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123ply wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
You are badly missing the point of the entire setting.

The Imperiums stagnation and eventual downfall back story is no longer true. Ever since Cawl started inventing things the fluff has done a 180

Which I consider to be a bad thing since it's pushing 40k into a more generic sci fi setting rather than the unique setting it was in the past.

Iracundus wrote:
It is debateable whether even Guilliman's return is sufficient to change things on the grand scale. Guilliman is running around the galaxy putting out fires, but is he really making any difference? Does he have an endgame? Right now he is like a torch, shedding light wherever he goes, but the shadows of ignorance return whenever he leaves. Institutional inertia is a powerful thing and I could see it returning things to the old status quo as he never seems to stay still in one place long enough to enact long term reform.

One could even see that as the deliberate strategy of the Chaos gods: Keep Guilliman busy so he can never sit still long enough to fix things. Even if he beats back individual threats and thwarts the ambitions of Abaddon or Daemon Primarchs, Guilliman being fully occupied with that effectively removes him from his real strength of administrative reform.

This. The return of Guilliman offers the illusory spark of hope, but we all know what road hope is the first step on...

As far as I can tell the Imperium's background was predicated along the same lines as the notion of "knowing how to drive a car without knowing how any of it's parts work".

Though as pointed out earlier in the thread, with the Cawl stuff it shows they can throw in whatever curve they want.

To put things at the most basic level, 40k is a setting where the "good guys" (there arnt any, but some folks cant handle that and latch onto the Imperium) are losing. The reason why the Imperium was broken in half in this edition is because the writers of the setting had made chaos a joke. They lost every encounter, always foiled...ect.

You cant have a good hero without a more powerful (in some aspect) foe to ascend to beating.

Simply put, the Imperium was to mary sue at the end of 7th. It needed to be knocked down a few pegs.

If the plan was to make Chaos a joke no longer then they badly failed.

Table wrote:
To put things at the most basic level, 40k is a setting where the "good guys" (there arnt any, but some folks cant handle that and latch onto the Imperium) are losing. The reason why the Imperium was broken in half in this edition is because the writers of the setting had made chaos a joke. They lost every encounter, always foiled...ect.

You cant have a good hero without a more powerful (in some aspect) foe to ascend to beating.

Simply put, the Imperium was to mary sue at the end of 7th. It needed to be knocked down a few pegs.

I'd not use the term mary sue to describe the IoM. But I do agree Chaos had lost it's threat. when I started 40k back in 5th edition the actual big threat as presented was more the Tyranids then chaos.

The imperium is the reason the imperium can’t be fixed. It’s just such a huge mess that it doesn’t really function at all.

As for the cawl thing, I think it is over sold a bit the impact he has had, a few new guns and tanks and a tweak to marines, in 10 thousand years! And they are all just a bit better, not a lot better, a wee bit. No one was bothered when very edition marines would find more tanks or flyers but they get an armour upgrade and it’s the reversal of the entire setting!

Best of all cawl can’t even remember how he did it or if he did at all. The setting is the same but now a marines tank floats a bit. Like it used to back in the day. People wouldn’t have batted an eyelid if they’d said it was all newly found stc.

I’m going to say it again, 10000 years for a slightly bigger version of an old gun is not a 180 in the fluff.

BrianDavion wrote:

Table wrote:
To put things at the most basic level, 40k is a setting where the "good guys" (there arnt any, but some folks cant handle that and latch onto the Imperium) are losing. The reason why the Imperium was broken in half in this edition is because the writers of the setting had made chaos a joke. They lost every encounter, always foiled...ect.

You cant have a good hero without a more powerful (in some aspect) foe to ascend to beating.

Simply put, the Imperium was to mary sue at the end of 7th. It needed to be knocked down a few pegs.

I'd not use the term mary sue to describe the IoM. But I do agree Chaos had lost it's threat. when I started 40k back in 5th edition the actual big threat as presented was more the Tyranids then chaos.

I've always considered Tyranids a greater threat than Chaos, and a more terrifying one from an existential point of view since it hammers home one's insignificance.

Imperium vs. Chaos feeds a simplistic "goodie vs. baddie" dichotomy. When one's enemy hates you because they're nursing a 10,000 year old grudge, it still means they care about you enough to hate you and what you stand for. Chaos gods care enough about humans to have champions as playthings. By contrast, the Tyranids don't care at all what you think or believe, or what your god/Emperor wants.

