If Tau are the weakest race, why can't anyone beat them?

Tau occupy a tiny region of space and yet continuously BTFO forces way bigger than than them. How the fuck do you stop them? Have Tau ever been blown out in the fluff?

Well, there was that time the Eldar fobbed the Ethereals off on them. That was a kind of BTFO.

Honestly, part of it is that GW has written themselves into a corner. The Tau can never lose too hard or they'll be completely wiped out.

Most of their failures have been in aggressive actions, less than ideal attempts at expanding their space and establishing new septs and so on, along with technological fuckups of various sorts.

They aren't the weakest, they're the youngest. When has gw ever said tau were weak?

Despite the campaigns making it seem like the Tau are rapidly expanding, the truth of the matter is the Damocles Gulf has pretty much been a back-and-forth border between the Imperium and Tau, every time they expand past it they get pushed back, and every time the Imperium tries to crusade into the Empire they get BTFO'd.

The only in-detail stories we get are the ones where the Tau win, mostly, but they have lost quite a few times, just in tucked away half-paragraphs.

because gw wants to keep selling models

I think OP meant weakest in terms of as an entire faction, in which case he's absolutely correct, but it doesn't really matter since nobody is focusing on the Tau with all their might anyway, usually because they're too busy fighting everyone else at the same time and believe their resources better spent elsewhere.

If the Tau appeared a thousand years earlier they'd have been stomped.

Every good game needs a token underdog. Tau are weak to 40k the same way the last seed in any sports playoffs are weak

I don't know, the imperial crusade launched in kauyon and montka was pretty huge and contained several space marine chapters including 2 first founding chapters. To really show how important this was, they even sent an execution force, something requiring the full vote of the high lords of terra. The imperium did direct its attention on the Tau with an appropriate sized crusade and still got BTFO on a single world

I have no issue with that philosophy and was one of the things that allowed me to feel as if the Tau actually fit into the setting in a weird way, they ignored all the 'dangers of technology' themes at the cost of not having any ancient superweapons or hypertech, just some practical and decent quality-over-quantity gear. They ignored the whole 'xenos can't be trusted, forget diplomacy' but their fluff was laced with times when that didn't work and they suffered for it. They struggled and had to fight for their beliefs inch by inch, with cost and determination.

The modern fluff just makes them look like a super faction that's the best at everything, though, with their better tech, better tactics, better soldiers, better commanders, better philosophies, better morality, better society, better ways of defeating enemies, and just in general better than anyone else, laughing at the retardedness of the 40k setting as if this were a realistic sci-fi but everyone else just took a nasty 100 IQ hit.

Except the contingency had already been placed to light the Damocles Gulf on fire, and the whole point was that taking the planet was supposed to send a message. It was clear that it wasn't an intent to conquer the Tau, but just to crush their advancement and then leave.

Even then, it didn't pay too much attention, if it really wanted to it could've sent ten times the forces, but they were better off used elsewhere, especially with the firewall contingency.

Tau should really just be sacrificed on the alter of plot. They are tiny and need to be rolled over to make room for another, more interesting faction.

Tyranids, Imperium, I don't care, just get rid of them. Let them have their heroic last stand and watch it all be for naught as their civilization crumbles.

I feel as if Tau need to be salvaged rather than deleted from the setting, go back to their earlier edition roots where they're actually struggling and pay the price for their philosophies instead of just being better than everyone else.

The Tau Empire should have been much larger and much older to justify the immense amount of tech, plot armor, and wank.

Everyone complains about marines but fail to realize Tau wank is as bad or worse, without the justification of a literal God emperor, Galaxy spanning empire, and 40000 years of development

Time and territory are all resources just as important as materiel and currency, yet Tau magically have insanely high resources per capita and technological development out of nowhere

But they can't. People are invested, both emotionally and financially, in them. Just removing them entirely would only make sense if the models stopped selling well... And from the amount of new stuff they've gotten over the years, apparently that's not the case.

That's never stopped GW from canning an army before and it won't stop them in the future. Tomb Kings and Bretonnia were two of the most loved factions in WFB and they went straight into the trash bin when AoS came out.

This. Tau wank is worse not necessarily because they get away with more, but because of the deeper consequences of what they get away with.

