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Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia

2023-06-23T00:08:17Z

2A01:E0A:19C:2BC0:9402:154C:E6FD:4199: /* Legendary Lords and Subfactions */

{{Topquote|For the Lady, as one!|Game battle chant for unexpendable units}}
{{Topquote|We're blessed!|Game battle chant for expendable units}}
This is the tactics page for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of [[Bretonnia]].

==Why play Bretonnia?==
*Because you like the chivalry ideals from ancient legends and don't care about the peasant half.
*Because you enjoy throwing disposable peasant fodder at a problem until the knightly heroes show up to save the day.
*You love the sight of infantry being thrown flat-on-their-back by the force of cavalry charges.
*Because you really do believe that magical swords distributed by women in ponds are the best justification for supreme executive power.

===Pros===
*'''Cavalry''': The widest selection of heavy cav in the entire game, each being able to fill out different purposes. While a minority of other faction's cav units can go fisticuffs with your horse boys, you are ''the'' cav faction.
*'''No $$$ required.''': It's the only completely free faction. All you need is to download either the Bretonnia FLC or the Repanse FLC and you get the entire faction. (Minus 3 legendary lords if you only get Repanse.)
*'''Air Superiority''': You can dominate the skies if you invest in it. Louen combined with Hippogriff knights or Pegasus Knights can win most if not all sky engagements, and after that you can pick and choose your fights from the sky.
*'''Numbers''': Your peasants cost about as what you invest in their infrastructure, AKA Nothing! You and Cathay are more or less the only order factions that can effectively use swarm tactics due to how cheap they are.
*'''High Armor''': Aside from Peasants, knights and high tier units have more armor than most and can be quite resilient.
*'''Good economy''': Your economy is easily the strongest in the game. Farms bring in insane amounts of cash and can be built literally everywhere. The way CA intends to counter this is through the Peasant Economy, that reduces income from farms when you have too much infantry on the field, but being a good Bretonnian, you don't really use Peasants except Archers anyway. Add in trade and a de facto monopoly on wine if you control Bordeleaux, and your treasury will never be empty again.
*'''Easy Diplomacy''': Everyone from the Order factions likes and trusts you, even the High Elves. This makes for easy trade deals and alliances, keeping your heartland safe from any outside threat.
*'''Lack of Supply Lines''': While other factions get a percent increase in upkeep for every Lord they recruit, Bretonnia doesn't. Field as many armies as you like! Follow every army with another army consisting entirely of peasants who lack upkeep for some easy battles.
**'''Warhammer III''': Sadly this feature is no longer unique to Bretonnia, as the Supply Line mechanic has been cut altogether in the third entry. While this doesn't directly hurt Bretonnia, it is but another example of how dated and powercrept their core mechanics are compared to pretty much the rest of the roster.

===Cons===
*'''Piss Poor Infantry''': Your Peasants fight with shitty cheap weapons at best or farming tools at worse. With bad leadership, armor, and defensive stats, even your "elite" infantry gets their booties smacked by most mid tier infantry. Playing Bretonnia means conceding the front line in most cases.
*'''Anti Large''': Any opponent with a functioning brain will get anti large against you. Expect halberds or big anti-large monsters to try to wipe your cav out. Large units are also more susceptible to enemy missile fire and in melee skirmishes the AI can fire with impunity (it usually tries to avoid friendly fire like the plague).
*'''Single Entity Monster''': Yep, despite having generally good anti-large bonuses, Knights of the Realm and Pegasus Knights won't be good at killing SEMs, since they will only be able to hit them with few models at a time, while SEMs are very good at dealing huge damage to models.
*'''Micro-Intensive''': To make the most out of your cavalry, you will need to micromanage your Knights a lot. Nothing like speedrunning carpal tunnel to make you like a faction.
*'''Very Easy Campaign''': It's fair to say that if you are not necessarily a fan of sandbox campaigns where you do not do a whole lot of map painting, Bretonnia can become very dull very fast. Once you have united Bretonnia, there is little to actually do outside of maxing out Chivalry and... that's basically it. Repanse de Lyonesse balances this out with a more unique starting position but not by much.
**'''Warhammer III''': Well, it is safe to say things have since grown livelier in the third game. Between Be'lakor, Grom, Kemmler, the Red Duke and Ikit/Malagor in the vicinity (not to mention the Wood Elves if they get annoyed), it's not rare to see Bretonnia reduced to a wasteland by turn 30. Alberic, having moved to Lustria to offer a smidge more variety, often finds himself getting the short end of the shit-stick when the Lizardmen, Vampire Coast or Skaven get a little riled up. Repanse has a slightly better lifespan on average, though it's rare to see her expand beyond her starting zone to any meaningful degree. In fact, most of the Confederation techs for Bretonnia are pretty useless now, since only a handful of factions will survive long enough for you to confederate them.
*'''Convoluted Vow System''': The Vow system is as straightforward as it is convoluted and, at times, constrained in the most annoying of ways due to the weird restrictions it places on your Lords' ability to access the better units in your roster. It's not very fun trying to kill late game Greenskin, Chaos or Dark Elf armies only with Knights Errant and the garbage tier peasant infantry,(especially against their legendary lords) yet you will need to do this to get access to even the most basic of your better cavalry. While it's indeed very fluffy, you will after a while struggle to find enemies to even fulfill your vows, making you feel like Don Quixote chasing after Windmills. Picking the wrong vow at a bad time will slow down your campaign considerably.
*'''Fatigue''': Until you get some research countering this and some perfect vigor units in the late game, expect your horsie boys to tire quickly. Cavalry tire faster than melee infantry when running and lose a significant amount of fatigue while charging — and expect to be doing a lot of both.
*'''Expensive Knights''': The upkeep on knight units is very high even after you fulfill the necessary vows. Expect peasants to take up most of your early game armies until the economy train gets rolling.
*'''One-Trick-Pony''': Bretonnia is known for exactly one thing: Cavalry. While you have mediocre archers and artillery, you will never be able to match the infantry of virtually any other faction, and you have no monsters and only one skimisher unit. If you tee up against a Bretonnian, you'll already know the core strategy they're going to be using against you.
**'''On a battle level''' : Your different legendary lords offer only minimal differences in your army composition (at most, Alberic's army will have more Squires while the Fay will have more Battle Pilgrims), so expect to be easily countered in multiplayer, and all your armies to be pretty similar, making your campaign a series of battles with little variance between them.
**'''On a campaign level''' : Much like the other non-updated races from game one, no lord-unique mechanics for you! While the chivalry mechanic itself is unique to Bretonnia, none of the legendary lords really offer much to differentiate themselves from one another, and the Chivalry meter itself isn't particularly engaging. Not to mention, excluding Repanse (who starts in Nehekhara), the three other LLs will have very similar campaigns after the first twenty turns or so.
* '''Horrible Replenishment''': No Lord or hero skills or technologies to get a good replenishment rate (except for Louen, who gets a skill to let Knight units in his army have an actually good replenishment, and Repanse, who gives an okay rate to her army with one of her skills). If a unit loses models, it's more often than not a better idea to disband the unit entirely and recruit a new one. Yes, it's ''that'' bad.
**'''Warhammer III''': The third game eventually did something to correct this, by giving damsels a skill to increase replenishment casualties, but even then it just brings their replenishment to "not bad" rather than "good". And if you can't recruit enough Damsels or can't get one to an army enough, you're shit out of luck.
* '''You've been powercrept to shit:''' CA followed GW's examples, and Bretonnia has not gotten any new units or mechanics since their original release way back in the first game, nor has their roster been buffed to compensate for the global increase in power. With the third game and until their update, your supposed "elite cavalry" is actually not the best anymore. Your best ground cavalry, Grail Knights, will struggle against nearly every other race's elite cavalry (a majority of which will either beat your Knights or at least trade roughly evenly, because your Grail Knights are still balanced for Game 1 and ''don't have armor-piercing damage'', while nearly all other factions elite cavalry do and have better stats) without having to suffer from the rest of their roster being shit. Paladins and Louen, once amazing character-killers/tanks, get folded by any generic demon character.
**'''Warhammer III''': Patch 3.1 did Bretonnia a few favors and gave them a sweeping series of buffs to help get them up to the current snuff of the playing field. Mass buffs across most cavalry helps Bretonnian charges leave a hell of a mark while the Blessing of the Lady changing from a Physical Resistance buff to a flat Ward save give knights much better staying power against the daemonic hordes and their Magical Attacks. Though their roster remains fairly anemic by modern standards, pretty much everything they do have also received a bit of a retooling (mostly buffs) so that each unit stays impactful.

==Universal Traits==

*'''Blessing of the Lady''': If one of your armies does a lot of good stuff (conquering enemies, never retreat, not using [[Lawful Stupid|cowardly tactics such as ambushes]]) it earns the favor of Bretonnia's favored deity. The Blessing is really spectacular as it gives a flat 20% physical resistance to all your units. Beware: retreating once means the loss of the Blessing until that lord earns it again.
** It got changed in '''Warhammer III''' to be 15% ward save (flat damage resistance) instead, since Daemonic factions have easy access to magical damage, which made the former iteration of the Blessing useless against them.

*'''Lance Formation''': <s>The Mighty Duck's Flying V is a trap.</s> Not anymore! It now add mass, making it way better at the intended function of smashing through infantry lines. You may still want to carefully choose when to use it or not, but it now has its own merits and it can really make a difference if used tactically.

*'''Vows''': Your most crucial campaign mechanic. Your Lords need to fulfill vows to the Lady to get access to your best bits. You can still recruit them, but they will cost considerably more upkeep (up to 5 times as much as you would pay normally). These vows are essentially mini-quests that become more difficult with each Level, of which there are 3. You always get to choose between 3 such quests but beware: once you take a pledge, you cannot change it. The main problems with the vows comes when sometimes the conditions of the vows cannot be fulfilled anymore (for example, one quest requires your Lord to defeat a Greenskin Legendary Lord, of which there are not many around by the time of the late game), keeping your Lord stuck with a Vow that he cannot fulfill, and damning your army to only use Knights Errant for the rest of the game. Be wary of that. Picking the wrong vow at the wrong time can screw with your campaign more than you would like. The only exceptions to this is Louen Leoncoeur, who starts with all vows already unlocked, and Repanse, who starts with the first two already completed.

*'''Knight''': Knights, forming the meat and potatoes of your armies, are literally in a special class all their own. They are unbothered by the plight of their ''Peasant'' foot soldiers and do not suffer leadership penalties when peasants start running away.

*'''Peasant''': Expendable with extra steps, really. As the trait implies, all of your peasant units have this perk, which itself is really just a flag for Knight units to interact with. Peasants get a leadership buff if they're within range of a Knight unit, but that's about all that can be said for them.

==Legendary Lords and Subfactions==

*'''King Louen Leoncoeur''': Your dedicated Duellist/Tank lord. The Royarch of Bretonnia and a bona fide Grail Knight rumored to have even kissed the Lady of the Lake. Whether this is exactly true or not doesn't matter, in Total War: Warhammer he is an expensive, balls out, wrecking ball of pure Grail Knight awesomeness. There is little that can give him much trouble, he flat out stomps nearly anything and anyone that dares to face him head on. If you like, you can even put him on a royal Hippogryph. Still, very expensive for what he does.
:On the campaign map, he starts in the main Bretonnian faction of Couronne and, more importantly, has all vows already unlocked at the start. his start primes him for a crusade against Marienburg and Norsca. His Lord Effect gives his entire army a bonus to Leadership and Melee Attack when fighting Chaos forces (Daemons, Norsca, Warriors of Chaos, Beastmen and Chaos Dwarfs).
*'''The Fay Enchantress''': Your caster Lord wielding the Lore of Life, a buffer/all-rounder caster. Comes with a few buffs, and while she has little armour, she can be surprisingly decent at killing infantry, since her '''Mist of the Lady''' ability deals constant damage to all enemies around her at no cost.
:In campaign she starts in the lower half of Bretonnia, being situating around Estalia (currently an Empire clone without mods), the Wood Elves, Dwarfs, Beastmen, [[Grom the Paunch]], and possibly Skaven if they move north. In the early game she can recruit extra peasants and has stronger casualty replenishment, with her personal army focusing on Grail Guardians and Battle Pilgrims.
*'''Alberic de Bordeleaux''': Your dedicated Anti-large Lord, buffing his army's Knights of the Realm to make them even deadlier against monsters, and Foot Squires to make them actually useful against enemy elite infantry. His '''Trident of Manaan''' gives him the ability to use a water-based Wind spell twice per battle, and greatly reduces attrition damage taken at sea, so feel free to go pirate/black ark hunting with him.
:He is the money maker of Bretonnia in the campaign, getting a bonus to trade, especially since he is closest to Ulthuan. His other bonuses reduce recruitment time for cavalry, increase recruit experience for knights, and Knights of the Realm have better melee defense. For most of WH1 and WH2, players would often assign him to sitting next to a big port city like Marienburg since he was more useful for boosting income than he was at fighting.
** In WH3, he got a new faction and a new starting position in Lustria with the possibility of confederating with Brettonia later, similar to Imrik's campaign. If the player doesn't intervene, his AI tends to ally with Marcus Wulfhart and tag team battle everyone else on the continent. His Lord Effects also got updated. He now starts with total immunity to sea attrition, increased Melee Defense for his whole army, and that bonus is increased further for Knights of the Realm.
*'''Repanse de Lyonesse''': Bretonnian Jeanne d'Arc, if Jeanne didn't meet a tragic end and lives way, WAY longer. Some 500 years after driving the servants of Chaos from Bretonnia, she now leads an [[Errantry War]] against the [[Tomb Kings|undead of Nehekhara]] because... reasons (probably because ultra-conservative Bretonnian lords don't want a PEASANT GIRL leading Lyonesse). In combat, she is a Questing Knight lord, being a dedicated infantry slayer and granting bonuses to help your troops win the grind.
:Unfortunately, as an Errantry War faction, she can't confederate with the other Bretonnian lords, but she can with other Errantry factions in the Southlands with little fuss. She is an old faction total war crusader, giving a bonus to peasant units and Questing Knights, refilling their water supply from fort to fort as they purge the desert of filth
** The last one got made completely redundant when '''Warhammer III''' added a Landmark near her start position that gives desert attrition immunity to the faction holding it.
*'''Sir John Tyrewald''': (campaign only) Not a mainline Legendary Lord, but a buffed unique vanilla Lord with a unique model, a tweaked skill tree, and prepackaged with his own Legendary Hero (Donna). Leads the Knights of Origo, who will confederate with Repanse early on barring early elimination shenanigans.

