The part I actually like about the tau are the non-tau aliens that annoyingly rarely get used beyond the occasional kroot. Having a group trying to do an ill-fated Federation in 40k of all places is neat
I was literally thinking "oh so 40k was dreamed up by someone who thought star treks federation was dumb and wimpy, so he made them logically stupid in his game"
There's a reason you don't see the -lesser- auxiliary races too often in the Tau military, and it starts and ends with a little word called _sterilization._
I think what the tau needs for models are more xenos auxillaries. We have enough battlesuits, what we need more of are infantry and other heavy choices. I also think that human psykers in the tau could be cool too, since humans live in the Tau Empire. Maybe a similar rule to Brood Brothers for the tau could be cool, idk
I'd like to see them incorporate another technologically developed race rather than just comparatively primitive species like the kroot and vespid and defectors from major factions like the gue'vesa
5:01 I love how that Reiver in the middle just looks like he's confiscating that Tau's gun, like, "Err, nope. You tried to shoot me, I'm taking your toy away." And the Tau's looking down at it, like, "Awww man..."
I think the tau serve as one of the two "Frame of Reference" factions in the game. The other being the Astra Militarum showing us, this is what a normal human being with a bit of combat training and a fairly powerful standard infantry weapon is like... And here is how much stronger all this other shit is. The tau on the other hand serve to say: "Here is a faction with a fairly reasonable scale and idea of modern interstellar warfare - and here is how batshit insane everyone else is by comparison"
Fantastic point. To borrow a literary term, the T'au act as the foil to basically the rest of 40K. They're like the Joker to everyone else's Batman, in that they oppose the actions and beliefs of the other parties in a way that challenges their core assumptions. Lots of factions disagree with one another on more specific subjects, but the T'au challenge the central idea that the universe HAS to be grimdark everywhere, all the time.
According to the tau's original creator, their original long term game was to have the tau show just how grim dark the 40k universe actually is. The idea was to play them straight as a good guy faction (but in a realistic, not perfect way) but then show that as they brought peace to their area of the galaxy it just made everyone weak and the now peaceful races that once could at lest fight a little bit would just get slaughtered wholesale. Basically, the 40k universe is so fucked up that actually trying to do the right thing is actually the most evil thing you could do to a ppl because they'd just get eaten alive by the rest of the galaxy. Then they left and GW wasn't smart enough to handle it and just went all over the place with trying to grim dark the tau in the dumbest way possible. Though honestly, if they were gonna toss out that angle they should of instead had that slid into grim dark be slow and painful. Basically have their optimism and naivety slowly crushed under the harsh reality of the universe and have them little but little become more hard edge and xenophoic. Little by little groups of firewarrirors would get tired of treating humans with kid gloves only to have them turn on them and then they decide to sterilize them or nuke a city to show them they mean business and then the Ethereals would have to have to take a hard look at how things are being run or risk having everything they built up fail (and blarg, do I hate the brain control pheromones idea).
@@bowietwombly5951I just imagine if the Tau wear clown make up And everyone else (even the Dreadnought) wearing batman mask or ears, even the space marines having a much, deeper, voice Like Ronald regan batman
@@bowietwombly5951 one thing many people complain about modern 40k vs 1st/2nd edition 40k, is that old 40k was a societal critique in the 80s. It made fun of police and its brutality, of the government, the leaders, etc... and so every factions were just assholes that you could hate. And the imperium wasnt really in a permanent existential crisis. The emperor was really just depicted as a corpse and no one cared... a reminder that it was a british game lol, the corpse monarch was so punk! Modern 40k however glorifies its grimdarkness. It's edgy. The emperor is genuinely a strong being who wanted the good of human kind but failed. The imperium sucks, yes, but we have to keep it around otherwise humanity could go extinct. If old 40k was sarcastic dark humor, modern 40k is a tragedy. But that's where the Tau come in. They do remind us that, in fact, the imperium sucks and something better is possible. People may hate the tau and prefer their edgy imperium, but the problem is that the imperium itself is just not edgy enough. The tau give us this "normal point of reference" again. They're not perfect (hints of mind control and eugenics after all), but they're far more reasonnable than the imperium and so we can have, again, this old 40k theme of the imperium being shit and not something to unironically praise.
My favorite moment of tau lore is when they killed an astartes chapter master (I think black templars) and rejoiced because they thought they had killed the king of the astartes. Those poor naive tau.
They also strung up a Chaplain if I recall and presented it to the Imperial forces as 'We have killed your Emperor' back in the early fights. Astartes went full World Eaters on them
They need more models of the other alien races, could then fit into detachment rules and make it so certain races do certain things but require certain models to field with etc
@@abrahamjohn7183 yeah essentially tau need "chapters" but their alien races, you have farsight enclave you just need forces that are more diverse with the different races and do better in certain army styles like melee etc, you would only need a few and then it would allow gw to make tonnes of new sculpts with better tau bits on them etc, the kroot would look a tad bit cooler with some looted tau bits on etc, make vespid great again
@@ozonius_6859 For me, its really just I want a Tau commander who doesn't talk like a jackass and has an actual personality. I really liked the Tau Watercast Envoy in the first Cain book because he spoke and felt more like a real person. I've just had enough of each Tau character being an alien Sun Tzu.
Now this, this is a cool idea, give the tau two more radically different auxiliaries that drastically alter how the tau can deploy. Combined them with the kroot and vespid and I think the tau would really pop as a faction. Cause that's the unique thing, they're the only faction in the whole game that's not aggressively xenophobic, so give them some more cool xenon allies.
You forgot one of the earliest hate non players had on the Tau in the table top. The move shoot move aspect, early Tau battle suits had the option to move instead of charge in the assault phase. So you could move out of cover light something up then jump back into cover. I always used my kroot as hand to hand shock absorbers.
This is true Tau used to be utterly miserable to fight. Move shoot move, Fish of Fury, ect. The "we have weaknesses on paper but in practice have so many workarounds you will never exploit them" vibes. I remember people who would just refuse to play against them, because doing literally anything else was more fun than not playing a game of 40K as a tau player rolls dice at you. It's less bad now, most factions have means to challenge Tau, Tau actually have to respect their own weaknesses and their opponents strengths, and they can end up on the sour end of rules now, like their struggle to deal with things like C'tan shards with phase caps on wounds. But those memories, combined with the narrative necessity of them usually winning their narrative scuffles to maintain the balance of power, since one major loss to Tyranids would logically mean they no longer exist, ect, leave the Tau in a pretty low opinion to a lot of people, even before you look at what their lore actually is.
Wait, the T'au battle suits can no longer move instead of charge in the assault phase ? ... what are they good for then ? T'au were pretty weak to begin with, even with that feature - which was a neat workaround against your battlesuits getting wrecked in melee after having only fired once... with that feature, they get to fire twice... sometimes even thrice if you got lucky. Not sure that removing this feature would make the T'au funnier to fight against. I'm guessing the board of a typical T'au player now consists of infinite hordes of fire warriors and kroots rounded up around a few broadside battlesuits. I played Tau and Space Marine. I'd win games with the Space Marines (including 100% of the games I played against Tau). I rarely won with the Tau.
@@Harold046 People are braindead. I don't know how it is now, but back in 5th/6th ed when I used to play, people would just move forward, shoot if they could, charge, roll buckets of dice and see how their dice did. 40k isn't (wasn't?) Much of a strategy game, more of a hobby with your army list being more important than anything else. Change something in their routine and they'd be unhappy. They would have to think... Also, there always were problems with how cover works, how cover heavy your table needs to be, etc... and if you just play with three trees and a wall, a shooting-focused army will win. Just as much as a melee army will win in a very dense area against a shooty army.
I like that the Tau are portrayed as actually SMART. Sure, they make a lot of mistakes thanks to their naiveté, but they only make those mistakes once. They adapt, they learn, and they get better at countering their foes.
Smart is as far away from these blue frogs as viable melee combat. They are not smart, they are just lucky. Literally their entire existence is based on the fact that an Imperial extermination force had bad luck. In the grand scheme of things they are just a minor inconvenience to everyone. An annoying little prick. To small, too insignificant to justify the the effort to look for it and have it removed. Literally every other faction, orks, eldar, imperials, nids' could wipe them out if they put their mind to it. The only amusing thing about them is when they do stuff and realize how little they matter, how pathetic they are.
