Why don't the Death Korps and Black Templars work together more often?
>The Death Korps come in endless numbers, don't give a frick about casualties, will frick your shit up at any range, and are absolutely fanatical about killing the enemies of the Emperor
>The Black Templars come in very large numbers (for a Space Marine chapter), don't give a frick about casualties, will frick your shit up at close range, and are absolutely fanatical about killing the enemies of the Emperor
Just deploy the Black Templars with Krieg regiments in support and they'd fricking crush the Tau like bugs.
Why don't you ask in your containment general?
I doubt the imperial navy would be willing to support the kreigers with that large of a naval escort for the length of a full campaign being they are canonical cowards due to exhaustively slow replacement rates of capital ships.
The Tau would at the very least trade 50/50 with imperial capital ships so long as they don’t get boarded instantly.
>The Tau would at the very least trade 50/50 with imperial capital ships so long as they don’t get boarded instantly.
That's what the Black Templars are for. The Tau can't do melee, so all they need to do is board their ships and they're fricked.
The problem for the imperium forces is getting their forces within teleport range, not an easy task if tau are fighting in the void and have superior speed and range.
The tau could choose to kite the imperial forces almost indefinitely so long as they are willing to sacrifice planetary resources temporarily until imperial navy forces are routed or destroyed. I only say this because the tau cannot travel from point to point anywhere as fast as the imperium and their only defensive strategy on a grand campaign would probably to put as many void capable capital ships guarding planets as possible to outlast the imperium. The tau can definitely replace their capital ships at an alarming rate compared to the imperium. In an extermination campaign I would argue the imperium would lose their will to fight first before the tau being as the tau have no other choice than to fight meanwhile the imperium has billions of fires to put out all across the empire.
>Why don't the Death Korps and Black Templars work together more often?
Because GW killed off battle brothers and ally soup after the disaster of 7th edition and moronic shit like taudar. The only time they bring it back is when they desperately want to shill something new and garbage, like how at the end of 9th in Arks of Omen EVERY SINGLE IMPERIAL ARMY WAS ALLOWED TO BRING 500 POINTS OF FRICKING VOTANN, "yeah bro sure thing your grey knights and custards heckin' love abominable intelligence worshipping xenos, please buy hearthkyn our warehouse is full of them!"
>custards
>abominable intelligence
To be fair I dont think the Emperor was ever against AI, he was just against the bad AI from the Dark Age of Technology. I think it was just the Administratum and Mechanicus that outlawed it after he was interred
If he was ever involved with outlawing AI it would maybe be him trying to pander to the Mechanicus in order to get them to fully join.
>why dont the mobile decapitation strike force that are space marines work with the slow human wave attack lemmings at the imperial guard where the strategy to win is hope you have more men than they have bullets
>Just deploy the Black Templars with Krieg regiments in support and they'd fricking crush the Tau like bugs.
>just deploy the least tactically and strategically flexible and effecitve imperial forces together against an opponent that has repeatedly beaten the imperium (despite a massive overmatch in terms of raw force/numbers) because of tactical and strategical inferiority on the imperiums end and they would totally win!
Good luck with those ww1 trench warfare tactics against an enemy that has figured out the concept of mobility and doesn't bother with rigid lines in the sand.
>Tau try to deploy against a the Krieg
>They try to pick them off with snipers, but the Death Korp's artillery outranges them
>They try to bombard them with air strikes, but the Death Korp's anti-air is well entrenched and fortified
>They try to use stealthsuits, but the mines and barbed wire the Krieger have deployed don't care whether you're invisible or not
>They try to use Seeker Missiles, but they're expensive, and the Kriegers are cheaper to replace than the missiles are
>They are finally forced to resort to literal human waves using their Gue'vesa, but the disposable auxiliaries don't have the numbers or training of the Kriegers
Tau, well known for their frontal attacks on fortified positions and love of static fighting.
