What does Veeky Forums think of the tau?

That would be cool from a fluff standpoint. But seriously their rules should be tuned down and auxiliaries should be given a chance to shine.

Op here, good point
10/10

-army that sucks as cc
-literally only one model with a power sword (farsight), and/or powerfist equivalent (onager gauntlet)
-not a single Tau model actually modeled wielding a "katana"
>weeb shit with the katanas
- m'kay...

Personally liked them as they represented a more typical military xenos army to face off against the Imperium, and actually looked the part.

Eldar, are rainbow wearing tarts that just run away through portals.
D-Eldar, just pirates running through portals too.
Orks, just a chaotic green mass showing up randomly
Necrons, just undead robots that don't really give a fuck.
Tyranids, hive-mind, all or nothing mentality NPC-race.

The fluff is supposed to be that the Imperium is trying to hold it's borders from various xenos empires pushing in, etc. Tau and Orks are the only one's that really fit the bill as constant threats trying to take territory. Tyranids only show up in mass once in a while and get fucking wiped out. Eldar and D/Eldar are too few and don't give a fuck about territory. Necrons are just sprinkled everywhere and batshit crazy at this point.

But sure let's cut out Tau, because imaginary Katana's are too weeb. It'll just all be on the Orks to be the constant xenos invaders. Look at the GW page, xenos armies make up like 1/4 of the armies listed know. Impeirial shit sells so much that GW might as well create another great civil war so that Imperial factions can just bash their heads against each other.

REEEEEEEEE COMMIES GET OUT

They already have Slingshot Drives, IIRC. The limit on their expansion is population and neighbors.

Two* swords. Playing Farsight Enclaves, you can give another commander the Fusion Blade.

I liked 3rd Edition Tau.
>Big Fish, Small Pond
>Technologically advanced, but still perplexed by some of the ancient gear the Imperium has
>Genuinely altruistic and tolerant, but with subtle hints of the totalitarianism lurking beneath the surface
>Lots of weird client states
>Hopelessly naive

Basically, I think they work as a faction to be an example of how not everyone in the 41st millennium is a raging dickhead 24/7. There needs to be a clearer emphasis on how unwittingly vulnerable they are, and how, on the galactic scale, they really aren't significant at all.
I always wanted there to be some fluff about the Imperium launching a massive assault against the Tau. Colonies get wiped out, the Fire Caste is decimated, it's a defeat of such a horrific nature that it fundamentally scars the Tau's cultural psyche and deeply shapes their attitude towards military operations from then on... and then mention that from the Imperium's perspective, this was basically a slightly disproportionate punitive raid undertaken with a barely remarkable amount of resources. It gets filed away in their annals as just another engagement, only remarkable because they had to use somewhat more force than they're used to against an enemy of the Tau's size.

I think that more important than being good, they must be genuine. They want the best out and for everyone. They may be wrong about what it mean or how to achieve it but they should be genuinely sincere about that.
I would love a story that explore that, I don't know maybe a political struggle between an ethereal and a imperial noble where every dirty tricks is used but in the end the ethereal staggers the Imperial but revealing that yes, he truly want the best for everyone and is resolutely disinterested.

Also I don't necessarily mind them winning, but I'm bothered by how GW make them win.
For example, if you want to give them victories, they could a campaign against the orks where they are dwarfed by the size and strength of their enemies and only barely pull out a win by playing the antagonisms between different boss or nobz. Muh unity and all.

Or even against the Imperium, they could have some "lose the battle, win the war" case where they get their asses kicked on the field but ultimately win by turning the local populations against the Imperium.
There should be more stories about tau diplomacy in general, would help them to not look like hypocrite when almost all of their expansions seem to be by force.

>What does Veeky Forums think of the tau?

I like um'.

I unironically think they're the least retarded faction a long with the Orks and the Tyranid..... With that said though please consider that I think ALL Warhammer Factions are needlessly retarded or edgy to the point of deviant-art-tier-writing and theatrics.

I just think the Tau just reign it in enough to be bearable and not just, "me rolling my eyes, okay, yeah, sure, the warpdrive flies through demon space powered by a quadapaleagic in the space-furnace and 25% of everybody gets gobbled up by demons or raped by demons and then they go fight the space-elves who clone themselves, etc.. etc.. or the space mummies who hate.. etc.."

