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 Arschbombe wrote:

So the concept is muddled, like lots of things in 40k. I guess my big beef with Guardians is just as a concept in the big bad Grimdark where the scale and numbers never make sense. The Eldar are the Dying Race ^TM and their army list for decades has been designed and balanced around this idea of them sending their reserve militia into all the battles. The Farseers are picking and choosing these battles, so why can't they ensure they have actual warriors available for these fights? I don't know, maybe this is part of their Grimdark. Eldar lead idyllic lives as artists, writers, poets, sculptors and at any minute they can get called up to go fight the big bads of the galaxy with their submachineguns. It's supposed to be this big deal when they call upon the ghost warriors. Why isn't it a big deal when Chad the bartender gets sent off to war?

My reasoning is that a game of 40k doesn't represent a normal battle in the setting, but a very specific kind of battle in which both sides are evenly matched and willing to sustain 90% casualties to capture the vitally-important objective circles. Because they represent the codes to activate all the orbital missiles or whatever.

So the battles hand-picked by a farseer as most advantageous cannot be a game of 40k unless the farseer was drunk, because 50 eldar don't plan to fight 80 orks in close quarters with the expectation of at least half of them dying. Games for eldar can only ever represent desperate circumstances because those are the only circumstances where they fight an equivalent force with even odds of winning. That's also why all the named characters, unique relics, heavy support etc happen to show up.

(Though of course the real reason is that they want eldar to be less elite than space marines. )

 Insectum7 wrote:

It makes a lot of sense that a faction with a small population base isn't fully stocked up on full-time soldiers. All those Guardians might have important non-warrior tasks that they have to do when the Craftworld isn't at war. I think there's also a cultural aspect to it, where being on the path of the warrior for too long is too dangerous, too consuming. There's probably some of their arrogance in it too. "We Eldar are so superior that we don't need to go full warrior to fight the other races". And to be fair, in their ideal situation (which is not a typical 40k battle) they can usually fly circles around their opponent in their high-tech grav-tanks, and only deploy their militia infantry when the battle's already been decided.

That's what I was talking about with the numbers. How many Eldar are there? We all know they're the Dying Race ^TM, but what does that really mean? They have fallen far from their height, but there could still be millions or even billions of them. It's the ever-present numbers problem that 40k has. If a craftworld has 100k inhabitants, what's the right number of aspect shrines and warriors should they have? I think Gav is on the still very, very few side of things, but I don't think 1,000 aspect warriors in that population would be wildly out of bounds.

To my knowledge, Guardians pilot nearly every war machine the Eldar have with few exceptions. The citizen militia isn't just the infantry with their Shuriken Catapults. They're also the tank squadrons, the artillery, the reconnaissance units and direct fire support.

I know. That's another thing that bothers me. For a citizen militia only called up when necessary (practically every battle it seems) they sure do have a lot of standing army things going on.

 Arschbombe wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

It makes a lot of sense that a faction with a small population base isn't fully stocked up on full-time soldiers. All those Guardians might have important non-warrior tasks that they have to do when the Craftworld isn't at war. I think there's also a cultural aspect to it, where being on the path of the warrior for too long is too dangerous, too consuming. There's probably some of their arrogance in it too. "We Eldar are so superior that we don't need to go full warrior to fight the other races". And to be fair, in their ideal situation (which is not a typical 40k battle) they can usually fly circles around their opponent in their high-tech grav-tanks, and only deploy their militia infantry when the battle's already been decided.

That's what I was talking about with the numbers. How many Eldar are there? We all know they're the Dying Race ^TM, but what does that really mean? They have fallen far from their height, but there could still be millions or even billions of them. It's the ever-present numbers problem that 40k has. If a craftworld has 100k inhabitants, what's the right number of aspect shrines and warriors should they have? I think Gav is on the still very, very few side of things, but I don't think 1,000 aspect warriors in that population would be wildly out of bounds.

I think there are conflicting numbers, but there was an old thread on Warseer where Gav popped in for a clarification of his idea, and it was something like a million or few to a Craftworld designed for hundreds of millions or even billions, making Craftworlds feel like these giant empty cities. I liked that. The idea of space borne ghost towns in slow decline is pretty evocative.

There may be/are contrasting visions around the numbers though.