>stealth teams destroy the artillery deep behind enemy lines
>engineers and sappers trying to place mines and dig trenches get picked off by snipers
>air-defense is destroyer by precision railgun fire and seeker missiles
>mass infantry formations get decimated by aircraft or simply cut down by pulse-rifle kill zones
>any rabble who makes it to tau lines can be repelled by the better armed and armored guevesa auxiliaries
>the only possible way to find is smashing your head into the enemy trenches until you or your enemy run out of people
a slav made this post
Why don't you write your own setting's lore instead of obsessing over GW's 40 year old slop?
he wants to talk about how badass he thinks the tau are
for the next few weeks he will have 2-4 threads up at all times until he loses interest again
>dont give a frick about casualties
you know thats actually a bad thing right? That the mass casualty human wave "we lost 10 regiments but gained 3m^2 of the killing ground, thats a win!" tactics are fricking moronic and dont work? Fricks sake thats literally something the tau have been shown to exploit against the imperium (and guard in particular) to massive effect
>create killing zone
>opponent keeps rushing it to try and overwhelm defenses
>pull back the moment they actually expend enough bodies to power through
>repeat
Ah, but here's the brilliant part about the Imperium's strategy: The Tau will run out of land to retreat from before the Imperium runs out of bodies.
In fact, it's even worse than that. The Tau would run out of AMMO before the Imperium runs out of bodies. The Imperium could send so many humans at the Tau that they literally wouldn't have the ammunition to kill them all, and it wouldn't even put a noticeable dent in the human population.
>The Tau will run out of land to retreat from before the Imperium runs out of bodies.
That strategy has failed multiple times before, its not going to suddenly work now. Guard are really shit and die really easily.
pretty much the only time we saw such a strategy put into action was the agrellan campaign, and it worked well enough that the tau were driven back to a single city where they only survived the first battle since Farsight showed up, and the second time by somehow gaining control of one of the planet's chaos tainted storms
We saw it in the Taros Campaign too, but the Imperium didn't bring enough bodies then.
>pretty much the only time we saw such a strategy put into action was the agrellan campaign
It wasnt, but agrellan was also a miserable failure for the imperium.
it is the only time it was described in detail though, Taros and Dal’yth were assaulted by small numbers of Guard by Imperium standards
Taros was also defended by a tiny tau army. The guard massively outnumbered the Tau.
>Dalyth
was assaulted by a massive force, it was a crusade.
>Taros was also defended by a tiny tau army. The guard massively outnumbered the Tau
it was about 20K versus 60K, not terrible odds when you are the defender even before you account for tech differences
>was assaulted by a massive force, it was a crusade
there is a whole novel describing it, it was 19 regiments, several tau codices back that up
>there is a whole novel describing it, it was 19 regiments
It was actually closer to 100, just with 20 regiments at the head of it. Plus a Titan legion and some space marine companies. And this was back when the Tau had planets just barely above the single digits.
the other 80 regiments were probably the ones back on the home front who were dealing with the 20 or so worlds the tau subverted
If the Tau are able to tie up almost 80% of a military force with guerrilla tactics and ideological subversion then that’s a valid military strategy if I ever saw one, especially since the Imperium only conquered two worlds before they got stopped at Dalyth, and the world with the largest population that they took only had 7 million people on it. 50 regiments to occupy a planet with 7 million people is a hell of a strategy.
The tau didn't subvert those worlds just to tie up Imperial resources, they subverted them to be stepping stones for an expansion in that direction never took place because Farsight's rogue state is now in the way.
The Imperium could have hit Dal’yth with an Exterminatus but didn't because they decided they weren't worth it now that the nids had shown up
Much like the Agrellan campaign the tau got rescued by the fact the Imperium had bigger fish to fry
The Imperium getting stopped on the first major Sept they run into isn't them getting rescued, it's just the Imperium straight up losing, same with the Agrellan Campaign where the Imperium couldn't even take a single planet from the Tau.
Had the nids not shown up, the Imperials would have hit Dal’yth with an Exterminatus, then either been driven out or wiped out. But then they likely would have come back with more ships and dished out more Exterminatus. Maybe they would have wiped out the tau, maybe they wouldn't have, it depends how much of a threat they saw the tau as in comparison to other regional threats
Same with the Agrellan. If it weren't for the 13th Black Crusade they likely would have geared up for a centuries long counter crusade
>the Imperials would have hit Dal’yth with an Exterminatus
Think about what that implies though. That's literally saying that the Tau are a greater threat to the Imperium than any other faction in the game. The Imperium doesn't even use exterminatus against the Tyranids or Necrons to that degree. The Tau are such a looming threat to the Imperium that the only possible way they can handle them is to resort to their measure of last resort which would turn a sizable chunk of the galaxy unusable for the Imperium.
