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Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
But that's not the in-universe strategic calculus, which (according to the fluff) is that the Imperium will act swiftly to contain threats before they spread once they become aware of them, especially if they are a source of subversion.

Within the 40k universe, the High Lords would have immediately recognized that the Tau were small, and their very weakness would have justified their immediate elimination. It would take far less resources, and save trouble later. If they're remote, even better - just virus bomb the planets and be done with them.

Utter nonsense. The Imperial bureaucracy is slow and never does anything on time. The first instance of war between the T'au Empire and Imperium only came about because the T'au started making inroads with fringe Imperial colonies and eventually the Inquisition got wind of it. The Imperium had to retake secessionist worlds before pushing into T'au space and when they did, the Crusade leaders slowly began to realise that:
A - The T'au weren't pushovers, they had the military skills and the technology to be able to inflict serious losses on the Imperial forces.
B - The planets they encountered weren't the sum total of the race and a proper extermination would require a massive force, with certain Crusade leaders calling for a retreat into Imperial space to repair the fleet and rebuild their significantly reduced numbers.
The only reason the Imperium didn't end up losing the Damocles Crusade was due to the arrival of Behemoth in Ultramar which forced a peace settlement between the T'au and Imperium. The T'au only agreed to this agreement because they too recognised the threat of Behemoth.

I think people often forget that whilst the Imperium as a whole has vast resources; the Imperium has to spread them out. In the end the Tau are too small a threat for major offensive action. Therefore the forces that fight against them are often the more local sector forces. Forces that are powerful but not the most powerful the Imperium has.


This allows the Tau to keep chipping away; keep developing new technologies and cement their hold over their sector of space. Each year that the Imperium considers them a more minor threat than other major threats; is a year the Tau get to become a greater local power.


In the end this is a weakness of the Imperium, the inability to deal with a minor threat until it becomes a major threat. It reinforces how spread thin their forces and resources are in tackling other threats in the Galaxy.



At the same time I've been wondering if GW were going to use a few campaigns to shatter the Imperium. Perhaps cutting it in two in to a very powerful loyalist side and a - basically border princes situation from Old World - side. Basically worlds cut off from the main hub of the Imperium and left to fend much more for themselves. With no chance of calling on the greater might. This allowing other factions and races a chance to do what the Tau are doing - carve out a section of the galaxy for themselves and have enough influence ot stand on their own

Ummm. Isn't that last bit what the whole "Great Rift" is supposed to do? Split the Imperium into two halves? One more stable, and the other more "cut off" from the rest, and thus more open to attack and appropriation by the various other factions?

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Ummm. Isn't that last bit what the whole "Great Rift" is supposed to do? Split the Imperium into two halves? One more stable, and the other more "cut off" from the rest, and thus more open to attack and appropriation by the various other factions?

That's my impression, though so far we've only seen one new race and they - Squa..Votaan - technically are Imperial allies rather than xenos enemies. So we've yet to really see the game bare the fruits of the Imperium being fragmented in power more so than in the last 30 years or so. There's a lot of potential cards on the table now to do that, but at the same time GW have limited resources and many things they can still explore without even touching on that. Heck maybe they do something like the Eldar - Yinnari/Exodites - doing a huge return to power and retaking many worlds from the weakened side of the Imperium

Iracundus wrote:
The High Lords are beset with requests for aid from thousands of worlds or sectors all over the galaxy. There are plenty of Genestealer cults, Chaos cults, or just plain schismatic Imperial cults that can be argued to be subversive as well. All of those places would argue their threat is important and needs to be dealt with first before it gets worse.

Again you act like those players from the long ago Eye of Terror campaign demanding the Imperium divert forces to squash the Tau threat in the bud. The problem is Chaos is beating down the door of the Imperium right now, Genestealer Cults are rising up and disrupting supply chains, the Tyranid hive fleets are picking off worlds and the Shadow is disrupting travel, etc... .

Let me stop you there and point out that you're ignoring the issue of scale.

That is, the forces necessary to squish the Tau are essentially trivial compared to the scope of operations around the Eye of Terror.

If I can throw a squadron of ships out to the periphery, sweep up the Tau and have them back in time for tiffin, I will. It's known as low-hanging fruit, the easy kill, and the forces diverted will be insufficient to affect the primary theater.

This is doubly the case if the Tau are far away from the main theater of operations, so the local forces there (with some Space Marine augmentation) can pretty much go nuts.

This is Grand Strategy 101, well within Imperial understanding. If you can use 10 divisions to utterly wreck a threat, they won't be missed on a front where 100,000 divisions are being engaged.

Moreover, you don't even need to take and hold the planets, just have some battle barges from the Back Benchers Chapter wander through and dump virus bombs until the bio-tests come back negative. Its the kind of thing a new squadron could do as prep for more dangerous combat operations in the Eye of Terror.

