Who here actually likes the Tau?

Who here actually likes the Tau?

>that gif
noice.

I like tau. I like shooty armies and their aesthetic is cool.

Combined arms, cool tech, an army that's not a ragtag mob that needs politcal officers to function. Of course I like them.

Me. I unapologetically, unironically enjoy the tau. Their fluff, their aesthetic, their play style, their rules, etc.

The only turn off for me is the melee thing, everything else is rad though.

Imagine how awesome it would be if they brought in the demiurg to be allies with them (space dwarves) they mine space for....stuff. Dwarves running around in terminator level suits with thunder hammers and siege shields, or siege drills.

ya i dont mind the tau. i like em.

Rad

Well until there's another shooty faction with flexible hard hitting elites and cool robots who aren't grimdark retards, I'm sticking with Tau.

They're pretty neato, seeing them while passing by the GW store at a mall actually got me into 40k

I don't play the game, but I'm into modelism and I ended assembling and painting my little bro's Tau army, I kinda dig them.

I liked the Tau before the recent fluff (mostly 7th Edition) making them, in my eyes, far too unbeatable, while also killing the Auxilliary fluff and hyping up Suits to be the bestest technological designs ever capable of being made to do anything amazingly.

Not sure if that counts.

I love having an alien army that I can engage in trench warfare with and shooting the fuck out of them.

By the Emperor.. I want to purge this thread...

I'm pretty sure there's only two kinds of people as far as enjoying Tau are concerned.

One, the people who are Gundam fans and can only see that far into them by being oblivious, intentionally or not

Two, the people who play tabletop with them who are only in it for the next 0 effort top tier army, or who are in it to make others rage

My experience has only led me to meet these two kinds of people. People who say they enjoy the space commie aspect and the "quality" of writing in their books fall under the second category

Any army that lets the Guard affix bayonets is okay with me

>My experience has only led me to meet these two kinds of people.
You hang around shhitty people then.

I like their tanks and basically everything smaller than a Crisis Suit.

>Best looking tanks in 40k.
>Fire Warriors and Pathfinders have a cool style.
>Drones are awesome.
>Not technologically retarded.

But...

>Not technologically retarded, but still for some reason make their "greatest" war machines bipedal walkers (that aren't walkers though) instead of anti-grav based.
>Crisis Suits are meh, might be passable with a not retarded foot design.
>Literally every other suit is pants on head retarded.

i hang around Veeky Forums when talking about 40k stuff mostly
but i guess you're still right

Yo.

the tau do not and will never belong in the 40k setting

remove tau

REMOVE TAU

The tau seem pretty chill.

And the only ork players I have ever met were very quiet kids and assholes, do you know what it mean?
Absolutely nothing.

I've played tau for 6 years, 7 this Christmas, yeah I like 'em, but in recent fluff they've been screwed over, they should develop hyper tech bullshit because they don't have enough worlds to build tonnes of low quality shit like guard. And I really don't think any battlesuit should have got bigger than the upgraded XV88. If the tactics relied more so on advancing fire warriors with flanking XV8'd and Vespids, with kroot appearing out of forests, or gliding into battle then holy cow would they be more fun to play against

Also the Orwellian theme needs to be played up more, oh you thought you were saving the people of Kaurava from certain death, nope forced sterilisation programs like in SG1, and when the population riot they're massacred and replaced by tau colonists overnight
dark Eldar experimenting on tau is another theme that should be played up with hypno therapy and civil wars

I love tau. I love giant robots and having an army that feels like it's made up with professional soldiers. I don't really play though just collect and read.

Hurr Durr 1984 Tau is dumb, but if you insist, it should be clear delineation.

>Aun'va leads the Ethereal council and believes that to survive, the Greater Good must be decided for the people, rather than something everyone strives for as a united whole and willingly sacrifices for.
>O'Shovah discovered this perversion of the Tau'va and rebelled. He doesn't know what the right path IS, but he knows it's not what Aun'va is forcing on the Tau.
>Aun'shi is one of the few Ethereals (much less an influential one) who holds to the old beliefs of the Tau'va and strives to keep the empire true to its original path. He doesn't openly rebel, because he does not think that splitting the Tau like that would serve the Greater Good, but remains a thorn in Aun'va's side, who can't vanish him, due to his popularity with the Fire Caste

Who /4 riptides/ here?