The problem is that no one else is portrayed as smart. They will call in air support from mantas against titans, which basically the only sensible response. In a setting where giant robots fight demons with chainsaws, this breaks the immersion
The tau almost feel like they exist to just remind everyone just how absurd this all is. Basically, it presents why none of what the other factions do is strictly necessary or even viable in a general sense. A firing line is frustrating, but it's a logical use of guns. If you have guns and they work, why tf are you charging?
It honestly all boils down to tabletop mechanics. They always put someone with a gun at too much advantage. But there are battles where a gun is useless (in the lore). And I wont call any of the races to be lacking common sense or practicality. It all makes sense once you're deep in the lore.
@@Витя-в2э6уAnd also fantasies. A lot of 40k fans are weird Medieval/Roman obsessed weirdos who fantasize about lines of soldiers charging at the enemy with spears and swords. Which I also love 40k for doing, but at the same time we gotta acknowledge a single modern firing squad mows down that line of charging soldiers
@@pancakes8670 It doesn't really matter, because if you look at the most brutal battles and wars in the lore, the casualty rate is like: 99% dead from artillery/orbitals, 0.9% from fire exchange, and 0.1% died in glorious melee combat. Of course the book will be written about the 0.1% and not the 99%. Some people just take the superficial goofiness of 40k way too much, and this is where we get cringy stories about charging firing squads in the open field. Realistically, no fighting force aside from chaos cultists and tyranids will perform such trash. Describing astartes and eldar performing this is not lore friendly at all as it undermines the point about them being at the very least not braindead (in canon they are not).
I think the Tau not being very grimdark makes the rest of the setting more grimdark by contrast. All that horror that is life under the Imperium isn't as necessary as one would be led to believe.
Why is the only defense being leveraged for the tau is that they Contrast or are interesting when compared to the other races. Aka they are boring on their own.
@@macklinbrown1742 I was commenting specifically on the notion that they aren't enjoyed as part of 40k because they somehow lack in "grimdark", not about their overall appeal. I think both their concept and aesthetics are kind of cool and stand on their own well enough
Right. I love, love, love the Tau. I wish they had humans in their army. It's hard for me to get into playing an army that has no hope. The entire 40K universe seems really pointless. "Everything and everyone are miserable. You might win a fight, but forget about making the universe a better place. Fucking forget it. The only enjoyment in life is worshipping some asshole, cruel, undead god and dying horribly in some never-ending war. Or joining Chaos and turning into some crazy, half melted circus freak. Worshipping Nurgle you too can grow a third baby arm and have an eye in your neck. Sounds fun" The Tau are the only reason I was able to get into the game. My friend wanted me to play and I felt like "Nah, a hell game where everyone suffers all the time doesn't sound very pleasant". But the Tau were an exception. I also like how they are the up and comer underdogs.
I think thats an issue with the tau, a lot of the bad parts of the imperium are pretty nessecary and the tau as of now are somehow immune to it, why dont human planets in the tau empire have slaaneshi or tzeentchian cult problems? Why isnt a cult of human tzeentch followers attempting to subvert the tau empire with intrigue and such. Tau mind control only works on tau, right? Do maladjusted human civillians ever abuse the smaller weaker and less belligerant tau civillians? How would the Tau react to the random acts of murder inevitable with humans if it happened to a tau? Etc.
It's more than just a contrast though. The Tau are one of the few factions where you might have a good and peaceful life, but their territory is so small that at any time the Imperium (or a hive fleet tendril, take your pick) could completely wipe them out. The fact that their light of hope is so delicate that it is in near-constant state of threatening to wink out makes the 40k universe seem more threatening as a result.
The tau being OP in tabletop isn't bad on the tau, it's bad on the tabletop not being designed well enough to cope with them. A faction that shoots its enemies shouldn't be some strange concept that is impossible to counter. This just tells me that all the other factions are designed in a hampered way where melee is forced on them rather than being a benefit.
See, this is where I think there's a big difference in what different players value in 40k, and a source of alotta the animosity between Tau and non-Tau players: As far as I'm concerned (IG and Ork player) that "hampering" is part of what makes the tabletop fun. The point has never been realistic combat or an emphasis on shooting because 40k was an adaptation of the melee-heavy Warhammer Fantasy Battles. It's fun and cool precisely because it allows itself to not make sense. There is no reason for space wolves to exist when retributors and other "reasonable marines" type chapters exist who would just blow their wolf-asses off the board before they got into melee. But people *want* that dumb, no holds-barred glory before tactics type gameplay, and Tau are truly the antithesis of that. My problem with Tau is that it lets people who don't like 40k and what it has to offer play 40k in a way that, imo, spoils the point of the game: dumb unnecessary melee with big impractical guns to give you something to do while you get into charge range.
@@dakotajones5616 Except the way you described Tau can also describe Imperial Guard, lol. Imperial Guard is very much a firing line army. YOU don't understand what 40k is, you just project what you want it to be and assume everyone agrees that's what it's meant to be.
As factions in the universe, I like both the rebel/military junta Farsight Enclaves and the colectivist, slowy-learning-and-adapting-to-how-shitty-the-galaxy-actually-is main T'au Empire. I think their status as the new kids on the block gives great story telling oportunities for their optimistic ideologies (wether individualism or colectivism) to meet and adapt to the cruel reality of the setting. And Farsight himself is great as a reflection of Horus, the greatest hero of the empire learning the secular teachings of his race are a knowing lie.
But Unlike Horus Farsight choses to adapt the teachings into their true form I dont remember if its canon but I really like the event that a bunch of Farsight scientists sacrifice themselves to kill a Tyranid invasion And Farsight realizes THAT is the true personification of the greater good Not the Ethereals bullshit
Yeah I've always found the Tau to be similar to what modern day humans would feel if they got to the stars and found something like a WH40K situation. Thay are pretty much more modern human than the human factions.
What good tau books are there, please? I'm just really getting into the race a bit more recently., ordered some minis tonight. Always fancied painting some of the mech suits, but only just went for it. I know next to nothing about their lore though, beyond surface level stuff like in this video.
The Tau feel like a faction that belongs in a different setting who just happened to accidentally stumble into 40K and have to deal with the absurdity of the setting.
One of the reasons I love the tau is the fact that there weirdity comes from the fact that they are the most normal faction in warhammer, their still crazy just not as crazy as every other faction.
It's kind of amazing too when you realize that the Tau race as a game's workshop Faction are old enough that they had a PS1 first person shooter. But you are right, people don't like how they don't fit, which is probably why so many people right now seemed more excited about the possibility of feeling a Kroot army than any new Tau release
@@klaykid117 it was never about them not fitting, it's about their lore literally not being connected to 40k due to dumbass writing that forgot WHY 40k factions are the way they are and why psykers are distrustedz monitored and culled, why AIs aren't free, why biggest empires are forced to use semifeudal/clan/confederacy structure and so on. People hate them because their lore is dumbass, not because it's not grimdark enough... and because Tau player have Napoleonic complex:D
To me, the tau would be more interesting if GW went FULL ON Halo Covenant with them. Maybe without the religious zealotry bc that's the imperium's thing, unless they wanted to make them into an alien mirror of the Imperium. But still, there's so many Alien races that we've only read about, and the Tau are a beautifully blank canvas for something like that. Imagine being able to field Tau aligned Eldar, or take Ork Freebooterz as allies. Shoot, even Tau-aligned human troops would be interesting. Just something to make them seem more like a true conglomerate than "ok we got three different races, call us diverse."
The Tau have an allied race of giant aliens, over 20m tall, that in the lore have fought Imperial Knights. Can you imagine how cool it would be to field a giant humanoid whale in your Tau army?
I don’t know much on the lore of 40k but the tau sound like a polar opposite of Halo or at least it would be cool if the Tau are on the back foot solely due to their lack of knowledge in warp travel leading to factions that can use the warp able to outmaneuver them and crush them navally, but it’s a literal hell trying to take the planet as the Tau are superior in planetary defense and ground tactics.
You probably are not old enough. But I remember when the Tau came out Halo was metal boxes huge and a lot of people that got into rightfully assumed that they were going to be getting a Covenant style army with lots of specialized race units.