==Unit Roster==
===Generic Lords===
*'''Bretonnian Lord''': A discount King Louen. Out of the box, he does all the same things as the Legendary knight lords, minus their fancy buffs and bound spells. A decent melee character who can help you save gold to spend on more knights (hard to go wrong with more of those).

*'''Prophetess (Heaven, Life, Beasts)''': Lord version of a Damsel. Saves you on lord and mage in MP making her a cheaper option if you want to focus your gold on other aspects of an army. In the campaign, recruiting a new lord is the fastest way to get a wizard early game.

===Heroes===

*'''Paladin''': Bodyguards of your lords, but most notable as gooners with a roaming pack on Pegasus mounts being a dive bombing threat to most units.
*'''Damsel (Heavens, Life, Beasts)''': Your wizards. They have an aura that reduces magic damage for your nearby units.
*'''Henri Le Massif''': (Chevaliers De Lyonesse only) Repanse's right-hand big boy and the only Paladin in the game with access to a Hippogryph mount. Deals a lot more AP damage. Fun trivia: Big Hank still counts as a large unit even when on foot.
*'''Donna Don Domingio''': (campaign only) A tweaked vanilla Paladin with an alliterative name, a sweet scarf, and an allegiance to a faction that's likely to confederate with Repanse early on.
*'''The Green Knight''': The first Legendary Hero. A ghostly hero that lasts for 15 turns (25 in WH2) every time you summon him. He is basically a Paladin that trades the bonus vs large for drastically increased damage and defense, 70% physical resistance, unbreakable, and the inability to be killed or wounded after the battle (what with already being dead). The downside is that you only gain a summon after reaching certain chivalry thresholds (at least until you reach max chivalry).

===Infantry===
'''Important Note''': All infantry units, as well as Mounted Yeomen, use up slots in your Peasant Economy. If your unit count for Infantry units exceeds the limits of the Peasant Economy, you get less money from Farms, the more, the worse. Not that you mind, because Bretonnian Peasants are really shitty. It's important to keep in mind, because the AI doesn't have this limit and will build Peasants nonstop, so you need to disband many armies when you confederate the various Bretonnian factions or your economy goes haywire pretty fast.

*'''Peasant Mob''': Grab your pitchforks and torches, because this is all you're going to get! Your free, expendable meatshield unit. They win the title of worst infantry in all three games, being defeated even by Zombies and Skavenslaves. Still, they're free. Use only in a pinch.
*'''Men-at-arms/Spearmen-at-arms''': Your okay-ish infantry, mainly used as meat shields to establish a front line. They'll do their job alright, but don't expect them to do a lot. Come in all varieties you could ask for. Will loose to their Imperial Counterparts in a one on one.
*'''Battle Pilgrims''': Now these guys are pretty interesting. They do a much better job at holding the front line than Man-at-Arms could ever hope to and even deal decent damage, especially when combined with a Grail Reliquae. Decent morale, good enough armor, plus a shield for good measure.
*'''Grail Reliquae''': An odd piece, even more so when you realize that these are four guys imitating a horse for a deceased Grail Knight. They won't last long in prolonged combat, are especially vulnerable to ranged units (especially Warplock Jezzails) but buff your melee infantry like crazy, most notably is the +16(!!) bonus to leadership and immunity to Psychology. If you have an infantry-heavy army, one or even two of these won't hurt, but remember to keep them in the second line.
*'''Foot Squires''': Your "elite" Infantry, not as terrible in the damage department as Men-at-arms, but nothing special. They hold longer than the other options, but don't have a shield and most other basic infantry will still make mince meat out of them. I personally recommend just sticking with Battle Pilgrims, because the latter is not as expensive, doesn't require a T4 Barracks and not as vulnerable to missiles. They are considerably more effective in multiplayer, where they are decent and very cost-effective can openers to be used against units like Chaos Warriors.

===Missile Infantry===

*'''Peasant Bowmen''': Your only source of missile troops, but a decent option, just on the merit of cost-effectiveness alone. When used in bulk, they are not to be underestimated. Can come in three flavors: normal, Fire, and Pox arrows. pretty much your only source of reliably poison which makes them a good support unit.

===Cavalry===

*'''Mounted Yeomen''': Very bad. Like, really, really bad. Why would you use these? They are horrible in melee, have terrible leadership, use up slots in the Peasant economy and their charge bonus isn't exactly anything to write home about either. There is literally no reason to use them in campaign. Knights-Errant perform better for almost the same price. The only way to make them useful is if you recruit their '''Mounted Yeomen Archer''' variation, mounted cavalry able to fire on the move, but even then...
**They are significantly better in Multiplayer where running farms are never a problem and Gold is a serious limiting factor in list building. They still aren't very good in melee but fill a vital role as the fastest units in the Bretonnian roster which is necessary for a throwaway harasser unit.
*'''Knights-Errant''': Your first real piece of cavalry, and an okay one at that. They don't need any vow taken and should form the basis of your early game armies. They cannot take a hit and should largely rely on their charges to deal the majority of damage. Phase them out as soon as you can.
*'''Knights of the Realm''': Your classic Bretonnian Knights. Heavy armour, shield, a great charge bonus, these are the staple of your army and really easy to get. Use them, love them. Require the first Vow to be completed.
*'''Questing Knights''': The linebackers. If you can manage them good enough, they can even replace your melee infantry quite easily. AP attacks mean they are great against any form of melee infantry without bonuses against large units. Require the second vow to be completed.
*'''Grail Knights''': Your definitive elite. There is little that can give them a lot of trouble. They hit hard, move fast, [[Awesome|never tire]], inspire units around them, and get a bonus vs. large. Your dedicated monster and single entity unit killers. Require the third vow to be completed, so they're exceedingly hard to actually unlock.
*'''Grail Guardians''': More defensive versions of the offensive Grail Knights with extremely high melee defense, so high in fact that they can hold their own against units that normally counter cavalry. If you don't like the micro-intensive playstyle of shock cav heavy armies, you can use them. Require the third vow to be completed.

===Flying Cavalry===
*'''Pegasus Knight''': Flying, fast, anti-large killers that are very good at killing monsters and other large units but will die if anything sneezes in their direction and cannot push through a blob to escape. The only high tier unit that requires only the first vow to be completed.
*'''Royal Pegasus Knight''': Slightly better than the above stats-wise, but also come with perfect vigour (never tire) and immunity to psychology. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Royal Hippogryph Knights''': Plenty of health and hit very hard: absolute beasts on the battlefield; however, they cost a ton and require the third vow to be completed.

===Artillery===
*'''Field Trebuchet''': Powerful and nice range with very slow rate of fire and below-average accuracy. useful as an artillery to deal AoE damage to enemy infantry but not as a siege weapon, its large hitbox and low HP causes them to lose fights against even the weakest towers.
*'''Blessed Field Trebuchet''': Upgrade to the above: slightly better stat-wise but also come with the bonus of not inflicting friendly fire. Hitting your own units still causes the artillery morale penalty so try not to hit your peasants late into the fight.

==Tactics==

===Multiplayer Strategies===
A lot of the general strategies against these factions is going to boil down to one simple task; Cycle-charging cavalry. Your cavalry is your bread and butter in every matchup, so the key take-away in this section will be units in particular you'll need to look out for.

*'''Beastmen''': Another particularly fast faction, the Beastmen are largely unarmored, so a few squads of Peasant Bowmen with Pox arrows can get some surprising value against a majority of their units, further crippling them for your famous cavalry charges. Anti-Large cavalry will serve you quite well in this matchup. Grail Knights and even Pegasus Knights will serve as the tip of your spear against Minotaurs, Cygors and Ungors, while Knights of the Realm or even Questing Knights can mop up the rest of the Beastmen roster.

*'''Bretonnia''': A mirror matchup against Bretonnia will go exactly like you'd expect it to go. You'll want to do everything you can to make sure ''you'' initiate combat first, and if that means sacking a peasant mob or two to bog down opposing Grail Guardians so that yours can get the charge bonus against them, then that's what it'll take.

*'''[[Total_War_Warhammer/Tactics/Chaos_Dwarves| Chaos Dwarfs]]''':

*'''Warriors of Chaos''': Hoo boy, that's a lot of armor. Warriors of Chaos are one of the slowest armies in the game, so you should have no difficulty outmaneuvering their forces to make that optimal charge. Despite your relative inadequacies at frontline engagements, Battle Pilgrims and Foot Squires can still deal not inconsequential damage to their forces while holding them in place for your Cavalry. You'll want to try to shut down any Hellcannons they bring, as that'll be the primary source of ranged pressure on your forces. Without that, you're free to run circles around them from dusk until dawn.

*'''Dark Elves''': Mobility is the name of the game here. Both you and the Dark Elves are good at it, so it will largely come down to who can micro their army better. Just forget about peasant spam. Even Bleakswords will shred them, to say nothing about Witch Elves and Sisters of Slaughter which will show any infantry you bring their own assholes in seconds. Peasant archers are a good choice in theory to put pressure on their light cav, but they are extremely difficult to protect if you aren't a seasoned player. No, this match will come down to your cavalry play. Luckily you have a HUGE advantage in the heavy cav game, since all they have in that department are Cold One Knights which are pretty much garbage. A solid airforce can be a powerful tool here, since the Dark Elves don't have much of an aerial presence. Masters on pegasi are pretty cost-inefficient (but can still threaten with their anti-large) and your flying knights or Paladins will easily shred dragons. Even Rakarth on Bracchus can't stack up if you goon him out. Plus, Pegasus Knights especially will have a pretty solid shot of dodging Scourgerunner projectiles and catching up with them to deliver death. Grail Knights are a great choice against Doomfire Warlocks or any other light cav, as long as you can tie them down. This is one of the few matchups where their elite infantry (read: Black Guard of Naggarond) can really threaten, so isolate them and goon them out with your lords/heros asap. Louen is probably the lord to bring here to support your airforce, your caster lords are just too squishy to stand up to their ludicrous amount of ap.

*'''Dwarfs''': Toss up, but with an advantage to you. Dwarfs units are slow, they don't have cavalry of their own, so your cavalry will be able to move unopposed, especially since Slayers can be counter-charged easily. On the other hand, a good chunk of their units have Defense Against Charge, high mass, and their gunline can wreck you.

*'''Empire''': It can be a bit tricky to have a plan against the Empire due to their sheer versatility, but there's one thing you know for certain; your Cavalry is better than theirs. Peasant bowmen will not deal remotely as much damage against the rank and file as the gun-wielding Empire missile units would against yours, but they can still get some honest work done against them. Foot-Squires can also best Empire missile units in combat if you can manage to get them there relatively unmolested, but don't imagine for a second that they'll hold the line against their dedicated melee troops. Trebuchets are also a solid backline option to help punch holes in the Empire's formations for your cavalry.

*'''Grand Cathay''':

*'''Greenskins''': You're in luck, Greenskins don't really have anti-large units. Their huge monsters (araknarock spiders, rogue idols) can be tough, but your anti-infantry cav should have a good time. What's better, is that the leadership of the Greenskins is surprisingly lower than what you might expect; a few successful flanking charges against their front line units can break them quite readily.

*'''High Elves''': The battle of the noble arrogant assholes, and believe it or not you actually have a very sizable advantage. The Asur have NO chance against you in the Cav fight, so grab some Grail Knights and watch as they run amok. Silverin Guard tend to be popular here as their Charge Defense, Anti Large and Magic Resist make them a semi decent counter to Grail Knights, though if you swarm them in peasants then you don't have to worry about them resisting your charge. If you don't want to risk your knights against the spear wall then grab some Field Trebuchets and kill them from afar. Dragons can easily be taken care of by either archers or double paladins. Plus Paladin support plus healing from the Fey Enchantress can make your Grail Knights all but unkillable for the Elves. Sure you have no chance at winning the infantry fight in a vacuum, but if you care about winning the infantry fight why the hell are you playing Bretonnia?

*'''Khorne''': This is probably going to be a challenging one. You beat Khorne in general mobility as all of your cavalry is faster than his. You beat him in ranged because his only ranged unit is a single-entity artillery-chariot while your trebuchets come with multiple models and you have archers. Your cavalry also has several anti-large options while Khorne has none. However your peasants will get shredded by almost everything in Khorne's roster, his cavalry units are much tougher and harder hitting even if they are slower, and he has plenty of ways to tangle up your ranged units in the form of Hounds and Furies. Bloodthirsters will be a big problem as their Terror will easily rout off your infantry and with that anti-large bonus they'll put a big dent on your knights, who will have trouble surrounding them. This might not be a bad matchup to bring Hippogryphs and Pegasus Knights. Used defensively they can fend off Hounds and Furies, can isolate Bloodthirsters in the air and surround them with anti-large damage, and in the case of the Hippogryphs still hit pretty hard against infantry. Skull Cannons will be ill-equipped to shoot them down and only Bloodthirsters can contest the sky.

*'''Kislev''': Ice magic with it's wide AoE slows is pretty damn good against your mobile elements, and Ice Guard with glaives are a big middle finger to everything you like to do. Peasant spam is also difficult to pull off due to the sheer amount of short range shooting inherent in Kislev's roster, and their dervishes are just as fast as your yeomen, and can trash around peasant archers. It'll be up to your airforce to carry and hope they don't get charged by anti-large bears who would like nothing better than to rape you with their lances.