I do, but perhaps for all the wrong reasons:

Ever since their arrival, 40k fags have been whining about how they don't fit in with the rest of the 40k universe. And it's this collective asspain is why I like them so damn much.

Plus they're one of the few armies that actually use guns to kill people at a distance, as opposed to just using them for something to do while charging towards the inevitable hand-to-hand clusterfuck.

I like Kroot
Kroot mercenary min-codex when

I like them because they're a tacit admittance by GW that the 40k setting fuckin sucks

I like 4th ed tau.

I don't like the current glut of suits.
I liked it when Tau was about being the Star Trek federation faction with races working together.

I love them but only because they are the only ones trying to advance technology and are the only ones that actually try diplomacy.

Kroot are great. Its like the Tau version of CIA backed south American death squads.

I like Farsight

but his anime squad is funny as fuck

I like it when they get their shit kicked in. Does that count?

I prefer kreat Knarlock with riders though.
Also, new units? Would there be a place for a kroot vehicle?
I want some sort of elite viet-kroot predators to fight Marbo. Mercenary equipment options and pseudo shamanistic look.

I thought the DoW tau are ebil too thing was pretty dumb honestly.

I do. They make all the other factions look incompetent. If I could change 40k I'd make the Emperor Tau and have them stomp everything in their great crusade.

I want them to be full real politic. They won't fuck you up for no reason or by pure hatred, but will if there is a point. They may also be nice and generous, but for totally utilitarian reasons. They would also believe in soft power: can't get [planet] to join the greater good? Well, if there is no rush, get a trade deal for now, we will see in time...

I'm actually not a huge fan of their battlesuits or most vehicles, but I love their drones, guns and infantry armor.

I too shall mimic the majority here, as I enjoyed the old Tau when they weren't just Riptide and Battlesuit spam.

Viable Piranhas and Demiurge auxiliary squads when?

Beside some of their vehicle design they're pretty cool. They definitely need to improve fluff tho.

Tau Bismark, fuck yes

The empire better fall apart because of some fool thing in the ghoul stars then. With Tau Bismarck fired by a Tau Wilhelm.

Pretty much this. The high-tech feel of their stuff is fun for a change in 40k. I like stealth, crisis, and broadside suits but the seemingly endless stream of new super-heavy prototype suits is a bit meh.

Having fun with them in Armada especially the Demiurg ships.

They're not animu enough. I'll add some samurai armor to mine once I get to Tau.

Where does this lie that Tau suits and mecha look like Japanese mecha come from?

me

I want to see some filthy human traitors filling out the ranks from conquered worlds.

Some quick breeding race of auxiliaries who specialise in suicide vest charges would be good too.
One death killing many.
For the greater good.

so basically a tau version of penal legions but without criminals?

Yep.
Made up of believers.
People who, when it came to drinking the blue kool aid drank the whole jug and demanded more.

I've always liked the Tau. I thought it was neat that they were the good guy underdogs who were clearly in over their heads. It was a good little splash of variety. Big shooty guns are always fun too.

I'll never understand the people who feel the need to take sides on these things. I think all the 40k factions are pretty cool with their own unique selling points.

I very much prefer to not play glorious Space North Korea.

Space Japan.

I'd like to see even fire warriors becoming their rarely deployed elite force with their armies being mainly auxiliaries with the rate they're expanding.

Nah, it's Space North Korea.

Not enough casual warcrimes to be Space Imperial Japan.

Hate the tau, love the kroot.

Since when the fuck has the faction embodying the aspects of Imperial Japan, Ancient Han China, and Modern Best Korea been the "Good guy underdogs"?

They have better propaganda, and you fell for it pretty heavily man.

I stopped playing 40k right when the Tau were brand new, and I liked them more back then. Back when they were a big fish in a small pond, that had no idea what they were walking into. Back when they were firewarriors, kroot & skimmers, with suites being elite units brought out for emergencies. Back when it was implied they'd get all kinds of diverse alien auxiliaries, so you could proxy the various unnamed minor empires at the fringe of the empire.

