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Orks: 1
Necrons: 0

Imperium: 1
nids: 0

Space pansies (eldar): 1
Tau: 0 (note, tau will longer be called space fish, as it was noted to be seen as an insult to fish everywhere.)

On to the next then lads!

IMPERIUM

VERSUS

ELDAR

Assume that the entirety of both races is united, this does NOT keep squabbles about leadership/back stabbing etc from happening, however it likely reduces it.

Imperium get everything, mars, sisters, spess mahreens, Navy, mechanicals, ordo xenos, etc. Even the grey knights.

Eldar get all eldar, Craft worlds, exiles dark eldar.


No outside interference, chaos gods are busy stopping G'mork from eating Ctan or some thing like that.

aaaaannnnddd GO!

With no other distractions, I think the eldar just don't have the numbers to fight off the imperium. Superior mobility is nice, but Eldar just lack the firepower to take on such a powerful foe.

I mentioned this in your last vs. that involved the Eldar and I will say the same again.

If, and it's a big if the Eldar were united in an effort to destroy the imperium, they will get their own hands dirty as little as possible. Ork waaaagggghhhhssss will be carefully nurtured, did splinter fleet will be guided to the Eldars preferred location... Christ, they may even go to the lengths of coaxing humungous as yet unknown to the imperium Necron dynasties into activity.

The Eldar would't win in a straight up war, but that also is not their MO.

This is a stalemate I believe.

Humanity cannot assault the Dark City in a sustained siege and the Dark Eldar cannot hope to win against the combined might of the Imperium mustered against them with piritanical raids. A siege requires there be set battle lines after all, with one enemy encircling another. The Dark City does not conform to Euclidean geometry, and therefore lacks the necessary prerequisites for a siege.

The absolute best the Imperium could hope for would be to blockade each and every webway portal entrance/exit in their territory, but they cannot block each one in the galaxy unless they conquered the entirety of the galaxy and knew about, could monitor, and defend each portal.

And this is only if the Dark Eldar lack the capacity to contort or manipulate the webway, which... given that a "web way portal" wargear is a thing, I don't believe is a valid statement.

Humanity wins. Seeing as how this is basically a war in a vacuum, humans have full use of the Warp, they can smash holes in the Webway with Warp Drives or jury-rigged Warp Bombs, shatter dimensions of Comorragh, etc. without any risk of Daemons getting in the way.
Not only that, the Eldar simply lack the necessary numbers and weapons to counter the quadrillions of human bodies that will be thrown at them alongside DAoT nightmare weapons that no longer have to be withheld in case of Chaos, Orks, etc. Not that the Eldar lack in the superweapon department, it's just a matter of the Imperium having more blackhole guns than the Eldar do (compare US and UK; both awesomely powerful with awesomely powerful weapons, but US just has more of them. This isn't a measure of warfighting capabilities, simply who has more).

 dusara217 wrote:
Humanity wins. Seeing as how this is basically a war in a vacuum, humans have full use of the Warp, they can smash holes in the Webway with Warp Drives or jury-rigged Warp Bombs, shatter dimensions of Comorragh, etc. without any risk of Daemons getting in the way.
Not only that, the Eldar simply lack the necessary numbers and weapons to counter the quadrillions of human bodies that will be thrown at them alongside DAoT nightmare weapons that no longer have to be withheld in case of Chaos, Orks, etc. Not that the Eldar lack in the superweapon department, it's just a matter of the Imperium having more blackhole guns than the Eldar do (compare US and UK; both awesomely powerful with awesomely powerful weapons, but US just has more of them. This isn't a measure of warfighting capabilities, simply who has more).

The webway exists between the warp and the material realm. If the Imperium had Webway-destroying devices, I think they would probably be standard issue against all Eldar and, I suppose, some Necron engagements.

That said, the Dark Eldar are not the only inhabitants of the Dark City.

Additionally, the city is not laid out in a siege friendly fashion. Imagine a city where every door and window, in every building, is a portal. While the door might lead from one room to another, the actual distance covered between living room and bedroom might be measured in hundreds of light years, but traversed instantaneously because of the intervening portal.