They exist. I don't really mind them one way or the other as a faction and at least aesthetically they look cool. They're really strong crunch-wise right now though and that brings out a lot of powergaming faggots who just field unpainted netlists for easy wins, though, and that's fucking obnoxious. Can't really blame that on the faction themselves though - that's just a combination of the game being huge as fuck with slow updates to literally dozens of armies and GW generally being shit at balancing or even paying attention to said armies.

I would like them if they toned down the mary-sue and focused on either making them a idealistic but naive faction that is inevitably doomed or increasing the 1984.

Only thing I would want changes is emphasizing their practically in warfare. They need way fewer giant robots. The Riptide should be like a Titan to them, and as far as they're willing to go, because anything bigger would sacrifice mobility.

They should be viewing everything through the lens of what a race in standard 'realistic' sci-fi would expect, and approach everything with those assumptions in mind. Sometimes, it should bite them in the ass, but if anything they shouldn't be too scared of retreating. If they take a world and the Imperium tries to take it back, there should be more instances of them retreating early with plans to get it back later.

>weeb shit with the katanas

Arn't the Tau's weebness Mecha based?

The Eldars are the ones with curved swords and surikens

The Tau are objectively the worst race in all of 40k. Bar none. I'd rather have a fucking Tyranid watch my back than a fucking Tau.

I like them a lot, they were my first army before I picked up Dark Angels and got hooked on that gaytrain. DA's are cool though and user's shouldn't hate on each others army choice

Tau are cool though, fairly unique in the setting, do cool things, and if GW didn't GrimDark them up to keep all the faggots from sperging as hard as they were Tau would have been 10/10.

Also this, this is a huge reason I play Tau, trigging hypersensitive anons.

They're ok, but I think they need someone to put them in their place.
Guilliman, please.

Oh, Lord, I want the tau to start shit with some custodes (now that they're being deployed) thinking they're just space marines.

chill kitten, They would hurt you, they are have a Galaxy away

The Greater Good isn't really communism, just collectivism, which can exist outside of a communist economic system.

>I always wanted there to be some fluff about the Imperium launching a massive assault against the Tau. Colonies get wiped out, the Fire Caste is decimated, it's a defeat of such a horrific nature that it fundamentally scars the Tau's cultural psyche and deeply shapes their attitude towards military operations from then on... and then mention that from the Imperium's perspective, this was basically a slightly disproportionate punitive raid undertaken with a barely remarkable amount of resources.

So like how the War of 1812 is literally one of the most important wars in Canada because they fended off an invasion and kept themselves from becoming conquered by the US, while in the US it's a relatively minor war of importance?

Totally goes against the whole point of their fluff. The Tau are supposed to be an example of the thousands upon thousands of minor xenos that the Imperium deals with.

I really like mechanically pewpew armies that rely on some different kind of unit keeping them from getting splattered if the enemy gets into melee.

...

The average Canadian neither knows nor cares about the war of 1812. They never even mentioned it in history class.
>t. Canuck

Really? We came really close to making you guys a state.

We came really close to saving Canada from itself.

They annoying, considering how young and technologically inferior they are, they should be stamped out by a single flotilla of the Imperial navy

If you had succeeded we'd probably remember it.

Fucking hell, I can feel the heat from here.

But they're not.

They're made out to be a major player in their area who is only growing more powerful as time passes.

>in their area
A dozen planets in a galaxy of billions.

And when you remember the Damocles Crusade, that just makes the Tau even more impressive. It's not about size, it's about how they use it.

The crusade that ended in Tau victory because the Imperium got distracted by the much larger threat of Tyrannids?

Eldar don't have katanas though.

>It's not about size, it's about how they use it.
Such is the power of retcons user.

They still won, that has to mean something to the people who actually live in fluff. Well, the Xeno's anyway, can't be everyday some little come-from-nothing Empire in the middle nowhere actually wins against the Imperium, no matter the reason.

It's pretty easy to think that the win got them a huge amount of weight to throw around.

If any of this is ever even brought up in lore at all, I can't recall it ever being brought up.

>implying its not a shitpost

Thanks for the (You), anyways

The Tau represent how a young and minor race can hold ground in the 40k universe.

By being tightly bound, well organized, keeping their heads down and their ambitions reasonable.

Their purpose in the meta-narrative is to express why the Imperium doesn't just wind back to hold a segmentum or smaller area with absolute control; By allowing the madness of the Imperium to continue, they hold immesurable amounts more control over the galaxy, compared to the Tau, who hold less than a hundred worlds.

The Tau are at the limits of their ambition, not because they lack ambition, but because they will never loosen their grip to throw out more net.

Though I suppose that could change if more races joined them like the Kroot did.