Now, reading through their fluff its like ascended fanboys have been pushing fanfiction wank for the last couple years.

WTF happened? Did Matt Ward decide he liked blue xenos better than blue marines?

This!

When I was first introduced to Tau and their lore, I thought it'd be a great combination Tau core units and their allies. More than just Kroot and Vespid allies everynow and then.

If only they were more like the Covenant...

>army is able to take DNA of races it's has killed.

It's such a cool concept that's wasted in fluff and lore.

Tau were totally bottom teir underdogs originally. Not just in the fluff either.

>>Best looking tanks in 40k.

>not liking space panzer VI

Love their models, hate their fluff.

>that
>panzer 4

What's wrong with their fluff?

I like the Tau!

They're like the covenant of 40k

The Tau came out around the time that Gundam Wing was being aired on the Cartoon Network in the UK. To the younger players, who are never fully aware that the entire setting is a deliberate knock-off of various 80's sci-fi, this similarity was a huge deal.

Over time it became a meme that combined with general saltiness about anime culture to produce some really shitty posts online and cringeworthy rants instore.

The meme mostly died away as a source of raw emotion during in the 4th and 5th editions, when Tau were a bottom tier army that was barely supported.

Then it came back saltier than ever from the 6th edition onward, when buttmad tournament losers needed an excuse for their failure.

And that's the history of Tau shitposting.

As someone who only knows about 40k through cursory glances into the lore, the Tau are the most appealing because MECHA.

Tau are great

I like the Tau, but I'd like more evidence of their Benefactors pulling the strings behind their good fortune. You can even keep the mystery and just leave suspicions among the higher ranks of the Inquisition.

...

Different user, but I personally hate modern (note: pretty much explicitly modern) Tau fluff on most levels for a plethora of reasons, the main ones being:

>They get away with far too much shit in a similar manner to Space Marines (which is also bad), performing risky or outright stupid manoeuvres, advances in technology or otherwise general acts while not only being punished for it, but being granted praise for their ingenuity
>They used to be tenacious underdogs but, in modern fluff, have explicitly been shown to be capable of not only holding their own against, but outright defeating any threat that comes their way, including Necrons, Space Marines and Eldar, painting their military (which is constantly improving) as nothing short of top-tier
>Their military is top-tier for entirely logical reasons, but this in itself is a problem when compared to the general narrative, their commanders are amazing, their troops are amazing, their technology is amazing, their tactics are amazing and their philosophy is basically proven to be right, superior to all others, this has no place in a narrative about conflict
>A lot of the older Tau fluff is slowly being phased out in theme, a drastic lack of auxilliaries and their once unique combat/tactics being replaced by 'Suits suit suits' that can perform any role, removing the need for clever tactics and writing, while additionally spamming the words "perfectly coordinated strategies," every other paragraph, how this can be considered good writing for conflict is beyond me
>They've gotten the Ultramarines treatment, retconning some losses into victories, other losses into pyrrhic victories, pyrrhic victories into resounding victories and adding more of such to their timeline, effectively, the Tau went from a believable struggling race to an almost undefeated powerhouse in the space of a Codex due to some completely unnecessary changes

Ironically, the opposite of the likes of Necrons and Tyranids. Who went from galaxy threatening big bads to just as likely to fail as humanity or eldar.

I can appreciate that. So their victories should be more hard won, with the feeling their naive optimism is being replaced with grim pragmatism?

It almost seems like a faction-war has been brewing within GW's writing department, with favoured factions of the small team of consistent writers retconning some races into the ground and ascending others to be the new powerhouses, even for the cases of Necrons and Tau, who have completely switched roles in the narrative (to a degree) for virtually no reason.

Tau fill the role that humans fill in most scifi opera: young, brash and energetic race new to the scene of the galaxy quickly advancing in rank and power.

Naive optimism is fine, there is absolutely no issue with the general themes, philosophies and ideas of the Tau as a faction. The only problem is their naivety is never punished these days and often carries them to victory. They have basically no weaknesses and those they do have are virtually never mentioned (hypothetically every time the Imperials attack a Tau planet they should gain void superiority no problem, forcing the Tau to be clever, but no, the Air Caste hold on and let the named Commander outplay the Imperials every battle because he's above logical consequences, for example) which is further pushed into the ground by everything about them being described as practical, helpful, logical or generally superior.

