i was just wondering eldar are outnumbered by just about everybody and are divided so i was wondering are eldar a threat to other races......
i was just wondering eldar are outnumbered by just about everybody and are divided so i was wondering are eldar a threat to other races......
Based off all the stories from Black Library and Forgeworld -I would say emphatically NO. In almost every encounter even when they have the numeric advantage they are either massacred (when fighting Space Marines), or suffer atrocious casualties (fighting everybody else). I get the impression they are barely able to survive in hiding let alone being a threat to anybody.Originally Posted by TyTy31
(I still have no idea how they survived the Emperor's xenos purges back in the pre-heresy.)
Probably just built a giant wall of Avatars to keep the Crusade out, seem to have a ton lying around to be ripped apart in the books anyways.
Despite being fresh from the fall, and despite all of the bad writing we see from Black Library these days and what the videogames have indicated, Eldar are meant to be one of the main major powers still around. Their spacecraft are very effective compared with the minor Xenos, and contrary to what the propaganda says, the Emperor's purge and crusade weren't all that: the most impressive thing about it was the speed, and it was mostly about unifying the existing human settlements than taking Xenos ones.
It depends on what is meant by 'threat' too, as the Eldar themselves aren't hell-bent on eradication of all life alien to them (and they actually prefer them to be around, as it would interest the traders and commodities you get).
For a long time humour was thought to be the most potent antidepressant; recently, though, it was found that the bitter suffering of one's enemies, with the placing of sensible limitations on the success of one's friends, was still more effective.
The Eldar are no longer able to topple the Imperium just by themselfs but they still have some of the best trained warriors and most potent psykers in the galaxy and
their technology is still second to non but that of the Necrons.
None of the craftworlds are actively seeking to eradicate anyone, the exodites keep to themselves, the corsair fleets are more in it for the adventure, and the denizens of Commorragh are just jerks.
That being said, pit any single eldar against any single human, ork, tau, or necron and they'll wipe the floor with them. Eldar are deadly, but they tend to keep themselves composed due to the rigid paths of discipline they adhere to (the exceptions being the Dark Eldar and some corsairs, of course). To an Eldar all other races are clumsy and seem to move in slow motion. They see other races as hostile animals. Eldar aren't out to make war, but will put down the local wildlife if necessary. Black Library (ironically) does the Eldar a disservice.
As for surviving the "Emperor's xenos purges" (I will assume you mean the Crusades), the center of the Eldar Empire was where the Eye of Terror is now and that is further than all but Lorgar's fleets went during that era. Sure the craftworlds spread out, but they stuck to that side of the galaxy for the most part. A couple of craftworlds were encountered during the Crusades, but there were no accounts of Imperial vessels assaulting any.
Last edited by Haunter!; 27-08-2012 at 08:50.
This seems grossly inaccurate.
A single ork would squash an average eldar into paste. And I don't think you can damage a necron without some real firepower.
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beer and axes
It depends what you mean by threat.
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I don't think you understood the point of the example I was using. Orks aren't individually strong and are lumbering, necrons are more or less walking suits of armor. An eldar striking first would leave little chance for either opponent to strike back.
Even if they aren't a direct threat as such, they can - and do - manipulate events to let others do their dirty work for them
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Are Eldar a threat.
Exodite sit on their worlds so no.
Corsairs, are a nuisance and can sap an area through its raids, but they will usually pull back before the fleet comes round to sort them out.
Dark Eldar, to the Imperium in general? No, to remote imperium plannets, and the poor wretches that live on them, oh yes. There are only a few factions that are worse to be raided by.