I don't know where people got the idea that everything should go into the boss fight. No, sweep the flanks first, then the boss fight becomes easier.

Oh yeah just wander a fleet through the T'au territory facing absolutely no resistance as it conducts lengthy planetary destruction.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:


That is, the forces necessary to squish the Tau are essentially trivial compared to the scope of operations around the Eye of Terror.

It seems you are unaware of scale. Just because you think the forces needed are trivial doesn't mean they are. The Imperium thought they didn't need many forces and they failed first with the Damocles Crusade then the Taros Crusade and so on. Every attempt by the Imperium to do anything against the Tau with minimal resources has failed. Even when they do recapture, that effort generally falters or peters out after that, because the Imperium at most is conducting small spasmodic campaigns against single worlds or sectors. There is no grand reconquest.

The fact the Imperium stripped their borders in order to feed into the meet grinder around the Cadian Gate or around all the other myriad of larger conflicts closer to Terra shows the Imperium does not have spare forces. The fact Kryptman had to divert the Tyranids to the Orks of Octarius just to buy some time even if it meant stronger Tyranids or Orks in the long run, shows long term planning is not something the Imperium is engaging in. The Imperium is desperate for every scrap of time or resource it can find for immediate use and gain. There are no magical reserves sitting around with nothing to do. If there were, the Imperium would not need to strip any areas. The Tau Empire is far too hard a nut to crack for the return on investment, especially when there are so many other fronts clamoring for resources and troops. Every one of those local governors or regional commanders would probably make the claim that their front is critical and that would result in the fall of the Imperium if neglected.

You are attempting to deal with cockroaches while a serial killer is at the door. Trying to demand the waste of excessive resources for the sake of a still small xenos empire at the very edge of the Imperium that poses no immediate threat to Terra while Abaddon is attempting to smash down the Cadian Gate or while post-Rift worlds are convulsing under cults of all sorts would get you executed for incompetence and gross misuse of the Emperor's already spread thin resources, if not a saboteur trying to secretly weaken the Imperium.

All the rabid frothing at the mouth by anti-Tau players during the Eye of Terror campaign met with the same response. The vast bulk of the Imperial players were not about to lose the war for the sake of satisfying some vendetta by a few at the edge of known space. That the Imperium lost that campaign is another matter, but they would have lost even more if they had denuded the front lines to go pursue a minor objective. How do we know it was minor? Because GW called it the Eye of Terror campaign and detailed the area around the Cadian Gate, while the Tau front was just an undetailed single bar showing expansion %.

The Imperium used to be the only faction with an endgame goal. Except maybe for the tyranids nomnomnom and very lose writing on the eldar god Ynnead. The imperiums star child theory was actually pretty heavily explored. Basically the Emperor would be reborn as a chaos god to battle the other four and protect humanity. Supposedly it’s been going on naturally for the last 10.000 years, fueling him with power from all the believers. It’s a bit funny actually because the more logical and rational the Imperium would become under Guilliman the worse of the Imperium would be.

Iracundus wrote:

How do we know it was minor? Because GW called it the Eye of Terror campaign and detailed the area around the Cadian Gate, while the Tau front was just an undetailed single bar showing expansion %.

In professional wargaming circles, that is known as putting the thumb on the scale.

GW can manipulate the results anyway they want, which is fine. If you think that the Tau would have been wiped out if only enough Imperium players agreed on it... yeah, no.

Similarly, if you think that Chaos would have conquered the Imperium because Imperial players went after the Tau...also a no.

Anyway, it's a fun argument to have.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

How do we know it was minor? Because GW called it the Eye of Terror campaign and detailed the area around the Cadian Gate, while the Tau front was just an undetailed single bar showing expansion %.

In professional wargaming circles, that is known as putting the thumb on the scale.

GW can manipulate the results anyway they want, which is fine. If you think that the Tau would have been wiped out if only enough Imperium players agreed on it... yeah, no.

Similarly, if you think that Chaos would have conquered the Imperium because Imperial players went after the Tau...also a no.

Anyway, it's a fun argument to have.

That is not at all what I said. You really need to read it again.

What the campaign did was to see how the 13th Black Crusade was going to be. Andy Chambers claimed it would set the tone for the next edition, with either Abaddon having broken through the Gate or not. As for the Tau, they started at 100% of their start size. The campaign ended with them at 132.6%. The scale could have gone down but it would not have hit 0. For the Tau the campaign determined whether they expanded or shrank, and by how much.