*'''Lizardmen''': First thing, leave the kids (peasants) at home. None of your infantry options stand a ghost of a chance against the Lizardmen; even the lowly Skink Cohorts are capable of besting them in combat and that's not even mentioning how quickly their massive Dinosaurs will chow through the pitchfork-wielding masses. Assuming they don't immediately just route the field from the sheer amount of fear/terror caused by all the monsters. Instead, double down on your strengths. Bretonnian cavalry will easily outpace anything the Lizardmen could ever field. Key units to build lists around would be your Grail Knights and (Royal) Pegasus Knights, who not only specialize against large targets, but are also immune to fear and terror. Though you can't expect their support for long, your peasant bowmen can really hinder the Lizardmen frontline and combat potential with the Pox variant, allowing some of your higher tier cavalry a touch more staying power for when you need to hold the line.

*'''Norsca''': Don't even think about it. Norscans are just as mobile as you are and have an abundance of Anti-Large damage that will burn through your Knights as if they were gasoline-soaked tissue paper, both of their LLs completely wipe the floor with yours and there is no hope of winning the infantry fight either. And that's not even taking their monstrous options into account, with Fimir smashing through your precious few heavily armoured units. Evade them where you can and better pick something else.

*'''Nurgle''': With all the poison, debuff spells and high mass of Nurgle units, it's actually gonna be very difficult to get a good charge in since your cavalry will most likely get stuck, surrounded and then die on your first charge, so it will be an extremely micro-intensive battle. Your Peasant arrows will obviously be of the fire variant and will need a frontline of men-at-arms (halberds or shielded, you need the anti-large bonus for any monster that gets close). Otherwise it's a simple "keep your cavalry units moving around until a unit gets separated from the rest, then gank it, repeat until your cavalry is too damaged for that, then bring them to your frontline so they can finish the job with support from what remains of your cav" deal. If your enemy decides to simply blob up his units to not let you get a charge in, bring a coupel of trebuchets for area damage.

*'''Ogre Kingdoms''': Don't expect your flimsy infantry to stick around for long after they're hit with the first ogre charge. This may be a matchup where you're best off getting your knights stuck in early and keeping them there. Cycle charging is alot less effective against an enemy who can dish out a tremendous amount of hurt by counter charging your cavalry every time they cycle charge back into the fight. That and your forces have better stamina in a protracted brawl thanks to lore of life and perfect vigor Grail Knights. Your anti-large air cav will reign uncontested due to Ogres lacking air presence, and they should be useful for tying up Ironblasters and Leadbelchers. They're also the only units you got who can reliably charge ogres without getting counter charged in return.

*'''Slaanesh''': '''PAIN'''. Their cavalry hits harder than yours, is faster than yours, and deal more damage on charges. Their infantry is fast, extremely killy and, if they have the CoC DLC, heavily armored as well, so there is nothing your own infantry can do against them and even your anti-infantry cav will struggle. They have chariots to mulch your infantry even more. Your cavalry has a slight advantage if you can get a charge in, since Slaanesh units are fragile and your Grail Knights never tire, but still. You do have better flying units than they do, so invest into pegasus knights, royal hippogryphs and flying paladins.

*'''Skaven''': While the Skaven missile units and artillery will put yours to shame, your cavalry is among the most suited to ruining the general Skaven strategy of blowing things up from across the map. Virtually nothing the Skaven have will be able to outrun your cavalry and a few well timed charges can break the relatively fickle leadership of their infantry quite easily. Knights of the Realm can do solid enough work against the general unarmored masses, but you'll want to keep some Questing Knights in reserve for any Stormvermin or Warpfire Throwers they might be packing... Unless the Skaven roll out Throt. A Clan Moulder-lead army can be one of your most difficult matchups, since Mutant Rat Ogres have little trouble blasting through your knights, Abominations are nearly unkillable for your piss poor infantry and Throt himself can frequently give Bonus vs. Large to all Skaven around him.

*'''Tomb Kings''': '''Don't''', despite what a Repanse campaign would suggest. The undead spears/halberds will tie your cavalry down and kill them, while the constructs are tough enough that even your anti-large cavalry will have a lot of trouble killing them, and their Necropolis Knights/Chariots/Nehekharan Warriors will mulch your infantry. You easily outshine them in the flying department, so a couple of Paladins on pegasi, Pegasus Knights and Hippogryphs will be very useful.

*'''Tzeentch''':

*'''Vampire Coast''':

*'''Vampire Counts''':

*'''Wood Elves''': If there's any faction capable of rivaling your cavalry charges, it's the Wood Elves. When engaging a mounted Wood Elf army, it really boils down to who gets the best initial engagement. If you can inflict a decisive charge against the Wood Elf cavalry, you'll neuter their offensive presence significantly, if they're not straight up cleaned off the battlefield. With the Wood Elf cavalry gone, you'll have virtually free reign to outmaneuver and slaughter the elves with your cycle charging prowess. Now, when it comes to dealing with the trees, you have several options; magical attacks and/or fire. Peasant Bowmen are a cheap as chips choice that can actually get quite a lot of value against Wood Elves as a whole (as not only are they unarmored, but a majority of them are unshielded as well). Lastly, though you'll need to screen them quite aggressively if you want them to stay online, your Trebuchet, though inaccurate, can blow holes in the Wood Elven front line and archer ranks long before they get into retaliatory range. Just make sure to keep tabs for sneaky vanguard deployments trying to circle around.

===Campaign Strategies===
** Always recruit an extra Lord to follow your main armies around. You don't pay supply lines, so the few hundreds of upkeep it costs you will be dwarfed by the Chivalry gained (since you gain Chivalry for each army that takes part in a battle), and that way you can do the "Raze evil faction's settlement for the bonus to Chivalry" while using your extra Lord to colonize it if you want.

** The Bretonnian economy is based around peasants. You can only have a certain number of non-knightly units before your economy starts sputtering; however, knights are expensive and your only archers and siege units are peasants. Luckily, Vows enable you to cut the upkeep of knights by significant amounts, meaning all-knight armies will be feasible in the early game if you do enough fighting to complete a lord's vows, and the more settlements you own the more peasants you can draft into your armies. The other unique aspect of the Bretonnian economy is that it is divided into two chains: farming and industry. Building the highest tier of one industry will soft-lock the other out of a settlement's productivity, meaning you'll have to demolish that other building chain. Generally speaking, farms earn much more than industry; the exception is in settlements with a Gold or Iron resource, whose unique buildings benefit from the industry bonus building. However, industry also functions independent of the faction's peasant cap, meaning you can field armies of peasants without losing income. You'll simply be making less than you do with farms.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]] {{Total War Warhammer Tactics}}

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia

2023-06-23T00:07:34Z

2A01:E0A:19C:2BC0:9402:154C:E6FD:4199: /* Legendary Lords and Subfactions */

{{Topquote|For the Lady, as one!|Game battle chant for unexpendable units}}
{{Topquote|We're blessed!|Game battle chant for expendable units}}
This is the tactics page for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of [[Bretonnia]].

==Why play Bretonnia?==
*Because you like the chivalry ideals from ancient legends and don't care about the peasant half.
*Because you enjoy throwing disposable peasant fodder at a problem until the knightly heroes show up to save the day.
*You love the sight of infantry being thrown flat-on-their-back by the force of cavalry charges.
*Because you really do believe that magical swords distributed by women in ponds are the best justification for supreme executive power.

===Pros===
*'''Cavalry''': The widest selection of heavy cav in the entire game, each being able to fill out different purposes. While a minority of other faction's cav units can go fisticuffs with your horse boys, you are ''the'' cav faction.
*'''No $$$ required.''': It's the only completely free faction. All you need is to download either the Bretonnia FLC or the Repanse FLC and you get the entire faction. (Minus 3 legendary lords if you only get Repanse.)
*'''Air Superiority''': You can dominate the skies if you invest in it. Louen combined with Hippogriff knights or Pegasus Knights can win most if not all sky engagements, and after that you can pick and choose your fights from the sky.
*'''Numbers''': Your peasants cost about as what you invest in their infrastructure, AKA Nothing! You and Cathay are more or less the only order factions that can effectively use swarm tactics due to how cheap they are.
*'''High Armor''': Aside from Peasants, knights and high tier units have more armor than most and can be quite resilient.
*'''Good economy''': Your economy is easily the strongest in the game. Farms bring in insane amounts of cash and can be built literally everywhere. The way CA intends to counter this is through the Peasant Economy, that reduces income from farms when you have too much infantry on the field, but being a good Bretonnian, you don't really use Peasants except Archers anyway. Add in trade and a de facto monopoly on wine if you control Bordeleaux, and your treasury will never be empty again.
*'''Easy Diplomacy''': Everyone from the Order factions likes and trusts you, even the High Elves. This makes for easy trade deals and alliances, keeping your heartland safe from any outside threat.
*'''Lack of Supply Lines''': While other factions get a percent increase in upkeep for every Lord they recruit, Bretonnia doesn't. Field as many armies as you like! Follow every army with another army consisting entirely of peasants who lack upkeep for some easy battles.
**'''Warhammer III''': Sadly this feature is no longer unique to Bretonnia, as the Supply Line mechanic has been cut altogether in the third entry. While this doesn't directly hurt Bretonnia, it is but another example of how dated and powercrept their core mechanics are compared to pretty much the rest of the roster.

===Cons===
*'''Piss Poor Infantry''': Your Peasants fight with shitty cheap weapons at best or farming tools at worse. With bad leadership, armor, and defensive stats, even your "elite" infantry gets their booties smacked by most mid tier infantry. Playing Bretonnia means conceding the front line in most cases.
*'''Anti Large''': Any opponent with a functioning brain will get anti large against you. Expect halberds or big anti-large monsters to try to wipe your cav out. Large units are also more susceptible to enemy missile fire and in melee skirmishes the AI can fire with impunity (it usually tries to avoid friendly fire like the plague).
*'''Single Entity Monster''': Yep, despite having generally good anti-large bonuses, Knights of the Realm and Pegasus Knights won't be good at killing SEMs, since they will only be able to hit them with few models at a time, while SEMs are very good at dealing huge damage to models.
*'''Micro-Intensive''': To make the most out of your cavalry, you will need to micromanage your Knights a lot. Nothing like speedrunning carpal tunnel to make you like a faction.
*'''Very Easy Campaign''': It's fair to say that if you are not necessarily a fan of sandbox campaigns where you do not do a whole lot of map painting, Bretonnia can become very dull very fast. Once you have united Bretonnia, there is little to actually do outside of maxing out Chivalry and... that's basically it. Repanse de Lyonesse balances this out with a more unique starting position but not by much.
**'''Warhammer III''': Well, it is safe to say things have since grown livelier in the third game. Between Be'lakor, Grom, Kemmler, the Red Duke and Ikit/Malagor in the vicinity (not to mention the Wood Elves if they get annoyed), it's not rare to see Bretonnia reduced to a wasteland by turn 30. Alberic, having moved to Lustria to offer a smidge more variety, often finds himself getting the short end of the shit-stick when the Lizardmen, Vampire Coast or Skaven get a little riled up. Repanse has a slightly better lifespan on average, though it's rare to see her expand beyond her starting zone to any meaningful degree. In fact, most of the Confederation techs for Bretonnia are pretty useless now, since only a handful of factions will survive long enough for you to confederate them.
*'''Convoluted Vow System''': The Vow system is as straightforward as it is convoluted and, at times, constrained in the most annoying of ways due to the weird restrictions it places on your Lords' ability to access the better units in your roster. It's not very fun trying to kill late game Greenskin, Chaos or Dark Elf armies only with Knights Errant and the garbage tier peasant infantry,(especially against their legendary lords) yet you will need to do this to get access to even the most basic of your better cavalry. While it's indeed very fluffy, you will after a while struggle to find enemies to even fulfill your vows, making you feel like Don Quixote chasing after Windmills. Picking the wrong vow at a bad time will slow down your campaign considerably.
*'''Fatigue''': Until you get some research countering this and some perfect vigor units in the late game, expect your horsie boys to tire quickly. Cavalry tire faster than melee infantry when running and lose a significant amount of fatigue while charging — and expect to be doing a lot of both.
*'''Expensive Knights''': The upkeep on knight units is very high even after you fulfill the necessary vows. Expect peasants to take up most of your early game armies until the economy train gets rolling.
*'''One-Trick-Pony''': Bretonnia is known for exactly one thing: Cavalry. While you have mediocre archers and artillery, you will never be able to match the infantry of virtually any other faction, and you have no monsters and only one skimisher unit. If you tee up against a Bretonnian, you'll already know the core strategy they're going to be using against you.
**'''On a battle level''' : Your different legendary lords offer only minimal differences in your army composition (at most, Alberic's army will have more Squires while the Fay will have more Battle Pilgrims), so expect to be easily countered in multiplayer, and all your armies to be pretty similar, making your campaign a series of battles with little variance between them.
**'''On a campaign level''' : Much like the other non-updated races from game one, no lord-unique mechanics for you! While the chivalry mechanic itself is unique to Bretonnia, none of the legendary lords really offer much to differentiate themselves from one another, and the Chivalry meter itself isn't particularly engaging. Not to mention, excluding Repanse (who starts in Nehekhara), the three other LLs will have very similar campaigns after the first twenty turns or so.
* '''Horrible Replenishment''': No Lord or hero skills or technologies to get a good replenishment rate (except for Louen, who gets a skill to let Knight units in his army have an actually good replenishment, and Repanse, who gives an okay rate to her army with one of her skills). If a unit loses models, it's more often than not a better idea to disband the unit entirely and recruit a new one. Yes, it's ''that'' bad.
**'''Warhammer III''': The third game eventually did something to correct this, by giving damsels a skill to increase replenishment casualties, but even then it just brings their replenishment to "not bad" rather than "good". And if you can't recruit enough Damsels or can't get one to an army enough, you're shit out of luck.
* '''You've been powercrept to shit:''' CA followed GW's examples, and Bretonnia has not gotten any new units or mechanics since their original release way back in the first game, nor has their roster been buffed to compensate for the global increase in power. With the third game and until their update, your supposed "elite cavalry" is actually not the best anymore. Your best ground cavalry, Grail Knights, will struggle against nearly every other race's elite cavalry (a majority of which will either beat your Knights or at least trade roughly evenly, because your Grail Knights are still balanced for Game 1 and ''don't have armor-piercing damage'', while nearly all other factions elite cavalry do and have better stats) without having to suffer from the rest of their roster being shit. Paladins and Louen, once amazing character-killers/tanks, get folded by any generic demon character.
**'''Warhammer III''': Patch 3.1 did Bretonnia a few favors and gave them a sweeping series of buffs to help get them up to the current snuff of the playing field. Mass buffs across most cavalry helps Bretonnian charges leave a hell of a mark while the Blessing of the Lady changing from a Physical Resistance buff to a flat Ward save give knights much better staying power against the daemonic hordes and their Magical Attacks. Though their roster remains fairly anemic by modern standards, pretty much everything they do have also received a bit of a retooling (mostly buffs) so that each unit stays impactful.