>Space Marines are the super-elite of Humanity that can get shit done, are more than a threat against even the most powerful of enemy forces, even if they're beatable, they're the transition to the top-tier of 40k armies
>Tau can make a better field combatant with half the resources in a fifth of the time using easier to make and maintain standard-issue stuff that can come off an automated factory

>AdMech lose knowledge all the time due to their obsession with the past, however, as an upside they are capable of using technology well above their paygrade in knowledge, unleashing the mighty Titans or world-shattering engines of the Omnissiah through dedication and massive amounts of resources that most factions might consider insane
>Tau just make shit that's almost as good, for a tenth of the resources, and is far easier to make, off the factory line

>The Imperium has to dedicate worlds of resources and a labyrinthine web of political connections to keep its war-engine running, pumping out dedicated soldiers by the hundreds of billions thanks to entire worlds dedicated to the process, at the cost of many things, resources and culture
>Tau just pull another Sphere of Expansion out of their ass because clearly their planets with half the population of the average Imperial world, of which they have fewer than a fully-grown Sector, are capable of just shitting out a couple billion soldiers at the drop of a hat

*ahem*

Orks are already the underdog. They can never win but you can never get rid of them either. Tau are just extraneous.

How would the Tau fare against the Indominus crusade plowing into their empire? Surely Guilliman is more than a match for Tau plot armor?

It's a lot easier to defend a small area.

Tau are just more efficient. The Imperium is massive but is wasteful and slow to react. Plus the Tau are motivated versus press ganged Guardsmen treated as cannon fodder. Sure, in another 20k years, the Tau probably will go through their own Men of Iron revolt but right now they're in their expansion phase.

Tau tend to lose against eldar, and Orks give them a pretty rough time as well. I don't think the Tau have ever been anything but BTFO by the Necrons.

Ghazghkhull and his Bullyboyz BTFO'd an entire Tau colony that had a lot experience fighting Orks in 704999.M41, as I recall.

Funny, for all the taus bullshit, they seem to suffer most under the Orks

Because the moment their plot armour drops this happens.

Fourth Sphere of Expansion got inside a Warp fissure and will probably be all over the galaxy. This will allow hte T'au to be in more campaigns, but also allow more catastrophic losses so long it affects the faraway colonies but not the Empire itself.

Meanwhile the Fifth Sphere of Expansion has enlarged the T'au Empire to an extend that you can now see it without zooming in. It has been a full century since Cadia.

I love the Tau, but making them so small was a mistake. If the Imperium loses a planet it's not a huge deal, if the Tau lose a planet it's a massive blow. The Tau essentially cannot suffer defeats on the same scale as the other factions, or else it cripples them as an effective force. So they're essentially forced into always winning crucial engagements, because if they don't they're gone entirely.

But user, Chaos has been deprived of attention for so long. The 4th Sphere Expansion will turn chaos so that Chaos can finally, at long last, appear in the fluff again.

Nah. The T'au have evolved/selectively breed and socially engineered to be resilient to Chaos corruption.

Resilience != to immunity. Who knows how long in their subjective time they were in the warp. And imagine all the crazy new models they could sell.

Nobody can afford to care about them enough to do something substantial about them.

Also plot armor.

Just give me updated units of these bad boys and half-spawn fire warriors being herded around by khornate Kroot

and forgot my image

>Orks are already the underdog.
>Orks just handed the biggest nid Hive Fleet in the fluff its ass on a plater and said "Come back if you want seconds"

I always just headcanonned that they controlled that whole expanse of the eastern galaxy that wasn't covered by the Astronomican - it was an area humans couldn't control, so the Tau spread out there (I also give them a few thousand more years - what does it matter, when half the setting seems to start at 30,000 and the rest is blank space?)

Not really sure what to do with that headcanon now with the new lore.

>what does it matter, when half the setting seems to start at 30,000 and the rest is blank space?

Because the Tau were crawling out of the ocean during 30,000

That's all Sautekh territory though, and they don't plan on giving it up.

That's the fluff as it stands, the conversation is about headcanon and hypothetical retcons/what-should-have-been.

Well, the alternative is endless REEEEEEEing at each other. But fortunately Veeky Forums seems to have mostly burned out on that a week or two ago. I fucking hated that stretch last month when Veeky Forums was rendered fucking unusable for 40k by badwrongfluff wars

The generals were female marine REEEEing all afternoon today. Even had a dedicated femarine thread up.

Would they have been awake a few thousand years ago? It could make for an interesting scenario even if they weren't - the Tau settle all these worlds, get torn through by two Tyranid fleets, and then these Necrons start rising up and destroying the heart of their space empire.