At no point have I said that the Tau would have been wiped out. What I was illustrating was your claim that it would be oh so easy for the Imperium to put the Tau in their place. Except it is not, and the same logic of why was used in the Eye of Terror campaign by actual real players. The vast majority of Imperial players refused to play on the Tau front because they saw it as a minor unimportant front next to the issue of the Cadian Gate, despite the exhortations of a few Imperial players that wanted to slap the Tau down. As a result, the Tau players achieved local superiority in their warzone and expanded their empire by nearly a third of its original size. That result was subsequently in later editions written into the background as the Third Sphere Expansion.

This kind of logic is the same as what the Imperium does. The Imperium does not and cannot deal decisively with the Tau because they have far more important war fronts demanding immediate attention and resources. Any resources sent to face the Tau are half hearted and limited in size and scale, and often things are further curtailed when their campaigns are cut short in order to re-use the forces elsewhere.

Of all the world-wide campaigns, the Eye of Terror was probably the least opaque and the one where players did the most, outside of the GW planned narrative. The details on the campaign mechanics and results are posted along with the verbatim results from White Dwarf:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/392010.page

Iracundus wrote:


This kind of logic is the same as what the Imperium does. The Imperium does not and cannot deal decisively with the Tau because they have far more important war fronts demanding immediate attention and resources. Any resources sent to face the Tau are half hearted and limited in size and scale, and often things are further curtailed when their campaigns are cut short in order to re-use the forces elsewhere.

Of all the world-wide campaigns, the Eye of Terror was probably the least opaque and the one where players did the most, outside of the GW planned narrative. The details on the campaign mechanics and results are posted along with the verbatim results from White Dwarf:

Okay, there are three separate discussions here.

The first is my statement that you can rig any kind of wargaming event any way you want and still make it "transparent." GW is not now, nor has it ever been, an honest broker. The global campaigns are about raising sales, and so that's what the results reflect. If you think GW would allow the rules to wreck their universe and harm sales, I've got an exciting multi-level marketing opportunity and also a bunch of money to the sum of $2millions US$ available through a very honourable Minsiter..

The second is that the Imperium is not a democracy. Forces go where they are told. A crowd-sourced approach to strategy is about as far from the 40k fluff as it is possible to be. The behavior of players teaches us nothing.

The third is that if the Imperium is so thinly stretched that it cannot detach enough forces to fight the Tau and Chaos at the same time it will fall very soon.

That's been my point all along. It's basic math. Against the original opponents (orks, nids, Chaos and sometime Eldar) the total military capacity of the Imperium need only be equal to two times that of each enemy. Because they cannot combine (and often fight each other), the Imperium has enough power to prevent a major defeat, can make limited counterattacks, and the situation is the desired dynamic stability referenced upthread.

However, as you add additional hostile factions, the Imperium must either be overwhelmed or have its own strength increased to cope with the threat. At that point, it has enough surplus power to crush the weakest opponent when the other ones are busy.

That would be the Tau, because they aren't hiding in the Warp, can't slip into the Webway, aren't weird critters lurking beyond the Astronomican, aren't hiding on dead worlds, and aren't protected by the Maelstrom at the galactic core. The Tau are basically equivalent to a well-organized rebellion on the village green, and for a fraction of the effort necessary to defend Armageddeon for the umpteenth time, they'd reduce the Tau homeworlds to carbon deposits.

Now, that's not the fluff, because the fluff is there to sell models, which is fine. Hooray for profit! But what I have outlined is why adding new factions must necessarily make the Imperium stronger or it will collapse. That then means that when the opportunity presents itself, the Imperium can drop a hammer on them. The Tau are the obvious choice because they are both subversive and (most importantly) can't run and hide.

You wouldn't even need a Macharius-level commander to do the job, either.

But it's fine, everyone loves the Tau, so why worry argue about it?

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Iracundus wrote:


This kind of logic is the same as what the Imperium does. The Imperium does not and cannot deal decisively with the Tau because they have far more important war fronts demanding immediate attention and resources. Any resources sent to face the Tau are half hearted and limited in size and scale, and often things are further curtailed when their campaigns are cut short in order to re-use the forces elsewhere.

Of all the world-wide campaigns, the Eye of Terror was probably the least opaque and the one where players did the most, outside of the GW planned narrative. The details on the campaign mechanics and results are posted along with the verbatim results from White Dwarf:

Okay, there are three separate discussions here.

The first is my statement that you can rig any kind of wargaming event any way you want and still make it "transparent." GW is not now, nor has it ever been, an honest broker. The global campaigns are about raising sales, and so that's what the results reflect. If you think GW would allow the rules to wreck their universe and harm sales, I've got an exciting multi-level marketing opportunity and also a bunch of money to the sum of $2millions US$ available through a very honourable Minsiter..

The campaign went against the well worn laid out template of Chaos attack, eventual Imperial counterattack, restoration of status quo. We see that was the plan from the event cards of that campaign. Yet in the end Chaos won, and Andy Chambers said himself that things occurred during the campaign that went beyond what he had foreseen.