How do you pour trillions of bodies through that to besiege a city when, at any time, on a whim, those doors can be closed and sealed? You might very well have squads engaged in a corridor in the city that is cut up and scattered across eons of distance. The second those portals are closed, your squadmates are dozens of light years apart, with no backup, reinforcements, communications, or support of any kind.

To put this in perspective, imagine a SWAT team trying to storm a building who's occupants have somehow spread each room of the building in different states of the U.S. and can, at any point, close each of those rooms off from the rest of the house, stranding the occupants in *gasp* Utah.

deathmagiks wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:
Humanity wins. Seeing as how this is basically a war in a vacuum, humans have full use of the Warp, they can smash holes in the Webway with Warp Drives or jury-rigged Warp Bombs, shatter dimensions of Comorragh, etc. without any risk of Daemons getting in the way.
Not only that, the Eldar simply lack the necessary numbers and weapons to counter the quadrillions of human bodies that will be thrown at them alongside DAoT nightmare weapons that no longer have to be withheld in case of Chaos, Orks, etc. Not that the Eldar lack in the superweapon department, it's just a matter of the Imperium having more blackhole guns than the Eldar do (compare US and UK; both awesomely powerful with awesomely powerful weapons, but US just has more of them. This isn't a measure of warfighting capabilities, simply who has more).

The webway exists between the warp and the material realm. If the Imperium had Webway-destroying devices, I think they would probably be standard issue against all Eldar and, I suppose, some Necron engagements.

That said, the Dark Eldar are not the only inhabitants of the Dark City.

Additionally, the city is not laid out in a siege friendly fashion. Imagine a city where every door and window, in every building, is a portal. While the door might lead from one room to another, the actual distance covered between living room and bedroom might be measured in hundreds of light years, but traversed instantaneously because of the intervening portal.

How do you pour trillions of bodies through that to besiege a city when, at any time, on a whim, those doors can be closed and sealed? You might very well have squads engaged in a corridor in the city that is cut up and scattered across eons of distance. The second those portals are closed, your squadmates are dozens of light years apart, with no backup, reinforcements, communications, or support of any kind.

To put this in perspective, imagine a SWAT team trying to storm a building who's occupants have somehow spread each room of the building in different states of the U.S. and can, at any point, close each of those rooms off from the rest of the house, stranding the occupants in *gasp* Utah.

So nuke the place with a thousand starships. Why waste the man power trying to take the city?

Oh wait a thousand won't do it?

How about 10,000?

100,000?

I can do this all day.

Imperium would definitely win. The only reason the Imperium doesn't win at the moment is because they are constantly being attacked from all sides by every other faction in the galaxy, preventing them from focussing and destroying each enemy one at a time. The Imperium is simply too massive for the eldar to win. The eldar might be able to hide and mess the Imperium around for a while, but eventually they would all be caught and destroyed.

Do you know where to Nuke? Since Webway entrances are hidden and sealed from the inside.

Assuming you do, and assuming the projectile is allowed, somehow, through the defenses of the portal, congrats: You've hurt a single room in a *Galaxy* *Spanning* *City* because they closed off that section once they figured out your nuke got through.

Guess it's time to find another Webway portal then. Somehow. And hope it's attached to a more vital part of the Dark City. And isn't more heavily defended or warded.


That's a lot of hope for a universe so grimdark you've got there...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tarvitz77 wrote:
Imperium would definitely win. The only reason the Imperium doesn't win at the moment is because they are constantly being attacked from all sides by every other faction in the galaxy, preventing them from focussing and destroying each enemy one at a time. The Imperium is simply too massive for the eldar to win. The eldar might be able to hide and mess the Imperium around for a while, but eventually they would all be caught and destroyed.

Hence: Stalemate.

Imperium cannot fight what it cannot find or assault or lay siege to.

Dark Eldar cannot win against an enemy outright.

Thus it becomes a galaxy wide game of cat and mouse.

deathmagiks wrote:
Do you know where to Nuke? Since Webway entrances are hidden and sealed from the inside.

Assuming you do, and assuming the projectile is allowed, somehow, through the defenses of the portal, congrats: You've hurt a single room in a *Galaxy* *Spanning* *City* because they closed off that section once they figured out your nuke got through.