I don't really browse the main general too much, but the autistic shitfits were in every single 40k thread. Even 40krpg general, which tends to be a bastion of relative civility and far more open minded; collapsed into anarchy a few times.

>a bastion of relative civility and far more open minded

You mean a den of debauchery with your blank ex-SoB Rogue Traders and Eldar waifu having Inquisitors.

hive fleet kraken destroyed a huge number of tau planets. they only survived cuz imperials eldar and crons fought off the hive. thats pretty BTFO.

>female marine REEEEing all afternoon today. Even had a dedicated femarine thread up.
>I miss this madness while I'm at work
Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing...

To clarify, I wasn't saying the Tau should be starting off as the same time as the Imperium. As far as I understand it, in the canon the Tau start expanding around M38. I'd start them around M36, giving them a few thousand extra years to expand out into the galactic east, with a little more speed than their actual expansions took. I figure if humanity can take about 200 years to finish the Great Crusade, the Tau can manage a rough sixth of it in a couple thousand.

Damn that perfectly encapsulates why the faction is out of place.

The sheer incomprehension they had to titans and gargants, as to why any intelligent race would waste so much time, effort and resources on such a ridiculous behemoth, and their use of orbital assets was a great counter to the rest of the settings ridiculous over-the-top insanity. The Taros Campaign book was great, it really gave a much better look at the realities of 40k warfare than most of the drivel released recently-just compare it to the mont'ka/kauyon books.

M36 is a good choice because IIRC the Imperium was busy with some shit during that time. Vangogh or Apostasy or some shit.

>comparing Warp travel that ignores time and distance altogether to non-FTL

Try doing 1/6 of it in a couple million years.

what the fuck is wrong with that riptide?

They have FTL though

Cause guess what people really like to buy, hint it isn't aux aliens

Tau are fucking braindead.

i still have thirty fire warriors and two hammerheads and exactly nothing bigger than a broadside
I havent bought a model for two editions, i guess this is what happened to fantasy players

Really, nothing needs to be changed that much. The issue is that writers completely ignore or fuck up what should be the Tau's greatest assets, density and logistics. The Tau should be winning because they can quickly reinforce themselves with forces from nearby areas to make up for technological deficiencies while the Imperium is waging a war on the sparsely populated edge of it's territory. Add on to that an efficient industrial base, functional R&D capacity, and effective communications and you've got solid reasoning for the Tau being able to counter the Imperium.

Not during their first two expansions.

Tau can't ever fucking win because they have socialist hugtime morals in a grimdark universe where the other races are genetically/mechanically/magically engineered killing machines.

Because fluff writing is done on a volunteer basis, to ensure the biggest fanboys always get to write for their own factions.

Do you WANT another Cruddex?

Pretty much hit it on the head there.

>We just spent twenty years building an over the top, ridiculous setting, and now we're gonna hold it up to realistic standards
Genius.

It's fucking Mars Attacks

>Tau are motivated
I mean, the Tau have more effective brainwashing than the Imperium, I'll give you that.

Delet this

AK AK AK AK

>solving an outstretched nail with a hammer instead of an ICBM
>but now we get ICBMs too! Just 249.99 at your local Games Workshop!

But then there's the problem that the Tau can really only have fights on those terms. And it's hard to explain how they get involved in anything else - you can't have them fighting a few systems away, let alone across the galaxy. How is that fun for a wargame where you're supposed to be able to bash any couple factions together? Everything else can be everywhere or could be everywhere, but Tau.

That's why I think the Tau Empire should encompass a bigger area - not only does it allow them to take a hit, and if done right you can still get the density and logistics you point out, but they can at least get involved with battles across a wider area.

That's a poor comparison. Beloved by the fanbase as they may be, compared to other armies they weren't selling as well. Tau are consistently one of 40ks top selling armies.

Guardsmen not motivated? Tell that to any commissar.

>Tau are consistently one of 40ks top selling armies.
Which is probably the greatest proof imaginable that 40k just doesn't appeal to people.

Taunar seem to sell surprising numbers despite that cost

The only top selling Tau units are the FotM shit like Riptides. A real "top seller" is Militarum Tempestus, which was shit yet still was a top seller.

>Inb4 tau emerges from the warp with allied auxiliary daemons that have been enlighten by greater good

>40k just doesn't appeal to people
It's so appealing that they can jack up the prices every single year well beyond what inflation would dictate as reasonable, and people still buy into it and play.
The only games that are even close are X-wing and Warmahordes (which is just 40k for poorfags)

If you constantly have to resort to shooting them in the back of the head to stop them from leaving, that means they aren't very well-motivated.