Ultimately whatever the result of the campaign though, it wasn't going to wreck the universe. Whether Chaos made a breakthrough or not, Terra was not going to fall. It would still have been more war and more PR for GW regardless of the result. GW had no need to hard railroad an ending, as seen from all the complaining by Imperial players over the years about their official campaign loss.

The second is that the Imperium is not a democracy. Forces go where they are told. A crowd-sourced approach to strategy is about as far from the 40k fluff as it is possible to be. The behavior of players teaches us nothing.

No one ever said the Imperium was a democracy. Again you miss the point. The point is real life people using perfectly rational cost/benefit analysis make the same logical conclusion that the leaders of the Imperium do: The Tau front is unimportant compared to more pressing matters and therefore few forces are allocated there. Low yield for high effort and more urgent threats need dealing with first. If anything, the 4th edition Codex showed the Imperium stripping forces there in order to feed to other fronts.

It shows that on the grand scale, there is little will to deal with the Tau because the Imperium has far more immediate threats. Local leaders and local Inquisition members may push for a decisive campaign against the Tau but they have consistently failed to get anything more than half-hearted symbolic efforts.

The third is that if the Imperium is so thinly stretched that it cannot detach enough forces to fight the Tau and Chaos at the same time it will fall very soon.

That is your speculation and hyperbole.

The Imperium is stretched against more than just Chaos and the Tau. The Imperium is facing a galaxy full of various threats. Of these, the Tau are distant and far away from critical Imperial centers of power and hence for people like the High Lords, a low priority.
The Imperium is not going to detach critically needed forces and garrisons to spend on a many months or even years long trek through the warp for the sake of a minor xenos empire at the Imperial periphery, when the Imperial heartlands are already convulsing under massed cult uprisings (doesn't matter whether Chaos, Genestealer, or just secessionist), and when half the galaxy is cut off from Terra. The Imperium is sacrificing its frontier in order to shore up its core. It is not doing the reverse.

Your repeated unproven assertion the Imperium has surplus forces to spare to eliminate the Tau just doesn't hold up and your assertions that they do are nothing more than your own personal wishful thinking without any actual citable evidence but rather just from a seemingly irrational hatred of the Tau as a faction. You seriously think Kryptman would have needed to throw the Tyranids at the Orks if the Imperium had enough forces to hold the Tyranids off directly? In fact, a Tyranid Codex explicitly says the Imperium did not , and therefore Kryptman had to think of more desperate measures.

All you have done is just unilaterally assert without evidence that the Imperium should or would have enough. That does not make it actually so and I have given references to GW sources that show otherwise.

Iracundus wrote:


The campaign went against the well worn laid out template of Chaos attack, eventual Imperial counterattack, restoration of status quo. We see that was the plan from the event cards of that campaign. Yet in the end Chaos won, and Andy Chambers said himself that things occurred during the campaign that went beyond what he had foreseen.

Right, and nothing much changed, except for a boost in sales, which is always nice.

No one ever said the Imperium was a democracy. Again you miss the point. The point is real life people using perfectly rational cost/benefit analysis make the same logical conclusion that the leaders of the Imperium do: The Tau front is unimportant compared to more pressing matters and therefore few forces are allocated there. Low yield for high effort and more urgent threats need dealing with first. If anything, the 4th edition Codex showed the Imperium stripping forces there in order to feed to other fronts.

No, that's not what happened. In the context of a game campaign that was heavily hyped as Imperium against Chaos, most of the Imperium players wanted to fight Chaos. That's all that happened.

Your assertion the Imperium has forces to spare to eliminate the Tau just doesn't hold up and your assertions that they do are nothing more than your own personal wishful thinking without any actual citable evidence but rather just from a seemingly irrational hatred of the Tau as a faction.

You completely ignored my point that the Tau are the only enemy the Imperium can possibly eliminate. Every other one has some sort of inaccessible stronghold. That makes them the only one against whom a truly decisive result can be obtained.

That's not anti-Tau, it's basic strategy and you see it throughout history.

To put it another way, if the Imperium is so weak and feeble that is powerless to stop the rise of the Tau or hinder their growth, it's got maybe 200 years left.

Yes. The Imperium is doomed.
In other news, water wet.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
You completely ignored my point that the Tau are the only enemy the Imperium can possibly eliminate. Every other one has some sort of inaccessible stronghold. That makes them the only one against whom a truly decisive result can be obtained.

That's not anti-Tau, it's basic strategy and you see it throughout history.

To put it another way, if the Imperium is so weak and feeble that is powerless to stop the rise of the Tau or hinder their growth, it's got maybe 200 years left.