==Universal Traits==

*'''Blessing of the Lady''': If one of your armies does a lot of good stuff (conquering enemies, never retreat, not using [[Lawful Stupid|cowardly tactics such as ambushes]]) it earns the favor of Bretonnia's favored deity. The Blessing is really spectacular as it gives a flat 20% physical resistance to all your units. Beware: retreating once means the loss of the Blessing until that lord earns it again.
** It got changed in '''Warhammer III''' to be 15% ward save (flat damage resistance) instead, since Daemonic factions have easy access to magical damage, which made the former iteration of the Blessing useless against them.

*'''Lance Formation''': <s>The Mighty Duck's Flying V is a trap.</s> Not anymore! It now add mass, making it way better at the intended function of smashing through infantry lines. You may still want to carefully choose when to use it or not, but it now has its own merits and it can really make a difference if used tactically.

*'''Vows''': Your most crucial campaign mechanic. Your Lords need to fulfill vows to the Lady to get access to your best bits. You can still recruit them, but they will cost considerably more upkeep (up to 5 times as much as you would pay normally). These vows are essentially mini-quests that become more difficult with each Level, of which there are 3. You always get to choose between 3 such quests but beware: once you take a pledge, you cannot change it. The main problems with the vows comes when sometimes the conditions of the vows cannot be fulfilled anymore (for example, one quest requires your Lord to defeat a Greenskin Legendary Lord, of which there are not many around by the time of the late game), keeping your Lord stuck with a Vow that he cannot fulfill, and damning your army to only use Knights Errant for the rest of the game. Be wary of that. Picking the wrong vow at the wrong time can screw with your campaign more than you would like. The only exceptions to this is Louen Leoncoeur, who starts with all vows already unlocked, and Repanse, who starts with the first two already completed.

*'''Knight''': Knights, forming the meat and potatoes of your armies, are literally in a special class all their own. They are unbothered by the plight of their ''Peasant'' foot soldiers and do not suffer leadership penalties when peasants start running away.

*'''Peasant''': Expendable with extra steps, really. As the trait implies, all of your peasant units have this perk, which itself is really just a flag for Knight units to interact with. Peasants get a leadership buff if they're within range of a Knight unit, but that's about all that can be said for them.

==Legendary Lords and Subfactions==

*'''King Louen Leoncoeur''': Your dedicated Duellist/Tank lord. The Royarch of Bretonnia and a bona fide Grail Knight rumored to have even kissed the Lady of the Lake. Whether this is exactly true or not doesn't matter, in Total War: Warhammer he is an expensive, balls out, wrecking ball of pure Grail Knight awesomeness. There is little that can give him much trouble, he flat out stomps nearly anything and anyone that dares to face him head on. If you like, you can even put him on a royal Hippogryph. Still, very expensive for what he does.
:On the campaign map, he starts in the main Bretonnian faction of Couronne and, more importantly, has all vows already unlocked at the start. his start primes him for a crusade against Marienburg and Norsca. His Lord Effect gives his entire army a bonus to Leadership and Melee Attack when fighting Chaos forces (Daemons, Norsca, Warriors of Chaos, Beastmen and Chaos Dwarfs).
*'''The Fay Enchantress''': Your caster Lord wielding the Lore of Life, a buffer/all-rounder caster. Comes with a few buffs, and while she has little armour, she can be surprisingly decent at killing infantry, since her '''Mist of the Lady''' ability deals constant damage to all enemies around her at no cost.
:In campaign she starts in the lower half of Bretonnia, being situating around Estalia (currently an Empire clone without mods), the Wood Elves, Dwarfs, Beastmen, [[Grom the Paunch]], and possibly Skaven if they move north. In the early game she can recruit extra peasants and has stronger casualty replenishment, with her personal army focusing on Grail Guardians and Battle Pilgrims.
*'''Alberic de Bordeleaux''': Your dedicated Anti-large Lord, buffing his army's Knights of the Realm to make them even deadlier against monsters, and Foot Squires to make them actually useful against enemy elite infantry. His '''Trident of Manaan''' gives him the ability to use a water-based Wind spell twice per battle, and greatly reduces attrition damage taken at sea, so feel free to go pirate/black ark hunting with him.
:He is the money maker of Bretonnia in the campaign, getting a bonus to trade, especially since he is closest to Ulthuan. His other bonuses reduce recruitment time for cavalry, increase recruit experience for knights, and Knights of the Realm have better melee defense. For most of WH1 and WH2, players would often assign him to sitting next to a big port city like Marienburg since he was more useful for boosting income than he was at fighting.
** In WH3, he got a new faction and a new starting position in Lustria with the possibility of confederating with Brettonia later, similar to Imrik's campaign. If the player doesn't intervene, his AI tends to ally with Marcus Wulfhart and tag team battle everyone else on the continent.
His Lord Effects got updated. He now starts with total immunity to sea attrition, increased Melee Defense for his whole army, and that bonus is increased further for Knights of the Realm.
*'''Repanse de Lyonesse''': Bretonnian Jeanne d'Arc, if Jeanne didn't meet a tragic end and lives way, WAY longer. Some 500 years after driving the servants of Chaos from Bretonnia, she now leads an [[Errantry War]] against the [[Tomb Kings|undead of Nehekhara]] because... reasons (probably because ultra-conservative Bretonnian lords don't want a PEASANT GIRL leading Lyonesse). In combat, she is a Questing Knight lord, being a dedicated infantry slayer and granting bonuses to help your troops win the grind.
:Unfortunately, as an Errantry War faction, she can't confederate with the other Bretonnian lords, but she can with other Errantry factions in the Southlands with little fuss. She is an old faction total war crusader, giving a bonus to peasant units and Questing Knights, refilling their water supply from fort to fort as they purge the desert of filth
** The last one got made completely redundant when '''Warhammer III''' added a Landmark near her start position that gives desert attrition immunity to the faction holding it.
*'''Sir John Tyrewald''': (campaign only) Not a mainline Legendary Lord, but a buffed unique vanilla Lord with a unique model, a tweaked skill tree, and prepackaged with his own Legendary Hero (Donna). Leads the Knights of Origo, who will confederate with Repanse early on barring early elimination shenanigans.

==Unit Roster==
===Generic Lords===
*'''Bretonnian Lord''': A discount King Louen. Out of the box, he does all the same things as the Legendary knight lords, minus their fancy buffs and bound spells. A decent melee character who can help you save gold to spend on more knights (hard to go wrong with more of those).

*'''Prophetess (Heaven, Life, Beasts)''': Lord version of a Damsel. Saves you on lord and mage in MP making her a cheaper option if you want to focus your gold on other aspects of an army. In the campaign, recruiting a new lord is the fastest way to get a wizard early game.

===Heroes===

*'''Paladin''': Bodyguards of your lords, but most notable as gooners with a roaming pack on Pegasus mounts being a dive bombing threat to most units.
*'''Damsel (Heavens, Life, Beasts)''': Your wizards. They have an aura that reduces magic damage for your nearby units.
*'''Henri Le Massif''': (Chevaliers De Lyonesse only) Repanse's right-hand big boy and the only Paladin in the game with access to a Hippogryph mount. Deals a lot more AP damage. Fun trivia: Big Hank still counts as a large unit even when on foot.
*'''Donna Don Domingio''': (campaign only) A tweaked vanilla Paladin with an alliterative name, a sweet scarf, and an allegiance to a faction that's likely to confederate with Repanse early on.
*'''The Green Knight''': The first Legendary Hero. A ghostly hero that lasts for 15 turns (25 in WH2) every time you summon him. He is basically a Paladin that trades the bonus vs large for drastically increased damage and defense, 70% physical resistance, unbreakable, and the inability to be killed or wounded after the battle (what with already being dead). The downside is that you only gain a summon after reaching certain chivalry thresholds (at least until you reach max chivalry).

===Infantry===
'''Important Note''': All infantry units, as well as Mounted Yeomen, use up slots in your Peasant Economy. If your unit count for Infantry units exceeds the limits of the Peasant Economy, you get less money from Farms, the more, the worse. Not that you mind, because Bretonnian Peasants are really shitty. It's important to keep in mind, because the AI doesn't have this limit and will build Peasants nonstop, so you need to disband many armies when you confederate the various Bretonnian factions or your economy goes haywire pretty fast.

*'''Peasant Mob''': Grab your pitchforks and torches, because this is all you're going to get! Your free, expendable meatshield unit. They win the title of worst infantry in all three games, being defeated even by Zombies and Skavenslaves. Still, they're free. Use only in a pinch.
*'''Men-at-arms/Spearmen-at-arms''': Your okay-ish infantry, mainly used as meat shields to establish a front line. They'll do their job alright, but don't expect them to do a lot. Come in all varieties you could ask for. Will loose to their Imperial Counterparts in a one on one.
*'''Battle Pilgrims''': Now these guys are pretty interesting. They do a much better job at holding the front line than Man-at-Arms could ever hope to and even deal decent damage, especially when combined with a Grail Reliquae. Decent morale, good enough armor, plus a shield for good measure.
*'''Grail Reliquae''': An odd piece, even more so when you realize that these are four guys imitating a horse for a deceased Grail Knight. They won't last long in prolonged combat, are especially vulnerable to ranged units (especially Warplock Jezzails) but buff your melee infantry like crazy, most notably is the +16(!!) bonus to leadership and immunity to Psychology. If you have an infantry-heavy army, one or even two of these won't hurt, but remember to keep them in the second line.
*'''Foot Squires''': Your "elite" Infantry, not as terrible in the damage department as Men-at-arms, but nothing special. They hold longer than the other options, but don't have a shield and most other basic infantry will still make mince meat out of them. I personally recommend just sticking with Battle Pilgrims, because the latter is not as expensive, doesn't require a T4 Barracks and not as vulnerable to missiles. They are considerably more effective in multiplayer, where they are decent and very cost-effective can openers to be used against units like Chaos Warriors.

===Missile Infantry===

*'''Peasant Bowmen''': Your only source of missile troops, but a decent option, just on the merit of cost-effectiveness alone. When used in bulk, they are not to be underestimated. Can come in three flavors: normal, Fire, and Pox arrows. pretty much your only source of reliably poison which makes them a good support unit.

===Cavalry===

*'''Mounted Yeomen''': Very bad. Like, really, really bad. Why would you use these? They are horrible in melee, have terrible leadership, use up slots in the Peasant economy and their charge bonus isn't exactly anything to write home about either. There is literally no reason to use them in campaign. Knights-Errant perform better for almost the same price. The only way to make them useful is if you recruit their '''Mounted Yeomen Archer''' variation, mounted cavalry able to fire on the move, but even then...
**They are significantly better in Multiplayer where running farms are never a problem and Gold is a serious limiting factor in list building. They still aren't very good in melee but fill a vital role as the fastest units in the Bretonnian roster which is necessary for a throwaway harasser unit.
*'''Knights-Errant''': Your first real piece of cavalry, and an okay one at that. They don't need any vow taken and should form the basis of your early game armies. They cannot take a hit and should largely rely on their charges to deal the majority of damage. Phase them out as soon as you can.
*'''Knights of the Realm''': Your classic Bretonnian Knights. Heavy armour, shield, a great charge bonus, these are the staple of your army and really easy to get. Use them, love them. Require the first Vow to be completed.
*'''Questing Knights''': The linebackers. If you can manage them good enough, they can even replace your melee infantry quite easily. AP attacks mean they are great against any form of melee infantry without bonuses against large units. Require the second vow to be completed.
*'''Grail Knights''': Your definitive elite. There is little that can give them a lot of trouble. They hit hard, move fast, [[Awesome|never tire]], inspire units around them, and get a bonus vs. large. Your dedicated monster and single entity unit killers. Require the third vow to be completed, so they're exceedingly hard to actually unlock.
*'''Grail Guardians''': More defensive versions of the offensive Grail Knights with extremely high melee defense, so high in fact that they can hold their own against units that normally counter cavalry. If you don't like the micro-intensive playstyle of shock cav heavy armies, you can use them. Require the third vow to be completed.

===Flying Cavalry===
*'''Pegasus Knight''': Flying, fast, anti-large killers that are very good at killing monsters and other large units but will die if anything sneezes in their direction and cannot push through a blob to escape. The only high tier unit that requires only the first vow to be completed.
*'''Royal Pegasus Knight''': Slightly better than the above stats-wise, but also come with perfect vigour (never tire) and immunity to psychology. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Royal Hippogryph Knights''': Plenty of health and hit very hard: absolute beasts on the battlefield; however, they cost a ton and require the third vow to be completed.

===Artillery===
*'''Field Trebuchet''': Powerful and nice range with very slow rate of fire and below-average accuracy. useful as an artillery to deal AoE damage to enemy infantry but not as a siege weapon, its large hitbox and low HP causes them to lose fights against even the weakest towers.
*'''Blessed Field Trebuchet''': Upgrade to the above: slightly better stat-wise but also come with the bonus of not inflicting friendly fire. Hitting your own units still causes the artillery morale penalty so try not to hit your peasants late into the fight.

==Tactics==

===Multiplayer Strategies===
A lot of the general strategies against these factions is going to boil down to one simple task; Cycle-charging cavalry. Your cavalry is your bread and butter in every matchup, so the key take-away in this section will be units in particular you'll need to look out for.