Chaos wants to enslave humanity, and would likely create some variation of their Eye of Terror societies dominated by the CSM, while the Chaos gods feed off the emotions of the masses. Humantiy would still exist albeit in a fashion that Imperials would find repugnant. However, Tyranids don't want to enslave humanity. They want to eat and extinguish humanity. Ultimate defeat against Chaos means enslavement. Ultimate defeat against Tyranids means extinction.

pm713 wrote:
If the plan was to make Chaos a joke no longer then they badly failed.

Perhaps they still carry their Saturday morning cartoon villainy on their sleeves but as far as the setting is concerned, the Imperium is in a real bad place and unless a major piece of plot armor is adorned (which it will be...later) it is going to burn.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Iracundus wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

Table wrote:
To put things at the most basic level, 40k is a setting where the "good guys" (there arnt any, but some folks cant handle that and latch onto the Imperium) are losing. The reason why the Imperium was broken in half in this edition is because the writers of the setting had made chaos a joke. They lost every encounter, always foiled...ect.

You cant have a good hero without a more powerful (in some aspect) foe to ascend to beating.

Simply put, the Imperium was to mary sue at the end of 7th. It needed to be knocked down a few pegs.

I'd not use the term mary sue to describe the IoM. But I do agree Chaos had lost it's threat. when I started 40k back in 5th edition the actual big threat as presented was more the Tyranids then chaos.

I've always considered Tyranids a greater threat than Chaos, and a more terrifying one from an existential point of view since it hammers home one's insignificance.

Imperium vs. Chaos feeds a simplistic "goodie vs. baddie" dichotomy. When one's enemy hates you because they're nursing a 10,000 year old grudge, it still means they care about you enough to hate you and what you stand for. Chaos gods care enough about humans to have champions as playthings. By contrast, the Tyranids don't care at all what you think or believe, or what your god/Emperor wants.

Chaos wants to enslave humanity, and would likely create some variation of their Eye of Terror societies dominated by the CSM, while the Chaos gods feed off the emotions of the masses. Humantiy would still exist albeit in a fashion that Imperials would find repugnant. However, Tyranids don't want to enslave humanity. They want to eat and extinguish humanity. Ultimate defeat against Chaos means enslavement. Ultimate defeat against Tyranids means extinction.

After reading some of the things those traitor legions do to captives, I can say I would prefer extinction. Mileage may vary.

But the problem with Nids as a narrative is that they are to strong. GW cannot in any way advance the plot because to do so would be to wipe out the setting. The Nids are more background color than a true threat to the setting (by this fact alone). It would be the same with Orks, but Orks are self regulated by chaotic societies and racial self genocide. This pretty much leaves Chaos or the Necrons to be the primary foe of the setting. And both have been mishandled in recent editions as a threat.

The problem I have with the nids in my games is I, and my group like narrative games on a small stage with numerous local threats, like ORKS etc but all with the inbuilt limitations, necrons for example aren’t all awake or are damaged to limit their threat a bit. If nids turn up on such a planet it’s real game over, total war against the nids and do or die time.

Table wrote:

pm713 wrote:
If the plan was to make Chaos a joke no longer then they badly failed.

Perhaps they still carry their Saturday morning cartoon villainy on their sleeves but as far as the setting is concerned, the Imperium is in a real bad place and unless a major piece of plot armor is adorned (which it will be...later) it is going to burn.

But not as bad as it should be as far as I can see. It's like Chaos rolls a dice every morning to see if they want to destroy the Imperium or not.

Table wrote:

After reading some of the things those traitor legions do to captives, I can say I would prefer extinction. Mileage may vary.

But the problem with Nids as a narrative is that they are to strong. GW cannot in any way advance the plot because to do so would be to wipe out the setting. The Nids are more background color than a true threat to the setting (by this fact alone). It would be the same with Orks, but Orks are self regulated by chaotic societies and racial self genocide. This pretty much leaves Chaos or the Necrons to be the primary foe of the setting. And both have been mishandled in recent editions as a threat.

They could balance the Tyranids vs. the Necrons. The two monolithic threats stalemate/weaken each other. Tyranid numbers and adaptability vs. Necron super science and numbers (offset by insanity or damaged tombs). There was also some hints in one of the older Tyranid Codices about even Chaos focusing more attention against the Tyranids, because Chaos wanted the galaxy for themselves. Specifically it was about a Chaos sorcerer grumbling that the Chaos gods would not be denied their galaxy by these extragalactic usurpers.

