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Rank the factions in order of how you think they're there solely to be the punching bag of other factions.

- Imperial Guard

- Everyone else

 Vermis wrote:
- Imperial Guard

- Everyone else

Ironically, they are probably somewhere around third or fourth place after Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines in terms of "punching bags". My list would be the following.

Space Marines
Chaos Space Marines/Chaos Daemon
Tau
Imperial Guard;
Eldars;
Sisters of Battle
Necrons
Adeptus Mechanicus;
Dark Eldars
Orks
Tyranids

Tyranids are without a doubt the top of the punchingbag list. Their very nature means that they can be beaten up and never suffer. They have no unique mortal heroes, in fact they are split into two kinds of "hero". The Swarmlord who basically is immortal and known to be reborn within the Swarm; and ones like Red Terror and Old One Eye - rumours, nightmares, hints of special/rare evolutions that aren't even certain if they are totally unique or just very specialist strains.
Plus with their entire race outside the Galaxy they are the only race that can lose massive wars and have no impact on tehir overall story as such. The Imperium can blast whole Hive Fleets to nothing and the Swarm doesn't "lose" overall.


Orks - Orks just want to fight, they also spawn from spores which have proven to be as hard to dislodge as Tyranids from worlds - even surviving Exterminatus. Fast breeding, love of war etc... Ork's aren't just a punching bag you can beat on forever, they also punch back.


Imperial Guard - the Guard are legion. Their recruitment drive is vast and that makes for commanders who are very light with the life of their guard. The Guard aren't just a punching bag for other factions (considering most worlds are held by the Imperium); but even for their own faction at times. In some ways they are only not higher because they are Imperial and not Xenos. Thus they are more likely to be attacking Orks and Tyranids; but equally are the most likely to be attacked by them.

Then we hit a motley of races. Necrons, Chaos, Sisters of Battle etc... Who are limited and not punchbags, but also aren't really in any semblance of order.


Space Marines - whilst they are the Emperor's Angels and they are limited in numbers, its only by their own political and religious restrictions. They can replace their numbers and their leaders are famed generals and long lived. They are not a punchbag, in fact most often they are the fist that does the punching. Even when beaten up by two hive fleets - Ultramare and Baal - they are still coming out swinging heavier.


Eldar - Whilst they are capable and willing warriors, their fallen nature makes them more suited to hiding and working in the shadows. Aiming to pick select fights and protect key areas rather than an all-comers attitude to war. They can conduct major warfare, but they can't take the vast losses that factions higher than them can soak.


Tau - Tau are the smallest faction with the least amount of awareness of the Universe.Granted they are growing fast in those areas, but still they can't be a punchbag too much - they've had to be shielded, hidden, protected in order to get their head up in a Galaxy that basically wipes out any smaller fish in the sea.

 Overread wrote:
Tyranids are without a doubt the top of the punchingbag list. Their very nature means that they can be beaten up and never suffer. They have no unique mortal heroes, in fact they are split into two kinds of "hero". The Swarmlord who basically is immortal and known to be reborn within the Swarm; and ones like Red Terror and Old One Eye - rumours, nightmares, hints of special/rare evolutions that aren't even certain if they are totally unique or just very specialist strains.
Plus with their entire race outside the Galaxy they are the only race that can lose massive wars and have no impact on tehir overall story as such. The Imperium can blast whole Hive Fleets to nothing and the Swarm doesn't "lose" overall.

Fully agreed.

 Overread wrote:
Tyranids are without a doubt the top of the punchingbag list. Their very nature means that they can be beaten up and never suffer. They have no unique mortal heroes, in fact they are split into two kinds of "hero". The Swarmlord who basically is immortal and known to be reborn within the Swarm; and ones like Red Terror and Old One Eye - rumours, nightmares, hints of special/rare evolutions that aren't even certain if they are totally unique or just very specialist strains.
Plus with their entire race outside the Galaxy they are the only race that can lose massive wars and have no impact on tehir overall story as such. The Imperium can blast whole Hive Fleets to nothing and the Swarm doesn't "lose" overall.


