The rules don't help, but a lot of what makes Tau irritating in 40k to veterans is how poorly they are written into the universe. 40k is a setting in which there really are no good guys - everyone is fighting for survival, and has long ago given up on being 'good' in exchange for just not dying.
Enter Tau, a noblebright race that's all for peace and harmony, with an empire devoid of crippling problems and a wonderful future ahead of them, noble leaders and just plain likable dudes as soldiers. Its an eyesore in a universe unique for daring to NOT have those things. It's like a slice of Star Trek dropped into the dystopian nightmare of a galaxy where hell bleeds into realspace.
There are seeds in the Tau lore that could, if expanded make them fit better - that the great society of theirs is a lie, that the ethereals are using mind control to brainwash the others, that they cover up genocide of undesirables - stuff that puts them more like a North Korea's propaganda village with windows painted on the walls on their fake houses. But GW's writers haven't really emphasized this, and it makes the race as a whole just annoying.
Jaxon Lewis
This is what I find so strange about myself. I love grimdark shit unironically, and yet I find myself most drawn to the groups in 40k that seem most outside of it.
Imperial Guard is also quite compelling to me. A bunch of unfortunate regular guys with a lot of guns against the nastiest shit in the galaxy.
Luis Collins
Is the R'varna worth it if you already have a normal Riptide and Y'vahra?
Robert King
The IG are conscripted by the Imperium through a planetary tax into a fighting force run by the most inefficient and unfeeling bureaucracy the galaxy has ever known. They are herded into ships, given rudimentary training by stern, remorseless commissars, practically whipped to the front lines, told to say their prayers, and climb over the bodies of their fallen to take a battlefield. Then, if they are not annihilated by the daemonic warpspawn, hulking warbeats, sinister xenos, or whathaveyou, they are probably going to sit on this hellhole for decades before the Imperium even remembers to pick them back up. Effectively, their lives are over. Ig fit very well in the 40k setting, because when the common man fights on its battlefields, he gets fucked one way or the other.
Just run a CAD. Limit yourself when it comes to the bullshit. Some people can, others just rationalize/justify why the NEED to field "X" unit(s).
If you cant genuinely put yourself in your opponents shoes, you arent mature enough to play Tau.
Josiah Russell
>with an empire devoid of crippling problems and a wonderful future ahead of them Except for the fact that the Tau empire is too small to survive in the long term. The only reason they survived as long as they have is that the Imperium views the nids as the more urgent threat.
Having each of your soldiers worth 100 enemy soldiers has you losing when the enemy sends 200 for every one of yours.
Cooper Green
>muh veteran opinion >muh grimdark
I was playing 2nd ed back in the early 90s. The Tau didn't 'ruin' 40k's pristine grimdark any more that the Eldar already did. Eldar are beautiful, elegant space elves in an otherwise mostly grimdark universe. Eldar hope to kill the Chaos gods and restore beauty and order to the galaxy. Eldar might kill humans and do some ruthless shit, but so do Tau. Tau are hegemonistic expansionists who manipulate and then strongarm other races. The Tau don't have problems, you say? They're a tiny empire with shit warp travel who are surrounded by immense alien forces that threaten to wipe them out. That's a pretty big problem for them.
Don't even get me started on the comical Orks. If you want something that deflates grimdark, Orks have been doing that since Rogue Trader.
40k has always been a clusterfuck of jarringly different themes and styles. To say that any one thing can break that, whether it's the Tau or not, is absurd.
Ryder Johnson
See, this makes me want to field IG more, partially because they are both A) grimdark as fuck and B) that is contrasted by me conceiving of IG soldiers having moments like those in the pic I posted above.
One of the things that makes groups like the Adeptus less appealing to me is that they seem to eat shit like world-consuming monsters for breakfast; they live in that element. It's the guardsmen that experience the insanity of 40K for what it truly is.
Thomas Walker
The Tau lore harps endlessly about their expansion and technological superiority. They may be small, but the fact that they "can't survive" never comes up, because GW is too busy Sue-ing them into the heralds of hope, justice, and prosperity. They beat the Cadian battlegroup sent to reclaim the Imperial territory they captured. They beat nids by "out maneuvering" and "out-adapting" them. They beat the Vostroyans. It gets old.