Guess it's time to find another Webway portal then. Somehow. And hope it's attached to a more vital part of the Dark City. And isn't more heavily defended or warded.


That's a lot of hope for a universe so grimdark you've got there...

You disregard the psychic abilities of the Imperium, and their ability to forsee into the future to look for an entrance.

Besides one could argue that if Gork and Mork are holding chaos at bay that the Emperor himself could direct things more closely from his golden toilet...

I don't disregard it, I just measure it against the psychic abilities and wards of the Eldar and then find it wanting, as pretty much every fluff resource mentions.

Farseers are, for example, commonly Beta level psykers if I recall correctly, with a few straying into the Alpha level territory, like Eldrad.

I can't discount the Emperor interfering with all this, but... if that's the case, Imperium V. Whoever ends up Imperium winning because Emperor says so.

For me, the Eldar don't have the chops to actually defeat humanity. Even assuming the Crafties, Exodites and Dark Kin all work together (a preposterous assumption) they can do little more than raid or beat down remote colonies.

If the Eldar kin gather in sufficient number to take and hold a world they're telegraphing their location and inviting the Imperium to sledgehammer them. If they gather enough power to strike a major center of power there's not a web gate (actually gates, no way Craftworlders and Dark Kin would share that kind of information) big enough to coordinate a decisive assault.

In such a war, with no enemies to distract them, the Imperium could make a concerted effort to track down and annihilate the spaceborne Craftworlds and conquer the Exodite worlds. It would take time, perhaps even a millennia or so, but eventually the Dark Eldar would find themselves fighting alone against the Imperium.

I think Commoragh would be nigh impossible to breach and conquer given current conditions. However...

Once it's only the Dark Eldar, who do not have the resources to conquer and hold planets alone (and who would not be stupid enough to squander resources trying), we're left with the DE resorting to their tried and true raiding tactics. As such they're little more than an annoyance to the Imperium.

The Imperium would likely either evacuate or (more likely) write off small colonies rather than defend them. If the DE are smart they'll limit their raids to keep the Imperium from focusing on them. If they keep things low key enough the IOM probably will accept the raids as the price of doing business and the war would stagnate.

If the DE are enough of a problem the IOM will turn all it's massive resources to destroying Commoragh. The Imperium can and would spend all the resources which would normally be wasted fighting all its other enemies into DE defense measures (tactics, techniques and equipment) while they research and crack the mysteries of the Webway. Again, this could take a millenium or more, but ultimately even the IOM will figure out a way to locate and seal or breach webgates.

Sealing the Webway would take huge amounts of time. The DE would seek old, abandoned gates as the Imperium gradually sealed more active ones. Eventually the Webway would effectively be sealed off from realspace, so the DEs supply of victims would dwindle to a trickle. The DE themselves would begin to fade and decay, essentially cut off from their supply of fear and terror by a slowly tightening blockade.

If the IOM can access the Webway, the cat and mouse game moves from realspace to the Webway itself. The fight would be ugly and bloody. Bits and pieces of Commoragh would be cut off and destroyed, but it's a bloody continent-sized city spread out across space-time, and the Dark Eldar know it like the back of their hand... and they're desperate. Doubtless deals will be struck with the dark powers even if they're otherwise occupied per the scenario.

In the end, however, the IoMs unfettered access to the realspace galaxy, with it's vast resources and humanity's faster reproduction rate, would probably overwhelm the Dark Kin.

That's my take on it anyway.

THis one isn't really worth mentioning. The very best the DE can do is simply refuse to engage and hide in the Webway.

Didn't the Salamanders chapter fleet successfully breach Commoragh or some such nonesense to rescue a captured strike cruiser?

If it only take a single Chapter and their Fleet (and I think GW used a similar size force to destroy a smaller Eldar craftworld in another codex..), not looking too good.

 Shade of Asuryan wrote:
Didn't the Salamanders chapter fleet successfully breach Commoragh or some such nonesense to rescue a captured strike cruiser?

If it only take a single Chapter and their Fleet (and I think GW used a similar size force to destroy a smaller Eldar craftworld in another codex..), not looking too good.