Yeah, that's the point. The Imperium is a dying beast, bleeding from a thousand wounds. How have you managed to miss that?
The Imperium can't muster the forces to eradicate the T'au because it's fighting on a thousand fronts against numerous foes while also stabbing itself in the legs with the constant internal conflict between the various institutions and military branches. The very first war against the T'au had to be cut short because the forces assigned were needed to drive back Hive Fleet Behemoth. How are you not getting this?

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

No, that's not what happened. In the context of a game campaign that was heavily hyped as Imperium against Chaos, most of the Imperium players wanted to fight Chaos. That's all that happened.

And because the players rightfully concluded that the Imperium would have still lost the campaign if they lost the Cadian Gate warzones even if they had won on the Tau front.

Your assertion the Imperium has forces to spare to eliminate the Tau just doesn't hold up and your assertions that they do are nothing more than your own personal wishful thinking without any actual citable evidence but rather just from a seemingly irrational hatred of the Tau as a faction.

You completely ignored my point that the Tau are the only enemy the Imperium can possibly eliminate. Every other one has some sort of inaccessible stronghold. That makes them the only one against whom a truly decisive result can be obtained.


That's not anti-Tau, it's basic strategy and you see it throughout history.

To put it another way, if the Imperium is so weak and feeble that is powerless to stop the rise of the Tau or hinder their growth, it's got maybe 200 years left.

The Imperium is falling if you haven't noticed.

It may not just be 200 years though. What the Imperium is doing is what empires throughout history have often done in times of crisis. They pull back their forces from far flung low priority frontiers in order to shore up the heartland. That is precisely what the Imperium is doing. It is focusing on putting down uprisings and reconquering lost worlds within the Solar, Tempestus, and Pacificus Segmentums. All other areas are either cut off from the Rift or left to their own devices. Local remnants of Imperial authority might do the best they can locally with whatever leftovers and levies they can raise but they are not receiving fresh reinforcements and support from elsewhere in the Imperium.

I'd argue that the Imperium could destroy the Eldar fairly successfully. Perhaps not destroy them all, but enough that they'd be removed from the main players on the Galactic scale.

The Imperium has even attacked and almost all but destroyed craftworlds before. It takes a toll, but the Imperium has the bonus of faster breeding, more resources and a far wider distribution. The Eldar counter by being sneaky and being able ot read the future; but those have limits and ultimately the Imperium would outlast the Eldar unless the Eldar went through some serious shifts in society, attitude and unlocked forbidden technologies (eg AI, robots and such).

Tau would be easier by far to destroy, esp as they are far more geographically limited; but the Eldar could be driven to the point of near extinction and get taken from the table of intergalactic players.

 Overread wrote:
I'd argue that the Imperium could destroy the Eldar fairly successfully. Perhaps not destroy them all, but enough that they'd be removed from the main players on the Galactic scale.

The Imperium has even attacked and almost all but destroyed craftworlds before. It takes a toll, but the Imperium has the bonus of faster breeding, more resources and a far wider distribution. The Eldar counter by being sneaky and being able ot read the future; but those have limits and ultimately the Imperium would outlast the Eldar unless the Eldar went through some serious shifts in society, attitude and unlocked forbidden technologies (eg AI, robots and such).

Tau would be easier by far to destroy, esp as they are far more geographically limited; but the Eldar could be driven to the point of near extinction and get taken from the table of intergalactic players.

The Imperium has attacked minor and weakened Craftworlds before. But every time they have attacked a major Craftworld they have failed. One of the 40K rulebooks I believe mentioned it cost a sector battlefleet and they gave up. Big expenditure of resources for little reward.
Again it comes down to that calculation of effort for gain. The Craftworlds are hard to find, hard to track, and require substantial commitment of space forces. As we see from the BFG rulebook, a sector battlefleet isn't really that big given the amount of space it has to cover. Rather it is designed to hold off minor threats and when a major threat presents itself, get aid from other sector fleets. Again given the Imperium's current dire state, it's not like it can spare so many fleets chasing after the slippery Eldar. Bigger fish to fry, and given that right now Guilliman is getting advice and aid from the Eldar to fight the mutual enemy of Chaos, it would be counterproductive. Right now the Imperium's biggest threats are Chaos, Tyranids (including Genestealer Cults), and Necrons in no particular order. All other factions can be a local threat but they are smaller than those big 3 implacable enemies, and in the case of Eldar and Tau, sometimes allies of convenience.

The effects of the Eldar Farseers is also difficult to quantify. Perhaps the very lack of political will is due to manipulation by them years or centuries ago. Maybe anyone more rabidly anti-Eldar has been steered away from positions of power, assassinated, or prevented from being born in the first place, through manipulating fate.

Of all the Eldar branches, the Exodites are probably the most vulnerable, if we look at them on their own. They have low population and limited technology. However they are often defended by the Craftworlders and Dark Eldar, as no Eldar likes the idea of other races attacking Eldar, regardless of what branch they might be.

