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Hi all,

I know a lot of people are inspired by the best of the best, whether that be the Ultramarine 1st Company, Praetorian Guard or Fallschirmjäger.
But my brain has always been tickled by the other side, the reluctant, under equipped and undertrained soldier.
We don't always hear about those troops in 40k, so what you guys think they would look like in your particular 40K faction?

For Orks, we're told that Orkish society is a meritocracy where the most brutal and cunning rise to the top and get the best equipment.
So logically those that fall to the bottom of the pile are probably pretty lazy, weedy and not too bright. They might not even have a decent chopper to their name!
They could also include the injured who can't afford a good Doc, or those with another speciality like a crashed flyboy or brewboy who has been swept up into a foot mob and herded towards the enemy.

All this is getting me excited to start a modelling project to make a pretty mediocre mob!

Fun topic but I'm having a difficult time imagining this for Eldar. Incompetent or just goofy (Tolkien) elves are rarely a thing and, though you certainly could do it, would stick out a lot from the established background. We've been told that in war even the most peaceful craftworld civilian puts on their war face and dedicate themselves to it fully. They can be plenty flawed, yes, but always in more of a pride and hubris way rather than an underdog.

But maybe I've just missed it?

Well, Guard Regiments vary wildly in quality of training and treatment of troops. But, outside of Penal Battalions the troops see their place in the Guard as a step up in life.

PDF are another interesting first/second line force. Their level of training and equipment is partially dictated by the Imperial Tithe, as the cream of that crop will be inducted into the Guard. But those that are left post-Tithe are at the mercy of the whims of the Plantary Governor.

In theory, they could be excellently trained and very well equipped. But they could also just be “here’s a Lasgun, bobs got the ammo, this end toward enemy” levels of under equipped and trained. So some will be incredibly effective, others utterly useless.

In terms of in-universe views on the PDF, we tend to see it through the eyes of the Imperial Guard, who typically see most of such interactions on occasions where the PDF has been unable to see off an attack or full scale invasion. This gives a misleading view, as we only ever see the failures. Because where a well trained, equipped and drilled PDF does its job? The Guard just won’t see it, because they’re not required in that warzone.

Orks? The more you fight and survive, the bigger and stronger you get. That’s the basis of their entire society, and every green skin fully accepts that’s not just the way things are, but the way things ought to be. So, any Yoofs born a bit scrawny, or no good at fighting just won’t survive terribly long,

Kinda the same with Dark Eldar really. Anyone no good at fighting just isn’t going to live long.

Craftworld Eldar? Every citizen is trained in combat, so they can serve as Guardians and vehicle crew. They’re also incredibly long lived. What we don’t know is whether Guardians have a minimum age/competency, I’d presume there would be. But one assumes a couple of centuries of combat training makes you pretty good by default.

For Orks the 2nd rate troops are Grots.
Never really Orks, because even Feral Orks do what they're supposed to do and believe it's the proper old way to fight with Sticks and Stones.
You could make a point for Blood Axes because they do stuff that's unorky, like fighting alongside hewmons and using strange taktiks.

I'm not sure I agree about the scrawny Orks not surviving very long. Orks love to dominate weaker members of their race, not necessarily kill them all off.
We are also often told that this or that formation of boys are particularly strong or 'ard so there must be weaker ones by comparison too!

With regards to Craftworld Eldar, yea agreed that it is pretty difficult. Maybe a particularly prosperous craftworld would have some raw Guardian Defender formations?

If I wanted to field a poor quality Eldar unit in a scenario, I think I would go down the condition route maybe?
A formation that had been shattered in a recent previous battle would have brittle morale and has lost all it's heavy equipment for example.

My view there is Orks give anyone who’s anyone more or less the same level of beating.

A Nob doesn’t go easy on a Snot, a Grot, a Yoof, a Wildboy, a Boy or another Nob. Indeed, it’s their ability to beat up anyone lower down the pecking order that defines their position as much as not being able to duff up the Ork immediately above.

