
Are you the OP? No? Two of those sentences provide answers to the OP. The Imperium isn't exactly "allied" in the normal sense of the word, despite what the Allies Matrix claims. "Divided We Stand" is a common trope in the Imperium, with every group keeping a suspicious eye on every other group.

You are positing that Space Marines, Imperial Guard and Sisters of Battle are not 'allies'?

Even in their own Chapter Space Marines keep a suspicious eye even on their own brethren for signs of slackness or impure thoughts, suspicion is rife at all levels in the Imperium and for good reason.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:
I'm arguing because I'm right.

"I'm arguing because I believe I'm right" is probably a more diplomatic wording.

Marines are not some common mundanity seen in almsot every battle. That's Orks, Heretics, and Guardsmen.

I absolutely agree with you. A Space Marine is a rare, terrifying/inspiring sight on the battlefield. No doubt for every million battles that take place in a war-torn sector, only a few hundred of those will have had Astartes in the field. However, when you look at Space Marines as a whole faction there is no heretic or xenos faction that they have not faced and, looking at the Halo Stars, they've even faced things no other faction has.


Forgive me if I'm not getting my point across eloquently enough. At any given time in the a period of a year, the Space Marines as a whole -will- have clashed on some level with another non-Imperium faction. They are constantly at war on all fronts with all of these foes, even if their presence is minuscule compared to the Imperial Guard muscle.

In any given month (or even week) in the year M41.999, -somewhere- in the Milky Way, there will have been guaranteed instances of:

-SM v CSM
-SM v Heretics/Traitors (including secular rebellions)
-SM v Daemons
-SM v Tau (and allied races)
-SM v Eldar
-SM v Dark Eldar
-SM v Tyranids
-SM v Orks

Conversely, an engagement between the Tyranids and Necrons might only happen once by chance in a year or even decade, and these are likely to be incidental rather than intentional.

Agreed 100% with Melissia. They are so famed in 40k because they are so rare to see. On tabletop, we probably see them in roughly 50% of games. In fluff, it's unlikely that they would ever be fighting. Most engagements take place between Guard/Heretics/Orks, as they are the most numerous and widespread factions.

Also, there's an instance of Chaos fighting Nids twice: Once on Pandemonium (M'kar failing once again) and Forgefane, an IW world thought impregnable overrun by Leviathan.

I do agree that space marine battles would be uncommon but they may be a tad more common that you'd think

Remember there is at least one million space marines. never mind that there may be countless others stuck in the warp from any time after the beginning of the great crusade.

again though very rare.

As for two factions that probably have never faced eachother:

how about Harlequins vs Grey Knights
or better yet Harlequins vs the Officio Assassinorum

surly tyranid and crons dont care to fight? crons got no juices to juice?

 Zognob Gorgoff wrote:
surly tyranid and crons dont care to fight? crons got no juices to juice?

Yes but sometimes their tombworlds are rich with biomass and the reward is worth the risk. I can only remember 1 canon example.
It was when the tau were fighting hive fleet gorgon and the necrons emerged from a tomb on a nearby moon.
They commenced to obliterate the Tyranids. and then proceeded to harvest the tau

Everyone's getting the question hideously wrong here. It's not about what percentage of battles in the Galaxy comprise of force A versus force B, but what percentage of a certain force's battles are against what race.

For example, if the Imperial Guard spends 50% of its time and manpower fighting Orks, and the Space Marines spend 60% of their time fighting Chaos, then Marines versus Chaos is a more common battle than the Imperial Guard versus Orks, relatively speaking. That's the question.

An easier whay of phrasing it would be to ask which enemy matchup comprises of the lowest percentage of battles for each force? I don't count allied fights, as of course they will be very low. Marines do fight Imperial Guard on occasion (rebellion, misunderstanding, etc), but it's obviously extremely low for obvious reasons.

Due to population size too, the percentages don't need to be mirroed either. The Tau for example probably fight the Tyranids and Imperial Guard the most, yet for the Imperial Guard and the Tyranids, the Tau will be a miniscule portion of their time spent fighting.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Madoch1 wrote:
As for two factions that probably have never faced eachother:

how about Harlequins vs Grey Knights
or better yet Harlequins vs the Officio Assassinorum

The first example doesn't really work, as the Grey Knights have likely never fought the Tau either, or any number of other races, because that's not their remit.

The Officio Assassinorum one is interesting though, but with numbers so tiny for both factions, I don't really class them as sides for the purposes of this debate. They're more sub-factions.

I'm mainly asking for the 9 main forces (counting the IG and SM as separate, but allied forces)

Chaos avoids Nids, but Nids don't avoid Chaos like they do necrons. I recall several fluff examples where Nids came along where Chaos was (one where Chaos Marines were fighting their original Loyalist Space Marine chapter, and the other in the Tyrannid dex where the nids unintentionally triggered a demon uprising by disturbing an artifact)

In the case of Chaos Space Marines, nids will eat them just like everything else. In the case of demons (the latter example), they actually ignored the demons and the demons didn't really care about them either but the demons were forced to attack because the nids were eating all the mortals that the demons wanted to corrupt. The Nids then reacted in self-defense.

Hierophant wrote:


I'm mainly asking for the 9 main forces (counting the IG and SM as separate, but allied forces)

Oh ok.

Well then i guess some fairly rare battles would be

Eldar vs Dark Eldar

Dark Eldar vs Sisters of Battle

Sisters of Battle vs Tau

Tau vs Dark Eldar

There are canon examples of a few of those but they are exceptionally rare.