Orks - Orks just want to fight, they also spawn from spores which have proven to be as hard to dislodge as Tyranids from worlds - even surviving Exterminatus. Fast breeding, love of war etc... Ork's aren't just a punching bag you can beat on forever, they also punch back.


Imperial Guard - the Guard are legion. Their recruitment drive is vast and that makes for commanders who are very light with the life of their guard. The Guard aren't just a punching bag for other factions (considering most worlds are held by the Imperium); but even for their own faction at times. In some ways they are only not higher because they are Imperial and not Xenos. Thus they are more likely to be attacking Orks and Tyranids; but equally are the most likely to be attacked by them.

Then we hit a motley of races. Necrons, Chaos, Sisters of Battle etc... Who are limited and not punchbags, but also aren't really in any semblance of order.


Space Marines - whilst they are the Emperor's Angels and they are limited in numbers, its only by their own political and religious restrictions. They can replace their numbers and their leaders are famed generals and long lived. They are not a punchbag, in fact most often they are the fist that does the punching. Even when beaten up by two hive fleets - Ultramare and Baal - they are still coming out swinging heavier.


Eldar - Whilst they are capable and willing warriors, their fallen nature makes them more suited to hiding and working in the shadows. Aiming to pick select fights and protect key areas rather than an all-comers attitude to war. They can conduct major warfare, but they can't take the vast losses that factions higher than them can soak.


Tau - Tau are the smallest faction with the least amount of awareness of the Universe.Granted they are growing fast in those areas, but still they can't be a punchbag too much - they've had to be shielded, hidden, protected in order to get their head up in a Galaxy that basically wipes out any smaller fish in the sea.

Topic is not about how much potential a faction has to be a great punching bag. It's about whether they're the most used punching bag or not.

So like if Tyranids win almost every time then they'd be lowest on the list despite being capable of shrugging off losses. On the other hand if Tyranids lost every single fight like the Avatar of Khaines or Abaddon the (H)armless then they'd be on the top of the list.

On the other hand if Tyranids lost every single fight like the Avatar of Khaines or Abaddon the (H)armless then they'd be on the top of the list.

CADIA!

seriously, can the "durr abaddon never wins" meme die already?

The point of the setting is that no side ever wins; its a continual state of push and shove war. For every massive victory there's a defeat. For every fallen Cadia there's a crushed Black Crusade.



My list was more looking at the lore and style of factions. Tau can't be the punchbag - they can't lose every fight because they've so little to lose it wouldn't be long before they were gone. Tyranids on the other hand are the polar opposite; they hold no land (save for 1 planet they've built); they have near infinite numbers and no restriction on how many hive fleets they can bring into the galaxy. Their heroes and leaders can't even "die" so they can't have heroic last stands and lost glorious heroes.

They are built as the punchbag - sure they crush Space Marine chapters and have beaten two back to their chapter worlds; but they always lose in the end as a hive fleet. As a swarm they've not lost.

I agree with Overread, and I think that Daemons are in a similar bracket.

 Overread wrote:
The point of the setting is that no side ever wins; its a continual state of push and shove war. For every massive victory there's a defeat. For every fallen Cadia there's a crushed Black Crusade.



My list was more looking at the lore and style of factions. Tau can't be the punchbag - they can't lose every fight because they've so little to lose it wouldn't be long before they were gone. Tyranids on the other hand are the polar opposite; they hold no land (save for 1 planet they've built); they have near infinite numbers and no restriction on how many hive fleets they can bring into the galaxy. Their heroes and leaders can't even "die" so they can't have heroic last stands and lost glorious heroes.

They are built as the punchbag - sure they crush Space Marine chapters and have beaten two back to their chapter worlds; but they always lose in the end as a hive fleet. As a swarm they've not lost.

That's not what the topic is about though. The topic is about how many authors treat which factions as a punching bag the most consistently.

Well if you go by books the vast bulk are the Imperium winning battles against everyone.

Tyranids don't even have a single book from their perspective. Meanwhile the bulk of the rest are Imperial focused stories. Xenos books are actually quite few in number across all races - its improving, but only slowly (heck I believe GW used to have a rule that basically all books were to be from the Imperium side of things).