Going easy makes little sense. If someone needs a corrective beating? They’re gonna get that corrective beating. The only variance is how long it takes to administer. If the victim survives? Great, pecking order restored. If they don’t? Nobody actually cares, but dibs on his teef.

This is even seen in their rough treatment of non-greenskin slaves. Grots can survive levels of deprivation other species can’t. And any such slaves that perish under the lash or from their exertions? Just goes to show why they’re slaves. They’re not as ‘ard as Orks. And again, nobody overly cares if they survive for long or not.

All flavours of Eldar could fall prey to pride. They are already the best, so why bother training as much? Maybe the craftworld is in a relatively calm region of space so no direct threat to drive diligence and competence. Maybe they are falling back into the arrogance and practices that led to the fall in the first place.

All shiny suit and no warrior.

Set up a craftworld that has spent eons away from conflict, where the only experience they get is as theatre, overly dramatic. Then have them suddenly need to fight and you have an army of people in brand new shiny armour and guns acting the only way they know how...

You'd need them to have never been visited by a phoenix lord though, so that no war shrines exist as that's going to make it hard to believe they don't know how to do war.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For orks, you could create an environment where them congregating together is bad for their survival, so they rarely get a chance to fight. Leaving them weedy and undernourished.

Say a planet with predatory creatures drawn by psychic energy, so the larger the waaagh energy generated by groups of orks, the quicker they pounce. As this happens when they're emerging from the ground, they would start life on the run trying to eek out a living finding food, with little time to practice krumping on each other.

There was a lot of old fluff about humans being unsure where a big grot ends and a weedy ork begins, so the distinction is apparently not always as obvious as the tabletop models suggest.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:
Set up a craftworld that has spent eons away from conflict, where the only experience they get is as theatre, overly dramatic. Then have them suddenly need to fight and you have an army of people in brand new shiny armour and guns acting the only way they know how...

You'd need them to have never been visited by a phoenix lord though, so that no war shrines exist as that's going to make it hard to believe they don't know how to do war.

But surely being trained in Warp Spider doctrine is of limited use to people who can't teleport?

That would be a funny scenario.

The OP was just after second rate troops, not an entirely useless craftworld. It could still have warrior shrines and the aspect warriors might be ok, it’s just as soon as they come off the path of the warrior they stop practicing so the Guardians are a bit pants. Although a bunch of lardy swooping hawks barely able to lift off with their jump packs and half hanging out of their armour has a certain entertaining ring to it.

Certainly a "spit and polish" Guardian regiment or an out of practice aspect warriors could form a 2nd rate formation!

Are there not old men and young boys in Eldar society that would be called up to serve in times of great need?

Eldar Guardians are their militia. They are “second rate” compared to the standing army of aspect warriors. In theory they should only be hitting the battlefield when things are bad. But it’s 40k, so things are alway bad.

As wars drag on, and casualties stack up, less and less qualified civilians could be called into service. They could pull bob off the Path of the Basket Weaver, hand him a shuriken catapult, and send him to the front. It’s what the farseers says needs to happen. It doesn’t mater that the closest he’s come to the path of war was dating a howling banshee for a couple years a century back.


That could be a narrative hook. A guardian squad full of misfits and rejects, all sent by the craftworld seers to be part of this unit, sent to the thick of the fight. Why does fate need them here? Is it because they are deadweight back home and need to be trimmed? Will war forge them into the heroes the craftworld needs? Will being eaten by a trygon give it indigestion a day later at an inopportune moment, allowing the autach to kill it, a turning point for the war? Who knows!

Path of the basket weaver XD
I think just like with Orks mobs, there must be some sort of bell curve in Guardian quality too.

i.e. Ulthwe guardians can't be better than average unless some Guardians are worse than average.

I did want to bring up the Frateris Militia, they are one of my favourite examples of low quality militia being pulled together from hapless worshipers and low level religious functionaries sent out to die!