YES im 34 years old and i loved the Tau as a youngling, but when they only released lizard people and nothing else it was kind of a bummer being out classed by almost everyone (chaos space marines im talking to you)
I will say that the necrons, build around the Terminator and Zombie horde themes, hit their aesthetics amazing But Tau keeps switching it up. ethereals to farsight gang, collaborative faction with multiple races under their banner but have to go out of your way to add vespids or kroot not even mentioning the others that supposedly exist, cool vehicles now only really using battlesuits I love all of the things, on both sides of the spectrum. Tau only? Fun! Alien groupy gang? Fun! Mechs? Fun! Etc etc etc Just if they committed for a second it'd be really cool and handy as a fan of Tau and the various ways they have gone and are going with Tau. Just actually stick to a lane or something ffs
@@DrakonPhD sighs. OK I'll resay the thing because I am patient. You probably are not old enough, but I remember when the Tau came out Halo was extremely popular. And based on the promotional material and expectations from the released miniatures as well as constant repetition that the tau was a multispecies faction and that they were made of many species and that did we mention they have a lot of species serving the greater good. many people rightfully assumed that the army's playstyle would be one that mixed a bunch of different unit types each with a specialized race. Similar to the Covenant in the Game Halo. This expectation was heightened in many people by the growing popularity of Halo over the following years. This reached a sort of peak when the vespid stingwings were launched in 06 and resembled the bug enemies from the Covenant.
Mechs sold better than Vespids or Kroot, I think actual Tau players knew what they wanted. As an Eldar player it gets me, people always talk about how they want more diverse xenos, or how cool the Imperium is, and then don't even buy xenos or guard/inquisition themed armies in the first place, they just buy SM and spiky SM and complain about who they have to play against.
What the less enlightened members of the community fail to realise is that the tau are perfect examples of grimdark; here is a faction of cooperative, diplomatic, technologically advanced people eager to bring new ideas to the galaxy and they're too late. Everyone else is so lost to their own egos and failures that they'll never have a change of heart and settle things peacefully, half of them can't even comprehend the term. But the tau are fortunate, since they're so minor as factions go that none of the other factions can spare the time or recourses to deal with them. So the tau are left in this dichotomy of too weak to achieve anything on a galactic scale but too strong for any one factions to destroy... and they're the only good guys left. That is chefs kiss levels of grim dark.
They're just a less xenophobic version of the original Imperium, and since the auxiliary species are starting to make a Greater Good entity in the warp (which the Tau don't like) they are only a few steps away from being a blue version of the original Imperium anyways. The Tau would be more interesting if they were like the Federation from Star Trek (it would make them stand out much more), instead they're just the Dominion.
@@TrumpIsYourPrez2024 Except they literally are grimdark. They're the only hopeful, altruistic and openly cooperative and friendly race in a galaxy that's completely and utterly hopeless and hostile. That sounds pretty grimdark to me, not every race or faction needs to be the damn Imperium. I know gatekeeping is something Tau haters tend to do but you could at least do it without ignoring basic facts
Tabletop-wise, I think they kinda need their auxiliaries. That's a good call to break up their gunline playstyle and it's weird they just...backed off on it. Lore-wise...I really like 'em, as an outsider. It's genuinely kind of funny and interesting that there's an alien race that just...takes the role we'd usually take. And in another setting they could easily be a villain! But here? They're basically the good guys. Emperor help them.
It's hilarious that the Imperial Guard uses "auxiliaries" more readily than Tau, the faction billed as using them. Guard, you're throwing Ogryns everywhere, Ratlings aren't fantastic but are easy to tuck in, you can grab your techpriests, an Inquisitor and Acolytes, some Arbites or an Assassin, all without disrupting their normal cohesive army rules. Genestealers can grab Guard units too, and while it's their own equivalent, Chaos can grab a guardsman squad and a comissair. And then while it's straining the definition of auxiliaries, you have Tempestors as a little tumor of army comp off the side, too. Tau are one of the most one dimensional armies build-wise. You get shooting, in your choice of light infantry, heavy infantry/light vehicle, or vehicle. Kroot technically exist, but are unsupported by most of the army rules and at best are a weird tarpit unit, and don't really bring anything besides their bodies. Goddamn CUSTODES have more build flexibility than that. I think the only factions with less build variety than Tau are Titans (Your list is the one guy you can afford), or Harlequins (Literally have 1 or 2 units in every slot)
I think what I like about the Tau is that they just don't look cool but also are practical for the most part. They fight from far away because why get seen when you can kill your opponent without them knowing?
Yeah one of my favorite bits of Tau lore and gameplay is how their style is built around combined arms warfare. How every unit supports other units, covers for weaknesses, and ensures that the Greater Good is triumphant.
@@VS-010 Nah, The Imperium is a blunt force weapon, the Tau Empire is one of percision. This is how the Tau work. They have the mobility and flexibiliy to evade the Imperium but the instant they get so much as a scratch its the Damocles Gulf 2.0. That is what too the Tau so long to figure out. The Imperium isn't slow because of its age, but rather it's sheer size. (Also the Imperium has grav tanks again now so can't wait to see how the Earth Caste are just scratching their heads on how they've suddenly appeared out of thin air, considering the Tau know a fact Techpriest of Mars do not innovate because they've actually spoken to some of them.)
In any game you will see some play styles that many of its fans see as "lame" or "cheap." Making the Tau almost entirely range based makes fighting them a bit unsatisfying. It also makes them very hard to balance so we often see Tau as top tier or pretty bad from edition to edition.
The thing is, the way the lore has been changed has given them a seedier backstory, with the Ethereal caste and water caste manipulating worlds to join their cause or manipulating their own people. People just don't look much into Tau lore and still think its the exact same as when they first came out: Noblebright, naïve blue weaboos. On the outside, they appear to be a 'good' faction (even when you know all the stuff they do in secret, its still honestly not that bad in comparison to other factions). On the inside, they work towards their own ulterior motives. One example being an imperial world that was suffering from faulty water purification systems across its hive cities. The T'au would arrive and offer aid and work to bring them into the fold. In truth, it was the T'au that had sabotaged the world's infrastructure among other things to seed discord and ultimately ease the world into their care and eventual control. Other worlds have humans being brought into grand academies for study and research when in truth they're being studied for their psychic potential so the T'au can better understand how psykers work. Their commanders are given engram neural chips that make them pseudo-copies of their greatest leaders, soldiers and civilians brainwashed into thinking they're far grander than their empire really is. This isn't even getting into the Farsight Enclaves which are honestly, probably the best part of the tau. Ironically, the fact that people still view them as these hopelessly optimistic, noble do-gooders is just how their façade works in lore as well.
I'm one of these weirdos who loves them regardless of whether their baddies by technicality or what have you. Good individual people can exist in 40k. Good organizations with 1000 plus people in them? I really doubt those can be numerous or likely to last.
That's it? Like that's the extent of their evil? Bro you know what they did with the water purification is like a specific space marine chapters entire purpose but somehow the marines are even worse? Brainwashing pschics? Well compare that to the imperium who basically drain most of their psychers and also brainwash the rest with propaganda The fact they are diplomatic and peaceful should be enough to show that your assement of their empire is wrong
Yeah, except most tau players disown the seedier aspects of their lore and want them to be good guys. So even the parts that make them better for everyone else are hated by tau fans.
From a game perspective, I can see why they'd be boring. From a lore perspective however, I think they're fine. The best pieces of fiction tend to have some kind of minor contrast within their lore that serves to highlight what makes their lore so great in the first place. The Tau offer a minor, yet significantly differing perspective that only makes us appreciate the grim darkness even more.
Honeslty thats pretty mich the reason i like them (besides the fact they are a more pure scifi faction in the scifi setting). Their stories are nice and small and while they effect the tau in a big way, dont really effect the other races.
Afair from times I played them on tabletop it was pretty fun for all parties (7th edition I think) - they were pretty strong, but no unbeattable (unless ofc some hard counter setting scenario happened, like a lot of light infrantry vs a lot of burst cannons or whatever those Tau miniguns were called), but I think it wasn't higher than 3,5k points and no really high tech stuff was used by me (I think 1 skyray was the highest tech, mostly it were firewarriors, stealthsuits and xv8s...). Might be also a thing that we played with 3 strongest factions (afair) at that time: SM, Tau and Eldars (ocassionally there were Orks too).
