Wilfred Owen said:

They all but made themselves extinct when they had their massive space orgy and made slaanesh, I doubt that they'd be able to unless each and every eldar morphs into Eldrad and pulls some massive space elf dickery and make, I dunno, ork-tyranid-necron hybrids decend upon terra or something.

Zamnil Blackaxe said:

Actually, I think I have my Deathwatch campaign worked out now, this is gonna be awesome.

Wilfred Owen said:

Well, their philosophies are identical, except that the Shadows want to "temper in the fires of war" all of the races, while the Isstvanians are only concerned with humanity.  And, I did say I thought of them as a "metaphor" for the Isstvanians, or vice versa. 

Sister Cat said:

Not at all, Sister Cat, it's all good! I must admit I'd only watched a few episodes of Babylon 5, so I probably wasn't on a sound footing with my metaphor!

Lightbringer said:

Well, the Shadows were my B5 heroes ... coolness in a can.  I mean, they created the Techno-mages for crying out loud! 

So, I probably got a little overly-defensive on their behalf. 

But I really can see the correlation that Adam pointed out, the ancient, hidden menace to all right-thinking folk everywhere.  And ones that turn up in the darnedest places. 

Tau.

I just want to crush Tau.

BYE 

H.B.M.C. said:

     "Crush the enemy. See them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women."

     - Conan the Barbarian

     While  I don´t understand exactly WHY, the idea of exterminating some Tau pleases me too. It just feels...right .

    ( After I introduce the Levitating Trash Cans aka Daleks to the Kill-Team. )

Chapter Chaplains General Warning:

If your answer to the question above is anything else than "Whichever I am ordered to" or "All of them" you should immeadeatly report to your local chaplains office for purity-councelling. Do not let the heretical thoughts grow in your mind in absense of light. Purge the unclean doubts from your heart. Seek enlightenment and attend to regular prayer services.

Orcs... I'd like to crush lots and lots of orcs.

Give me a powerfist or T-Hammer and pitch me a couple of Deff Dreadz or a Killer Kan.

Hmm... Tough one.

Tau: For being too damn upstard for their own good

Eldar: For failing to die out in due time

Tyranids: For being ugly and eating worlds

Necrons: Damn machine things

Orks: It's fun to shoot them and watch their limbs twitch

Mmm, love all the Tau jealousy in here. It is ok, you'll eventually go from jealousy to acceptance and humanity will enter a new golden age of prosperity aided by the Greater Good :)

BrotherAtrox said:

Good answer, good answer!

But seriously though, if I ever get the gumption to run a pure 40k RPG  instead of my homebrew disaster; the races I would send the PCs after the most would be the following:

- Orks: Cause they're big, stupid, and their ridiculous populations ensures you can always have a random Orky warship show up when it's the least convenient.  Plus if I get enough of them together, I can have a battle that could go on for days.

- Dark Eldar: Because they're pyschopaths, pirates, and all sorts of things that make for good, utterly repulsive villains.

- Those Slaught dudes: They're certainly interesting enough in a Lovecraftian sort of way and I certainly could have a great deal of fun making the party filter through "plots within plots."

- Necrons:  Not a major contender for something I'd throw at the party when I'm feeling sadistic but definitely an option if I want to teach them a lesson in futility.

For a game of intrigue and horror I would do: Slaught (I'm actually doing up a campaign for them right now)

For a fighty campaign I would do: Necron (zombie/lich-like machines are just fun.  And they are a pain to take down.  Sounds kind of fun)

For a RPing heavy campaign I would do: Tau (played right against the natural ingrained moral values of the PC's you can do some fun with this)

For a space-based campaign I would do: Eldar (invading and destroying Craftworlds is just too much to pass up on)

For a silly and humor based campaign I would do: what else? ORKS!! (and yes they would pain the Emperor red to make him go faster)

 Tyranids.

Firstly, they've got all kinds of grody biomechanical body-horror potential.  If you've never read up on critical analyses of the first Alien movie (I recommend either feminist or marxist analysis, or preferably both), you're missing out.  I will rewrite the fluff on 'nids to make them much more like the original xenomorphs, and they will leave my players feeling disgusted and horrified.  Did you know that in the original scripts, there wasn't an alien Queen?  When the bog-standard xenomorphs cocooned people to the walls, enzymes or retroviruses or something would actually transform that person slowly into a face-hugger egg, while they were still alive.  This is why the face-huggers appeared to be sort of cobbled together out of bones and organs.  

Further, you can use gene-stealer cults to do all kinds of hidden-heretical Shadows over Innsmouth type stuff.  And you can have real holy-shit serious bug-hunts with some of the more gigantic tyranids as well.  Oh, yeah, guys, you better track down that gigantic sonofabitch and kill it before it starts laying eggs in people.  

Also, there are a lot of Tyranids that are actually quite intelligent while still being utterly inhuman and alien, so there's that possibility.

To sum up: The Tyranids are a cross between Xenomorphs and lovecraft's Great Old Ones.  You can do cult/heresy investigations, desperate time-pressured bug-hunts, cosmic and body-horror, basically whatever you want.

The Eldar.

My brother's Eldar have been nothing but a constant source of pain for me in 40k. It's time to balance the scales.

Besides, pulse lasers, bright lances, star cannons, and the utterly reviled scatter laser are all the reason I need to hate them.