 Gert wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
You completely ignored my point that the Tau are the only enemy the Imperium can possibly eliminate. Every other one has some sort of inaccessible stronghold. That makes them the only one against whom a truly decisive result can be obtained.

That's not anti-Tau, it's basic strategy and you see it throughout history.

To put it another way, if the Imperium is so weak and feeble that is powerless to stop the rise of the Tau or hinder their growth, it's got maybe 200 years left.

Yeah, that's the point. The Imperium is a dying beast, bleeding from a thousand wounds. How have you managed to miss that?
The Imperium can't muster the forces to eradicate the T'au because it's fighting on a thousand fronts against numerous foes while also stabbing itself in the legs with the constant internal conflict between the various institutions and military branches. The very first war against the T'au had to be cut short because the forces assigned were needed to drive back Hive Fleet Behemoth. How are you not getting this?

Mostly agree, but not that the Imperium is dying.

I mean, The Imperium is a vast beastie. One so vast I don’t think we’re really equipped to comprehend it. It’s overly bureaucratic, and massively inefficient. Yet, it’s endured for well over 10,000 years against everything thrown against it. And what’s being thrown against it has only increased over time.

In the Good Old Days, immediately Post-Heresy it recovered from its Worst Moment, and moved on. The Scouring took place, driving Traitor Forces into hiding and seclusion. Yet so successful had the Great Crusade otherwise been, no force was really poised to finish what Horus had begun until The Beast, and yet The Imperium survived.

It’s sheer mind boggling scale is the reason for that. Yes, you can utterly crush a system or even a sector. But there’s plenty more where that came from, and humanity is nothing if not nutty enough to just keep coming at you.

This is why the like of Ghaz are such a threat, and indeed Ghaz in particular. Orks outnumber humies in terms of body count. And worse, that body count is almost entirely militarised and up for a fight. But it’s also inherently anarchic and entirely lacking in centralised command and organisation. Ghaz is on the verge of changing that. Sure, he’s not exactly Universal Supreme Commander, as he does have rivals (Arch Arsonist to name but one), but he still has enough of a following that when Ghaz is on the move, other Warbosses of broadly similar standing need to get on the move as well, if only to show they’re just as good at fighting a satisfying fight.

The Silent King is a threat unlike others, as he stands to unite the Dynasties once more, and their technology with it.

But for now, the threats against the Mostly United Imperium are disparate enough that it’s survivable. The Imperium needs to suffer widespread and truly catastrophic losses to be truly diminished. Because however pyrrhic a given victory might be in the end? It has the resources to ship in new populations wholesale. Very, very few species in the Galaxy have the numbers or organisation to follow suit.

My impression of 40K fluff always has been it's not a question of 'if' but rather 'when ' the Imperium will fall. Especially in older books pre 8th. It was clear that either the 13th crusade, or Ghaz uniting the Orks or Necrons rising (up until 5th Edition) or tyranids would crush the Imperium. I'd even say either of these threads alone was hinted at being strong enough to wipe the galaxy.

GW then had to muddy the waters when they moved on. The 13th crusade, despite having been built up over 10k years and being successful, only split the Imperium and then got lost in sideplots (Vigilus, Nachmund). Ghaz simply... stopped and did strange Space Wolves Things. Tyranids are still about to eat the galaxy (if they ever make it past Baal, that is ), and Necrons still rise up, now a bit more united. The Imperium is still about to fall, though GW is not as obvious about that as before, outside of restating how bad it is in the rift or on its other side. But we got Primaris and Gulliman, so at least the Imperium looks cool while going down.

I don't think it's a problem they went forward with the fluff but rather how, they were too careful with the Imperium. Half of it should at least be in ruin or rebelling against Gulliman who attacks their very foundations of belief and spread of power. Seeing how the explosion of Cadia did literally nothing to IG as a faction on the tabletop there should have been whole 1st founding chapter planets biting the dust, but nothing happened, really. Even Vigilus is still around and kicking despite being on the brink of death right at the first book (Orks and DE party everywhere and the water reserves had been boiled even before a single CSM set foot on the planet, that thing should have been lost right there, but plot armor is strong in the Imperium).

Yes and no. Again the sheer staggering scale of the Imperium means it’s gonna be bloody difficult to completely destroy.

Ghaz is absolutely a threat, seemingly well on the way to getting every Ork behind him. But….he’s still Just One Ork. Ullanor and War of the Beast are both examples of such mega Waaaghs falling apart in the same way as lesser Waaaghs. You just need to kill the biggest Boss, and ideally a bunch of his immediate underlings, and the whole thing will fracture and do horrendous damage to itself in the aftermath.

