Quite frankly the Tau will not play any vital role in the galaxy IMO. They way it's all gonna end is that the Tyranids will devour all life in the galaxy and without any life energy and souls to feed on both the C'tan and the Chaos gods will cease to exist. But it's going to take tens of thousands of years until we reach that point so it will not be a subject of Warhammer 40k or our favourite hobby, ever.
I think they will all die, when games workshop lowers there prises, and out of shock too!
But truthfully tyanids would win with there mass amounts of numbers...hmm... i think I'm going to go make a zurge, oops tyranid army...or dark eldar... and finish my CD army... sigh
Every race is poised to destroy every other race (with the exception of the Eldar and the Tau). None of them will "win" because it's a setting, not a story, and it's always going to be poised at zero hour, when the whole Galaxy is on the verge of being eaten/stripped of all life/overrun by Orks/conquered by Abbadon/finally brought to heel by the Imperium. It's part of the theme of 40K.
I haven't seen the latest issue (or the last few actually), but I doubt they're gearing up for any major changes like that. Most likely they're just trying to drive home the whole "ZOMG!! The Universe is so dark and we're all DOOMED!!1!" atmosphere of 40K. With the recent release of the new CSM Codex and the upcoming Daemons Codex, naturally they have to make them look unstoppable.
At most they may be building up to their next Ultra-Mega-Worldwide Campaign Event. I can't see them making any far reaching changes to the Imperium as it's kind of the focal point of the game, and as for getting rid of the Guard, that's ridiculous. Imagine the uproar from the players! And really, what kind of half-arsed business practice would it be to develop armies and sell miniatures for them, and then one day just go "What on Earth were we thinking?" and remove them from the game as if they never existed.
Oh, wait...
No, the Eldar would annihilate every other race if they could - they're simply too few to ever make it happen. The Tau want everyone to join them in a happy smiley love-in.
And really, what kind of half-arsed business practice would it be to develop armies and sell miniatures for them, and then one day just go "What on Earth were we thinking?" and remove them from the game as if they never existed.
Oh, wait...
Apparently that particular race is now actually on the to-do list; right at the bottom granted (and in a more Xenos form), but actually on the list
Every race is poised to destroy every other race (with the exception of the Eldar and the Tau).
what do eldar and tau like each other
There are hints (with the GW hammer of subtlety) that the Eldar created the Ethereals
Edit: I've merged the two threads to gether as they had the same topic which is why things might not flow properly
Do you think GW might kill off the Emperor, then they could do the whole star child fluff again.
if the emperor died i see two outcomes
1 he becomes the 5th chaos power
2 mankind is overwelmed by chaos literally and figuritivly ( spelling)
Do you think GW might kill off the Emperor, then they could do the whole star child fluff again.
GW don't add to the story any more - they learned from their mistakes with the global campaigns which left them with a setting that risked being too radically changed and therefore automatically outdating every Codex. People get annoyed enough with Codecies and Rulebooks being updated because of rules - imagine if everything they produced had to be redone because The Emperor was dead now, or Abbadon got as far as Mars, or Armageddon was really conquered by the Orks.
It's a setting, not a story. It's supposed to be static so that people can play using the same armies and special characters and not feel like their version of events isn't "official".
The background of the 40K and Warhammer universe changes, but it's refining and retconning; adding new layers to what's already happened, not just continuing the story. Everything is poised at zero hour in both settings, and that's how it'll stay.
Am i the only one who remembers the necrons here? if everyone annihilates each other, it will be a fight between tau, necrons and 'nids.
Or the Orks, Necrons and 'Nids. Or Chaos, the Orks and 'Nids. Or The Imperium, Chaos, Orks, 'Nids and Dark Eldar...etc. etc.
Every race is poised to destroy every other race. Except the Eldar (who can't) and the Tau (who won't). It's not a case of picking a handful of the strongest and predicting which will be left standing - every Codex for every race says the same thing. "If the Orks only united under one Warlord, they'd sweep away the whole Galaxy in a tide of green" or "once the Tyranids arrive in force, we're all doomed" or "if only the Imperium would stop persecuting psykers and worshipping a corpse, they could unite and start a new Great Crusade".
It's part of the flavour of the setting that humanity is doomed - either they'll destroy themselves, or aliens/chaos will do it for them. There is no right answer: there is no "most powerful race". They're all Galaxy-destroying threats.
i dont think cannibalism is to far fetched...
They actually do consume each other. The Tyranid organisms that are used to invade a world are re-absorbed by the Hive Ships when they move on by throwing themselves into the pools of bio-matter that are sucked up into space. Furthermore, Hive Fleets sometimes turn on each other when there's no other species around - what you have to realise though, is that the victors of such a conflict simply consume the bio-matter of the losers, and grow stronger through the adaptations they've come up with, and the adaptations they create to fight the other Tyranids. So when the Tyranids eat each other, they just get stronger overall.