The only way the Tau could expand beyond their slow creep into the cosmos is if they gave up on being Tau.

The Greater Good and all their philosophy and propoganda would lead any race through the stars, and in another universe, they'd be flying around their own little Enterprises and prime directiving this shit.

But in 40k, The stars want you dead, curiosity is poison, and faith can save you when all is lost.

The addition of the Kroot expanded the Tau empire only as far as the Kroot held: Eventually you run out of non-aligned races to integrate.

40k isn't supposed to be a serious setting, it's more like paranoia then dune.

The "Greater Good" doesn't mean be altruistic. Their not the fucking Federation going around and making everyone play nice. It's "hey you know we could feed like 5 planets if we cut out all these farmers vacation time" It's "fuck your red hot anti-grav speeder, we're making more battle suits".

The whole "greater good" is anti-individualism, pro-community, that's the jist of it. And if your not cool with that they just kick your ass out of the way and take what you've got.

>Their not the fucking Federation going around and making everyone play nice.
Which the Federation did by force while calling out anyone who did the same, the Federation and the Tau are quite similar in that they're advanced and are benevolent but only if they're in charge and you play by their ever more restrictive rules, and remember they're the good guys.

Tau were never hopelessly naive. They made use of a less aggressive rationale to justify their conquests, but ultimately they're still conquerors. They're not as malicious as other factions, but then, that's not saying much.

That wouldn't make them unique, though. If you brow beat the Tau into being the Imperium by another name and another aesthetic, their place in the setting is reduced to being a crisper looking, pure military.

What would be better, that would touch on the unsettling and potentially artifical nature of their rise to power would be for an Imperial Crusade to be cut to ribbons in the most horrendously bloody way imaginable, only for the Tau to emerge being as forthright and accepting of Imperial defectors as ever.

What I'm getting at is that the Tau are a galactic case of Uncanney Valley. That shit is not right. It literally should not be, and it shouldn't be out-dueling Crusades and Hive Fleets. So *why* is it?

Been collecting them since they first came. My first 40k army in fact.

The fluff is gay, the mechs are weeb, but I always wanted an alien empire themed faction for my W40K army so I made an army of kroots, gue'vesa, tau stealthsuits and tarellians converted from saurus kits and other xeno races from left-over components. The non-canon units/races are pretty underpowered so no players have complained when I've introduced them tabletop.

>tarellians converted from saurus kits

Are you the guy from that Tau site whose cadre has the light-blue accents?

Have the US actually ever won a war?

>attacking small south-american villages of about a 1000 people doesn't count

No

Seconded.

I like them. Its fine to dislike them but at this point its only contrarian grognards that are dedicated to championing the anti-tau bandwagon.

I like the Tau for the element of real politik they bring to the setting, being the only real power the imperium is shown having negotiations and power plays with. Ostensibly this occurs all the time in the background with minor xeno races the Imperium has decided aren't worth the resources of murdering yet, but we only ever SEE it with the Tau

Part of the issue is the Imperium - GW has never been clear on what it wants it to be. Space HRE, a sprawling cluster fuck of fuedal states connected by mutual religion, maze like politics and a central imperial figure? Or Space ROME, a sprawling cluster fuck of provinces united under a totalitarian good King emperor?

Obviously thematically, it leans more heavily on the later despite visually being the former. Which makes sense, because then you have the Orks who represent the barbarian, the hun, the savage. You have the Eldar who are the last great empire, the Greeks and Pheonecians and Macedonoans. You have the Necron who are the ancient and decayed good pharaoh's of the long dead civilization who was so advanced their feats seem impossible - your Egyptian and pre classical culture.

What does that leave the Tau as? The orientals, distant, mostly irrelevant. India, China, Araby, Nippon. Barely heard of, usually only via trade. Aside from the occasional border skirmish or adventurism never encountered.

Their only benevolent when you've got something to offer them. Their 1st colony was built on the ashes of a xenos race who joined them but mysteriously died off of some unknown disease, that just so happened to have no effect on Tau themselves.

I sincerely doubt the Tau, with their constant need for manpower, would wipe out a whole client species even if all they were good for was bitch work.

Now if the Tau have some mysterious benefactor who feels different, that's a possibility

>Now if the Tau have some mysterious benefactor who feels different, that's a possibility
ie. aetherials.

I agree with:
That it's nice to have a diplomatic side to the setting.

However, aesthetically and thematically, they seem out of place. Dirty barbarians, ancient aliens, baroque armor, conscript armies, and gritty magitek robots match up.