 Arschbombe wrote:

To my knowledge, Guardians pilot nearly every war machine the Eldar have with few exceptions. The citizen militia isn't just the infantry with their Shuriken Catapults. They're also the tank squadrons, the artillery, the reconnaissance units and direct fire support.

I know. That's another thing that bothers me. For a citizen militia only called up when necessary (practically every battle it seems) they sure do have a lot of standing army things going on.

I think that behavior works fine. Imagine calling up your "dying race" militia and sending them in solely as casualty-heavy infantry. I think it's better that they wrap a good portion of their precious citizens in tanks and other war machines, thus minimizing losses and maximizing the damage output they can do.

Not to bring up a sore topic, but I believe Israel is kinda similar in that much of its military is made up of part-timers, and they'll crew things like tanks, artillery or whatever. But someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Arschbombe wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

It makes a lot of sense that a faction with a small population base isn't fully stocked up on full-time soldiers. All those Guardians might have important non-warrior tasks that they have to do when the Craftworld isn't at war. I think there's also a cultural aspect to it, where being on the path of the warrior for too long is too dangerous, too consuming. There's probably some of their arrogance in it too. "We Eldar are so superior that we don't need to go full warrior to fight the other races". And to be fair, in their ideal situation (which is not a typical 40k battle) they can usually fly circles around their opponent in their high-tech grav-tanks, and only deploy their militia infantry when the battle's already been decided.

That's what I was talking about with the numbers. How many Eldar are there? We all know they're the Dying Race ^TM, but what does that really mean? They have fallen far from their height, but there could still be millions or even billions of them. It's the ever-present numbers problem that 40k has. If a craftworld has 100k inhabitants, what's the right number of aspect shrines and warriors should they have? I think Gav is on the still very, very few side of things, but I don't think 1,000 aspect warriors in that population would be wildly out of bounds.

I think there are conflicting numbers, but there was an old thread on Warseer where Gav popped in for a clarification of his idea, and it was something like a million or few to a Craftworld designed for hundreds of millions or even billions, making Craftworlds feel like these giant empty cities. I liked that. The idea of space borne ghost towns in slow decline is pretty evocative.

There may be/are contrasting visions around the numbers though.

Regarding the population counts, there are/were 2 schools of thoughts with Craftworld Eldar populations. The small number and big number schools. Clearly Gav Thorpe adheres to the small number since he envisages Alaitoc, one of the largest Craftworlds, as being the size of a continent but only having the population of a few million (the size of a small Western city). However, the Iyanden supplement, was written by Matt Ward, who for all his faults was at least an adherent of more realistic numbers. He depicted Iyanden as having lost literally billions in the fight against Hive Fleet Kraken. Craftworlds having billions is more plausible for a race that engages in so much warfare and with generations supposedly so few and spaced out, than having them be tiny city states that would have no hope of prevailing against a single hive city let alone hive worlds or Tyranid hive fleets. The big number school is also more consistent we have seen of the cityscape of Lugganath in GW art where it shows a Craftworld Eldar urban landscape that still looks busy and bustling.

When it comes to numbers and combat capability though, remember that Space Marine chapters are only 1000 strong, and in most engagements they're typically 50-200ish.

I think in the universe of 40k, small numbers can still act plenty big. Especially if we're talking about fast striking precision warfare.

Definitely. The Eldar don’t tend to go to war out of sheer belligerence. Rather, it’s strategic interventions to nudge fate in the desired direction.

That could be assassinating a specific target or targets (for instance, the Whiteshield that, in time, will become a great military commander, a regiment which might awaken a tomb world), it could be to snatch a relic back, or divert a war front, it could be to ensure a specific Aspect Warrior becomes trapped upon their path, so they become the Exarch which will prove pivotal decades or centuries from now.

There’s a calculus there. What might cost a toll of lives right now, might be how you avoid an entire Craftworld falling tomorrow. And they key to that might be something esoteric. A Guardian on their first deployment might lose the rest of their squad, causing them to walk the path of the warrior. And whilst on that path, it’s their blade that kills the Ork that would’ve gone on to be a second Ghaz.

That all adds to their mercurial reputation. Their goals are comparatively rarely recognisable by other formal militaries. Because as soon as the nudge is achieved, there may be no further reason to continue the engagement.

Don’t think like a Human, think like a Copper. Think like Vimes. Think like a ruthless bar steward.