*'''Beastmen''': Another particularly fast faction, the Beastmen are largely unarmored, so a few squads of Peasant Bowmen with Pox arrows can get some surprising value against a majority of their units, further crippling them for your famous cavalry charges. Anti-Large cavalry will serve you quite well in this matchup. Grail Knights and even Pegasus Knights will serve as the tip of your spear against Minotaurs, Cygors and Ungors, while Knights of the Realm or even Questing Knights can mop up the rest of the Beastmen roster.

*'''Bretonnia''': A mirror matchup against Bretonnia will go exactly like you'd expect it to go. You'll want to do everything you can to make sure ''you'' initiate combat first, and if that means sacking a peasant mob or two to bog down opposing Grail Guardians so that yours can get the charge bonus against them, then that's what it'll take.

*'''[[Total_War_Warhammer/Tactics/Chaos_Dwarves| Chaos Dwarfs]]''':

*'''Warriors of Chaos''': Hoo boy, that's a lot of armor. Warriors of Chaos are one of the slowest armies in the game, so you should have no difficulty outmaneuvering their forces to make that optimal charge. Despite your relative inadequacies at frontline engagements, Battle Pilgrims and Foot Squires can still deal not inconsequential damage to their forces while holding them in place for your Cavalry. You'll want to try to shut down any Hellcannons they bring, as that'll be the primary source of ranged pressure on your forces. Without that, you're free to run circles around them from dusk until dawn.

*'''Dark Elves''': Mobility is the name of the game here. Both you and the Dark Elves are good at it, so it will largely come down to who can micro their army better. Just forget about peasant spam. Even Bleakswords will shred them, to say nothing about Witch Elves and Sisters of Slaughter which will show any infantry you bring their own assholes in seconds. Peasant archers are a good choice in theory to put pressure on their light cav, but they are extremely difficult to protect if you aren't a seasoned player. No, this match will come down to your cavalry play. Luckily you have a HUGE advantage in the heavy cav game, since all they have in that department are Cold One Knights which are pretty much garbage. A solid airforce can be a powerful tool here, since the Dark Elves don't have much of an aerial presence. Masters on pegasi are pretty cost-inefficient (but can still threaten with their anti-large) and your flying knights or Paladins will easily shred dragons. Even Rakarth on Bracchus can't stack up if you goon him out. Plus, Pegasus Knights especially will have a pretty solid shot of dodging Scourgerunner projectiles and catching up with them to deliver death. Grail Knights are a great choice against Doomfire Warlocks or any other light cav, as long as you can tie them down. This is one of the few matchups where their elite infantry (read: Black Guard of Naggarond) can really threaten, so isolate them and goon them out with your lords/heros asap. Louen is probably the lord to bring here to support your airforce, your caster lords are just too squishy to stand up to their ludicrous amount of ap.

*'''Dwarfs''': Toss up, but with an advantage to you. Dwarfs units are slow, they don't have cavalry of their own, so your cavalry will be able to move unopposed, especially since Slayers can be counter-charged easily. On the other hand, a good chunk of their units have Defense Against Charge, high mass, and their gunline can wreck you.

*'''Empire''': It can be a bit tricky to have a plan against the Empire due to their sheer versatility, but there's one thing you know for certain; your Cavalry is better than theirs. Peasant bowmen will not deal remotely as much damage against the rank and file as the gun-wielding Empire missile units would against yours, but they can still get some honest work done against them. Foot-Squires can also best Empire missile units in combat if you can manage to get them there relatively unmolested, but don't imagine for a second that they'll hold the line against their dedicated melee troops. Trebuchets are also a solid backline option to help punch holes in the Empire's formations for your cavalry.

*'''Grand Cathay''':

*'''Greenskins''': You're in luck, Greenskins don't really have anti-large units. Their huge monsters (araknarock spiders, rogue idols) can be tough, but your anti-infantry cav should have a good time. What's better, is that the leadership of the Greenskins is surprisingly lower than what you might expect; a few successful flanking charges against their front line units can break them quite readily.

*'''High Elves''': The battle of the noble arrogant assholes, and believe it or not you actually have a very sizable advantage. The Asur have NO chance against you in the Cav fight, so grab some Grail Knights and watch as they run amok. Silverin Guard tend to be popular here as their Charge Defense, Anti Large and Magic Resist make them a semi decent counter to Grail Knights, though if you swarm them in peasants then you don't have to worry about them resisting your charge. If you don't want to risk your knights against the spear wall then grab some Field Trebuchets and kill them from afar. Dragons can easily be taken care of by either archers or double paladins. Plus Paladin support plus healing from the Fey Enchantress can make your Grail Knights all but unkillable for the Elves. Sure you have no chance at winning the infantry fight in a vacuum, but if you care about winning the infantry fight why the hell are you playing Bretonnia?

*'''Khorne''': This is probably going to be a challenging one. You beat Khorne in general mobility as all of your cavalry is faster than his. You beat him in ranged because his only ranged unit is a single-entity artillery-chariot while your trebuchets come with multiple models and you have archers. Your cavalry also has several anti-large options while Khorne has none. However your peasants will get shredded by almost everything in Khorne's roster, his cavalry units are much tougher and harder hitting even if they are slower, and he has plenty of ways to tangle up your ranged units in the form of Hounds and Furies. Bloodthirsters will be a big problem as their Terror will easily rout off your infantry and with that anti-large bonus they'll put a big dent on your knights, who will have trouble surrounding them. This might not be a bad matchup to bring Hippogryphs and Pegasus Knights. Used defensively they can fend off Hounds and Furies, can isolate Bloodthirsters in the air and surround them with anti-large damage, and in the case of the Hippogryphs still hit pretty hard against infantry. Skull Cannons will be ill-equipped to shoot them down and only Bloodthirsters can contest the sky.

*'''Kislev''': Ice magic with it's wide AoE slows is pretty damn good against your mobile elements, and Ice Guard with glaives are a big middle finger to everything you like to do. Peasant spam is also difficult to pull off due to the sheer amount of short range shooting inherent in Kislev's roster, and their dervishes are just as fast as your yeomen, and can trash around peasant archers. It'll be up to your airforce to carry and hope they don't get charged by anti-large bears who would like nothing better than to rape you with their lances.

*'''Lizardmen''': First thing, leave the kids (peasants) at home. None of your infantry options stand a ghost of a chance against the Lizardmen; even the lowly Skink Cohorts are capable of besting them in combat and that's not even mentioning how quickly their massive Dinosaurs will chow through the pitchfork-wielding masses. Assuming they don't immediately just route the field from the sheer amount of fear/terror caused by all the monsters. Instead, double down on your strengths. Bretonnian cavalry will easily outpace anything the Lizardmen could ever field. Key units to build lists around would be your Grail Knights and (Royal) Pegasus Knights, who not only specialize against large targets, but are also immune to fear and terror. Though you can't expect their support for long, your peasant bowmen can really hinder the Lizardmen frontline and combat potential with the Pox variant, allowing some of your higher tier cavalry a touch more staying power for when you need to hold the line.

*'''Norsca''': Don't even think about it. Norscans are just as mobile as you are and have an abundance of Anti-Large damage that will burn through your Knights as if they were gasoline-soaked tissue paper, both of their LLs completely wipe the floor with yours and there is no hope of winning the infantry fight either. And that's not even taking their monstrous options into account, with Fimir smashing through your precious few heavily armoured units. Evade them where you can and better pick something else.

*'''Nurgle''': With all the poison, debuff spells and high mass of Nurgle units, it's actually gonna be very difficult to get a good charge in since your cavalry will most likely get stuck, surrounded and then die on your first charge, so it will be an extremely micro-intensive battle. Your Peasant arrows will obviously be of the fire variant and will need a frontline of men-at-arms (halberds or shielded, you need the anti-large bonus for any monster that gets close). Otherwise it's a simple "keep your cavalry units moving around until a unit gets separated from the rest, then gank it, repeat until your cavalry is too damaged for that, then bring them to your frontline so they can finish the job with support from what remains of your cav" deal. If your enemy decides to simply blob up his units to not let you get a charge in, bring a coupel of trebuchets for area damage.

*'''Ogre Kingdoms''': Don't expect your flimsy infantry to stick around for long after they're hit with the first ogre charge. This may be a matchup where you're best off getting your knights stuck in early and keeping them there. Cycle charging is alot less effective against an enemy who can dish out a tremendous amount of hurt by counter charging your cavalry every time they cycle charge back into the fight. That and your forces have better stamina in a protracted brawl thanks to lore of life and perfect vigor Grail Knights. Your anti-large air cav will reign uncontested due to Ogres lacking air presence, and they should be useful for tying up Ironblasters and Leadbelchers. They're also the only units you got who can reliably charge ogres without getting counter charged in return.

*'''Slaanesh''': '''PAIN'''. Their cavalry hits harder than yours, is faster than yours, and deal more damage on charges. Their infantry is fast, extremely killy and, if they have the CoC DLC, heavily armored as well, so there is nothing your own infantry can do against them and even your anti-infantry cav will struggle. They have chariots to mulch your infantry even more. Your cavalry has a slight advantage if you can get a charge in, since Slaanesh units are fragile and your Grail Knights never tire, but still. You do have better flying units than they do, so invest into pegasus knights, royal hippogryphs and flying paladins.

*'''Skaven''': While the Skaven missile units and artillery will put yours to shame, your cavalry is among the most suited to ruining the general Skaven strategy of blowing things up from across the map. Virtually nothing the Skaven have will be able to outrun your cavalry and a few well timed charges can break the relatively fickle leadership of their infantry quite easily. Knights of the Realm can do solid enough work against the general unarmored masses, but you'll want to keep some Questing Knights in reserve for any Stormvermin or Warpfire Throwers they might be packing... Unless the Skaven roll out Throt. A Clan Moulder-lead army can be one of your most difficult matchups, since Mutant Rat Ogres have little trouble blasting through your knights, Abominations are nearly unkillable for your piss poor infantry and Throt himself can frequently give Bonus vs. Large to all Skaven around him.

*'''Tomb Kings''': '''Don't''', despite what a Repanse campaign would suggest. The undead spears/halberds will tie your cavalry down and kill them, while the constructs are tough enough that even your anti-large cavalry will have a lot of trouble killing them, and their Necropolis Knights/Chariots/Nehekharan Warriors will mulch your infantry. You easily outshine them in the flying department, so a couple of Paladins on pegasi, Pegasus Knights and Hippogryphs will be very useful.

*'''Tzeentch''':

*'''Vampire Coast''':

*'''Vampire Counts''':

*'''Wood Elves''': If there's any faction capable of rivaling your cavalry charges, it's the Wood Elves. When engaging a mounted Wood Elf army, it really boils down to who gets the best initial engagement. If you can inflict a decisive charge against the Wood Elf cavalry, you'll neuter their offensive presence significantly, if they're not straight up cleaned off the battlefield. With the Wood Elf cavalry gone, you'll have virtually free reign to outmaneuver and slaughter the elves with your cycle charging prowess. Now, when it comes to dealing with the trees, you have several options; magical attacks and/or fire. Peasant Bowmen are a cheap as chips choice that can actually get quite a lot of value against Wood Elves as a whole (as not only are they unarmored, but a majority of them are unshielded as well). Lastly, though you'll need to screen them quite aggressively if you want them to stay online, your Trebuchet, though inaccurate, can blow holes in the Wood Elven front line and archer ranks long before they get into retaliatory range. Just make sure to keep tabs for sneaky vanguard deployments trying to circle around.

===Campaign Strategies===
** Always recruit an extra Lord to follow your main armies around. You don't pay supply lines, so the few hundreds of upkeep it costs you will be dwarfed by the Chivalry gained (since you gain Chivalry for each army that takes part in a battle), and that way you can do the "Raze evil faction's settlement for the bonus to Chivalry" while using your extra Lord to colonize it if you want.

** The Bretonnian economy is based around peasants. You can only have a certain number of non-knightly units before your economy starts sputtering; however, knights are expensive and your only archers and siege units are peasants. Luckily, Vows enable you to cut the upkeep of knights by significant amounts, meaning all-knight armies will be feasible in the early game if you do enough fighting to complete a lord's vows, and the more settlements you own the more peasants you can draft into your armies. The other unique aspect of the Bretonnian economy is that it is divided into two chains: farming and industry. Building the highest tier of one industry will soft-lock the other out of a settlement's productivity, meaning you'll have to demolish that other building chain. Generally speaking, farms earn much more than industry; the exception is in settlements with a Gold or Iron resource, whose unique buildings benefit from the industry bonus building. However, industry also functions independent of the faction's peasant cap, meaning you can field armies of peasants without losing income. You'll simply be making less than you do with farms.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]] {{Total War Warhammer Tactics}}

Xenos

2023-06-22T23:56:21Z

2A01:E0A:19C:2BC0:9402:154C:E6FD:4199: /* The Other Side */

{{topquote|Beware the [[xenos|alien]], the [[heretic]], and the [[mutant]].|Thought for the Day}}
{{topquote|Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.|Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays}}
{{topquote|Aside from the occasional genocide, oppression, evil and torture, etc., it is inarguable that public policy could be implemented more rapidly in an autocracy.|David Harsanyi}}

'''Xenos''' is a Greek word which means "stranger" or "alien." "Xenophobia," or "fear of the strange," comes from this root. Often used synonymically to "hatred", but the correct word for that would be "misoxenia" or "misoxeny". [[4chan]]'s "Paranormal" board is named [[Board-tans/x|/x/]] after it.

==''Warhammer 40,000''==
In ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'', the [[Imperium of Man]] uses "xenos" as a catch-all derogatory term for any non-human life forms. For example, the [[Ordo Xenos]] is the branch of the [[Inquisition]] which deals with aliens, and they have whole litanies about what happens to Xenos they get their hands on, like "Mark of the Xenos" (also the name of a [[Deathwatch]] [[Monster Manual|supplement]]).