Craftworld eldar, They mostly want to be left alone, the only problem comes when you touch their stuff, or are going to touch their stuff ten years in the future. (They also beat you up if you meddle with Chaos, but thats probably a good thing for the Imperium.) I doubt they would be interested in destabalising the Imperium, as they are an effective meat shield against the rest of the threats in the galaxy. As to the nature of their threat, they don't play the numbers game that the Imperoim does, they are all about projecting enough force at the right place at the right time, (plus a lot of trickery and proxies)
As others have said, the Eldar aren't a direct threat to the Imperium. They know that if they were to be involved in any protracted conflict they would lose, if only due to them not being able to take as many losses as the more numerous races. Hence why they don't go out if their way (with the exception if perhaps the Beil-Tan, who have taken it upon themselves to try and restore the old Eldar empire) to provoke other factions into attacking them. They much prefer to do things in an indirect way.
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Yes they are individually strong, they can also recover/ignore most injuries that would kill/cripple a human or an eldar, an eldar might kill an ork at range or best him at swordsmanship but if you stuck a naked ork and a naked eldar in a room an ork would splat him 9/10 of times (the 1/10 being a powerful psyker or something )
"WE ARE THE ONLY SOURCE OF GOODNESS, SEVERE AND DRASTIC. THERE IS NO OTHER SOURCE OF HOPE THAN US. WE ARE AGONISINGLY ALONE."
beer and axes
Yes, yes they are. Just because they don't have S4 doesn't mean they aren't incredibly strong, it just means they aren't at the "damage tanks with their bare hands" levels of strong that is what S4 represents. An ork would be a scary, scary thing to fight in a brawl, and let's face it, to an ork, every fight is a brawl. An eldar may have some fancy fighting moves, but the ork only needs to connect one hit and there's probably several broken bones, and then let's see you do some fancy dance punches now, space elf!
A single Corsair warband, that isn't even the strongest one, has 3500 ships, the equivalent of 50+ Imperial sector fleets.
If you call a Segmentum Imperial Navy headquarters a remote planet, and the Segmentum Admiral (the guy who commands 1/5 of Imperial fleet resources) a poor wretch, then you're completely right.
I agree with determining as to whether or not the Eldar is still a threat all depends on how you define the word threat.
As said before the Eldar isn t a conquering force at least not anymore (they may have been pre-fall) sure Beil-Tan do still fight various races in order to perhaps restore their lost empire but a single craftworld isnīt going to become the straw that breaks the Imperiums back and conquers all their planets.
The Eldar as a race (that includes their dark kin) right now are mostly bent on surviving in one way or another.
With the Craftworld where their threats really lie in is in their manipulating skill. A Tyranid fleet will clash together with their craftworld in so and so many years? Well the solution to that problem is clear move something in between them and the Tyranid fleet and have them take on the Tyranids while the Craftworld remains safely out of the way.
How do the Eldar do this? By either manipulating the different races into attacking one another many an Ork Waaagh!! Have proberbly been started by the Eldar in order to lure the Imperium or another strong race to certain points so that they can deal with an upcoming threat to the Craftworld.
So as to answer if the Eldar is a threat i would say in the sense that they can topple the Imperium or conquer then different races and make them all slaves, no in that point the Eldar isnīt that big of a threat, however in the sense that by their manipulation they can move much larger threats your way, threats that CAN do all the things the Eldar canīt do...Oh Yes on that point the Eldar is most DEFIANTLY a threat.
Are you sure this isn't GW failing at numbers again? Also what counts as "one ship" are they counting fighters/bombers and light frigates. I assumed the Corsair's were effectively space pirates, this is pretty much born out by 'Path of the outcast'. They had a few big ships, but most of their number are small raiders, good for a smash and grab, but likely to be out gunned if the sector fleet (in terms of Tonnage) if they catch them.
Is this a regular thing, or a fluff awesome moment? Lets immagine for a moment I'm a drugged up DE slaver, do I raid the segmentum base for nice fleshy slaves, or do I go for some backwater hive. Lets face it all the time spent fighting IG is time that could be spent collecting slaves. Although I will conceed that Segmentum Admiral may have some nice bling that can go in my horde.
The point is the bulk of the DE targets will be people rich, poorly defended planet. They could pull off more daring raids, but why go through all that effort unless you had to.