Necrons as written even now are overpowered if one looks at it. For example, in the FW Fall of Orpheus the Orpheus sector gets gutted by the Necrons in 100 days, including the 90% near annihilation of possibly the largest Imperial fleet gathering since the Heresy for next to nothing in Necron ship losses. An Imperial campaign called the Orpheus Salvation campaign is launched but it fails since 7 years later, in 999.M41, the Orpheus sector is officially dissolved and the region re-classified again as wilderness space.

Abaddon fights for literally decades in the Gothic sector for the sake of acquiring Blackstone Fortresses, yet the Necrons essentially tear through an equivalent amount of worlds in under a year, with the remaining time really just mop up. If one Necron dynasty can do that, it really starts to raise issues for why earlier active Necron dynasties haven't torn down the Imperium already if a dynasty can take out 60 worlds in 100 days.

The way to write themselves out of the corner they wrote themselves into, would be for GW to match the Necrons vs. the Tyranids. Rather than the Imperium directly defeating them, the Imperium actually has to be a bit more subtle. We see echoes of this in Kryptmann instigating the Orks vs. Tyranids Octarius conflict.

The thing that is frightening in terms of background for the Tyranids is how they spread like a cancer. Sure they lose in a few high profile battles here and there, but then the shattered remnants sneak off and start picking off isolated worlds past the main defensive concentrations and regrow in strength. That is exactly what the remnants of Hive Fleet Kraken did. All those small victories were enough for some splinter fleets to grow back to full strength, so ultimately those defeats that Kraken suffered at Ichar and Iyanden might not have meant that much in the grand scheme.

I believe a major hurdle in the development in technology is the Imperial Cult of the Adetpus Ministorum "Ecclesiarchy" and the Mechanicus' obsession with the Omnissiah(Emperor). We all know what happened the last time a particular Primarch treated the Empeor as a god... since the Emperor's slumber everyone has seem to have forgotten the primary tenant of the IoM... that it ISN'T a religion.

I personally struggle with the concept that we can pilot these Ramilies class WARP traveling starports but we can't repair or build new ones malarkey. If humans have one skill in the entire multiverse it is our ability to reverse engineer. In a matter of a century the Mechanicus on Mars would disassemble and analyze every bit of tech they didn't "understand" and understand it pretty quick. Hand an infant an iPad and they already know how to download apps and play games, without being able to read mind you!

That being said, not fixing the Imperium of Man is purely a plot device. With the speed of development of technology if it were unhampered we would we quickly be on our way to the dark age of technology again ("Machine Spirit" sounds an awful lot like AI if you ask me) and that would really unbalance the narrative.

Vazriel wrote:
I believe a major hurdle in the development in technology is the Imperial Cult of the Adetpus Ministorum "Ecclesiarchy" and the Mechanicus' obsession with the Omnissiah(Emperor). We all know what happened the last time a particular Primarch treated the Empeor as a god... since the Emperor's slumber everyone has seem to have forgotten the primary tenant of the IoM... that it ISN'T a religion.

I personally struggle with the concept that we can pilot these Ramilies class WARP traveling starports but we can't repair or build new ones malarkey. If humans have one skill in the entire multiverse it is our ability to reverse engineer. In a matter of a century the Mechanicus on Mars would disassemble and analyze every bit of tech they didn't "understand" and understand it pretty quick. Hand an infant an iPad and they already know how to download apps and play games, without being able to read mind you!

That being said, not fixing the Imperium of Man is purely a plot device. With the speed of development of technology if it were unhampered we would we quickly be on our way to the dark age of technology again ("Machine Spirit" sounds an awful lot like AI if you ask me) and that would really unbalance the narrative.

An infant would be okay with swapping the arms on LEGO figures. The Mechanicus will either spend 200 years arguing if it's okay or just shoot everyone involved.

pm713 wrote:

Vazriel wrote:
I believe a major hurdle in the development in technology is the Imperial Cult of the Adetpus Ministorum "Ecclesiarchy" and the Mechanicus' obsession with the Omnissiah(Emperor). We all know what happened the last time a particular Primarch treated the Empeor as a god... since the Emperor's slumber everyone has seem to have forgotten the primary tenant of the IoM... that it ISN'T a religion.

I personally struggle with the concept that we can pilot these Ramilies class WARP traveling starports but we can't repair or build new ones malarkey. If humans have one skill in the entire multiverse it is our ability to reverse engineer. In a matter of a century the Mechanicus on Mars would disassemble and analyze every bit of tech they didn't "understand" and understand it pretty quick. Hand an infant an iPad and they already know how to download apps and play games, without being able to read mind you!