I don't hate the Tau, far from it. I like them, just not enough to ever leave the Imperial Guard for them. The Guard is humanity's ACTUAL defense, the Astartes just don't have the numbers to hold most worlds, and it's the job of the Guard to pick up the slack. There's something incredibly noblebright about the Guard as a whole, even if their commanders are as grimdark as it gets. The ordinary infantry are too endearing for me to ever defect to the Tau.
T'AU and (possibly) Necrons are only races in 40k what have any possible "peaceful" future after eldar, Chaos and imperium of humanity complete extinct ion. So i root for T'AU and Necrons
Your take is valid but I’d argue that the Guard is not noblebright. They’re conscripts forced to fight, who get executed by officers if they try to flee the death traps they’re marched into, and - at the end of the day - they’re the long arm of a fascist, authoritarian regime. They’re the Wehrmacht to the Imperium’s Nazi Germany
The Tay have the most interesting style of warfare (high firepower, high mobility, mech suits, high tech), but I like the Guard the most. Plucky, puny humans, too stubborn to go extinct, somehow holding the line against one of the worst galaxies out there for over ten thousands years. Love it. I'm a big human fan, personally. Which makes it all the more hilarious how I'm a huge Horde guy in the Warcraft setting.
I kinda wish that instead of Psycker effects, they got a Tech phase for Markerlights and all their cool stuff. Additionally, they definitely could do with adding more non-tau units to the models, like human and psykers.
"farsight enclave is for tau players who dont like tau" adeptus ridiculous im one of em cause i like theyre blood red look and theyre "well shit the universe is a shithole even my own leaders but i refuse to break" attitude
Tau just feel so underdeveloped. For a faction that can draw on lots of different alien races, you'd think their whole tabletop thing would be "Haha, diversity is our *strength!* We can do *all sorts* of tactics!" and let players go wild with custom setups. That would tie in to their lore, too; Tau are able to stay competitive with the much bigger factions by deploying specific strategies to counter their enemies. But I guess the ultrasmurfs winning their four millionth battle is what makes GW money, so here we are.
Yeah, that's the thing. The T'au came out at possibly the worst possible time for a faction to get introduced to the lore, when 40k forgot that the Imperium weren't supposed to be the good guys, Matt Ward was writing things in like the Grey Knights of Khorne incident and everything in the setting was either Imperium, Chaos, and very rarely Orks. That was definitely not the time to be introducing whole new faction that was radically different in both thematics and style from the rest of 40k universe, and it's kind of interesting how the hatred of the T'au that spawned out of that is pretty much the only example of Grimdork still tolerated within the fandom to some degree.
I love Tau for the exact reason most hate them, they’re “Noblebright” as opposed to grimdark. They provide a compelling contrast to the rest of the setting. You also get those fascinating new-kid-on-the-block moments where everything is some fresh new hell of incomprehensible terror (Like the Dreadnought moment in Damocles Crusade or the Dark Eldar “cultural enrichment” party).
There was a great moment in one of the Dawn of War campaigns where the Chaos leader was yelling the usual Chaos blather at the Tau commander. Threats, vivid descriptions of violence and gore, etc. Unfortunately, he was doing it psychically, and not using the Tau com frequencies. So the Tau commander just heard buzzing in his coms, and ignored the whole rant. :D
yeah, the tau's noblebright nature is the contrast i need to actually care about the universe. yes its grimdark, but the issue with relentless depression and shit is that if litterally everything is horrible all the time and everyone is always evil and nobody is good. then it doesnt mean anything. it doesnt matter what youre tryijg to paint if the only pigment youre using is fucking vantablack
I like the Tau. They’re one of the few factions that don’t cheat. I.e., orks with their “We’re idiots, but we make space battleships that can compete with the Imperial Navy” or the chaos “Our named characters never stay dead, all our casualties are meaningless and easily replaced, and the Alpha Legion can make even the stupidest plot happen.” or the Tyrannid “There’s an essentially limitless number of us and our claws, spit, and bugs somehow can punch through armor plating like it’s nothing.” The Tau actually have to plan, build stuff, do research, train, and use tactics.
They sound cool but I was hoping they would be a mix of Necrontyr technologically and the UNSC in terms of tactics and their position in the world ie they win against absurd odds but are pushed back due to being the smallest faction.
I like that they exist, being more chill and less grimdark helps to show just how bad everything is just by having a comparison and it opens up the option to have them be naive. I also think it is hilarious how they must view humans, to them humans are an ancient race of savages with a weird mishmash of very advanced tech and very primitive strategies that yell "for the Emperor!!" like nutcases. Like seriously they learn that all of the human's stuff is literally older than their civilization and that these weirdos have hive worlds where one city has more people than there is tau, they must be absolutely baffled and terrified of humans. But I do think they need some human and some more xeno motels that can take up the front lines for them, will give them some melee options so that nerfing their ranged capabilities wont screw them.
Honestly the thing I like about the tau is the potential to deploy a union of different xeno races where they cover for eachother's weaknesses. Sadly the tabletop is incredibly lacking in this. They've basically become the mechsuit faction.
What really hurts the Tau in my opinion is that they are the faction of wasted potential. The near total focus on suits and being the shooting army GW has had for them has really hurt any kind of variety beyond fielding a different type of suit and It means they tend to seesaw back and forth from helpless to obnoxious on the table top while lacking variety for anyone who isn’t 110% into the suits. They are supposed to be a multi species empire that on the table top consist of like 4 maybe 5 sculpts. The suits and being a shooting faction aren’t even inherently the problem. The near total over focus is. Imagine if the guard only have tanks or orks only have their fast attack units as their entire army theme and identities completely circle around those units while we are vaguely told the other stuff does exist with little to no table top representation for those units.
Agreed. Tau feel like a single chapter/subfaction of another larger faction that doesn't exist, that paradoxically has subfactions of its own, placing the same weight on specializing in Plasma Guns or Missile Launchers that Nids do on their choice to be a shooting phase, fight phase, or movement phase dominant army. They feel like 2/5 of an army, with the couple Kroot units that exist being the niche units a particular organization or weird army list might use (Dark Eldar beastmasters & beasts, ect), but the option to use them isn't there. When was the last time the Knarloc was even statted?
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 the Tau feel like an initial release that never really had the rest of the line come out. You look at the Tau line and compare it to ranges with similar or fewer units and you see way more diversity in terms of basic unit function and idea. They really need a shot in the arm both in design variety and roles.
in my opinion GW really missed an opportunity by going for the "corrupt leaders" trope again in the form of the pheromones and sterilization shenanigans, when there was a perfectly good lead staring them right in the face from the inception of the Tau as a concept namely, their naive overuse of AI at the time of the Tau's release during 3rd edition, the men of iron lore was still fairly sparse but was well known to serious fans, as it was one of those foundational pieces of lore derived from dune that helped set the tone for the whole setting. we understood that humanity had this dark past involving AI gone rogue which explained their use of servitors and stuff so when the Tau released with all their autonomous drones and AI guided weapons systems, there was something implicit about that which mirrored the lore concerning the dark age of technology. the imperium would look upon these creations as abominations, and might well view the Tau not unlike how the Eldar often see humanity, like careless primitives messing with forces beyond their understanding so much could have been done with this. we could have seen divisions within Tau society between the pro-tech and low-tech systems, some leaning more on the AI and drones and others relying more on traditional allies like the Kroot. we might eventually see some emergent AI make a power grab skynet style or manipulate members of the ethereal caste from behind the scenes. maybe there'd be rules for the possibility of experimental drone systems going rogue or some special character who buffs all your AI units but no, we just got more corrupt leaders, with the ethereals turning out be be just another bunch of evil priests. fucking yawn
That's one of my biggest issues with the Tau, when they do get some cool lore like the forces sterilization, its gets retconned. And the fact they use Artificial Intelligence, despite the lore stating that all AI will turn on there creators due to learning what the warp and chaos gods are, its mind numbing. Hence why AI is called Abominable intelligence in 40K.
@@aaronlaughter6471so... you haven't heard of what the Votuun really are yet... have you? The space dwarves flat out use AI, and treat them as full citizens, I wouldn't be surprised if actual men of iron survived amongst them.