And the worst part is, exterminatus doesn't even work anymore. They tried it in the Agrellan campaign and some of the Tau were able to survive beneath a city-shield.
Exterminatus can mean different things. On aggrelan they used a special bomb to ignite its atmosphere as a desperate last resort, at other times they can actually just explode a planet (like with nostromo)
>Had the nids not shown up, the Imperials would have hit Dal’yth with an Exterminatus
The nids gave them the cassus beli to finally retreat, they in to way prevented them attempting an exterminatus. It should however be noted that at the time the retreat order was given the crusade was already on the ground going nowhere fast, and nuking the planet would have wiped them out.
>but they could have used it from the start!
Meaning the nids would have nothing to do with it then. And also evidently not, either because they didnt have exterminatus capable weaponry or because the planetary defences were too strong for an exterminatus to be effective (meaning planetary shields or fortifications which would have withstood it).
>But then they likely would have come back with more ships and dished out more Exterminatus. Maybe they would have wiped out the tau, maybe they wouldn't have
Given the "success" of the damocles crusade? They would not have. But sure, if you remove every reality of the imperium and just ask "can they beat the tau if they teleport all their armies on top of them"? Yes, probably. They however cannot and never will be able to do it, so it doesent matter. The damocles crusade was a massive gathering of force and it still wasnt enough, and that was a long time ago for the only faction actively advancing in technology and sophistication.
>the retreat order was given the crusade was already on the ground going nowhere fast
They didn't bring enough forces. Standard Imperial procedure is to start small and throw bigger and bigger armies at the problem until it goes away
>they didnt have exterminatus capable weaponry or because the planetary defences
It is a major plot point in the book. Some factions wanted to bombard Dal’yth to dust right from the beginning, but the larger faction wanted another ground war despite having a laughably small invasion force
>damocles crusade was a massive gathering of force and it still wasnt enough
but it wasn't a massive force
>The aggrelan campaign WAS the counter crusade
It was a counter crusade organized on short notice, usually these things take years to organize and can grind on for decades
>usually these things take years to organize
Yes, because usually the imperium sits on its ass and is a bureaucratic nightmare.
Considering they have to rearrange the economies of multiple worlds to sustain the crusades, it is actually pretty quick
19 regiments isn't much, many in the Imperium would sacrifice far more if they got in the way of an Exterminatus. On Agrellan they wiped out millions that got left behind
>Standard imperial procedure is to throw as much as they can at the problem, to try and stamp things out with overwhelming force when the ball gets rolling
No its not, read some Guard codices, there are always a thousand different things competing for Imperial attention at any given time, so they expect local forces to have a go at it first then slowly expand the number of worlds contributing to the campaign
>what they WANTED doesent matter very much
they were also in position to do so at the time but chose not to
>Except it was
not according to the book that describes it, or the codices that back up its numbers
I can't think of a single crusade that is anywhere close to as small as 80 regiments, but technically pretty much any war with religious backing can be labelled as such
Remember at the time the Imperials knew nothing about Tau and thought they were likely just one large home world plus some colonies like most b-list xenos races
>Standard Imperial procedure is to start small and throw bigger and bigger armies at the problem until it goes away
Standard imperial procedure is to throw as much as they can at the problem, to try and stamp things out with overwhelming force when the ball gets rolling. And thats what they tried to do with the damocles crusade, wipe the tau out once and for all.
>Some factions wanted to bombard Dal’yth to dust right from the beginning
And they also wanted to wipe out the tau, what they WANTED doesent matter very much.
>but it wasn't a massive force
Except it was.
Regarding the size of it, it certainly wasn't the largest military force ever assembled, but it was comparable to other crusades, not the largest crusade, but somewhere in the middle.