Yes that was my point - guardians are already the civilian militia. The only way to actually get second rate 'poor' craftworld troops is if they have no experience or training capability in warfare to begin with.

The guardian squads are trained and led by ex aspect warriors - they still have actual war training. Not to mention the autarchs.

So you need to remove all warfare training capability from the craftworld before you will actually get crappy eldar soldiers.

But willingness to train is a key part of that capability. If you don’t handle a shuricat for a few centuries, it’s likely that even Eldar will get a bit rusty

Funnily enough, it was my idea for Deathwatch army. We're told some chapters see it as honor, and send their best. We're also told other chapters just fill the quota by sending in undesirables the officers don't want around. I wanted to do said army of outcasts, some SM just inept, some being subversion/mocking idiotic chapter stereotypes (say, White Scar sniper who hates bikes but sees no problem in lurking dead still in spot for hours waiting for target to show up, or Black Templar thinking Imperial Cult is the dumbest thing ever and Emperor was right all along with Imperial Truth) who were kicked out for not fitting in/being too competent for their peers.

Of course, then idjit duo of Kelly and Cruddace nerfed already weak DW five times in a row, significantly dampening my enthusiasm, and after someone went and actually made DW fun/fluffy in their first 8th ed book, went for the kill utterly ruining terminator part of the army and ripping primaris component out of DW outright, making it broken, garbage, unfluffy mess that had about 25% winrate unless you spammed cherrypicked Thatguy loadout on every single model in your army and that was that

 Hellebore wrote:
Set up a craftworld that has spent eons away from conflict, where the only experience they get is as theatre, overly dramatic. Then have them suddenly need to fight and you have an army of people in brand new shiny armour and guns acting the only way they know how...

You'd need them to have never been visited by a phoenix lord though, so that no war shrines exist as that's going to make it hard to believe they don't know how to do war.

How so?

Aspect shrine is basically an Oriental dojo, and if the practitioners there hit a period of peace, not only they will get rusty, they will start to focus on flashy and impractical techniques that would normally get you killed but now proliferate as you have nothing to show you how bad idea your new genius move is. Say, a Warp Spider teleporting in front of the enemy to watch fear in their eyes as they are about to be skewered...

Only to get shot point blank as training dummies tend to not be equipped with guns nor do they shoot back

 Kroem wrote:
I think just like with Orks mobs, there must be some sort of bell curve in Guardian quality too.

i.e. Ulthwe guardians can't be better than average unless some Guardians are worse than average.

I did want to bring up the Frateris Militia, they are one of my favourite examples of low quality militia being pulled together from hapless worshipers and low level religious functionaries sent out to die!

Funnily enough, this is precisely what the canon used to be. Ulthwé Black Guardians used to be elite of the elite, with much higher stats than other Guardians in the game. At least until that clown Phil Kelly went and inflated every stat in his pet faction into the stratosphere eradicating all variance, drawbacks, and weaknesses. Guardians used to hit on 4+/have 5+ save, making them worse than even elite human IG troops, not that LOLastartes+ level joke Kelly made out of them...

Because the exarch suits contain the souls of every master of the dojo and it only takes one person to put it on to have a multi generational combat master to train everyone.

On Guardians? They’re more than just “here’s your armour, here’s your Shuriken Catapult, go get some”.

As covered above, they’re a trained militia. And being a species than can live for thousands of our years, that’s a lot of training - and on someone with greater pace and reactions than a baseline human, Ork or Tau.

Furthermore, and here’s the kicker? They wear a war mask. Which isn’t just a physical helmet to protect the bonce. It’s a persona they adapt, like a very temporary Path. Depending how you read it, it’s either psychological or psychic in nature. It separates the Warrior from the Person, allowing the individual to commit horrific acts of war without marring their true personality.

And so, the extent of a “mere Militia’s” training and natural gifts very probably vastly outweighs the training and natural gifts of a career soldier from a shorter lived species.