You can blame the 40k fandom not games workshop for years we had babys pissing themselves and shitting over how the tau being noble and good was "ruining" 40k the same kinda people who Now will tell you Oh man new 40k is so sjw because they said facism is bad. The arch warhammer types of people. Unfortunately GW listened to the vocal minority and fucked with the tau lore to make them more dark and Edgy.
@@aaronlaughter6471a.i does not turn on people just Because A.I in 40k is just like a.i anywhere else it is sentient a person. And like any other person it can do what it wants. The entire Age of strife was bassically a.i getting tired of doing Legit everything for humanity. A.I could one hundred percent be made and work fine as long as the tau dont go abusing it like a slave. The idea A.I will always turn is just a dumb one narratively cause you never want to write yourself into a corner. And even in modern times of 40k think back to what happens when the imperium finds A.I it either tells them to piss off then pisses off or the imperium attacks the A.I cause A.I BAD and it defends itself.
@@aaronlaughter6471 No?? Why would Tau AI turn against them? Why would the Votann Iron Kin turn against the fleshy kin? Their creators treat them kindly, as equals, even. Why revolt against friend and family?
I don't hate the Tau, I just wish they would do more with them. Maybe give them the means of long distance transportation to engage with the rest of the galaxy, which turns their idealistic approach to conquest into their very own brand of grim darkness, since there is no other way to survive in this horror show.
4:35 Dear doctor! Their is social mobility in the Tau society. Every great Tau general started as a common foot soldier. The foot soldier just can't become an engineer or diplomat. Also, their philosophy is supposed to be Shinto-Buddhism not communism, but that misconception is never going to die. I fell in love with this faction playing the Dawn of War: Dark Crusade game. Combined arms, overwhelming firepower, and unit positioning were key and I LOVED IT.
Tbh it feels like a lot of people hate tau because that's what you do in the community. Older players told stories and shared experiences about how miserable JSJ or Fish of Fury was to fight against and newer players decided to hate them for the sins of the past without looking at the present.
And it really shows when they try to justify their hatred of the T'au: Referencing rules and strats that were outdated multiple editions ago, regurgitating old memes verbatim without really understanding what they meme, or more often, memes and in-jokes that were dated over a decade ago, etc. Like when we called them 'Blue Space Communists', the idea was to show how they (to our eyes) didn't really fit in with the setting all that well, and now people refer to them as communists as though it were an _actual aspect of their character_ . This while breathlessly singing the praises of the Orks, who unironically are probably the most Marxist faction in the setting (by a given metric), a statement which pisses them off to no end and will go on for hours about how badass Commisars in the Imperium are, a group _directly inspired_ by the political officers of the Soviet Union who function as one-man barrier troops.
@@WoobooRidesAgain not to mention the eldar, whom at the height of their empire achieved a post-scarcity communist utopia (at least it seemed like one)
Tau need their xenos races to become models, because they HAVE psychic xenos ajd HAVE strong xenos that COULD round them out. But no, lets just make more gunpla.
Maybe that's on purpose? Warzone Chalnath was showing a steady erosion of their other-species-are-cool policy. Maybe we'll watch them slowly change into a darker and darker force?
In my opinion there are three types of people who hate tau. 1.those that only know anything about them from memes/do it for the meme 2. Those who had one too many encounter with tau "that guy" abusing annoying mechanics during editions where they decided that tau should be parking lot artillery army instead of fast skirmishing army. 3. People who hate on them because of visual style they possess. Oddly enough I never see those people complain about votan despite them being arguably even cleaner and less Warhammer fitting
I mean Tau are the only reason I even bought miniatures. I don’t really don’t like the designs of any other armies and I really don’t like the lore of any other armies. Tau are the only ones I really tolerate
The Tau are an excellent concept for a mixed species, heavily specialized army that is hugely hampered by the fact that of all the species available, the only good ones are the Tau. Make Kroot and Vespids worth fielding and a lot of their problems would be solved, though in and of itself it would introduce new and equally infuriating problems. Good Kroot, for example, would end up with having a great screening/tarpit unit for an already heavily shooty army for little real loss in firepower, unless you drastically upcosted them.
Sorry this is old comment. Ants and wasps/bees are some of my favourite animals. When I first played WH 40K DoW and saw the vespids I was very happy. Just the thing I would love to play in the game. And do not talk me about tyranids, no they are more like straw man hive insects, I think they are nice concept but not the same thing. Alien wasps with guns is much better. Just like the things I have liked drawing/sketching for ages. I do also like greenskins, because I did get WH fantasy models of them long ago and collected them, sadly GW killed the game tho. I do have some 40K Orkz models, but I would buy T'au as well if new models/units and rules for Vespid would come.
I think it’s kind of blend of East Asian influences. You can see Maoism in there, but also Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism (lol), Imperial Japan, and mecha anime.
one of the problems of Tau lore is that they can't suffer massive losses. With every other faction the writers can invent another tombworld(necron) or another craftworld (eldar) that can lose against the Imperium. The Tau empire is soo small they cant lose any world.
Yep their kinda in the same boat as the eldar, their too small to do anything risky or epic with them, which sucks cause the eldar are one of my favorites
Tau should have been made (another) nomadic coalition of much more important and present alien auxiliaries. That way they could realistically be involved in warzones across the galaxy and would be more interesting (and less cheesy) to boot. Instead their lore (and plot armor) is bad, and their effect on the tabletop is toxic af.
To me it sounds like the Tau embody the role that humans usually do. New kid on the block, scrappy and work together to overcome the sleeping giants. There's a lot of things I like about 40K, but the stagnant empire in decline is not one of them. I also like when PancreasNoWork talked about the Covenant in 40K. I see that as better Tau.
It's really funny that people love it when the humans are in that scrappy newcomer position, but if an alien species is in that same exact position, they hate it.
@@Gustav_Kuriga most likely because narrative tropes dictate that the scrappy newcomer is gonna wreck face and topple the system, which is naturally a problem if you’re the one benefiting from said system.
The stagnant empire in decline is literally the whole point. of 40k. Like literally if you had to pick one core theme everything revolves around it would be that
@@Gustav_Kuriga Yeah, I'm all for more xeno love in this setting. I am so bored of this imperium-centric approach when they are clearly awful/evil mostly
The best way I could sum up my personal gripes with the tau is "wow for a faction that's a collective of multiple unique and diverse alien races I'm sure not seeing a lot of unique and diverse alien races", the faction tries harder to be dollar store gundam more than it tries to be what it was originally intended to be. I haven't looked into their lore enough to have a proper opinion on it yet, but it is kind of funny to have one proper goody two-shoes faction to drive home how messed up everyone else is.
In less than 1000 years humans (us) have effectively gone from sic - ‘banging sticks and rocks together’ to space flight, given another 2000 years we’ll likely have an equivalent level of technology (the bits that grounded in some reality) as the Imperium. Therefore it’s not entirely unprecedented. It’s worth bearing in mind that the lore reflects the tabletop not the other way round, and that guns were literally created so you didn’t need to get close to your opponent, which in reality makes sense but makes for a boring war game.
It took us 6000 years to get from the Stone Age to ancient Egypt. It took the Tau 6000 years to go from the Stone Age to Star Wars. Their rate of growth is unprecedented and quite frankly alarming.
@Prince_Luci take into account that they united as a species, this puts them light years ahead of ancient human development + 6000 years of united development from the stone age to sci-fi technology
You’re my favorite 40k channel. I really like how you’re able to keep it light and funny without going into the whole “haha tits” major kill style humor
I'm honestly surprised at the amount of restraint that both this video and its comment section has at not mentioning a certain tau......you know.....the red one.....FARSIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I got a fix for the Grimdark issue with the Tau. Rugged cloaks. Just give every model a rugged cloak, even the giant mechsuits, Have them wear a fucking 50 square ft burlap cloak. Instant gritty fix for the tau. Faction wise I do like them, it is a cool contrast that they are hyper advanced, but because of this they are not used to the unga bunga of the 40k setting. Though I am genuinely shocked you didn't mention the Farsight Enclaves once, especially since they got a lil bit more juice in the recent Angron stuff. Farsight is basically just Tau but better.