 Overread wrote:
Well if you go by books the vast bulk are the Imperium winning battles against everyone.

Tyranids don't even have a single book from their perspective. Meanwhile the bulk of the rest are Imperial focused stories. Xenos books are actually quite few in number across all races - its improving, but only slowly (heck I believe GW used to have a rule that basically all books were to be from the Imperium side of things).

Codices and other stuff count too and IoM loses a lot there. And a lot of IoM perspective novels have them losing too. Space Marines seem to be the no.1 non-punching bag but some people above think differently.

Space Marines are heavily represented in the 40K fiction both as protagonists and less frequently antagonists. They actually suffer significant defeat fairly rarely in that fiction, so they do not constitute what I would call a "punching bag".

Sisters of Battle have a few good ones - sactuary 101 to introduce the necrons, the blood tide, the foot note in the new edition mentioning their main system (ophelia) had been conquered by daemons and had to be rescued by Guilliman...
Celestine is also becoming the imperiums avatar.

At the other end of the scale the tau escape harm with great frequency and contrivance.

 Overread wrote:
Their very nature means that they can be beaten up and never suffer. They have no unique mortal heroes,

Fun fact, nearly every "Evil" race in WH40k has non-mortal heroes. I'm not going to say this is because GW specifically set their fiction up so that the good guys always win, but....

Factions whose named characters cannot be resurrected easily: Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Tau, Eldar, Knights, Orks (I say this, but that is EXACTLY what they just did with Ghazghkull, so....?)

Factions whose named characters can be resurrected easily: Dark Eldar, Chaos Daemons, Chaos Space Marines, Necrons, Tyranids, and Sisters (the designated Good Guy Worfs of the 40k cannon)

Factions whose characters can just die because they don't get to have named characters: Harlequins, GSC, Admech, R+H




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would rank things thusly:

Extreme Mook Tier: Very Frequently killed in fiction either as a means to simply set up the threat of the main antagonist, or as an "Appetizer villain" to establish how badass the heroes are before they run into the main threat

Genestealer Cults, Renegades and Heretics, Imperial Guard, Skitarii, Sisters, Orks

Mook Tier: While often depicted as a main antagonist, these factions seem to nearly always lose in-fiction when they are portrayed

Chaos Daemons, Chaos Space Marines, Craftworld Eldar, Tyranids, Space Marines (ONLY Chapters who have never explictly been given rules in the game. Any time you hear "Chapter Master Blabla of the Chapter You've Never Heard Of" you know he's gonna die)

Plot Armor Tier: These races tend to win IF they are pitted against a race in one of the tiers lower than this, but lose if they are pitted against a race in one of the tiers higher than this.

Inquisition, Dark Eldar, Harlequins, Knights, Necrons, Space Marine subfactions that do have rules in the game but who are not listed in the top tier above this one

Extreme Plot Armor Tier: Win when pitted against any faction in a tier below and never seem to fight one another. If one of these factions is involved in a conflict, you can be pretty certain that unless they leave for some reason, they will be on the winning side.

Space Wolves, Ultramarines, Tau, Custodes, Grey Knights

Tyranid codexes have gained a notoriety for being full of Tyranid defeats by other factions.

And the main lore events from the past 5+ years focused on the Hive Fleet Leviathan slowly advancing towards the Baal system, encircling, exhausting and eliminating every opposition until they faced the accumulated might of Blood Angels and their successor chapters, more than 20k marines in one place.

All that concentration of marines was pounded to the dust by relentless Nids and right before delivering the final coup de grace, the Great Space Magic happened, deleted an entire fleet of millions of hive ships and in their place was a crusading fleet with Bobby G.

*ultra-sigh*

Kitane wrote:
Tyranid codexes have gained a notoriety for being full of Tyranid defeats by other factions.

And the main lore events from the past 5+ years focused on the Hive Fleet Leviathan slowly advancing towards the Baal system, encircling, exhausting and eliminating every opposition until they faced the accumulated might of Blood Angels and their successor chapters, more than 20k marines in one place.