The stat inflation for the Guardian was because of the proliferation of Marines leading to the perception that WS 4 was the average when in reality most enemies would be encountering Guardsmen with WS 3 or gangers/cultists/militia/Whiteshields with WS 2.

The fact Eldar Guardians, their militia, had WS 3 originally was already meant to show they were better than normal baseline humans as WS 3 encompassed professional human soldiers while also having Initiative 4 (compared to Guardsmen with Initiative 3). That was like how originally in WHFB Elves were basically normal humans with +1 WS +1 BS and +1 I to show they were better. However the sheer amount of WS 4 and BS 4 devalued this.

An Eldar that devotes themselves to be a broad all round better infantryman is the Dire Avenger and their original WS 4 BS 4, matching that of Space Marines, and Initiative 5 (greater than Space Marine Initiative 4) was meant to show what an unaugmented Eldar could accomplish just by focusing on training.

Irbis; thats an awsome concept for a Deathwatch army! I never really thought about it but it makes total sense that some chapters use it as a dumping ground!

It does seem like the older books had a bit more nuance when it came to topics like this, maybe GW found that they sold more models if they told every factions that their warriors are the best of the best?

MDG; I do hear you that on average the Guardian is a very competent warrior, but there is a difference between paper strength and the realities of a desperate war.
An idealised Guardian regiment will certainly be finely equipped, expertly trained, hair pomaded and a song on their lips!
But I can definitely see a desperate Craftworld throwing anyone in a spandex Guardian suit and pointing them towards the invaders, if it's the difference between survival or not.

But those occasions, thanks to Farseers and the Eldar approach to war are stupendously rare. Like Iyanden vs Nids rare.

In the grand scheme of things, Eldar interventions as small and surgical, at least by direct Imperial/Tau/Ork comparison. Sure, it might be a very large force with multiple Titans in support. But it’s still there for a specific aim and purpose, hanging around no longer than is necessary to achieve whatever goal the Farseers decide needs to be achieved.

Whilst I’m not really one to bring in-game stats into a Background discussion? At least with the current 40K army selection rules, we can more accurately represent that Aspect squads do indeed form the backbone of most Battle Hosts, with Guardians a comfortable but often tactically necessary minority.

Yea no argument from me there, I think an Eldar warhost is highly unlikely to use that type of troop!

Tau is an interesting one, but I don't know enough about Fire Warrior training to know.
Do they have a central academy somewhere or is it left up to the fire caste on each colony to organise training?

Highly standardised I think, it’s the only job a Fire Caste can or will ever have.

A couple of interesting quotes from the 40K wiki on the topic

The Kroot are currently the numeric mainstay of the T'au military forces

Shas'o who bitterly hold onto a position are frowned upon, and are considered to lack imagination by their peers.

So from these I would say that Fire Warrior formations are already an "elite" style unit, with the poorer quality units probably coming from auxiliary levies.

But that also there is scope to have a poorly led and/or poorly regarded fire warrior formation, which doesn't live up to the best and brightest fire caste standard.

I guess the issue is the impact of training versus physical attributes.

I mean I'm writing this as an overweight 40ish year old with bad eyesight and increasingly dodgy legs. If I was urgently conscripted tomorrow I'm going to be a lot worse at doing most of the things soldiers have to do than I would have been at say 20 - when I was a lot fitter. I could probably shoot a rifle much the same - but its all the other stuff.

Logically there could be over the hill Eldar and Orks - but I'm not really sure. They are Xenos after all. Some will be stronger/weaker - but in a range that may not matter. Both are engineered races.

Experience goes two ways. Its not that difficult to imagine say an experienced (elderly?) Fire Warrior squad that may know its stuff - but equally isn't as keen to just rush into the fray in a way fresh units straight from their academies would be, because they've seen so many die a long the way. I guess though they are meant to get promoted through to Crisis Teams - but presumably they can't all be.