Anyway, no one will ever "win" in 40K. That's kind of the point. You can't destroy Chaos, the Orks are too numerous and thrive on conflict anyway, the Necrons still have unnumbered warriors waiting to be awakened under the surface of thousands of worlds, the Dark Eldar hide in the Warp where no one can get them, the Eldar have their Exodite colonies scattered across the Galaxy, the Imperium is just too huge and the Tau might just survive by letting these other forces destroy each other.
The Imperium is beset on all sides by invincible enemies. That's what 40K is.
Tau are space commies.
This age of whatever (you can tell I don't keep up with 40k) isn't going to effect the fluff majorly. Look at GW's track record - SOC wasn't implied into the background at all! Well, not much.
I guess by now we all know that the Tau have a special place in your heart, Godbob.
But they are still pretty irrelevant in the greater scheme of things. Sorry!
tommy h is that why they just chose a planet that no had heard about give it a gobal campange
Pretty much. Ditto for the Nemesis Crown and Warhammer - a meaningless magic item they just invented. It lets people play for something, but doesn't require them to commit to killing off one of their villains/planets/cities.
I guess by now we all know that the Tau have a special place in your heart, Godbob.
But they are still pretty irrelevant in the greater scheme of things. Sorry!
you'll see you'll all see i'll rase an empire and destory everthing after my DA and tzeenth are ready of course
Not if they can get past my DE Talos in close combat... I love it! I think all races should lose execpt my Talos!
the storm of chaos has been mentioned in all 7th ed army books
same for the eye of terror
It's not that they're not mentioned, but more that no matter the significance (or insignificance in the case of the nemesis crown) of the objective they have already decided on the ending.
No matter how well the Empire did early on in gameplay terms Archaon was always going to get to Middenheim. It was just unfortunate that by trying to include every race in the campaign that they had to come up with that rediculous ending of the Orc just b*itchslapping Archaon and leaving it at that or the Vampires/Undead marching all the way to the walls and then turning back. Or how Archaon has been given (i assume) a second chance by the chaos gods, hardly the most forgiving of deities.
If GW could just commit one character or settlement (like they did with Erengrad a while back, which has remained trashed to the best of my knowledge), a tangeable change. The balance of power remains but one side loses...and they lose something.
Had Archaon died like he should have instead of being turned into the Lord of the Next Times by Chaos bunnies like Thorpe, whats the worst that would have happened? GW can make rules for the new character in less than a day and they can produce another miniature that every other Chaos player will buy, inc those with Archaon models. It would at least have given the campaign a bit of substance
whats the worst that would have happened?
All the Chaos players who use Archaon would have been annoyed that their General was no longer "official". They would have felt like they couldn't use him any more.
The problem is not that the Storm of Chaos or Eye of Terror campaigns should have done more - it's that they were a bad idea right from the beginning. Making it so that armies or characters used by players cease to exist in the setting is bad business when you require people to invest in particular factions in order to play the game. They had no choice but to restore the status quo at the end; they should simply never have promised that things would change.
Also, it was absurd for anyone to expect any other result. If enough games are played by equal-strength armies then of course the results are going to be about 50/50. That's just the law of averages.
Yes, but he was only invented for the campaign. Archaon has been a Chaos special character since the 5th Edition "Champions of Chaos" suplement.
The Tau are a cross between Hippies, Smurfs and Shergar.
Of course GW won't have a victor in 40K, that would wreck their business. World wide uber campaigns are on the other hand, a massive seller, and apart from that the guys at the studio who do all the writting love 'em too.
My theory is this - GW have taken the "WE'RE ALL DOOMED!!!" thread as far as it can go. If the baddies get any stronger then humanity is not doomed, it will have expired. They've also nearly reached saturation with the range. You can't redo much of the range as the range for most armies is now almost fully plastic and high quality.They can't totally redo the army as people won't buy it they'll just use their old stuff with old rules. You need a new angle like Apocalypse. Failing that you need an excuse to add lots of new cool stuff. You know the type of thing, new units all around, everyone instantly gets harder.
When the Golden Throne packs in, the Emperor will be resurected, walk the Galaxy again and lead men in a new technological dawn. Meanwhile, the technology of the Tau takes a further leap as they encroach into Imperial space. Massive hive fleets appear on the eastern fringe, Ork numbers explode, and the Eldar and Dark Eldar war over control of powerful ancient weapons. The forces of Chaos take advantage and explode out of the Eye of Terror.