That being said, not fixing the Imperium of Man is purely a plot device. With the speed of development of technology if it were unhampered we would we quickly be on our way to the dark age of technology again ("Machine Spirit" sounds an awful lot like AI if you ask me) and that would really unbalance the narrative.

An infant would be okay with swapping the arms on LEGO figures. The Mechanicus will either spend 200 years arguing if it's okay or just shoot everyone involved.

Exactly, you get it! The technology they have is from the Omnissiah(Emperor) anyway and if he allowed it to exist before there is nothing for them to argue over, so they need to get off their religious butt and get back to work...
lets say it together... Imperial Truth!

In a number of ways, the Mechanicum is the worst enemy of the Imperium, above and beyond Chaos or Tyranids. Cawl and his supporters might be the only sane members of the entire organization.

On technology, I'll refer peeps to a blurb about them in Rogue Trader. Now being that old, it's canonicity is of course questionable. But, it's an interesting thought all the same.

Essentially, STCs were the death knell of man's technological progression. They were just too good. You need an item? Tell the STC what it is, and what materials you have to hand. It'll work out the details, tell you how to do it.

Now, rinse and repeat for a few generations. Each subsequent generation has less and less reason to think about a given problem for themselves. Just get the STC to do it. From there, it doesn't take long for societies, planets and entire systems to be entirely reliant on STC databases.

Soon as those are lost (either because they're beyond repair due to age, or wrecked during conflict) and you're left with a singularly technologically ignorant populace. Yes, they may have nice toys, up to and beyond anti-grav miracles. But they've no idea how they work, or how to repair them. And for those that retained a modicum of repair knowledge, they still don't know how to improve upon them.

First they ensured stagnation, then regression.

That's why the Mechanicus wielded so much power, same for it's descendant, The Mechanicum. It's not that they know everything - just that nobody else knows anything. The Mechanicum are similarly obsessed by STC knowledge because they simply cannot conceive of a better way. STCs saw man rise to dizzying heights on the galactic stage. Therefore, they're clearly the only way to get back there. We just need to find one completely complete, and we can ask it how to make more. And more. And more. And more. Then we're back where we were.

Flawed, deeply. A recipe for disaster? Almost certainly. But logical, in it's own fashion.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On technology, I'll refer peeps to a blurb about them in Rogue Trader. Now being that old, it's canonicity is of course questionable. But, it's an interesting thought all the same.

Essentially, STCs were the death knell of man's technological progression. They were just too good. You need an item? Tell the STC what it is, and what materials you have to hand. It'll work out the details, tell you how to do it.

Now, rinse and repeat for a few generations. Each subsequent generation has less and less reason to think about a given problem for themselves. Just get the STC to do it. From there, it doesn't take long for societies, planets and entire systems to be entirely reliant on STC databases.

Soon as those are lost (either because they're beyond repair due to age, or wrecked during conflict) and you're left with a singularly technologically ignorant populace. Yes, they may have nice toys, up to and beyond anti-grav miracles. But they've no idea how they work, or how to repair them. And for those that retained a modicum of repair knowledge, they still don't know how to improve upon them.

First they ensured stagnation, then regression.

That's why the Mechanicus wielded so much power, same for it's descendant, The Mechanicum. It's not that they know everything - just that nobody else knows anything. The Mechanicum are similarly obsessed by STC knowledge because they simply cannot conceive of a better way. STCs saw man rise to dizzying heights on the galactic stage. Therefore, they're clearly the only way to get back there. We just need to find one completely complete, and we can ask it how to make more. And more. And more. And more. Then we're back where we were.

Flawed, deeply. A recipe for disaster? Almost certainly. But logical, in it's own fashion.

Fantastic comment! I don't feel we will ever gain a fully intact Standard Template Construct OR Standard Template Constructor(3D Printer on crack) due to it pushing the narrative too far. Humanity would be back to chasing the Eldar in tech and completely embarrassing the only thing that makes Tau relevant. Opinions?

Contradicting my earlier statement be damned but we deal with this problem regularly in the engineering fields. It is not uncommon that we have someone WAY past the design phase for mechanical systems that had no true understanding of mechanical intent or the fundamentals of machines.