Virtually any shiny new IG regiment is a 2nd or 3rd rated army, cause before they get some actuall combat experience, they are greenhornes who have mere 6-9 month of training in greenhouse environment. It's fluf according to Abnet and it's reality according to my military service when difference betwen guys on their 3-5 year and 1 year guy so great you can't belive this same unit.

Tyel wrote:

Logically there could be over the hill Eldar and Orks - but I'm not really sure. They are Xenos after all. Some will be stronger/weaker - but in a range that may not matter. Both are engineered races.

In Path of the Warrior one of the Exarchs, Kenainath IIRC, retires and hands his Scorpions off to the main character Exarch, Morlaniath, before the big battle. He says his current body is done and his temple, Deadly Shadow, will go dormant until another Exarch is called.

This implies that Eldar don't suffer from a long slow decline. They live a long time and have a very short and steep decline as their bodies finally fail. It is also possible that this only applies to Exarchs since they are composite beings with multiple souls in one person. Perhaps those additional souls extend the useful life of the physical body in some way.

Back to the main topic, I think it's a little odd that Ulthwe Black Guardians are the elite guardians. I get that they're the standing army of the craftworld, but what about Biel-tan? Everyone there walks the path of the warrior first. Regular guardians are said the be led by former aspect warriors. What happens when everyone is a former aspect warrior?

 Arschbombe wrote:
Back to the main topic, I think it's a little odd that Ulthwe Black Guardians are the elite guardians. I get that they're the standing army of the craftworld, but what about Biel-tan? Everyone there walks the path of the warrior first. Regular guardians are said the be led by former aspect warriors. What happens when everyone is a former aspect warrior?

It does seem a bit of a plot hole - but I think the issue is that since Biel-Tan is the "Aspect Warrior" Craftworld, they shouldn't ever really need to fall back on Guardians.
By contrast Ulthwe Armies should have Guardians+Psyker support as their mainstay.

Military Training for, let’s say purely for example, the 100 years of youth before Sodding Off And Walking Another Path (Biel Tan) is not the same as Military Training, let’s say purely for example, 1 in every 5 years of your life.

Not when your life is to all intents and purposes immortal.

Real world example? When I was a nipper? I was a maths whizz. I was studying GCSE/Standard Levels Maths at the age of 9.

I’m now 45 and a smidge. I can still of course do basic arithmetic and I still know how to work out a fraction and that. But stuff like Simultaneous and Quadratic Equations I once did standing on my head?

Not. A. Clue.

I dare say my inherent competence with numbers and maths and that would let me pick it all up again comparatively quickly? Not quick enough to compete with someone who uses applied maths day in, day out.

 Arschbombe wrote:

Tyel wrote:

Logically there could be over the hill Eldar and Orks - but I'm not really sure. They are Xenos after all. Some will be stronger/weaker - but in a range that may not matter. Both are engineered races.

In Path of the Warrior one of the Exarchs, Kenainath IIRC, retires and hands his Scorpions off to the main character Exarch, Morlaniath, before the big battle. He says his current body is done and his temple, Deadly Shadow, will go dormant until another Exarch is called.

This implies that Eldar don't suffer from a long slow decline. They live a long time and have a very short and steep decline as their bodies finally fail. It is also possible that this only applies to Exarchs since they are composite beings with multiple souls in one person. Perhaps those additional souls extend the useful life of the physical body in some way.

Back to the main topic, I think it's a little odd that Ulthwe Black Guardians are the elite guardians. I get that they're the standing army of the craftworld, but what about Biel-tan? Everyone there walks the path of the warrior first. Regular guardians are said the be led by former aspect warriors. What happens when everyone is a former aspect warrior?

Yeah that's Gav Thorpe's personal retcon hobby horse that exarchs have bodies.... They are absorbed by their armour the older they get. Phoenix lords aren't unique they are just the oldest. Exarchs don't retire, death retires them. They are obsessed with fighting, they literally can't stop doing it. Thorpe writing them like teachers that retire is the dumbest gak I've ever seen and just another reason why I hate that GW decided he should be the one that writes them...