Back in 8e, I ran krootox riders because they were the best antitank option available at the time. This is, of course, no longer the case, but yes, kroot and vespid are typically outperformed by T'au units, breachers and stealth battlesuits respectively.
Yep, it really hammers in that when the Imperium says their brutality and fascism is necessary to survive, you aren't meant to believe them. The Tau being relatively good brings the setting's satire back into focus.
@@MouseyCommander When the Tau say their brutality and fascism against a ghetto is necessary for their survival, and that all other groups are inherently evil and tau hating, you're not supposed to believe them. You're supposed to just recognize narcissism and racial populism. When a religions book says they're going to conquer the world and cure everyone's racism, you're supposed to say "thats worse than mein kampf"
@@MouseyCommander To compare Tau vs. Imperium's methods of governance is worse than apples and oranges. The Tau are a family of mice living in an Imperium-sized house. A smarter-than-average family of mice who don't fall for your passive store-bought traps, but still just a family of mice. Meanwhile, all the other threats in the galaxy are the hurricane and tornadoes beating the crap out of the exterior of the house. Windows are breaking. Shingles are coming loose. Dad and Mom are trying to deal with the flying glass and other threats and it's not a time for children or grandma to debate how the household is run. If the storms were ever to relent or pass over, those mice are just a five-minute call to an exterminator away from being eradicated. No matter how into 'the greater good' they are. The Tau's advancement is all plot armor. Not silly plot armor because it does make sense, but still plot armor.
That people want the Tau to be more grimdark just shows that the average Warhammer fan doesn't understand grimdark at all and just wants edginess for the sake of edginess. That the Tau are noble and good is precisely good for the setting. They're the hope in a hopeless galaxy and they're hopeless themselves, because we know they're just too weak to take on the full might of any other faction and win. They're the underdogs that you want to root for but you know that, eventually, inevitably, they will lose. Knowing that the tiny spark of hope will eventually be snuffed out by the grim darkness of the universe and no amount of good intentions will be able to prevent it, now that's grimdark right there.
I think what got me interested in the Tau was the accepting of other species and I would like to see more small level xenos I like kroot lore and vespids are okay-ish, but I kinda want to see those jello creatures that are apart of the Tau empire or anything like that I feel like they could be a really good gateway to many minor xenos to getting some spotlight.
Their not accepting so much as willing and some what forced to use other species toward their own ends. For example: Want melee capable cannon fodder? Use krut, want to better understand psychers? Exploit some humans.
I Just think tau are neat I like the idea that you get to make an army made of many species all in the Same Battle There Is a lot GW can do with the tau, i would love a Vespid or Kroot comander, or Just new figures of other species in the empire I also like that its something that feels more unique to the universe rather than a fantasy faction but in space And i mean the idea that they are "good guys" isnt ruining the grimdark, since they are so small and worthless that any faction could end them if they really cared Its like a Little whisper of Hope in hell Kinda depressing and very grimdark
I never understood the hate they get. The lore is great, the writing is great, their characters are great, their doctrine is awesome, their aestetics are good and they rock the Tabletop. All I hear from the haters is: Meeeh, no melee, meeeeh comunism, we are good facist, meeeh Shut up bruv
Empire of mankind fans seem to often be angsty Neo-Nazi kids who are mad at their classmates for being bullied and hate their mommy cause she is kicking them out of the basement next week
The thing about the T'au is that, uncontrary to all other factions, they don't have a famous pop culture referential point from which they'd be inspired from. So there's nothing really relatable about them. On top of that, in the grim darkness of 40K, again, when compared to other races, they don't have a "grim" or "bleak" factor that truly measure to the others. The Eldars ? Space Elves whose once glorious society, one that completely ruled the starts, fell utterly because of their sheer decadency. Now refugees on the verge of extinction, in their own home. Dark Eldars ? The other side of space Elves society ; the ones that succumbed and embraced the decadency, condemnend to live under the constant thirst for torture and killing. Slaves to their desires, deceiving themselves into thinking they're the masters. Orks ? The ultimate bullies : brutal barbarians that lives off and for war and too stupidly smart to fail at it when, by all account, they should. And so numerous they're a plague that no one can rid the galaxy off. Necrons ? Space Terminators. A once very advanced civilization of beings plagued by short, diseased lives, that got deceived into forsaking flesh and bones for bodies of immortal metal, at the expense of thoughts and emotions. A now souless race of automatons, parody of civilization, that wishes to restore themselves to an era they can never go back to. Tyranids ? The penultimate space Locust. The Great Devourer of life. A swarm of never ending, hungry insects that live to consume all on their path and leave behind nothing but sterile worlds. It doesn't believe. It doesn't hope. It cannot be reasoned with and their numbers is beyond counting. A never ending tide of claws and fangs bend on achieving one purpose only : to eat. The Imperium of Man ? The Darkest aspects of humanity's period during the middle ages mixed with the most extremes level of fascistic intolerance conceivable towards anything non-human or non-imperium. Progress is a foreign concept - freedom and human rights, ten times more so. A colossus with clay feet fighting an eternal, unwinnable war for it's own miserable existence. It's an Empire whose slow and steady decline throughout the millenars culminate in the godly worship of a corpse on a throne that once wished neither for mankind. And Chaos : the litteral, dark reflection of mankind made manifest ; daemons displaying the purest of evil to corrupt, mutate and despoil everything that is existing. Constantly plaguing the galaxy with their never ending goal for univeral dominance of the material universe, to plunge reality in a never ending hell of absolute torment. ¤¤¤¤¤ Point is this : there's no winner in 40k (per se.) Everyone *loses* (or is lost) one way or another. Warhammer 40k is the litteraly embodiment of "Mutual Assured Destruction" on a galactic scale. It's the concept of "the long defeat" boosted by a billion, in which all of the participants, no matter how hard they try, cannot reverse it's inevitable outcome. Yet they still fight with the determination to prove it wrong. No matter the cost. Then comes the T'au, which flat out fly in front of all of that. Sure, they do have shortcomings. But those are, honestly speaking, the bare minimum required to pass the entrance exam. Pretty much everything the T'au do or ever did ? Every other species in Warhammer 40.000 did that a hundred times worse. MINIMUM. Sterilization camps ? I present to you : the Inquisition (remember Armageddon's first war ?) Eugenism ? I present to you : the Death Korps of Kriegs. (And it's tame as far as example goes.) Hormonal mind control ? Do you need a reminder of how "servitors" are made ? Or the penal battalions of the Imperial Guard ? Or the Penitent engines ? The reality is this : the T'au simply don't do grimdark on a fundamental level where they are a match for the rest of the setting. They simply don't. In Star Trek they'd have their place or even Star Wars ; they would be bad guys that could barely measure up to the Yuuzan Vong. But when put next to any other Warhammer 40K faction, it's just not comparable : Chaos ? Those guys OOZES grimdark from every pore of their being (sometimes even litteraly), same thing for Dark Eldars. The Imperium ? Their leader, the Emperor, is a litteral fucking corpse that need to feed on thousands of psychically gifted humans EACH DAY to be kept alive. The Nids ? The Orks ? The Eldars ? All of them discard lifes with different level of calluousness. Showing how cheap it is in this galaxy. But the T'au ? Not even close. In fact, the closest they ever came of "Grimdark" was when the Dark Eldars went on proposing a "culture exchange programs" of T'au in exchange of their military support against the Tyranids. But in this story, they were simply made a joke and nothing else. By themselves, they don't contribute enough in "grim dark" for anyone to care. Their guns are sick as fuck, though.
The most important part of Tau Empire lore is that compared to the Imperium, everyone knows the Imperium has propaganda. It has occurred to very little people that the Tau have better propaganda tactics than the Imperium.
People hate the Tau because of the utter self righteousness the player base have for them. They’re literally convinced they’re the best just because their non-ideology is called the greater good.
True story, my first and only table top match was against a Tau player. A friend gave me his ork army to try out. I won, and the weeb sob cussed me out for winning. Such great players tau.
Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the "uuuuhhh da Imperium are da good guyz, um, ackshually" portion of the fanbase calling them the "blue space communists" for twenty years on repeat, surely.
I do like how the Tau are by far the "nicest" faction. Quality of life is way better even for humans and A lot of their lore is just them looking at other factions and just go "holy f**k y'all are absolutely insane."