All that concentration of marines was pounded to the dust by relentless Nids and right before delivering the final coup de grace, the Great Space Magic happened, deleted an entire fleet of millions of hive ships and in their place was a crusading fleet with Bobby G.

*ultra-sigh*

Don't forget the two-page interim period where a Khornate daemon army jumped up and down on the tyranids, stacked their skulls, and then wandered off without interacting with their leader's personal fixation on the Blood Angels in any way at all.
Devastation of Baal seriously wrapped up with 'oops, ran out of word count.' Basically the climax of the entire story was left out to fit in pages and pages of creepy masturbatory fantasies about the sublime perfection of lictors.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Their very nature means that they can be beaten up and never suffer. They have no unique mortal heroes,

Fun fact, nearly every "Evil" race in WH40k has non-mortal heroes. I'm not going to say this is because GW specifically set their fiction up so that the good guys always win, but....

Factions whose named characters cannot be resurrected easily: Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Tau, Eldar, Knights, Orks (I say this, but that is EXACTLY what they just did with Ghazghkull, so....?)

Factions whose named characters can be resurrected easily: Dark Eldar, Chaos Daemons, Chaos Space Marines, Necrons, Tyranids, and Sisters (the designated Good Guy Worfs of the 40k cannon)

Factions whose characters can just die because they don't get to have named characters: Harlequins, GSC, Admech, R+H




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would rank things thusly:

Extreme Mook Tier: Very Frequently killed in fiction either as a means to simply set up the threat of the main antagonist, or as an "Appetizer villain" to establish how badass the heroes are before they run into the main threat

Genestealer Cults, Renegades and Heretics, Imperial Guard, Skitarii, Sisters, Orks

Mook Tier: While often depicted as a main antagonist, these factions seem to nearly always lose in-fiction when they are portrayed

Chaos Daemons, Chaos Space Marines, Craftworld Eldar, Tyranids, Space Marines (ONLY Chapters who have never explictly been given rules in the game. Any time you hear "Chapter Master Blabla of the Chapter You've Never Heard Of" you know he's gonna die)

Plot Armor Tier: These races tend to win IF they are pitted against a race in one of the tiers lower than this, but lose if they are pitted against a race in one of the tiers higher than this.

Inquisition, Dark Eldar, Harlequins, Knights, Necrons, Space Marine subfactions that do have rules in the game but who are not listed in the top tier above this one

Extreme Plot Armor Tier: Win when pitted against any faction in a tier below and never seem to fight one another. If one of these factions is involved in a conflict, you can be pretty certain that unless they leave for some reason, they will be on the winning side.

Space Wolves, Ultramarines, Tau, Custodes, Grey Knights

I've been thinking about why the craftworlds seem to get the short end of the stick a lot, in fiction and support, and I wonder if it's because they're in a really bad position from a product perspective.

Every time a new edition comes out with a box, it will have marines vs someone, and often they get new stuff (like the new necrons coming out). but the Craftworlds aren't a typical 'villain' force, so are unlikely to see the inside of a starter box. They are also the tragic dying elf trope, but are also seen as somewhat good by the standards of the setting.

If you broke down the factions into 'alignments' rather than origins, you'd get something like this (using relative definitions of the terms good and evil and relating them entirely to the imperium):

Good: Imperium, Eldar

Good/Neutral: Tau

Evil/Neutral: orks

Evil: Chaos, Tyranids, Necrons, Drukhari

This is somewhat subjective but it highlights the challenges some factions have in being used in stories and also being supported in products. The non-dark eldar factions are directly competing with the poster boys for protagonist position because they aren't obvious evil aliens bent on killing humans. Which means they aren't going to appear as an opponent in a core box and they aren't going to displace marines as the 'good' faction either.

The eldar are thus left to float in limbo as marines take up all the good guy slots in advertising and products and stories (and there are so many imperial factions that this is saturated).

The tau are good/neutral, in that they can take the place of a protagonist, but their motivation puts them directly in conflict with the imperium - trying to convert humans the greater good and take their worlds. So they can appear convincingly as antagonists.