Please note that "Xenos" is the plural AND singular spelling of the noun and adjective. This practise of using the unified form of this term for both singular and plural is inconsistent with the actual declension of 'xenos', which takes Greek inflections to reflect case and number as a noun, and case, number, and gender as an adjective. The technical plural form of 'xenos' in the nominative is 'xenoi' and accusative as 'xenon.' "xeno-" is a prefix used to denote the xenos origin of something, and Xeno is a character from [[Tau Quest]] whose name derives from "xeno-abomination".

If a scenario like that of ''Alien Nation'' or ''Men in Black'' happened in which extraterrestrials come to [[Earth]] in search of citizenship, the word Xenos would quickly become listed as Hate Speech due to the actions of [[/tg/]].

==Xenos in the Galaxy==
The setting of 40k is full of Xenos that are [[Original character, do not steal|completely original and in no way inspired by any other source]] (quietly kicks a copy of Lord of the Rings discreetly under the table). Despite being 'full' of them, though, the vast majority of these will never appear as anything more than a briefly mentioned group of corpses and are largely inferior to humans.

Each Xenos faction comes with its own rich and engaging history, play style and unique aesthetics that set them apart from their foes. They also bring a nice change of pace from the constant presence of the Adeptus Astartes. [[Your Dudes|Do you play the brutish ramshackle Orks, the elegantly swift Eldar or the never ending chittering swarms of the Tyranids? The choice is yours.]]

Each faction presents a threat that could, maybe, possible, perhaps eventually prove to be the Imperium’s doom should the forces of the Emperor falter in their duty or waver in their devotion. To be a human in the armies of the 41st Millennium is to face numerous threats, to stand against such nightmarish enemies, that even now move to bring doom upon the domains of man, is to stare into the very face of madness and despair.

Although playing a support role within the setting, with the Imperium taking up the primary protagonist’s role and the main antagonist (now that the story advanced a little bit even more than ever before) being the forces of Chaos, Xenos do still have a role to play, predominantly as sidekicks or weaker enemies. Which is really a shame, as their are plenty of interesting Xenos with little information, like [[Kroot]] or [[Hrud]].

Prior to the dawning of the Imperium there existed numerous Xenos species throughout the galaxy with their own hegemons, existing in the wake of the [[Old Ones]] war with the [[Necron]]. Of these Xenos hegemons the greatest was that of the [[Eldar]] Empire, which endured for an insanely long period of time with its only serious rival for power and ability being the nascent and much younger human dominions, which ended when the Eldar decided to have one too many orgies and create Slaanesh.

==Xenos and the Great Crusade==

However, with the Fall of the Eldar and the calming of the Warp storms that had up until then isolated the many human colonies that were spread across the galaxy, the Emperor took advantage of the newly created galactic power vacuum to launch his [[Great Crusade]]. During the Great Crusade the Emperor announced that Humanity had a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_Destiny preordained destiny] to rule the stars and was the one to pen the phrase "Suffer not the alien to live", giving orders for the extermination of all sapient Xenos. So stringent were his orders that when [[Primarchs]] like [[Horus]] and [[Fulgrim]] did seek to interact with Xenos, their men protested that it was against the standing orders of the Emperor to do so.

The Emperor's reasoning for this rampant xenophobia was that during the Age of Strife humanity was uniformly turned on by every single one of its xenos allies, who proceeded to enslave, rape, and kill human worlds, and therefore xenos couldn't be trusted and must all be killed. However, it's implied that this claim should be taken with a grain of salt. While no one is going to argue that the [[Orks]], [[Nephilim]] or [[Slaugth]] are really nice and cuddly, the idea that every single one of humanity's xenos allies, without exception, turned on us is a bit unlikely (from a math perspective if nothing else). Not to mention that the [[Great Crusade]] encountered many examples of humans enslaving humans, humans enslaving xenos, humans and xenos existing in harmony, and peaceful xenos civilizations that just wanted to be left alone. And killed most of them. If a xenos race were doing to a pocket of humanity what the [[Imperium]] does to its own people, the [[Great Crusade]] would have [[Exterminatus]]ed the fuck out of them, humans are dicks to other humans just as much as xenos are. Additionally, the only human who actually has first-hand knowledge of this xenos betrayal are the Emperor and his cronies, and the Emperor [[Imperial Truth|would never lie to people about something important in the name of getting the reaction he wants]]. Not to mention the Imperium's justification for xenocide is almost word-for-word the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth stab-in-the-back-myth] the Nazis used to try and justify their treatment of Jews and the Holocaust, only replace "Aryan" with "human" and "Jew" with "xenos". Even canon has implied on the ''very'' few times it's come up that this story might be a load of bull; the Interex and Disaporex were both human/alien alliances who were thriving in harmony until the Imperium wiped them out, and the planet of Traynor's Rest from the [[Rogue Trader]] TRPG was inhabited by a human/alien alliance that hadn't had any major conflicts or arguments for '''twenty thousand years''', forcing the Imperial missionary who found the place to literally fabricate a bunch of BS to get the humans to genocide their alien partners in what is probably an homage to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

''Master of Mankind'' also implies that the reason the Emperor wanted the xenos dead was not out of simple xenophobia, but because he couldn't control them like he did humanity and because xenos showed humanity that there were other ways of living than his design. All the while the Emperor used xenotech to create ''his'' better future for humanity. The same was true of non-Imperial humans, but at least the Emperor was willing to give them a chance to submit to his rule before wiping them out utterly. And, perhaps more pragmatically, because those civilizations may have had [[STC]] fragments and he couldn't afford to have those destroyed. Having a policy of absolute genocide towards all non-Terran ''humans'' in addition to xenos might have actually been more reasonable from the Emperor's standpoint, because it would have wiped out all those nascent [[Chaos]]-tainted civilizations and those who genetically deviated from the Imperial standard, but the Emperor needed those STCs. Ironically, the [[Age of Strife]] may have ended up saving a lot of lives in that respect.

The armies of the Emperor of Man spread across the width and breadth of the galaxy [[Rip and Tear|butchering]] all that stood in their way, including many human civilizations that had survived the horrors of Old Night and refused to bend the knee in submission to this man that claimed the title of Master of Mankind. The resulting genocides led to the extinction of hundreds of species, including many of the older races that had existed since before humanity had first looked up at the stars. Hundreds of alien races were wiped out, although barring Orks the majority of the Great Crusade seems to have been spent fighting against other human empires, as Xenos forces were comparatively rarer, indicating that they had perhaps fared even worse during the Age of Strife. Even groups such as the Diasporex, a combination of humans and Xenos living in harmony, were exterminated simply for their pluralistic ideologies, their human members slain as well for refusing to consign their Xenos compatriots to extermination.

By the end of the Great Crusade all major non-human powers and Empires had been broken, with only small and insignificant states, or weaker polities outside the Imperium's borders remaining. Ironically, the Craftworld (due to not needing planets), Exodite (due to Craftworld protection and simple obscurity) and the soon-to-be Dark (Webway) Eldar were likely the best off despite the fact that their main power was completely broken before the Crusade, besides the Orks who aren't a polity so much as a self propagating sentient (in the loosest terms) bio-weapon.

==Xenos in the 41st Millenium==

Since the Great Crusade the threat of Xenos has mostly remained a frontier matter, or a matter of small raids, with most [[Tau Empire|noticeable concentrations of Xenos restricted solely to the outer reaches of the Galaxy]], or contained in sectors where they posed little threat to the Imperium. The rest are either allies of the Imperium, neutrality accepted by the Imperium, or outright protectorate species of the Imperium. Keep in mind the Imperium wants to ''regulate'' aliens and directs its "Suffer Not The Alien" towards space monsters instead of the average Joe who minds his own business. None of these are ever named, though. Whether or not the average Imperial even knows these non-Kill The Alien xenos exist is also unknown. In effect the Great Crusade had succeeded in scouring most Xenos life from the Milky Way Galaxy, leaving them mostly clinging to the frontiers and outer zones in small numbers, with the noticeable exception of the Orks. Excluding the Orks, most Xenos have been eradicated or reduced to such small numbers that they present no significant threat to the Imperium, with the Xenos population of the Galaxy combined being inferior to that of the Orks or Humanity. Between the end of the [[Horus Heresy]] and the beginning of the 41st Millenium the only major Xenos threat to emerge was that of the [[War of the Beast|Beast Waaagh!]], a potent combination of powerful Ork Warlords and their armies, who assailed the Imperium briefly, before being slain and their forces totally destroyed in short order.

Aside from consistent and largely ineffectual attacks by Orks and the differing subgroups of Eldar, many xenos are simply too weak to make any noticeable impact on the Imperium and have never succeeded in any actual effort against the Imperium at all. Which makes you wonder why have xenos at all, really.

The beginning of the 41st Millenium did, however, see three new Xenos threats rise to actually endanger some parts of the Imperium; the extragalactic threat of the [[Tyranid]] Hive Fleets, the rising of the [[Necron]] Tomb Worlds, and the new Tau Empire. All of these pose a more considerable threat than any Xenos before them did, the scope of the Tyranid attack being impossible to know, the Necrons representing a species possibly as numerous, but far more technologically advanced then the Imperium itself, and act significantly less retarded in combat. Finally, the Tau, <s>not really because they could ever conquer the Imperium (though they have had their fair share of victories), but because they risk the possibility of repeating the same mistakes as humanity and feeding Chaos even more.</s>{{BLAM|The Tau'va does not support this propoganda. Through unity, we shall conquer the savage Imperium and make a way for our inevitable conquest of the stars.}} Just as soon as you manage to get out of that childs pool about to be raped by Tyranids, I will take you seriously blueskin. And by "take seriously" I mean send an actual Crusade instead of a handful of whatever was available to toss in your general direction. You do ''not'' want Ultramar to take you seriously.

==Xenos Factions==

[[Image:Ork Enclaves.jpg|thumb|right|150px|'''Ork map''']]
[[Orks]] -The Orks are the endless green tide of homicidal space fungus made by the [[Old Ones]] ready to sweep across the galaxy in an unstoppable WAAAGH! should they ever one day unite. It is the saving grace of the other inhabitants of the galaxy that they are terribly prone to infighting and factionalism, and will gladly beat the shit out of each other if no other enemy presents itself. It is said that if a Warboss was ever able to unite the many Ork klans under one banner, then the very heavens would tremble in fear. This is debateable though, as when the Ork Warlords known as the Beasts did this, they (barely) failed to defeat even a greatly weakened Imperium. They are the most numerous Xenos species native to the galaxy, or at least most numerous until such a time as the Necron are all awakened as some [[fluff]] has implied the Necrons are just as numerous if all are awakened. Orks are actually a bio-engineered warrior race, or at the very least a degraded version of a bio-engineered warrior race, known as the Krork. Orks live for conflict and battle, their entire society and civilization revolving around it, and as a result are perpetually in conflict or, otherwise, seeking a conflict. This behaviour has also left the Orks disunited as a species, with Orks being prone to hitting each other with axes just as much as any other species. Orks primarily cling to the frontiers and fringes of the Galaxy, having long ago been purged from within the heart of the Imperium's territories by their many successful wars against the Orks. Due to the haphazard nature of Orkish Warp Travel, however, Ork Armies can appear anywhere and, quite literally, at any time as well, meaning that they often [[Deep Strike|strike deep]] behind the borders of the Imperium despite their relative military weakness. Outside the borders of the Imperium several Ork Empires, such as Charadon, Bork and Octarius do exist, and some are older even than the Imperium itself. It also helps that the orks robust biology enables the greenskin menace to live in places that no other species could survive in; there have been reports of small tribes of orks living on the bombed out husks of planets which have been subjected to [[Exterminatus]].

[[Image:Eldar map.jpg|thumb|right|150px|'''Eldar map''']]
[[Eldar]] -The Eldar are an old species (by old we mean 60 <s>millenia</s> <i>million</i> years at least, since they were Old One creations too) which, following the collapse of their empire, has splintered into a number of subfactions:

*[[Craftworld Eldar]] -The Eldar are the perpetually dying light in an ever darkening galaxy but even as their flame flickers they refuse to allow themselves to be extinguished, though their numbers dwindle constantly. Which has been going on for over 15. Thousand. Years. Honestly, for a dying race, coupled with their persistent [[FAIL|defeats]], it really makes you wonder how they are still around. Many among their kind seek to rebuild their empire, and to transform their weak flame into a burning light to bring about a new dawn for their race; but if this is to be their end then they will face the growing darkness standing with blades ready in hand. Come 8th Edition and, with the obsession for trademarked names, the Craftworld Eldar are known as the Asuryani. Craftworld Eldar live, predominantly, within enormous ships known as [[Craftworlds]] that at one time served as vast trading vessels for the Empire of old. Within the Craftworlds the Eldar try to preserve what remains of their Pre-Fall history and culture as best they can but even they cannot stop the slow and inevitable degradation of time as older generations are lost and the memories of their glories pass into myth and legend. Like all Eldar, they are survivors of the calamitous event known as The Fall, which destroyed the old Eldar Empire. Those who live on the Craftworlds attempt to control and direct their emotions and psychic power in order to prevent it from corrupting them like it did their ancestors, and thus have a highly regimented social system known as the Paths, founded by the first of the Phoenix Lords; Asurmen.

*[[Dark Eldar]] – The Dark kin are the very incarnation of cruelty in all its many forms. Ironically, they torture people for pleasure, and you would think that they'd like Slaanesh, but nope. They fear it just as much as normal Eldar. From their shadowy nightmare realm/BDSM porn studio of Commorragh, they strike out to bring misery, horror, and boners ([[Wyches]] only) upon an unsuspecting galaxy. Those who know of them know that it is better to die than be taken by these sadistic bastards. Pray they do not take you alive. Dark Eldar represent the portion of the population which has refused to give up on the cruel and barbaric lifestyle which caused The Fall in the first place. Instead, they have moved into the alternate dimension known as the [[Webway]] and mostly exist within the aforementioned <s>porn studio</s> City of [[Commorragh]]. Dark Eldar must feed on the pain and suffering of others to stave off their souls being consumed by [[Slaanesh|She Who Thirsts]], and as a result have developed a society and culture predicated on the capture and torture of others in [[/d/|increasingly inventive manners]]. Dark Eldar are among the most notorious corsairs and raiders of the Galaxy and are the bane of many an Imperial admiral.