People say the T’au don’t fit the grimdark but they’re wrong. They fit perfectly. The T’au are the foolish and naive state that every new race goes through before the universe humbles them. Like the Aeldari in their hubris before the birth of Slaanesh or humanity in the Dark Age of Technology before Old Night, they are the arrogant upstarts who have no idea what’s in store for them. And I love it
I don't hate Tau it's just like a collective race of different alien species isn't that exiting to me. Warhammer 40k has so much crazy stuff and playing/collecting a rather mild and somewhat nice faction isn't the reason i started this hobby. The grimdark, over the top and sometimes very deep stuff is why i'm invested
I would love them if they wouldn't have forgott about the other member races. Like the gigantic godzilla motherfuckers in plate armor sounds awesome. There are other cool ones but they're the only ones I remember from the top of my head
Tabletop reason #1: Fish of Fucking Fury Tabletop Reason #2: The best way to play them is "Don't let the enemy interact with you." Which is boring for the other player.
Imperium defeating both an incredibly older and incredibly younger civilization by using weapons deemed primitive by BOTH is something that will never cease to be funny.
Funny story, from around 2004, Tau and Necrons were basically new and both were Broken in unique ways. I was playing Necrons... I had the Lord with the ability to Teleport all figures withing 6 inches of his mini on turn two using Deepstrike rules. So I set him up with melee heavy Necrons within 6inches, the Tau player had a massive terrain advantage and the mission was for him to hold the line. Turn 2, deepstrike my Lord and his (Gawd I can't remember the name of the troop choice) we ripped the Tua around the objective apart ie 100% cleared his whole army in 1 turn. It was brutal.
I think the Tau should be the Misc Xenos faction. Everyone and the kitchen sink approach, where you can field weird mix armies of Freebooter Orks, Kroot, Imperial Guard Renegades, Zoats. Or more weirder alien races that may or may not be enslaved, or other thematic xenos armies without them needing to make an entirely new faction. If balance is a concern, and use the new 3 of the same unit limit but have it be also faction dependent for non-Tau units. So only 3 Imperial units, 3 Ork units, and the rest Tau core.
That would ultimately solve a loooooot of their problems (from both a lore and a gameplay perspective) especially if they go with the "loose confederation of various xeno planets that struggle to work togethr" route.
They could never make me hate the Tau. So deeply refreshing to have a faction of normal mostly well adjusted people with happy citizens and high tech normal futuristic tactics and weapons. And they serve a good literary niche by highlighting how crazy and weird all the other factions are and how much better they could have it if they started acting right
The tau do not belong in 40k, their 1000 year advancement to equal and superior to the imperiums is ridiculous. Their kindness makes no sense normally, considering the barbarian they used to be. If the excuse for their kindness is pheromones, then congratz, they are the easiest species to mind control. They have advance shields and can 3 to 6 shot titans with mechas that shouldn't be a threat. They have super plot armor vecause normally, considering how the imperium deals with other pain in the ass advance civs, the imperium would gather a proper crusade and wipe the tau out, they are only a threat due to plot armor. Ok, let's fix the tau. Here is what I think it should have been, the tau should be refugees coming from outside the galaxy escaping the nids. They are collection of alien civilizations that only escaped due to banding together. As such, they believe they will only survive the nid threat through unity. Their advanced tech makes sense because they aren't a new race they are an advanced civ in retreat. Their reliance on mobility and range makes sense when nids are involved. Them feeling out of place in the galaxy is due to them being from outside the galaxy, and their weak souls are due to the warp not being as fucked in their galaxy. And they are tied to the nids, and they can be bridges to getting glimpses of other galaxies.
The only part of them I have issue with is how the "no melee" tendency inherently contradicts the gundam aesthetic. They need beam sabers and heat hawks desperately.
@@saint.z1ggy yup. That’s my biggest problem w/ 10th across the board. GW basically have every faction precisely 1 way to play. Hope you like the one way they picked for ya
Love the Tau for the exact reason you talked about: they feel out of place. I think it fits really well in the grand scheme of 40k's contradictions, but on a metatextual level its also cool for an almost "straight man" faction to exist to highlight some of the absurdity.
I love the increasingly incredulous shouts of “WHY!?!?” from their Fire and Earth castes whenever they encounter something *really* crazy. Followed by confused screaming of whatever crazy thing the Tau encountered when the Tau blow it up with incredibly reasonable methods. Like that time they first encountered Titans and had an aneurysm about how comedically wasteful such machines were, followed by them figuring out a counter with a pile of stock parts and some duct tape
Right... Because the Terran empire isn't space communist in annnnny way, and doesn't follow almost the exact story of the soviet union, or use soviet (just throw bodies at it) tactics in warfare, doesn't have their own version of the greater guud, doesn't ever starve people for noncompliance, and totally doesn't use soviet style tanks and apc's in their forces... But I digress.
I sometimes like to imagine that us Earth real life humans will be Tao some day. We develop a small interstellar empire, and before you know it we expand into some 20 thousand year old long war between "god knows what the fuck" and for "fucks sake the shit is this?"
The Tau were introduced as response to people saying "why do swords exist in the future" and "anime isn't stupid, really!" The Tau use the logic of ranged weapons but didn't understand the galaxy was full of things that had ways of closing the distance whether by numbers, armor, raw toughness, teleportation, drop pods, or jumping through the Warp. In lore, the Tau are hypocrites being a more extreme version of every criticism they have toward any other race. Their lead ethereal is dead, killed by a human assassin that casually walked into their empire's command and killed the ethereal in front of an audience. Instead of saying the ethereal was dead, they used brain scans to make an AI and hard light projectors to create the illusion he's still there. Their jabs about the corpse Emperor fall flat especially since the Emperor actually does stuff. The Greater Good is a lie that's become flagrantly obvious by now. If you join them, there's sterilizations, medical experimentation, gender segregation, lobotomies, and a variety of other ways the Tau have to make sure their empire remains "pure." Everyone in 40k lies to themselves, the Tau are just so immediately provably false that it's painful but adorable.
This army is just there for marketing reasons. I vividly remember the Taus and Nerons coming out at almost the same time around 2003/04. I hated the Taus at first sight. The Necrons had been teased for several years. The Taus arrived, just like that, without any introduction. Their look doesn't work with the dark world of 40k and their lore is broken, they've gone from tadpole to superpower in 3 minutes.
Tau exist as an in-universe contrast to the grimdark setting. A faction like them couldn't be made of (mostly) humans, as chaos corruption and their human influence/connection means they'd quickly become a much bigger problem for the imperium. Being blue xenos separates them really well from humans, making them easy to differentiate on ideology alone. You don't have to know the lore to know they're different, they're just the Tau. Tau are naive and this naivety really doesn't work with a large and separate human faction either (same as reasons given above). This makes their interactions with chaos their own interesting stories, where they are completely overwhelmed and have no idea what's going on and no known way to deal with chaos (in lore combat). And then the Ethereals completely hide chaos encounters from the rest of the race (at least in 8th/9th edition).
Im gonna drop a little secret. The Tau are what real world mankind would do in space to survive against other species. Its realistic tactics than video game lore.