Having said that, we will have an amazing parallel to this in our reality very shortly. In my field we have users engaging "AI" to answer questions about data and they think "AI" is magic because they don't understand data or algorithm. This combined with generative design software and 3D printing we could have an unprecedented boom in technology in the next 30-50 years the likes of which we can't imagine.

bolter_fodder wrote:

Create a network of astronomicans. I am guessing the IOM can build / design psychic amplifiers (like librarians use) - so I am sure they could cobble up a machine that, say for example, 1000 psykers can connect to and power it safely so that they can do it for years (say 10 years ave) before they burn out. Maybe we need one per subsector since they will be much less powerful then the golden throne - there are maybe a few hundred subsectors (?) call it 200 - therefore 200,000 pykers for each 10 years is less then what the golden throne consumes (356 * 1000 * 10 years = 3,560,000). This would also have some redundancy in the system. Maybe also build a few giant ones that need 10,000 psykers for central hubs and what not.

Local astropathic choir beacons are already a thing mentioned in the fluff, and they're often on major worlds around the imperium. But the Astronomicon is like the magnetic field which lets you use a compass, and they're more like little lighthouses. Light houses just can't replace a compass in pre-gps navigation.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On technology, I'll refer peeps to a blurb about them in Rogue Trader. Now being that old, it's canonicity is of course questionable. But, it's an interesting thought all the same.

Essentially, STCs were the death knell of man's technological progression. They were just too good. You need an item? Tell the STC what it is, and what materials you have to hand. It'll work out the details, tell you how to do it.

Now, rinse and repeat for a few generations. Each subsequent generation has less and less reason to think about a given problem for themselves. Just get the STC to do it. From there, it doesn't take long for societies, planets and entire systems to be entirely reliant on STC databases.

Soon as those are lost (either because they're beyond repair due to age, or wrecked during conflict) and you're left with a singularly technologically ignorant populace. Yes, they may have nice toys, up to and beyond anti-grav miracles. But they've no idea how they work, or how to repair them. And for those that retained a modicum of repair knowledge, they still don't know how to improve upon them.

First they ensured stagnation, then regression.

That's why the Mechanicus wielded so much power, same for it's descendant, The Mechanicum. It's not that they know everything - just that nobody else knows anything. The Mechanicum are similarly obsessed by STC knowledge because they simply cannot conceive of a better way. STCs saw man rise to dizzying heights on the galactic stage. Therefore, they're clearly the only way to get back there. We just need to find one completely complete, and we can ask it how to make more. And more. And more. And more. Then we're back where we were.

Flawed, deeply. A recipe for disaster? Almost certainly. But logical, in it's own fashion.

That makes sense to a certain extent, but if you look at the modern world, we're already largely there. The vast majority of people don't have the slightest idea how any of the tech they use on a daily basis works, how to fix it, or how to go about replacing it. Most people wouldn't even be able to start a camp fire properly today. Our civilization is built on layers of people doing specialized jobs, a vast quantity of which aren't even necessary. I wonder if you broke down the population of the USA into those who actually keep the utilities we need running (food, water, heat, housing, such) what percentage would actually be doing work that really really matters. Versus entertainment and wheel spinning jobs programs.

bolter_fodder wrote:
So... I have a theory (ready to be shot down of course) to fix the imperium (in some ways at least).

My two theories are this:

Put a geller field around the web-way breach under the imperial palace...hell, but a hundred star-ship gellerfields under there with multiple redundancies. This free's up maybe some of the thousand pyskers each day getting burnt out, and maybe some of the GEOM daily todo list.

Create a network of astronomicans. I am guessing the IOM can build / design psychic amplifiers (like librarians use) - so I am sure they could cobble up a machine that, say for example, 1000 psykers can connect to and power it safely so that they can do it for years (say 10 years ave) before they burn out. Maybe we need one per subsector since they will be much less powerful then the golden throne - there are maybe a few hundred subsectors (?) call it 200 - therefore 200,000 pykers for each 10 years is less then what the golden throne consumes (356 * 1000 * 10 years = 3,560,000). This would also have some redundancy in the system. Maybe also build a few giant ones that need 10,000 psykers for central hubs and what not.

With these two things in place, they could let the Emps die... and see what happens. Maybe the web way can be reopened for business under the place (patched with gellerfeilds) and in the mean time space travel is still on going with Guilliman in charge, and possibly the return of the GEOM as a man or a god, and maybe someone wakes up the Lion and a couple other Primarchs come back. Plus with maybe x10 the number of space marines (primaris) being pumped out....

Obviously this would take a century or so, but why would any of these things not be possible?
This also assume Guilliman + co can keep the IOM together for another 100 yrs - but he has proved he can already.

Anyway, that was my thought...