Necrons? Well….who knows! Silent King is piecing them back together into a cohesive force. If he’d simply turned off rather than destroyed the master Control Protocols they’d be a more significant threat, as he’d have no need to persuade, cajole and threaten other Dynasties to his cause. He’d just….throw the switch and have perfect command over all once again. But he did, and as a result now needs to reckon with completely insane egos.

What Guilliman represents is the Imperium’s sheer resilience. The manpower and resources it commands are so vast, you need to get your Big Hit In, and then keep hitting it and hitting it as hard as possible. Because should it get a breather from your onslaught? It’s gonna pushback. And it can pushback really, really well.

Look at its approach to warfare. Pound for pound Guardsmen just aren’t that great in the grand galactic scheme of things. But they come with lots of toys, and tend to well supplied. Chaos and Eldar cannot afford the war of attrition the Imperium can bring to bear. They don’t have the numbers, or any particularly reliable way to replace decent combatants.

A single catastrophic battle is a bummer for The Imperium, but no more. For Chaos and Eldar, it could spell curtains, because they don’t have the infrastructure (Chaos) or numbers (Eldar) the like the Imperium has.

Even against Orks? If a world falls, no matter how lynchpin? The Imperium can still do a bit of the old Exterminatus, and there goes a not insignificant amount of your Waaagh! And the more desperate the hour grows, the easier it is to see losing even say, Armageddon, than letting it remain in enemy hands.

Subtle and efficient The Imperium is not. But as an entity it’s ridiculously resilient.

I mean, even if they do Exterminatus? It could be a Life Eater virus. BANG! And the Orks are gone. Give it a safe period (which could be a year) and you just…..ship in a whole new population to get the planet back up and running.

This is reflected in how Chaos forces tend to fight. Raids, rather than protracted invasions. And when there are protracted invasions, they tend to feature Warp Shenanigans to prevent Imperial Reinforcement. Because if The Imperium can get to dictate the flow of the war? You’re screwed. The longer you stick around, even if it’s death by a trillion cuts, the worse your situation can become.

The Imperium also has a pretty impressive unity to it. Sure not everyone gets along and civil war is far from unheard of, even without underlying Cult Activity. But Chaos forces are temporarily aligned Warbands, driven largely by ego and dreams of personal glory in the eyes of the Gods. Everyone has their own agenda, and they’re not necessarily compatible with your own. If your allies decide to Do Their Own Thing? There’s not a lot you can do about it, other than giving them a kicking. Which in itself is a distraction and possibly entirely counter productive.

The death of the Imperium doesn't mean the death of humanity though. If we liken the Imperium to the British Empire or the Soviet Union, we know that each had its heights of power but through warfare, internal conflict, and external political pressure both "nations" ceased to exist. The British Empire lost most of its territorial holdings but maintained a semblance of its former self in the form of the Commonwealth while the USSR collapsed into many different states, some of which are aligned with the largest former Soviet state and some which are not.
At some point, I believe that is what will happen to the Imperium. Not any time in which the game will take place of course but even now we've got the split caused by the Rift with pocket empires forming beyond the ever watchful eyes of Terra.

I kind of disagree.

I see where you’re coming from. But when the empires mentioned failed, they were by no means The Whole Of Humanity.

The Imperium, to all intents and purposes? Is. Sure there are as yet undiscovered human worlds out there. But The Imperium is still the comfortable majority of humanity.

And because of just how it’s organised? Losing the central organisation is Very Bad News. Not necessarily an extinction level event I suppose, but what worlds survive become far easier prey.

Heavily industrialised Systems, reliant on food imports would face starvation. Lose those? You lose their industry. Lose their industry, and it’s another hole in the pocket of your overall logistics.

It’s essentially a house of cards, albeit with significant glue currently holding it together.

This is why Terra, and knocking out the Astronomicon is such a blow to the Imperium. Warp travel becomes even riskier. You may even lose Astropathic communication, so won’t be able to call for aid.

Some systems will be kind of ok I guess? But more specialised, single purpose systems would be screwed one way or another.

The thing is, we've seen pocket empires survive and indeed thrive during the Long Night. The collapse of the Imperium might not see a resurgence of exactly those but factions like the T'au would certainly benefit.

So "losing" the Imperium depends a lot on how its lost as to the potential fallout.

Eg the Imperium could fragment into different factions and still survive. You might have your Holy Terra centralist group and then various splinters off that. Heck the Imperium already broadly functions this way due to the sheer size of it.
So if those fragmented zones became even more fragmented you could still have trade and civil wars and such.



If Terra fell and the astronomicon broke down then things might be a whole lost worse as then the Imperium basically loses a huge chunk of its space travel potential. This could lead to them falling way way behind other races as they'd simply not be able to move resources and people and weapons around anywhere near as fast as they need too. Other races would have a field day in being able to raid and divide the Imperium unless they came up with some seriously good new tech to replace it.