I would call Dark Kin a threat, given by nature of their tactics, they never give the oponnent enough time to respond or prepare for their attacks, call reinforcements etc, and they can attack anywhere, like locations in the middle of "safe" sectors, where PDF would be understaffed and poorly trained, without time to call reinforcements like Space Marines or "proper" IG army, they can abduct/murder whole planets population in a single night.
Also they are really creative in the ways they do this and have collection of doomsday devices that would let proffesor Farsnworth stand in shame. They are 40k equivalent of those annoying invisible units from RTS games, like Banshees from SC2 or Tanya from C&C games, which can topple your entire game as they suddenly appear in the middle of your base and start blowing up buldings and stuff when you are fighting with your uge 200/200 army of Battlecruisers on the front line on the other side of map. Also, Dark Eldar are quite numerous
Last edited by Jonny Draigo; 27-08-2012 at 16:07.
So there we were at 2:30 in the morning; I was beginning to wish I had never come to cadet training school. To the south lay water -- there was no way we could cross that. To the east and west two armies squeezed us in a pincer. The only way was north; I had to go for it and pray the Gods were smiling on me... I picked up the dice and threw two sixes.
It really depends on who's the writer. The Eldar - especially craftworld Eldar - have all the tools to handle an enemy force several times larger. Even without huge numbers, the combination of divination (where Eldar are only rivaled by Tzeentch daemons), experience, high tech, and high mobility spells serious trouble for whoever is fighting them. If the author wants the Eldar to win, the elements are certainly there - a force that mobilizes without you knowing, that hits where you don't expect, that can force or avoid engagement pretty much at will (i.e. compare the speeds of eldar and imperial vehicles), and that always seems to know what you'd do.
Then again, the Eldar seldom seem to fare so well in recent books as those abilities would suggest. I'm curious how the entire "siege of Alaitoc" went for the Imperium, considering we are talking about a major craftworld which has to mobilize its entire force (which, among other things, means its entire titan arsenal).
@On The actual topic
Not really? They'd probably love to be at the helm of the galaxy again, but as it is they're trying to save their race. While you could pull the "cornered animal" type of argument; they're not really cornered either. They simply wish to survive at the moment; which is simple enough it seems for CWE as they need only defend themselves or attack at a moment of opportunity so they don't have to.
@The Single Eldar being stuff all the time forever..
Well, maybe. Orks are a match for Space Marines at times, and certainly so for Eldar. I'd say it's not one sided in either direction. Fact is; an Eldar could get a great hit in (say.. cut off an entire limb) on an Ork, and may get grabbed and murdered in the process by the incredibly heavy and strong Ork. More so if he has a choppa or the also-very-heavy shoota. Even an Exarch might fall to a miscalculation of the Ork's ability to, simply put, not die.
This is mostly moot anyway as Eldar should:
-Never be without good weapons/armor
-Shouldn't be in close combat even WITH weapons/armor/psychic assistance (unless they're meant to be)
-Probably not waste time tangling with Orks in the first place. They may hate them, but unless the orks are directly screwing with them there's no reason to get into such a drawn out process of dealing with an enemy who doesn't go away, thrives on war, and thusly attracts more of them into the fray simply by fighting them in the first place.
I'd argue similarly for Necrons. You may be quick with the knife, but unless you have a *really fraggin' good knife* or are *really talented* it's sod-all that you'll kill even a Necron warrior reliably. The reason they're WS4 is because they don't *miss.* They're machines that calculate; and while slow to react; you'll basically have to parry or dodge. Get hit by it and it's just as bad as being run through by any number of the galaxies' brutal CC weapons. Similar to the above, why are you in CC with a naked or even mediocre Eldar? Unless it's a Banshee, Scorpion, or an appropriately armed Exarch, it has no place in CC with other units; and it's quite unEldary to be where you're not meant to after.. a billion years of training or whatever.
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