*[[Exodites]] - The original Eldar exiles, the first to notice the decay of their old Empire and leave it, were the Exodites. Effectively Eldar Hippies/Amish of a sort who decided to renounce advanced technology in the belief that it had fostered decadence and spiritual corruption. Instead, they live lives in tune with the nature of their Worlds, attempting to eke out peaceful existences there. By that we mean the planets are Maiden Worlds and therefore psychic and a complete paradise requiring zero effort for the Exodites to live luxurious, pampered lives that makes the Garden of Eden look like Nurgle's Garden. Since it's not "technology", they believe it doesn't count as decadent. They live an almost nomadic existence following the great herds of “dragons” and although they may appear highly vulnerable to attack they are still capable of defending themselves with their Dragon Knights and their reptilian dragon mounts. They also in time of great need have their own guardian equivalents of the [[Wraithknight]]s known as the Fire Gales, Bright Stallions and Towering Destroyers. Against greater threats such as a large Ork waaagh however they are still heavily dependent upon the Craftworld Eldar to defend them from harm.

*[[Harlequins]] - One of the smallest but also the most elite of the Eldar groups, the Harlequins are Eldar who worship the sole intact and surviving Eldar God: [[Cegorach]]. Masters of comedy and moving through the [[Webway]], Harlequins are mostly devoted to attempting to find ways to defeat the Chaos Gods. Pretty funny <s>people</s> elves too. They serve as negotiators between the different branches of the Eldar society, helping to forge alliances between the different groups in the name of a greater cause at times. Harlequins are also the Eldar with the greatest knowledge and mastery of the mysterious Webway, allowing them even more rapid movement than other Eldar possess.

*[[Ynnari]] - The smallest of all the Eldar's numerous subfactions, not even able to rival a minor Craftworld per their own leader, the Ynnari are Eldar dedicated to the worship of Ynnead, the newly born Eldar God of Death. The Ynnari have only recently emerged and follow what is known as the Seventh Way, a prophecy which supposedly reveals a way through which their god [[Ynnead]] can be fully roused without exterminating all living Eldar. The Ynnari are dedicated to the hunt for the fifth and final Crone Sword, with which they believe they can bring about the premature maturation of Ynnead to defeat Slaanesh whilst mortal Eldar still exist within the Galaxy. They have close ties with the Craftworld of Altansar, but most other Craftworlds, or their Seer Councils at least, are suspicious of the Ynnari. Many notable Eldar figures, such as [[Lelith Hesperax]], [[Jain Zar]], and that [[Eldrad|dick]], have joined their ranks.

[[Image:Necron-galaxy-map-1.jpg.jpg|thumb|right|150px|'''Necron map''']]
[[Necron]] Dynasties -They are the terror from a forgotten age (indeed, the very same enemy the Old Ones fought) that intends to reclaim the Galaxy from the weak parasitic races that now claim ownership of what was and always will be theirs. To the Necrons, there is not war in the future, only pest control. Among the oldest species of Xenos in the galaxy, Necron are a largely mechanical species who are beginning to awaken throughout the Galaxy. Due to a process in the distant past most Necron have become little more than mindless robots, with only their leaders displaying true self-awareness or intelligence. The Necron are an ancient and powerful species, who's numbers are bolstered by the constantly increasing number of their worlds which are reactivating.

[[Image:Tyranid Hive Fleets Galaxy Map (1).jpg|thumb|right|150px|'''Tyranid map''']]
[[Tyranid]] -Fear the shadow in the Warp for they are coming to consume all and when they are finished, nothing will remain. A Xenos race not native to the Milky Way Galaxy, the Tyranid are a voracious species of Xenos linked through a gestalt intelligence known as the [[Hive Mind]] which directs the species. The Tyranid are largely a predatory species, seeking to OMNOM as much biological matter as possible in order to make use of it for themselves. Thus far their forays into the galaxy have usually been blunted before they made significant headway, but due to the nature of their existence as a species outside the Milky Way Galaxy, it is difficult to know the extent of the Tyranid at current.
*[[Genestealer Cult]]s - One of the most nefarious weapons deployed by the Tyranid are the Genestealer Cults. These cults, born from the intermingling of Genestealers with other beings, can emerge on numerous worlds and work to undermine the defenses of said planet due to a mistaken worship of the Tyranids as saviours, in turn making it far easier for the Tyranid swarm to consume.

[[Image:Tau-map.jpg|thumb|right|150px|'''Tau map''']]
[[Tau Empire]] - A recently emerging faction within the Galaxy, the Tau Empire is an expansionist weeaboo state which seeks to incorporate other Xenos into it where possible. Technologically advanced (compared to the Imperium, anyway) and well-known for their ideological commitment to the [[Greater Good]], or Tau'va, the Empire is at current still very naive regarding [[Chaos|what]] is waiting for them beyond their borders. Within the confines and safety of their borders the Tau confidently look towards the future but they are blissfully unaware that although they may be the big fish in a small pond at the moment, within the deeper waters there are leviathans waiting to be discovered. Now in 8th Edition they are the T'au, cause "Tau" was apparently not good enough for trademarking. As of 9th edition, they've bought much of their best tech from the Leagues of Votann.

==Xenos Roles==
Within the galaxy of Warhammer 40,000 Xenos are the least important and influential of the three main factions, rarely managing anything of note on their own other than catastrophic defeats at the hands of Space Marines. Whilst the Imperium are the Protagonists of the setting and Chaos the primary Antagonists, Xenos tend to fill a spectrum of lesser roles in between these two poles, usually only being important in the way they assist or impede these two larger factions. Part of this is also due to the fact that Xenos inhabit less of the Galaxy than anyone else, with the vast majority of the material galaxy being controlled by the Imperium and the majority of the [[Warp]] being controlled by the forces of Chaos, leaving Xenos as distinctly the weakest of the three factions. Overall it also means that the Human race, comprising both the majority of the Imperium and Chaos, is far stronger than all other Xenos, as even the combined Xenos races don't compare favourably to either human-dominated faction. Which is dumb, because the whole universe shouldn't focus exclusively on the Imperium, but we digress. Broadly speaking Xenos can be divided into three broad categories concerning their Role in the narrative of 40k;

===The Chaff===
These are the Xenos who tend to exist as a largely faceless horde of mooks who are gunned or chopped down in droves, usually with little dramatic tension, and more as a way to demonstrate how badass or awesome the protagonist is. These Xenos tend to play the role of a lesser antagonist, not as dangerous as Chaos, and having little true power, but an antagonist nonetheless. These are the antagonists against whom it is most common for the protagonist to win bloodless victories or overwhelming victories, to demonstrate the difference in strength between the protagonist and these lesser antagonists. Similarly the Chaff Xenos also often play the role of demonstrating how powerful Chaos is, without allowing Chaos to actually beat the Imperium, by either losing or being supplanted by Chaos at a point in a story line, to make clear the true threat was Chaos all along. Orks in particular are adept at this tactic of being an initial, and rather minor threat, who is then replaced by a more severe Chaos threat later.

Chaff are characterised by the fact that, no matter what, they will almost always lose the war in the end, regardless of all circumstances, and there will rarely be any long term negative consequences of battles with them. They will also usually be vastly inferior to the protagonists, being killed in one-on-one duels and such to showcase the superior fighting abilities of their foes. Ork Warbosses and Eldar Avatars of Khaine are two of the most commonly used examples of this, often dying to establish some or other protagonist as a [[badass]].

Although Orks and Tyranid tend to be the most commonly used Chaff, as of late the Craftworld Eldar have seemingly become quite prone to being Chaff too, with battles such as the attack on Yme-Loc, the Battle of Orar's Sepulchre and more usually having the ancient and elitist soldiery of these factions gunned down in enormous numbers and absolutely powerless to do anything.

'''Examples incude:'''
* [[Orks]]
* [[Kroot]]
* [[Tyranids]]
* [[Craftworld Eldar]]

===The Ally===
This type of Xenos usually poses little to no actual threat to the protagonist, although expect the story to usually start with the protagonist battling them to showcase the protagonist's superiority. The Ally is almost always in possession of some critical knowledge or device, usually relating to a Chaos Threat, which the Ally will prove impotent to handle on its own, instead resorting usually to giving the protagonist the role of actually ending the threat, often after trying and failing themselves. Although a betrayal is not always necessary, and more than enough of these alliances will not have a betrayal occur, expect at times a final twist in which the protagonist also kills the Ally before they can backstab them.

Although in general these alliances tend to be momentary and not have longer lasting ramifications, it should be noted that the recent plot development of the [[Ynnari]] subfaction of Eldar seems to have seen the Imperium gain a possible permanent vassal Xenos faction (or at the very least "Oh my fucking God there are four different apocalypses going on I will take anyone I won't need to shoot at this point.").

'''Examples include:'''
* [[Tau Empire]]
* [[Craftworld Eldar]]
* [[Harlequins]]
* [[Ynnari]]
* [[Necron]]
* In one single case in a short story [[Orks]]

===Once-offs===
These are Xenos who fall into the same category as the oft-mentioned 'there was a Cult Uprising' fluff extracts in 40k. These are characterised by tending to be nothing more than a mention of their existence, before a quick mention that they are now all dead, usually due to some Space Marine force attacking. These Xenos tend to not even have an illusion of threat, such as Chaff Xenos, and are very much just hand-waved away the same way Cult Uprisings tend to be, being very quickly destroyed and without any significant impact.

Due to the very nature of their existence there are few examples of these types of Xenos, seeing as they tend to simply exist as a single name mentioned to have already been destroyed. Two common examples which are frequently reused, however, are the Genestealer Cults and [[Exodites]]. Exodites, in particular, are usually only brought up in a story to describe how they die awfully.

'''Examples incude:'''
* [[Genestealer Cult]]
* [[Exodites]]

Separate to these well-defined roles, all Xenos play the part of the 'Worf Effect' role, dying or losing so as to establish their opponent's power. Whether it is to Chaos or the Imperium, Xenos will frequently only appear to be bested in some or other manner, usually to solidfy how powerful a particular character or faction of the Imperium or Chaos is. This category is very much often occupied by specific Xenos characters too, and tied to certain events, and can be found most frequently in Black Library novels, in which almost any Xenos antagonist introduced will be built up as a threat but, almost, inevitably be either dead or running by the end of the story.

==Xenos and Chaos==
As a whole, the Chaos Gods seem to have little interest in Xenos compared to humanity, as humanity on its own provides them with such an abundance of easily manipulated and corruptible beings that they have quickly become the Ruinous Powers primary playthings. Indeed it is worth noting that literally all the known favoured servants of Chaos are humans exclusively. With the sole exception of [[Slaanesh's]] desire to devour the Eldar, there is rarely much attempt by the forces of Chaos to corrupt any Xenos species. During the [[Great Crusade]] there were a number of Xenos who worshipped Chaos, but these have since been exterminated by the Imperium; but not before they had spread their teachings to those within the Imperium itself who proved to be far too easily swayed. By the 41st Millenium there are no known large or significant concentrations or factions of Xenos serving Chaos, mostly due to the ones that escape Imperial notice being as small and disorganized as any other Chaos cult. That being said, chaos worship is a fickle thing, and there are mighty civilizations who do worship chaos still at large in the galaxy in one form or another, some of whom, such as the Yu'Vath, have become so intertwined with chaos that even death cannot stop them. The Saruthi are also of note, while supposedly corrupted by a human chaos grimoire, the Saruthi have met with success following their corruption, and make use of tetrascapes that allow them to hide outside of the material universe even more effectively than the Eldar with their Webway.

*Eldar- Despite having souls and egos that burn brighter and stronger within the Warp, they are typically not taken by the other gods as they are the "sole property"/sex toys of Slaanesh who claims and devours their souls upon their deaths, unless precautions have been taken to avoid such a fate. Sporadic hints of Eldar who willingly gave themselves up to Slaanesh have been made, but are considered to be mere speculation both in-universe and out-of-universe. Even the Dark Eldar, who would otherwise be amazingly good slaves of Slaanesh, fear and despise it (if only for purely selfish reasons). One case of Nurgle-corrupted Eldar has been mentioned in the Death Guard's codex, so it might be possible for another Chaos Good to claim their souls under the right circumstances.
*Necrons – They are what you could describe as being the very opposite of what the Chaos gods are looking for due to not having souls. Without souls, they're absolutely worthless even as slaves, and their innate anti-Warp attributes make them a threat rather than a potential tool. Although they are not beyond corruption themselves, as seen with Lucius' capacity to possess them. Additionally, Chaos has been known to frequently possess advanced machines including their own Tomb Worlds, so it is possible they could be corrupted indirectly.
*Tyranids – Their minds are too alien for Chaos to corrupt them; an individual Tyranid can no more be turned against the collective than an individual cell can voluntarily rebel against the organism it belongs to ('voluntarily' being the keyword - cancer, anyone?), and without a true consciousness the Chaos Gods have nothing to tempt them with. When the two sides come into conflict, it’s like watching a battle between an immovable object and unstoppable force; the daemons are weakened by the presence of the Shadow, and the Tyranids gain nothing from victory other than continued survival. They each have so little to gain from combat with each that they both try to avoid each other whenever possible.
*Tau Empire – The Tau have a very weak presence in the Warp and possess a small fraction of territory compared to the other races of the galaxy; however, their disbelief in Chaos means that should the Ruinous Powers choose to move against them they will be as blindsided as the Imperium was during the Horus Heresy. However, it should be noted that due to the strict regimentation of their lives and space communism, it is extremely difficult for Tau to serve Chaos. The Kroot, on the other hand, have a much more robust warp presence, and actually have a clue that the warp is dangerous, unlike their Tau allies. Additional their biological proclivity to eating dead enemy's means they can be exposed to corruption in a whole diffrent manner than that of other races. All this aside, the events of the Fourth Sphere Expansion (and its rediscovery by the Fifth Sphere Expansion) have proven that they can still be corrupted in spite of their weak Warp presence and at least a few Tau have figured out that Chaos is strengthened by psychically active species.
*Orks - While there are sporadic examples of Orks turning to Khorne, Gork and Mork have been proven to be real gods and are highly unlikely to allow any sort of poaching in this manner. The other three Ruinous Powers simply have little appeal for Orks, as they lack any real ambition for Tzeentch to exploit (except the biggest baddest Warbosses, who are so steeped in WAAAGH energy they are fully immune) and do not fear death enough to turn to Nurgle's protection (they only fear not being able to fight anymore and [[Flesh Tearers|getting eaten alive]]), and Slaanesh (excuse me, flash gitz), I mean really? That being said, being resistant does not mean immune, and corrupted orks do show up from time to time bearing the plagues of Nurgle and some of Khorne's daemons are green instead of red.