Orks are evil/neutral, in that they can be protagonists but you're less likely to see them as good and they will aways work as antagonists.



The eldar are trying to survive, maybe destroy chaos and protect their maiden worlds. But they aren't trying to conquer anything and they aren't trying to exterminate humanity just cuz.Basically the eldar don't occupy a distinct enough conceptual niche in relation to the imperium (this is what everything is built around). They can't be protagonists because they've got a dozen imperial protagonists to work with, and they don't work as convincingly as antagonists because they aren't as anti-imperium as the 'evil' factions. The tau are like this to a lesser extent.


So you're left with this void where the eldar are kind of the imperium for xenos in as much as there is such a thing, but because the imperium is focus and only their enemies get the limelight by association, you just don't get anything for them.

Basically the eldar are the red headed stepchild of imperial factions (using imperial to mean protagonist) so they get ignored quite easily.


The only way to change this due to GW's business model is to re-align the eldar somehow, like ynnari form a unified eldar empire bent on retaking the galaxy, in which case they can be more tauesque in their alignment. I imagine that's what they were kind of trying to do with the ynnari, but it was done so half heartedly that it has fizzled.


At the moment they're more an imperial supplement that tries to stand by itself, but there's so little space for them to occupy they don't really get much of a chance. You can see this also in the narrative of Pariah, where there's a single eldar appearing as an IMPERIAL ally rather than with anything to do with an eldar force. They're being relegated to Obi Wan to the imperium's Luke. when they got their own book they had to be fighting their own people. It didn't seem like they could convincingly get them into other narratives.

If we're going by bl books I think it should be pointed out that the legions have a tendency to ultimately lose even in their own books. 10th company was wiped out at the end of ADB'S trilogy except for a few Bleeding Eyes, Malcharion, and Variel. Honsou's assault on Ultramarr failed. So they have trouble winning even when they're the protagonists.

But I'd still say the biggest punching bag title would be a tie between tyranids/gsc and daemons.

At this point, anything that's not a Marine has equal opportunity to serve as a punching bag, specifically for Marines though sometimes their mates (not Guard) show up.

Guard barely even featured as anything else than a punching back in Fall of CADIA. They've had pretty much zero relevance as anything than a footnote with anything to do with non-BL lore since then. I don't think they've been as narrative of a punching bag as much as they have now? At least they actually threw some punches before. That being said they're still on the Imperium, so they're a punching bag who don't actually lose?

The Daemon Primarchs have the 'invulnerability problem' where they can't truly die, therefore make excellent punching bags to show off how badarse the Special Character of the Month is, although apparently poor Ghazza isn't immune to that now.

Xenos- well, I don't need to explain this one.

Tyranids = Genestealer Cults -> Orks -> Imperial Guard -> Chaos Daemons -> Eldar -> Necrons -> Tau -> Dark Eldar -> Mechanicum = Chaos Marines -> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> Space Marines.

It's a pretty poor list, because even those higher up have a good chance of getting pummelled into the dirt, they're just less likely to get completely steamrolled in the process... except Marines, obviously.

Chaos guard, probably the only thing getting beat up worse then guard, even by their "teammates "
that is when they show up .

Aye, including in the rules department since 8th dropped.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Chaos guard, probably the only thing getting beat up worse then guard, even by their "teammates "
that is when they show up .

Yeah, Generic Rebels/Heretics is for sure the ultimate winner of any punching-bag race in 40k.

In Fantasy, that role was unquestionably filled by the Beastmen, and it is telling that RnH in 40k have always had beastmen as well. For some reason, GW likes asserting their dominance by humiliating goatmen as much as Shane Madaj.

Tau and necrons would be in the bottom of the list since the former are not yet known by everyone and a bit too tiny and the second still waking from their tombs so partly -very partly- unnoticed on many places. All others being stuck in an endless war agaisnt pretty much everyone else that no one can actually win means that they'd all be to my mind on a single rank as far as getting punched in the face goes.