Exterminatus is used extensively against the Tyranids, many of them were functioning Imperial worlds, just to deny them biomass. It is also sometimes used to avoid lengthy campaigns or quash heretical ideas.
>They tried it in the Agrellan campaign and some of the Tau were able to survive beneath a city-shield
There are several types of Exterminatus. The Agrellan one seems to be some sort of unique psychic bomb. But other methods like Cyclonic Torpedoes would easily be able to take out one shield city just by obliterating the planet's crust below it
>If it weren't for the 13th Black Crusade they likely would have geared up for a centuries long counter crusade
The aggrelan campaign WAS the counter crusade, aggrelan was an imperial world which the tau conquered (iirc also the testing grounds for riptides the first time round) which the imperium then tried to get back, failed and was forced to try and nuke from orbit.
>Had the nids not shown up
Wow if the Imperium didn't have to defend 1,000,000 worlds it could use those 1,000,000 worlds of resources to attack? That's crazy man. What genius insight. It's completely unfair that having a larger territory with more industry and more people means you need to spend more defending that territory too.
The Tau now have the Necrons on one side and the Rift on the other, plus a high concentration of nids in the area, they are better off just focusing on other threads as there is a fairly high chance the tau won't even be around in a few centuries
Also, is there any sources on how many worlds the tau had at the start of the Damocles Crusade?
They had at least 15 septs by that point, but that doesn't include colonies and such. Meanwhile 3rd and 5th spheres only added several septs, so it is hard to say how much truly bigger they are now
IIRC they had 20 septs after the 2nd sphere of expansion. Since then, they've had the 3rd, 4th, and 5th sphere of expansion, with only the 4th sphere really being much of a failure (still captured a few planets though) and they're undergoing the 6th sphere of expansion right now IIRC.
They rarely give us any solid numbers, but we know that they've captured hive worlds and forge worlds, we know that they have at least one ecumenopolis with a population in the trillions, and we know they're heavily automated with manual labor jobs heavily done by drones freeing up a lot of labor to do other stuff like fight in wars, colonize planets, or do research. There is a statement from one book I'll try to find that said something that would indicate the Tau having roughly 1,000 planets or so.
Still very small compared to the Imperium, but the Tau are very much playing "Tall" instead of "Wide", they don't have nearly as much territory as the Imperium but their industry, population, and resources within said territory is vastly higher on a per-planet basis.
>the Imperium could have hit Dal’yth with an Exterminatus but didn't because they decided they weren't worth it now that the nids had shown up
At the point the tyranid assrape of maccrage was happening imperial forces were already pinned down and being pounded by tau fire, they already lost their chance to try and do a preemptive exterminatus and had to withdraw while letting the tau be (despite that being the explicit goal of the campaign, to eliminate the threat which was deemed too dangerous to let live, because despite how little it accomplished the damocles crusade was meant to wipe the tau out)
>versus 60K
And two detachments of marines and a titan division.
And they then got crushed.
I don’t believe that the imperium could transport those bodies to the battlefield successfully before they were shot down or overwhelmed by the myriad of other foes they face of over billion fronts across the galaxy.
Why are Krieggays so retrded?
The Krieg know how to fight in the conditions of the 41st millennium. Infinite manpower, infinite morale, and infinitely disposable. The Imperial Guard are so cheap to send into battle that every pulse rifle bullet shot to kill one was probably more expensive than the Guardsman that was killed. It's literally impossible to win against such a force.
>infinite morale
Theyre like ld7
>infinite morale
Why can't the secondaries at least read the source material? The Krieg gunned down their own commissars en masse at vraks when the commissars tried to force them to keep charging into artillery fire.
Anon he clearly knows nothing about the krieg but memes, he probably thinks they are trained in some mystical shovel-fu too.
>As the artillery fire hammered down it caused the utter collapse of the 158th regiment's attack in sector 50-45. The Commissars amongst the retreating assault squads demanded that the men stand firm and push on, summarily executing the first men to take any steps backwards. In return, several Commissars were shot out of hand by their own side as the shredded assault companies scurried back to the safety of their own trenches. At the parapet the first wave collided with the second wave as they moved forwards to begin their advance. Fighting broke out as the officers of the second wave tried to force passage forwards. After only a couple hours the 158th regiment's attack had disintegrated into shambles. For the regiment's abject failure, the colonel and his staff would be arrested and eventually executed. The regiment was then disbanded by the 88th Siege Army's commissars. All the survivors would be sentenced to serve amongst the Penal Legions.