Despite this there are still a tiny few examples of Chaos affiliated Xenos in recent Fluff; a Genestealer Cult corrupted by Nurgle, a commune of Eldar worshipping Slaanesh, but these are never large or substantial groups, usually being very small and inconsequential incidents. It does, however, indicate the possibility of corruption. Most likely the lack of corrupted Xenos can be put down to either their resistance to Daemonic corruption, although it could also be that like the Imperium, who have their holy symbols that hold the Ruinous Powers at bay, that some xenos like the Eldar with their Runes and the Orks that create effigies to “scare” away the creatures of the warp, may be in possession of their own effective counter-measures against Daemons. (It is, however, equally possible that they simply have not been described by the fluff due to the preferred focus on humanity over the xenos races in general.)

Overall, however, the Chaos Gods seem to hold little interest in Xenos and tend to ignore them in favor of humans. Almost all, if not all, the greatest and most powerful servants of the Chaos Gods are themselves human, or were once human, with almost no Xenos counted among the ranks of Daemon Princes. The only possible exception to this is the Daemon Prince [[Be'lakor]] whose origin has never been explicitly confirmed but, considering his age, is presumably a Xenos of some sort. He is, though, the sole exception and other than this possibility all the greatest, most powerful and favoured of all the Chaos Gods Servants are purely human. Furthermore even the most powerful Daemons, such as Drach'nyen, despite being magnitudes younger than an enormous amount of Daemons, seem stronger than all others by simple stint of being born from human emotions; it's actually directly linked to the Emperor himself and was born from "the first murder." None of this changes the clear conclusion that, again, humans simply provide more power than all other beings, except possibly the aforementioned Slaanesh Eldar due to special circumstance.

{|align=center border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0"
|-
|align=center|'''*Inquisitor log 17548.68'''
|-
|align=center|'''*After careful study of such heretical materials I have come to the conclusion that the Chaos Gods' lack of interest stems from the fact that humans, in particular, Space Marines, are simply far more malleable and powerful compared to any other lesser forms of life in the galaxy. Compounding this, humans have so effectively conquered the majority of the Milky Way that they provide the largest body of servants for the Chaos Gods to use, making the near-exclusive focus on them somewhat pragmatic. The poor deluded Xenos think to arrogantly "warn" us of the dangers of the Warp, little understanding that humanity is protected by the light of the Emperor. It can only be their jealousy of the lack of influence that the almighty Emperor has over them that they think to teach us, what breathtaking arrogance, but what can you expect from such filthy heathens.
'''*In sum humanity's natural superiority over all other races means that the Chaos Gods have chosen to rather exclusively focus on them and them alone, seeing Xenos for the most part as pointless and useless compared to humanity. Furthermore humanity is the only species that threatens the Chaos Gods, with no Xenos faction capable of in anyway challenging them, and thus humanity is also focused on as the only danger to their power. Basically the Chaos Gods focus on humans cause they're the only race that matters. (Spoken like a true son of the Emperor, you will go far in the Inquisition).'''

'''*Remember that the weak and foolish Xenos may look vaguely human in form but they are but mere imperfect imitations of the genetically perfect masterpiece that is the human form. Humanity is the ultimate life form, perfect in every way, and blessed by the God Emperor himself. The Galaxy is ours by right and we will purify the Xeno taint until only holy humanity remains. This truth is so absolute that even unspeakable horrors accept it and happily ignore the alien weaklings, barring certain exceptions like the Eldar's collective folly.'''
|}

==The Other Side==
The irony of the setting is that, from the perspective of most of the Xenos species in the galaxy, the Imperium of Man is as dangerous and constant a danger to their existence as the Orks or Tyranid. From the Great Crusade onwards Xenos species such as the Tarellians, Demiurg and Eldar have been powerless to do anything as the Imperium constantly expanded its borders, genociding more and more Xenos every century, pushing them further and further out as all resistance in the face of the Imperium proved utterly futile.

Thus to the Tarellians, Hrenians, Tau, Galg and many more the Galaxy is a terrifying place since most of it is the Imperium, an all-powerful empire devoted to the relentless expansion of its domain and extermination of all other forms of life. For over 10,000 years, some of these species have watched Imperium has steamrolled everything in its path, and it has simply grown from strength to strength, [[Plot armor|overcoming all enemies and expanding its borders continuously]], dooming to extinction untold numbers of sapient species and creating a galaxy where Xenos mostly live in hiding or cling to the frontiers, with the exception of the Orks (who are having the time of their lives), the Necrons (who are a superpower on their own, albeit highly divided) and the Eldar to a certain extent (both Imperium and Craftworlds are pragmatic enough to know that they don't need to destroy each other when greater dangers exist, with alliances between the two being unusually common and frequent, most recent example being Ynnari).

Not for nothing are the zones which contain the most Xenos limited to areas which the Imperium considers outside their control, the [[Ghoul Stars]] and Eastern Fringe for example. In the galaxy of the 41st Millenium to be born a [[Grimdark|Xenos is to be born within a Galaxy where the most brutal and vicious empire in history is determined to kill you, your family and everyone you've ever known, because it considers your existence as an insult to mankind]].

To compound this fear for the Xenos there is also the fact that, as a species, humans always seem to outcompete all other species at everything. Due to their '''MASSIVE''' numbers(surpassed only by [[Orks]], [[Tyranids]] and ALL [[Necrons]]) vaunted position within the setting and [[Plot armor|general favouritism]] directed towards the Imperium, and more importantly the Space Marines, they are unfortunately burdened with the dubious honour of always being [[Mary Sue|the best at everything]]. No matter [[Shadowsun|how stealthy a Xenos might be]] there is always [[Ravenguard| a human stealthier than them]], no matter [[Imotekh the Stormlord|how skilled a commander]], there will be a [[Creed|human]] more skilled than them, no matter [[Eldar|how strong a Psyker your entire specie is supposed to be]], there will be [[Malcador|multiple]] [[Mephiston|human]] [[Magnus|psykers]] within the setting stronger than you could ever hope to be. If your specie's entire shitck is "[[Tau|the reasonable man in an unreasonable universe]]"? There will be [[Roboute Guilliman|someone]] more reasonable than you, with a [[Belisarius Cawl|a human scientist]] being more rational and making more progress than [[Earth Caste|your entire scientific group]].

The 41st Millenium is a dark and foreboding existence for the Xenos, one where the most bloodthirsty and xenophobic species in the galaxy is set on conquering the galaxy, eradicating all other life in it and, worst of all, looks set to achieve this no matter how stiff the resistance, the only delay being a ten thousand year long civil war on whether they worship the greatest tyrant in history or eldritch horrors that eat souls. Considering this it is hardly surprising that Xenos would rather side with the [[Tau]], who offer surprisingly lenient membership into their Empire, or the [[Sautekh Dynasty]] who, though making subjugated nations vassals, still permit them to exist. Of course one could also just be Orks and not care about it at all and have a bloody good larf out of all the figthing. Or be a Tyranid drone where all you really care about is the next all you can eat buffet.

From a meta perspective, Xenos also suffers from mankind's inherent human bias:
*Most authors don't like them that much or writing about them (it doesn't pay as much as writing Imperium books and it's harder than writing humans or [[Space Marines|people that shouldn't act like normal humans but do anyways]] and writers are humans too, with their own preferred factions and characters), so authors tend to prefer the Imperium.
*They don't get much written about them and the Imperium gets more stuff
*Imperium stuff sells more and has more variety, and as such has more fans (if you hate an Imperium book, there's hundreds more by multiple authors you could like. If you hate an Eldar or T'au book, there's only a handful and they're all written by [[Gav Thorpe|the]] same [[Phil Kelly|guys]])
*Authors and fans like the Imperium more...
*Repeat until the ratio of Imperium to non-Imperium stories is 10/1 at best (as of October 2022, Imperium has roughly 500 pieces written on/about them by Black Library, Chaos has around 50) and 100/1 at worst (Necrons have 5). [https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1469gs4/in_the_best_case_scenaario_it_would_take/| Some dumbass on reddit did the math] for the year 2022, and it would literally take a full century for Xenos to get as many Black Library stories as the Imperium has, and that's the very best case scenario, where BL ''completely'' stops releasing Imperium stuff for 98 years. So yeah, Xenos will never get many good books.

==How do they compare==

Thanks to "Wrath and Glory" we now have a better look at how GW views the different species.
The list below shows the attribute Maximums for:

*Human- Adeptus Ministorum, Adepta Sororitas, Astra Militarum, Agents of the Imperium, Adeptus Mechanicus, Scum and renegades (the maximum stats apply to those who have been gifted with the very best genetic and cybernetic enhancements that the Imperim can provide, short of becoming a Space Marine)
*Eldar- Corsairs, Rangers, Warlocks
*Orks- Ork Boy, Kommando, Ork Nob
*Astartes/Primaris- Mini-Marines, Chad-Marines, Chaos Space Marine

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="left" class="wikitable sortable"
! ||Strength||Agility||Toughness||Intellect||Willpower||Fellowship||Initiative||Speed
|-
| '''[[Humans]]''' || 8 || 8 || 8 || 8 || 8 || 8 || 8 || 8
|-
| '''[[Orks]]''' || 12 || 7 || 12 || 7 || 8 || 7 || 7 || 7
|-
| '''[[Eldar]]''' || 7 || 12 || 7 || 10 || 12 || 8 || 12 || 10
|-
| '''[[Space Marines|Astartes]]''' || 10 || 9 || 10 || 10 || 10 || 8 || 9 || 9
|-
| '''[[Primaris Marines|Primaris]]''' || 12 || 9 || 12 || 10 || 10 || 8 || 9 || 9
|-
| '''[[Necrons]]''' || 9 || 6 || 13 || 13 || 5 || 6 || 6 || 6
|-
| '''[[Tau]]''' || || || || || || || ||
|-
|}<br style="clear: both; height: 0px;" /><br>

*Strength: Raw physical power. Strength is a measurement of the sheer physical force a character is capable of and how much they can lift and carry. Also determines how strong their attacks are.
*Agility: Dexterity and coordination. Agility measures a character’s manual dexterity and whole body coordination, it also governs their accuracy with ranged weapons and stealth abilities.
*Toughness: Endurance and ability to shrug off damage. Toughness provides a measure of the body’s ability to resist injury, toxin, and disease.
*Intellect: Ability to process and interpret information. Intellect measures a character’s ability to process, retain, access and creatively interpret information. Also determines their skill with tech and medicine.
*Willpower: Determination and strength of will. Willpower gauges a character’s mental fortitude and determination. Also demonstrates their Psychic Mastery.
*Fellowship: Force of personality. Fellowship determines a character’s empathy and social awareness, as well as the ability to manipulate social situations to their benefit.
*Initiative: Reflexes and reaction speed. Initiative is a measure of how quickly a character can react to dramatically changing situations; it is also a demonstration of their skill with weapons.
*Speed: Movement speed. Speed determines how fast a character is able to move over a distance and also governs how fast they are able to attack or dodge an opponent.

It should be noted that these stats represent the "base" for each species and will not likely represent many of the named characters, who tend to be exceptional examples of their kind. This list does not show the effects of either psychic enhancements, sorcery or any other type of Warp based shenanigans, as these tend to last for only short periods of time.

These numbers should not be treated as law, but more as guidelines that show a rough idea of how GW thinks they should be represented. When interpreting how these species stack up to each other it would be a good idea to use the humans as a base.
:*Strength: Humans can achieve a Strength max of 8; England's Eddie Hall currently holds the deadlift record of 500kg, which we will use to show the max strength level that a human in 40k can achieve (you can increase this if you want). Using the numbers provided we can roughly estimate that an Eldar Ranger can potentially deadlift up to 437kg, a Space Marine can deadlift 625kg, but an Ork Nob and Primaris can deadlift up to 750kg. It is likely the number is higher due to DAoT gene engineering done to the entire species and natural evolution.
:*Intellect: Humans can achieve an Intellect max of 8; Terence Tao was recorded to have an IQ of 230 (increase as you see fit). A Kommando could potentially have an IQ of around 201, whilst an Eldar Corsair or Chad-Marine could have an IQ of 288. While most Necrons are basically mindless machines, the ones who can think are shown to be some of the smartest things in the Galaxy, bar almost none.
:*Speed: Humans can achieve a Speed max of 8; Usain Bolt has been recorded at 28mph (it has been theorized that the human body has the potential to reach speeds of up to 40mph). Using the current recorded speed Orks Boyz could come in at about 25mph, with Mini-Marine at 31mph and a Warlock reaching speeds up to 35mph.
:(None of these numbers are hard facts and we are also basing the comparison at the upper end of human ability not the human average)

==See Also==
* [[Alienhunters]]
* [[Dark Eldar]]
* [[Eldar]]
* [[Hrud]]
* [[Kroot]]
* [[Monstergirls]], which is what happens when xenos meet [[Rule 34]].
* [[Necron]]
* [[Nicassar]]
* [[Old Ones (Warhammer)|Old Ones]]
* [[Orks]]
* [[Q'Orl]]
* [[Rak'gol]]
* [[Saharduin]]
* [[Slaugth]]
* [[Tau]]
* [[Tyranids]]
* [[Vespid]]

==External Links==
* [http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?t=11125 Ultimate Lesser Xenos List]

{{Important Species in 40k}}

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Xenos]]