No mention of Squats? they were punched so hard they fell out of of canon in a setting that doesn't even has a canon policy and GW refused to even name them for decades.

Also Sisters were the imperial punching bag until very recently.

the_scotsman wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Chaos guard, probably the only thing getting beat up worse then guard, even by their "teammates "
that is when they show up .

Yeah, Generic Rebels/Heretics is for sure the ultimate winner of any punching-bag race in 40k.

In Fantasy, that role was unquestionably filled by the Beastmen, and it is telling that RnH in 40k have always had beastmen as well. For some reason, GW likes asserting their dominance by humiliating goatmen as much as Shane Madaj.

Aren’t Corsairs bottom of the list?

Eldar Avatars are the total defination of a punching bag......

Space Wolves have plot armour so thick that rest of the universe could end and they would not notice.

Most do alright in their own books - Guard do well in Cain, Tanith, Helsreach and other novels

Well, there's a reason PDF's have (/had?) a meme about how often they die, while none of the other factions do AFAIK, so they would be my number 1 choice.

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Chaos guard, probably the only thing getting beat up worse then guard, even by their "teammates "
that is when they show up .

Yeah, Generic Rebels/Heretics is for sure the ultimate winner of any punching-bag race in 40k.

In Fantasy, that role was unquestionably filled by the Beastmen, and it is telling that RnH in 40k have always had beastmen as well. For some reason, GW likes asserting their dominance by humiliating goatmen as much as Shane Madaj.

Aren’t Corsairs bottom of the list?

I don't recall ever seeing Corsairs in basically any 40k fiction, so...no? I could not tell you how frequently or not corsairs win and lose in fiction. Might as well say the Zoats or something are the ultimate punching bag. Maybe. I dunno. They might as well not exist.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Eldar Avatars are the total defination of a punching bag......

Space Wolves have plot armour so thick that rest of the universe could end and they would not notice.

Most do alright in their own books - Guard do well in Cain, Tanith, Helsreach and other novels

CWE make it out of Extreme Mook Tier in my book because they almost always lose in-fiction, but they tend to lose as the climactic event, instead of merely being a delectable sampler, a bolterporn horse dee oover to take you in to the main course of the bolter based pornographic artistry, as factions in the Extreme Mook Tier so often are.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Arbitrator wrote:
At this point, anything that's not a Marine has equal opportunity to serve as a punching bag, specifically for Marines though sometimes their mates (not Guard) show up.

Guard barely even featured as anything else than a punching back in Fall of CADIA. They've had pretty much zero relevance as anything than a footnote with anything to do with non-BL lore since then. I don't think they've been as narrative of a punching bag as much as they have now? At least they actually threw some punches before. That being said they're still on the Imperium, so they're a punching bag who don't actually lose?

The Daemon Primarchs have the 'invulnerability problem' where they can't truly die, therefore make excellent punching bags to show off how badarse the Special Character of the Month is, although apparently poor Ghazza isn't immune to that now.

Xenos- well, I don't need to explain this one.

Tyranids = Genestealer Cults -> Orks -> Imperial Guard -> Chaos Daemons -> Eldar -> Necrons -> Tau -> Dark Eldar -> Mechanicum = Chaos Marines -> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> Space Marines.

It's a pretty poor list, because even those higher up have a good chance of getting pummelled into the dirt, they're just less likely to get completely steamrolled in the process... except Marines, obviously.

I would disagree only because dumpstering marine chapters that nobody has ever heard of is pretty par for the course as setup for how badass a bad guy is or how dire the situation is before another good guy faction comes in and saves the day.

If the main character of a short story is Captain Davington Borklesworth of the Celestial Walruses chapter, he'll probably end up on a spike on some warboss or chaos lord's armor to set up how super exquisitely nasty that bad dude is.

I think it's important to differentiate between 1st founding Space Marine chapters and some known 2nd founding successors - and Space Marine chapter of the week you haven't heard of before.
The first bunch of Space Marines will always win (or die up to 1 survivor, like the Blood Angels seem to do occasionally).

The second bunch will always lose (getting "worfed" if you like) to show how evil the attacking force is.