IF the Imperium fell to massive military action from the outside there's always a chance that whatever big-bad smashed the Imperium, also broke itself in the process. Creating two broken factions; which during the war between them and the fallout of them breaking, could also hit multiple others. A classic example would be a super-Tyranid Hive Fleet strike that ate its way to Terra and on the way had multiple tendrils that ate into other factions as well. Perhaps coupled with a huge Shadow in the Warp projection that breaks and seals multiple warp breaches and the like.

Ergo everyone breaks each other and everyone ends up like Eldar by the end of a cataclysmic war. In that situation even if the Imperium fragmented after, other races would have taken similarly hard blows, might have fragmented themselves and would generally leave everyone weaker and in a state of confusion and with a lot of local leaders vying for power.



If the Imperium takes a heavy blow internally, perhaps a huge religious fragmentation then the Imperium fighting itself could destroy itself. This in turn would destroy its ability to protect itself. Humanity as a species might well find safety under the Tau or even Eldar; both factions likely keen to not preserve humanity itself, but the military, production etc.... capacity as a weapon and shield for themselves.

 Gert wrote:
The thing is, we've seen pocket empires survive and indeed thrive during the Long Night. The collapse of the Imperium might not see a resurgence of exactly those but factions like the T'au would certainly benefit.

True, but where does the resurgence come from?

With Nids and Necrons in the mix, the Galaxy is a very different place than pre-Crusade.

Whilst it’s not canon, pre-fall Eldar may also have kept Orks in check, just culling them here and there - with Wotsisface from Ullanor game only rising post-fall, in the short window Fall/Crusade allowed. If that’s right (and I really cannot cite that one!) then that’s another spanner in the overall works.

Heck. Even the level of forces Chaos now has are colossal in comparison.

Isolated and alone in 40K isn’t good for your health!

There's a lot of ambition and power-grabbing in the Imperial upper classes. How many would seek to become the replacement capital if Terra fell? How many would claim to inherit the very spirit of the Emperor Himself?
I think there would be a "grace" period where mass religious fervour would probably push an intense counter-campaign against anything and everything in sight before things settled down a bit and the real chaos began.

To be honest, it’s all Orky under the surface.

Chaos? Orky.
Necrons? Orky
Humans? Orky.

Orks just have the best way that’s universally agreed to sort out who gets listened to.

Sure, the business of sorting that out is inherently self destructive, and can be more easily forced than other “more civilised” erm…civilisations. But it remains a strength.

As I’ve said before, with the Triumph of Ullanor, had it not been for the Heresy, Orks would’ve been broadly manageable, as The Imperium would have all the ingredients necessary for regular culls.

Interdict Ork held worlds, and do relatively surgical strikes to keep them fighting among themselves. And should Orkiness Orky, and a Rogue Waaagh pops up regardless? You can put it down.

In the very, very long term you probably could drive Orks to complete extinction, but in the meantime interdiction and culling would be the order of the day.

I'd imagine the Imperium to end like in the hellenistic period. It won't be one decisive battle (at least not if Terra stays alive, should Terra fall it could/ should indeed happen pretty fast), but you'd have it broken up, falling one by one, getting weakened because of infighting like between the Seleucids and Ptolemaians and so on. You might have something like Ultramar survive even Millenia after the Fall.

And I think that's what's actually happening in the Dark Imperium beyond the rift already.

We can also take a decent step back, and consider the wider temporal picture.

The Emperor allegedly had/has foresight. Given The Great Crusade didn’t go as planned, the claim of foresight is often dismissed.

And……kind of fair enough. Ish. On the proper loyalist side, for the nearest Humankind Ever Came To An Actual God? He does fit the bill.

But, and thanks to a Luetin vid on YouTube (check him out, he’s ace)?

Who said The Great Crusade and it’s failure wasn’t part of that plan?

I mean, if you have foresight, let alone perfect foresight as some might claim, and you’re functionally immortal? How can Us Mere Plebs tell when we truly live in the golden age or shadow and ruins thereof, and when we’re merely lounging upon the steps to something truly magnificent? The trials and tribulations of 40K as a setting might be nothing - if The Emperor has/had perfect foresight?

As a trademark crap analogy?

Think of the main Star Wars theme, and consider your existence as a single note. Your entire existence is being that note. You might be aware, however dimly, of the notes that went before. Maybe you’re in the phrase(?, I think that’s right, sorry I’m not musical) where it turns ……all dark and scary. And all you can think of is those lucky notes that can before that were part of something glorious and heroic. But here you are. Playing your part and being played in turn. All you can see, as that single note in the greater symphony is what played before.

That….that doesn’t mean there isn’t greater musical glory to come. It sucks you can’t and won’t be part of it. Yet, according to this (frankly bollocks) theory? The Emperor is the conductor. The sheet music is his foresight. And He’s gonna do whatever it takes.