Didn't we have this thread last week
and the week before that
and the week before that
and the week before that...

Yeah, lets talk about space marines instead. We only have like 50 threads about them per week.

"The poctroon become the first sentient race to join the Tau Empire...within a few generations, disease destroys their indigenous population.
The Tau, whose physiology is fortunately immune to the plague, inherit the Poctroon homeworld, turning it into the prime world of ...Bork'an Sept. The Nicassar become the first race to join the Tau Empire and survive long enough to tell about it."
-Tau Codex

Yea, sure, the codex writers totally didn't hide anything between the lines there.

Fusion blades don't count. They're more like daggers really. Based on Fusion blaster, just limiting the energy beam to a shape of blade to be used in melee if need be.

>and it shouldn't be out-dueling Crusades and Hive Fleets. So *why* is it?
Because it didn't.
Damocles Crusade was halted to a standstil but not defeated, and only because their reinforcements get lost in the Warp.
Gorgon hive-fleet was a mere splinter, not a true hive-fleet, and it was defeated with a help of aforementioned imperial reinforcements that time-shifted 100 years forward due to warp-travel problems.
About the only major threats Tau defeated on their own were Ork Waaghs, and mostly because Tau military are almost purpose-bult for fucking up badly coordinated conventional armies Orks (and 90% of the Guard).

Can't we talk about the Q'Orl? Why doesn't GW make an army and codex out of them? Is it because they are bugs and we have nids already?

Wh40k has too shitty a ruleset to make it any fun to play. It should abandon being a wargame, and convert to skirmish game.

They should have a Dyson Sphere or two already. They represent what mankind during the Dark Age of Technology. Show this era, this Brave New World, in all its glory and horror.

nahhhh, I love the idea that DAoT stuff is so stellar and unmatched that other races can't understand why sometimes the Imperium is using that, and other times using a M1919.
Yeah for the brave new world stuff, I think that was always heavily implied for the anons who'd read more than shitty sci-fi novels, but I still think their tech should be fancier stuff of what we have right now, rather than the essential magitech of DaoT.

Isn't peak eldar and peak necron(tyr) tech like three head&shoulders above DaoT tech?

Back to back World War champions, lads.

>They represent what mankind during the Dark Age of Technology
During the earliest beginning of the DAoT, maybe. The Tau are nowhere near the required technology or infrastructure to build Dyson Spheres, Ring Worlds and the like.

Depends what book you're reading. In general general it goes Necron>Eldar>DAoT>Imperium>everyone else

But then you have Priests of Mars where a DAoT warship shoots THROUGH TIME

I don't mind them, but I've never actually felt compelled to buy any of their models, despite having some cool shit and that sexy new Vior'la scheme. Every other army has tempted me at some point or other, just not them.

Also, as got at, they're given way too much emphasis for a faction that doesn't have much influence beyond its little sphere of space and the immediate frontier around it. There's infinitely more reason for Hrud (a galaxy-spanning, pre-DAoT civilisation that has fought numerous wars with the Imperium since the Great Crusade) to be a playable faction.

On the contrary. We will be able to planet- crack Mercury for the construction of a Dyson swarm in a few centuries. Large scale automatitation is all that is needed. Theres already a plan of how to do it. The construction would tkaw 25/50 years.

The Tau have alread experimented with ways to collect the full power of a stars and are experimwnting witb starkilling weapons.

>The Tau have alread experimented with ways to collect the full power of a stars and are experimwnting witb starkilling weapons.
I always find it a bit odd that the more advanced factions are doing this shit in the background, and yet they're still so reliant on footsloggers to fight all their battles.

It never made sense to me how oldcron fluff was basically "Kill everything" and had control over hugely powerful starships and weaponry, yet still relied on avarage joebot to do most of the killing.

only as an allied detachment

That's how you make sure it's done right.

I think the Newcrons are more guilty of that. With shit like the World Engine, surely they could invent some more efficient way of dealing with less advanced enemies than throwing skelebots with (admittedly pretty bitchin' guns) at them?

The Oldcrons at least had a tendency to harvest enemies (and enslave them, according to some of the BL books they appeared in) rather than killing them all the time, so you could come up with a shaky justification for it based on that. Still, there are much more effective ways to round up meatbags for your experiments than skelebots.

>But in 40k, The stars want you dead, curiosity is poison, and faith can save you when all is lost.

I fucking like your interpretation, user.
The shortest, most straight-to-the-point explanation of 40k-logic vs. Real world-logic that I have seen yet.