They also need to get the same treatment as anyone else when the big threats like Necrons come to town, not 'tenaciously push the invaders back' or whatever.

You're talking 6th/7th edition fluff, man. Once upon a time GW intended them to be genuinely well intentioned, like some naive Star Trek federation that stumbled into the wrong neighborhood.

They've since become a mix of Orwellian/Brave New World dystopian, but I remember those old days. That was actually when I still played them. I still think it's neat now, but I had liked that contrast.

Inb4 forced sterilization- that meme got one mention in a game from a franchise that also brought us Khornate sorcerers.[/spoilers]

I personally believe GW gave them the ultramarine treatment because retards were constantly spouting about them being insignificant.
Congrats you all played yourselves and now they are truly a threat to be reckoned with.

Minus the xeno coalition thing the Mechanicus is far more like the Covenant then other factions.

>mfw I just started playing Tau a few months ago
>mfw I have no interest in any suit bigger than the Broadsides
>mfw I fucking love the Piranha
>mfw I will literally never win because I refuse to use Riptides
>mfw I have no face

I wish auxillaries were worth a shit now. I love the Kroot I do have but I'd love an army of them with only mild Tau support instead of them only being a troop choice.

I enjoy the aesthetic of Fire Warriors and the vehicles. The suits look weird to me, but Riptides and Ghostkeels look fine. The superheavies and the Crisis suit just look weird.

on all levels except physical, Imma ork
I say, tau are ok

I'm just disappointed that GW refuse to apply the grimdark to them too.

They're Space North Korea! That should be grimdark as fuck!

I don't see it

Heavily regimented militaristic culture, caste system, deification of leaders, obsession with "The Greater Good".

Is this not the political situation already?

the thing is north Koreas propaganda is to distract from how shit the country is while the tau have pretty good standards of living and the government is overall well run their propaganda sounds more like Victorian era propaganda to promote the mission to civilize savage and bringing enlightenment ideals

That's the point I was making. If GW wanted them to fit in by painting them with a bit more grimdark, it wouldn't be a huge reach at all, and everyone (myself included) who complains about how they stand out too much from the other 40k races would be satisfied.

I used to play them back when I played 40k in 2007ish. What's changed since then?

Tau are pretty cool. Especially Red Tau.

To be fair, the narrator of Dark Crusade and Soulstorm was a imperial scholar. He clearly was biased against xenos.

Yeah, but on the other hand?

Fuck you whiners.

The Orwellian part of the Tau is dumb. What we really need is more story of ill-fated Tau naivety.

I never got why people thought Brave New World was dystopic. Sure, it's a bit of a false utopia, but the vast majority of people are happy and productive, the government appears to be operated by intelligent, reasonable and well-meaning individuals, and those unhappy or unwilling to go along with the status quo are offered the choice to join one of the more remote yet comfortable enclaves full of similarly-atypical people where restrictions are relatively lax. It's not perfect, but it's a far cry from 1984.

They're the only thing in 40k I do like.

I want less Orwell, more space samurai.

Mass Fire Caste starvation in times of peace while the Earth and Water Castes grow rich, an entire Sept committing soduku because an Ethereal gets a chill up his spine, and complex politics based on falsifying family trees.

I mean, the Third Sphere is basically the invasion of Korea in the 1700's.

They should represent what Mankind was during the beginning of the Dark Age of Technology. In all its glory and horror. Closer to Brave New World than 1984. Use cloning, genetic engineering, AI in every corner, medically clean and all of that. Without overt oppression or brutality but unnaturally efficient and something it feels like wrong.

I one Riptide, only because I like the model.

One of each Battlesuit is fine.

But muh waifu are Piranhas and Ghostkeels.

Visible pilots really do it for me as a modeler.

The Imperium is space Better Korea, as stunted tech shows.

They're Bretonnians. Lileath is their patron.

I prefer white and black. Or orange and black, with black as the dominant color.