They didn't do it on their own. Vect served the Webway entrance to them on a figurative silver platter, deactivated all the defenses, and laid a trail of space-bread crumbs, and they *still* suffered massive losses even with the element of surprise and utter chaos. They were essentially the distraction Vect used to gain power.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 PhillyT wrote:
THis one isn't really worth mentioning. The very best the DE can do is simply refuse to engage and hide in the Webway.

Bingo. Stalemate.

Problem is any victory for the Imperium assumes *total* control of the Galaxy with enough of a degree to locate any existing webway gate. Craftworlds can enter the webway (with monumental effort), which "saves" the CWE, then there's the exodites which can evacuate into the webway, and there's the Dark City which is spread throughout the webway.

This isn't something that either side could really win. Eldar because they lack the Stamina as a species required for galactic warfare, and Imperium because they lack the means by which to take the fight effectively to the enemy. Even assuming they wiped out the CWE and Exodites and Pirates and Raiders and etc leaving only the Dark City, you're still met with an impossible siege scenario.

To me, the biggest aspect of both of these armies are their overwhelming use of firepower. This, in effect, almost totally negates the man power advantage the imperium holds, simply due to the fact that both races have a power base and once that power base is destroyed then in effect the other race is crippled.

D/Eldar have the Commarragh as the single dencest population of Eldar power in the universe, while the Imperium has the Sol System (mainly Terra, but mars is also very important). If either is destroyed, that faction is crippled mobility wise as Commarragh makes up a significant portion of webway as a port city and with out the Astromonicion the imperium is thrown back to the Dark ages.

Both factions have powerful doomsday weapons, from detonating warp drives to Vects infamous black hole in a Box that can nuke the other power base down with an on demand apocalypse. So the question of who would win a ground war is irrelevant, but more who has the best capacity to deliver their doomsday weapon. Purely through virtue of the natural defences of the webway and the fact Commarragh is in fact a conglomerate of sub realms means that it is much harder for th imperium to achieve a death blow in comparison to getting a similar weapon near terra.

Not fan voting here, in fair warfare the Imperium would steamroller the Eldar, but a good quote from path of the Archon goes along th line of "Vect alone knows when the time for subtlety and scheming is done, and he finds the biggest weapon possible to devastate the enemy before they have a chance to realise how far he Is about to escalate things". And it's hard to argue that Sol can be protected from this initial killing blow as well as Commarragh can, so not often then not, the Imperium would be crippled after the first real blow falls.

I'm a DE player first and foremost, but the imperium would ultimately win any conventional war. However, in an unconventional war the Dark Eldar could win. Also most of the ways to attack Commoragh that have been mentioned are outright silly.

Probably the best way for the imperium to handle The Dark City would be to use its psykers to predict raids opening through portals and to ambush them with an overwhelming number of space marines with the hope of securing them before it closes. Now with access they can send in the guard, most of them will die wandering around in the webway hopelessly lost, but since they are basically in infinite supply that's ok. If they finally are able to locate a route to the city then the imperium can try to fully mobilize on it.

Even this would likely fail because even the larger portals are not going to allow the empire to bring its full might. So they may just be walking into an endless trap. Especially when you consider heamonculi can easily open and close portals to hell dimension, and they webway tunnels can be closed off or rerouted. This also discounts the fact their are dangers in the webway that are never specified, but at least include the last living free Eldar God. Both races have doomsday devices, but its far easier for Dark Eldar to use theirs than it would be for the imperium to make use of theirs. You can't just shoot an exterminatus device into the webway and have it hit Commoragh, but it would be pretty easy for the Dark Eldar to intoduce humanity to a modified version of the Glass plague simultaneously across the entire imperium, or a plague specifically made for humans like the Dark Eldar have done to Orks before.

The best way to handle Dark Eldar would be to just ignore them and allow them to feed off you like a parasite. It could go on forever and probably still be less costly then for the imperium to dig them out of the webway.

A more symetrical fight is if you would include the Eldar species as a whole, meaning Dark, Craftworld, Corsairs, Exodite, and Harlequins.