Wheeee, that's a point.
Has Tau space ever been so close to a warpstorm before? Can the ethereals be heavily influenced by the warp and warp entities? I mean, I know that their technology can be.

TAKING BETS ON 4TH SPHERE.
>LOST TO THE WARP AND TAINTED BY CHAOS
>APPEARED SOMEWHERE IN RANDOM SPACE
>COMMANDER FARSIGHT TOOK IT
>THEY'VE ALL BEEN THROWN TO FAR RANDOM SPOTS OF THE GALAXY DEPENDING ON THEIR CASTE, RACEWAR NOW.

wrong, upon the release of bretonnia and during the updates of tomb kings they were flying off the shelves as they weren't directly outclassed by other armies

the tau are only popular when their codex has an OP list

And that's exactly it, Tau will never win because they aren't willing to do shit like that, even when it works.

>they may be, compared to other armies they weren't selling as well.
Of course they weren't selling, the latest release for brets was 15 years ago.

Only the ethreals survived from the 4th sphere. Warp flunged them to the past where they stop the genocidal tau civil war and unite the race.

Reminds me of a comic but I can't find it.
A Tau diplomat and his daemon buddy IIRC

The Tau annoy me because they use AI and get away with it. Drone tech should have been the end of their empire.

There is no justifiable reason that Tau AI should be stronger at resisting chaos then Human tech. Especially when Tau struggle to understand the warp and the nature of a soul.

LONG AGO IN A DISTANT LAND, I TZEENTCH, THE SHAPESHIFTING MASTER OF DARKNESS, UNLEASHED UNSPEAKABLE EVIL BUT A FOOLISH FIRE WARRIOR WIELDING A MAGIC SWORD STEPPED FORTH TO OPPOSE ME.
BEFORE THE FINAL BLOW WAS STRUCK, I TORE OPEN A PORTAL IN TIME AND FLUNG HIM INTO THE FUTURE, WHERE MY EVIL IS LAW.
NOW THE FOOL SEEKS TO RETURN TO THE PAST AND UNDO THE FUTURE THAT IS CHAOS!

Chaos corruption is a meme and like everyone but humans have a special pass to ignore it.

tau ai is not stronger
it's primitive and stupid

>Samurai Jack is now a Tau Fire Warrior
So what does that make the Scotsman? An Ork (I mean, they're the only ones who can deliver the proppa' amount of insults compared to the rest of the galaxy).

Drone AI is more like a faithful dog than a full blown human.

They're well-motivated after shooting one of them in the back of the head though.

Well gunleg, so yes

P L O T
L
O
T

A R M O R
R
M
O
R

Their existence sells units and they appeal to Gunpla-fetishists.

They've won a few minor battles against the Imperium when they've had advantage in local numbers and ambushes. In conventional campaigns they've been BTFO by the Imperium every time, the Imperium just can't be assed to try to occupy their territory.

>Ork scotsman

I am decidedly okay with this

>How would the Tau fare against the Indominus crusade plowing into their empire?
Girlyman is too busy fighting chaos, and if anything he'd keep Tau around as a buffer state that causes way less trouble than the shit it buffers Imperium from.

Humans built the equivalent of Hal, Shodan, something like that. The Tau have built that silly Japanese robot that falls down a lot, only it hovers.

But human "AI" stands up to Chaos just fine (as well as anything else, at least). There's no canon saying that the Iron Men fiasco was due to Chaos, and even if it were, that can probably be chalked up to widely linked systems and an over-reliance on AIs taking care of humanity rather than the other way around.

YA ONE-EYED, 'ELMET-WEARING, FOUR-FINGERED, GROT-FACED, GOAT-LEGGED, etc etc

When will GW make more "smaller" Major factions like the Tau? I would love to see more alien races getting a foot hold in their neck of the woods

I doubt it. More auxillary alien races though perhaps.
Abhumans for imperials, Mercs for DE and Chaos, Aux for Tau, etc.

Tell me, what sells?
And what doesn't

They've been loving those mini-codexes lately. Maybe a few will pop up in those.

The problem is that GW right now seems to be focusing on old ideas, or reinventing old ideas, rather than making anything new. I doubt they'll come out with any alien race unless there's one that's been dropped by the wayside in the past.