To be fair it's been so long since Vraks half the current GW writers probably know more Krieg memes than actual IA books at this point
>To be fair it's been so long since Vraks half the current GW writers probably know more Krieg memes than actual IA books at this point
Are you ready for the Power-shovel?
>Are you ready for the Power-shovel?
They already had a krieg trooper kill a tau stealth suit (which canonically has space marine levels of protection) with his shovel in a recent WH+ animation
Technically it was a trench club, not a shovel. That being said, don’t hold your breath for any animation designed to accurately show Tau capabilities.
Yeah that show was a fricking mess of imperiumwank, at least till the eldar showed up (I was glad they got a chance to shine though). Unfortunately there's also a book where kriegers do moronic shit like hold a stealth suit down with their bodies, and their squad leader shoots the stealth suit with a bolter (you know, the explosive gun, not killing the kriegers for some reason) and then the hole gets pried open as if the stealth suit can't, you know, fly away
Remember the kill team launch animation has a Krieg guardsman kill a Power Klaw wielding Ork Nob by parrying his powerklaw with a chainsword.
Every single krieg gay is a wiener sucking secondary whos read about 40k on a wiki and has no idea how krieg actually function. They don't bayonet charge everything they're masters of siege warfare and trench fighting, using infiltration tactics, creeping barrages, massed artillery and tank assaults. They aren't infinite either most straight up can't have kids due to physical reasons so they mainly replenish losses using cloning vats gifted by the mechanicus. and they certainly still human, they're just more tolerable to losses thanks to valuing victory over all else in petenence for their world turning traitor.
>I don't understand logistics of war: the post
Because they don't have the luxury of mail ordering their allies for £100 a squad or whatever the going rate is these days; galactic logistics mean you have to work with whoever turns up to the same war rather than just sticking with your best buddies.
Too much edge, will slice the planet in half
>the black templars don’t care about casualties
Helsreach and other instances in the lore demonstrate time and time again that despite their honor autism and religious convictions the black templars will go to great lengths to avoid pointless casualties both among themselves and their marine and guard allies, as well as civilians
well for one it would get the Inqustion on the Black Templars case even more, that and both of them have massive differences in doctrine, kreigers are far more geared towards siege warfare while the templars are more geared towards sudden and brutal assults so it wouldn't make sense to pair them up
They would hate each other because they are too alike.
The better question is what sort of crusading force would be needed to take out the Tau today. The Tau only had, what, a dozen planets, maybe 20 at the start of the Damocles crusade? Whereas now they probably have a few hundred, including former Imperial hive worlds and forge worlds (which would no longer be hive worlds or forge worlds but still).
Templars disdain the cowardice of the Guard and their tendency to break and run
The Death Korp never breaks and never runs.
I'm pretty sure they have the same morale rules as the rest of the guard
meanwhile, the death korps
>As the artillery fire hammered down it caused the utter collapse of the 158th regiment's attack in sector 50-45. The Commissars amongst the retreating assault squads demanded that the men stand firm and push on, summarily executing the first men to take any steps backwards. In return, several Commissars were shot out of hand by their own side as the shredded assault companies scurried back to the safety of their own trenches. At the parapet the first wave collided with the second wave as they moved forwards to begin their advance. Fighting broke out as the officers of the second wave tried to force passage forwards. After only a couple hours the 158th regiment's attack had disintegrated into shambles. For the regiment's abject failure, the colonel and his staff would be arrested and eventually executed. The regiment was then disbanded by the 88th Siege Army's commissars. All the survivors would be sentenced to serve amongst the Penal Legions.
A minor bureaucratic error from millennia ago made it so they’re rarely ever deployed in the same war zones despite the synergy and effectiveness they would have together, ultimately causing the loss of hundreds of planets and untold trillions of lives.
And it wasn't even Tzeentch's idea, just a careless frickhead halfassing his job