In this scenario the Craftworlders and the Exodites are dead due to the superior Imperial war machine. The Imperium could never hope to defeat the DEldar, though. The Dark City is unassailable by convenional armies. Any strike forces they could squeeze in would just be fodder for the twisted wiles of the city's inhabitants.

Though the reverse is true. Dark Eldar just don't do conventional warfare.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
To me, the biggest aspect of both of these armies are their overwhelming use of firepower. This, in effect, almost totally negates the man power advantage the imperium holds, simply due to the fact that both races have a power base and once that power base is destroyed then in effect the other race is crippled.

D/Eldar have the Commarragh as the single dencest population of Eldar power in the universe, while the Imperium has the Sol System (mainly Terra, but mars is also very important). If either is destroyed, that faction is crippled mobility wise as Commarragh makes up a significant portion of webway as a port city and with out the Astromonicion the imperium is thrown back to the Dark ages.

Both factions have powerful doomsday weapons, from detonating warp drives to Vects infamous black hole in a Box that can nuke the other power base down with an on demand apocalypse. So the question of who would win a ground war is irrelevant, but more who has the best capacity to deliver their doomsday weapon. Purely through virtue of the natural defences of the webway and the fact Commarragh is in fact a conglomerate of sub realms means that it is much harder for th imperium to achieve a death blow in comparison to getting a similar weapon near terra.

Not fan voting here, in fair warfare the Imperium would steamroller the Eldar, but a good quote from path of the Archon goes along th line of "Vect alone knows when the time for subtlety and scheming is done, and he finds the biggest weapon possible to devastate the enemy before they have a chance to realise how far he Is about to escalate things". And it's hard to argue that Sol can be protected from this initial killing blow as well as Commarragh can, so not often then not, the Imperium would be crippled after the first real blow falls.

I see that I was wrong... Eldar win.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

deathmagiks wrote:
Do you know where to Nuke? Since Webway entrances are hidden and sealed from the inside.

Assuming you do, and assuming the projectile is allowed, somehow, through the defenses of the portal, congrats: You've hurt a single room in a *Galaxy* *Spanning* *City* because they closed off that section once they figured out your nuke got through.

Nuke is figurative, as any idiot would realize (not calling you an idiot, just imperceptive). By "nuke" he means doomsday weapon, a la Blackhole Gun or detonated Warp Drive.

Eldar.

All they have to do is blow up Terra with their infinite doomsday devices, and humanity is denied FTL travel.

 EmpNortonII wrote:
Eldar.

All they have to do is blow up Terra with their infinite doomsday devices, and humanity is denied FTL travel.

And a second eye of terror opens up making Chaos the dominant force in the galaxy.

GG Space Elves.

Eldar. Webway gates and super tech go a long way.

That and proper sphess majikz.

Sure, they'll all feed chaos in the end, but that's a good thing.

Nuke is figurative, as any idiot would realize (not calling you an idiot, just imperceptive). By "nuke" he means doomsday weapon, a la Blackhole Gun or detonated Warp Drive.

A rose, by any other name, still triggers an immediate lockdown protocol in a Non-Euclidean city

Which... now that I think about it, might actually be terribly self-harming to the Imperium.

Step 1: Doomsday-nuke warp portal 1

Step 2: Deldar close and isolate warp portal 1's adjoining room. Dark City saved.

Step 3: Doomsday bomb detonates. Has no passage by which to focus it's destructive force (whatever that may be) since closing the webway portal creates an isolated pocket dimension thingy, so full force hits the webway pocket and, unsurprisingly, shatters it with it's doomsday-ness.

Step 4: Isolated Webway bubble collapses, creating a corridor between warp and material universes.

Step 5: Call in the Gray Knights to deal with a self-created daemonic incursion.

Step 6: Lose city/world/system/sector to warp.

Step 7: Repeat at each webway location.

Step 8: ???

Step 9: Profit?