What if the gellar field fails. The Emperor didn't think the one around the Primarchs would and then Argel Tal destroyed it.

Iracundus wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

Table wrote:
To put things at the most basic level, 40k is a setting where the "good guys" (there arnt any, but some folks cant handle that and latch onto the Imperium) are losing. The reason why the Imperium was broken in half in this edition is because the writers of the setting had made chaos a joke. They lost every encounter, always foiled...ect.

You cant have a good hero without a more powerful (in some aspect) foe to ascend to beating.

Simply put, the Imperium was to mary sue at the end of 7th. It needed to be knocked down a few pegs.

I'd not use the term mary sue to describe the IoM. But I do agree Chaos had lost it's threat. when I started 40k back in 5th edition the actual big threat as presented was more the Tyranids then chaos.

I've always considered Tyranids a greater threat than Chaos, and a more terrifying one from an existential point of view since it hammers home one's insignificance.

Imperium vs. Chaos feeds a simplistic "goodie vs. baddie" dichotomy. When one's enemy hates you because they're nursing a 10,000 year old grudge, it still means they care about you enough to hate you and what you stand for. Chaos gods care enough about humans to have champions as playthings. By contrast, the Tyranids don't care at all what you think or believe, or what your god/Emperor wants.

Chaos wants to enslave humanity, and would likely create some variation of their Eye of Terror societies dominated by the CSM, while the Chaos gods feed off the emotions of the masses. Humantiy would still exist albeit in a fashion that Imperials would find repugnant. However, Tyranids don't want to enslave humanity. They want to eat and extinguish humanity. Ultimate defeat against Chaos means enslavement. Ultimate defeat against Tyranids means extinction.

as I said they've done a abd job for awhile of really putting chaos front and center. they're getting better at it now. we spent too long with chaos being a bottled up joke and 'nids actually achomplishing things. we'v heard of forge worlds being eaten etc. when's the last time a major forge world was described as being taken/destroyed by chaos?

BrianDavion wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

Table wrote:
To put things at the most basic level, 40k is a setting where the "good guys" (there arnt any, but some folks cant handle that and latch onto the Imperium) are losing. The reason why the Imperium was broken in half in this edition is because the writers of the setting had made chaos a joke. They lost every encounter, always foiled...ect.

You cant have a good hero without a more powerful (in some aspect) foe to ascend to beating.

Simply put, the Imperium was to mary sue at the end of 7th. It needed to be knocked down a few pegs.

I'd not use the term mary sue to describe the IoM. But I do agree Chaos had lost it's threat. when I started 40k back in 5th edition the actual big threat as presented was more the Tyranids then chaos.

I've always considered Tyranids a greater threat than Chaos, and a more terrifying one from an existential point of view since it hammers home one's insignificance.

Imperium vs. Chaos feeds a simplistic "goodie vs. baddie" dichotomy. When one's enemy hates you because they're nursing a 10,000 year old grudge, it still means they care about you enough to hate you and what you stand for. Chaos gods care enough about humans to have champions as playthings. By contrast, the Tyranids don't care at all what you think or believe, or what your god/Emperor wants.

Chaos wants to enslave humanity, and would likely create some variation of their Eye of Terror societies dominated by the CSM, while the Chaos gods feed off the emotions of the masses. Humantiy would still exist albeit in a fashion that Imperials would find repugnant. However, Tyranids don't want to enslave humanity. They want to eat and extinguish humanity. Ultimate defeat against Chaos means enslavement. Ultimate defeat against Tyranids means extinction.

as I said they've done a abd job for awhile of really putting chaos front and center. they're getting better at it now. we spent too long with chaos being a bottled up joke and 'nids actually achomplishing things. we'v heard of forge worlds being eaten etc. when's the last time a major forge world was described as being taken/destroyed by chaos?

Totally I was so fed up with Chaos being the Scooby Doo villain.

Course some people won't ever be happy mind you. "ohh sure they cut the IoM in half, but it doesn't count cause the emperor is still alive" *facepalm*

BrianDavion wrote:
Course some people won't ever be happy mind you. "ohh sure they cut the IoM in half, but it doesn't count cause the emperor is still alive" *facepalm*

Yeah, I don't think the Imperium has been in as much trouble just now for nearly 10,000. I think we are in a very interesting time because now Chaos has a permanent foot hold in the galaxy, they are also going to have to fight serious wars against the Tyranids or the Necrons etc. Its not just an Imperium vs Chaos setting. I mean when was the last time Chaos ever fought a war with the Tyranids on the scale of Macragge etc.