All of the Imperium? United? They can bring their entire force? That is not even a question. The Imperium would sweep over the Eldar like an ocean over a sandcastle. The Eldar population is so insignificant compared to the Imperium, no amount of ancient doomsday weapons can fix that. And that is before we even get to the fact that the Imperium probably has an even larger stockpile of ancient doomsday weapons.
The Imperium could just hunt down every Craftworld at its leisure. In the grand scale of things, the Eldar do not have the numbers and power left to be anything more than a minor annoyance for a galaxy-spanning empire. It would be a huge achievement for them to take out a single sector, and the Imperium has hundreds of sectors. Not to mention that whereas every loss suffered by the Eldar is irreplaceable, the Imperium can send in the next wave ad infinitum.
Really, the Imperium, controls almost an entire galaxy, they would have as good as limitless power, if only it were not divided and assaulted constantly on all sides.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 EmpNortonII wrote:
Eldar.

All they have to do is blow up Terra with their infinite doomsday devices, and humanity is denied FTL travel.

That might work if Terra were undefended. Doomsday weapons need to be delivered after all.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
Both factions have powerful doomsday weapons, from detonating warp drives to Vects infamous black hole in a Box that can nuke the other power base down with an on demand apocalypse. So the question of who would win a ground war is irrelevant, but more who has the best capacity to deliver their doomsday weapon. Purely through virtue of the natural defences of the webway and the fact Commarragh is in fact a conglomerate of sub realms means that it is much harder for th imperium to achieve a death blow in comparison to getting a similar weapon near terra.

Finally someone gets it. The Eldar have a home to fall back on that exists independently from planets, the Imperium doesn't. If the Eldar want to destroy the Imperium and not just manipulate it into being a useful pawn they have no reason to even consider invading and occupying planets. Pop out of the webway, deliver WMDs to destroy an entire hive city/planet/whatever, disappear again. The Imperium has sheer numbers, but most of its size will contribute absolutely nothing to this fight. Who cares if you have a billion guardsmen on a planet when the "fight" consists of a bunch of nukes suddenly appearing above the army and detonating a millisecond later. Now the Imperium has a billion corpses, exactly the same result as if the Imperium had only had a single guardsman on that planet.

The Imperium would overwhelmingly win any such conflict if it came to straight up open warfare.

The Eldar have more advanced technology and the Webway, but the Webway is not what it once was and their technology is not so advanced that the Imperium cannot manage at least rough approximations, even if significantly more primitive.

Meanwhile, their numbers are dwindling, they're scattered all over the place, and the Craftworlds, if found, can be engaged and destroyed by conventional means. The Dark Eldar have it a little better in that they can hide in the webway, but they're built around piracy & raiding, not extended conventional warfare.

Meanwhile the Imperium outnumbers them by a ludicrous amount, and its own fearsome arsenals and powers, is spread everywhere, including many places the Webway cannot reach, and has its own vast space-based civilizations as well, from Space-borne Space Marine chapters to asteroid field mining colonies, deep space Fleet stations housing millions of people, etc.

 EmpNortonII wrote:
Eldar.

All they have to do is blow up Terra with their infinite doomsday devices, and humanity is denied FTL travel.

The emperors beacon is still just a beacon, The ships only must make shorter jumps like how they colonized the galaxy before the emperor.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:

 EmpNortonII wrote:
Eldar.

All they have to do is blow up Terra with their infinite doomsday devices, and humanity is denied FTL travel.

The emperors beacon is still just a beacon, The ships only must make shorter jumps like how they colonized the galaxy before the emperor.

Which isn't much faster than tau space travel.

 raiden wrote:

 Jehan-reznor wrote:

 EmpNortonII wrote:
Eldar.

All they have to do is blow up Terra with their infinite doomsday devices, and humanity is denied FTL travel.

The emperors beacon is still just a beacon, The ships only must make shorter jumps like how they colonized the galaxy before the emperor.

Which isn't much faster than tau space travel.

Hrm, I'd argue that. Tau ships don't fully enter the Immaterium, the human race had spread across the galaxy loooooooong before the Astronominican, the Tau ships just kinda skip off the surface of the dimensional divide, and they lack psykers and navigators that can parse the Warp (who can still navigate to some degree even without the Emperor's beacon).

It's debatable, the navigators are use to warp travel via the beacon, it'd be hard to swap back, besides, remember waaay back when the humans were first colonising chaos was MUCH calmer. Jumps would be short. Faster than tau yes, but only to a degree. There wouldn't be any galactic crossings in under a year anymore.