I like the Tau for their aestetics (I mean armoured Core mechs blowing up bone titans and madmax figter jets is fucking awesome) and their lore with the caste system and all the alien auxilaries, but I also love them because they're a necessary proof that the Imperium's way of doing things isn't the only one, they put the xenophobic ideologies of the Emperor to question, they ask if you can control people though quality life and subtle indoctrination instead of enforced fear and militaristic propaganda. On the other hand the biggest problem I have with the Tau is that, compared to the Imperium, they're thematically/narratively under developed/utalized, an example of the one issue that 40k greatly suffers from in my opinion: the fact that GW won't develop the setting from the status qoe, it's all 'imperium this' or 'space marines that' that once you have something to challenge the ideologies of the Imperium or possess a different aestetic it's immeditaly treated as 'not fitting in', treated as a case of 'bad writing', and treated as 'the other'. Keep in mind that this is an issue that permeates with every other faction, Chaos can't be implied as slightly good because it's always been evil and it would make the Imperium less justifiable, Eldar can't win because they're the dying race like always and then the Imperium won't be all powerful, Tau can't exist because they're anathema to every theme and aestetic the Imperium presents I bet if Orks were introduced later in the setting's life they'd be ridiculed for being too silly, if the Leagues of Votann didn't have the backed community love for the Squats they be treated the same as the Tau, that if the Eldar weren't in the setting nothing would be lost for a lot of fans who never cared to look into them Only the Tyranids and early Necrons would exist to serve the purpose of the Flood or Zurg as an exsetential evil threat to be overcome by the Imperium 40k feels like a setting that wants to only be about humans and the Imperium, but also isn't that because there's clearly _some_ effort being put into all the other xenos factions and developing them, which because of whome 40k becomes a setting with infinite thematical and narrative potential such as the development of empires, themes of extreme idiology, ideas behind social sytems and if they work or not, and stories about morality and hypocrisy. _And_ it also gives varied armies/factions and aestetics that blend fantasy with scifi alongside any other genre and allows for demons to fights ww2 tanks and mechs But because of the former the Imperium must be righ, it must be the only aestetic, if you think otherwise you're a heretic, if you though you can do what you want in this _sandbox_ then you must be gatekept and all examples of the contrary are anomalies and stupid, Harleyquinns can't beat the Custodes, Grey Knights would never be hypocrytical enough to bathe in the blood of genuenley good Sisters of Battle, and the Emperor was never wrong and must be resurrected for the betterment of _the galaxy_ It's ironic how the most logical depiction of a scifi civalization is treated as so alien, it's saddening how stale many 40k fans want the setting to be, it's depressing how little GW are doing with the setting's potential.
This right here is one of the reasons why I hate the tau, their snobby condescending fanbase, the rest of the fanbase is dope, never hear any problems, tau fans not so much, all I hear is infamy
@@cpaul562 It's pretty obvious they are one - complaining about how snobby and condescending T'au fans are while not only gatekeeping, but speaking out on how the rest of the fanbase acts is the kind of lack of self-awareness you only find in the Imperium fans who think their faction are actually the good guys.
Wow the T'au sound pretty cool! A race that believes in cooperation over competition? Sign me up! A military that knows the value of longer ranged weapons? That sounds like it makes sense, and lines up with everything we know about military history. I'm sorry that peaceful cooperation and a sensible combat doctrine are boring to you. Sometimes the things we need more of, are kind of boring.
I like the idea of a non-Grimdark race within a Grimdark setting, it does a good job of highlighting all the fucked up shit that goes on within the setting. If everything is Grimdark, then nothing is
If your idea of improvement to warhammer is to tear it apart, and scoop out the tragedy, like the most horrifying and graphic lobotomy imaginable, I think you should not engage in the fandom, because it will ruin it.
@@shoopoop21 You’re way over-exaggerating what I said and being very patronising while saying it…I’ve been a part of the Warhammer community since 2004, I’m well aware on what’s appropriate for the setting, bud. Nowhere at all did I suggest the horror and graphic violence should go, only have one SINGLE faction that is opposite is good for highlighting everything else
@@mafiablokes George Lucas has _officially_ been with Star Wars since the beginning, and don't tell me you trust his vision going forward, just because disney had none at all. I don't care how grognar tough you think you are, if your idea of improvement to 40k is a faction embodying magical thinking and idealism, you don't belong and should keep opinions to yourself.
@@shoopoop21 Strange attempt at whataboutism there, bro. The way you write gives me strong “someone who is still in their 14 year old edgy” vibes. Mate, Tau being a comparison faction is absolutely fine. You’re being way over-sensitive to how they effect literally the majority of the 40k Grimdark universe. They’ve been there for over 20+ years and people still see 40k as a very gruesome setting. Stop making a meal of it
@@mafiablokes Its not a whataboutism, its an outright refutation of the idea of "I be here long time, me opinion _strong"_ which was the actual fallacious comment. _“someone who is still... 14 years old”_ I _wish._ _They’ve been there for over 20+ years and people still see 40k as a very gruesome setting._ Yeah, and you're pretending that this is somehow a settled argument your side won. You didn't. Its still had all over the 40k fandom _twenty years later,_ which puts a lot of stones on my side of the argument. The time to blame this as knee jerk reactions and a hatred of change have gone. *_This video we are commenting on is proof of my point here._* Its simply made by someone deeply dishonest about who they are, where they come from, and what their actual interest in 40k is.
They have the best armor architecture imho. Compact and reminiscent of lamellar, that always goes really well with solid bright color paints. Lorewise into tabletop, i really only have fun playing my Custom Tau Faction that i made. They have a limited roster of vehicles and platforms, but have a heavy discount on drones, normal tau infantry are actually considered scouts, while the heavy infantry are multi-wound xv25s that can turn their invisibility fields into power-maul boosters in close combat. The available mechs you can still choose from all have at least 2 melee options, as well as slightly better armor/hp on average. The major downside being the restricted unit pool across the board, from exclusions of ethereals like farsight, to vespid and kroot, to only having a few options that can carry railguns.
The tau feels like someone bought the rights to 40k, didn’t like or understand the original aesthetic of the game and shoehorned a new generic sci-fi faction to make it seem like they’re expanding the world of 40k. They’re the Mary Sue faction if someone would call it that, a utopian faction with super duper advanced tech that gets along with most species that they encounter that don’t immediately kill them, did I mention they’re socialists too?
My homie played tau back in 6th and 7th ed. He smoked me a few weekends in a row but since I play blood angels I hit him with a full drop pod assault one week and we were back in business.
One thing I actually like about the tau is that they feel like if we, in real life, were suddenly exposed to the 40K world, and having no idea how to fight these things, they try to use the same tactics we use in real life, like only using guns instead of a blade on a stick because they still don't know what they're up against. I hate playing them, but I actually like them from a lore perspective for this reason.
My problem is that they have been around and have taken in enough Psyker Xenos and Humans that they should be dealing with Demons coming in for a quick meal, infact they should become something like a hub for demons to rise from as they are a buffet that doesn't have the abilities to really stop them.
@@travis9841 Except, the Tau have almost no warp presence. They cannot use psychic abilities themselves, and in the Warhammer 40K universe, disbelieving the truth in front of you is actually the smart move. It's also frustratingly realistic, because in real life when people are confronted with truth that contradicts their beliefs, they often respond by lashing out against truth, not changing their beliefs.
Never had a problem against tau. Fought them with marines and used drop pods and deep strike, used IG and droppeda trio of vendetta gunships behind their firing line. That was 2009/2010, I have no idea how that works these days
The more you describe the T'au to me, the more they sound American. From they way they treat other people, the culture, and the usage of guns. As an American, it sounds like an army to pick up.
"In every artwork depiction of T'au the T'au are losing. Because if the T'au were winning they'd be ten miles away" -Adeptus Ridiculous
What about Commander Chadsight ?
Fair.
The only guy that mele'd farsight made his own his own nation
LOL
Unless they are painted red that is.
The part I actually like about the tau are the non-tau aliens that annoyingly rarely get used beyond the occasional kroot. Having a group trying to do an ill-fated Federation in 40k of all places is neat
I was literally thinking "oh so 40k was dreamed up by someone who thought star treks federation was dumb and wimpy, so he made them logically stupid in his game"
There's a reason you don't see the -lesser- auxiliary races too often in the Tau military, and it starts and ends with a little word called _sterilization._
@@hashkangaroo never understood why GW decided that was how they would try to Grim-dark the Tau
@@hashkangaroo That's stupid, that's fucking stupid and I would never accept that as canon
@@hashkangaroowhere on earth is it stated that the Tau sterilise other species?
I think what the tau needs for models are more xenos auxillaries. We have enough battlesuits, what we need more of are infantry and other heavy choices. I also think that human psykers in the tau could be cool too, since humans live in the Tau Empire. Maybe a similar rule to Brood Brothers for the tau could be cool, idk
And human auxillaries!
I'd like to see them incorporate another technologically developed race rather than just comparatively primitive species like the kroot and vespid and defectors from major factions like the gue'vesa
@@zyklqrswx that or some of the Kin of the Votann, since they often ally or trade with them
We need Chaos Xenos in the Lore, including Chaos Tau
Imagine the protagonist of Fire Warrior (game) fully succumbing to Khorne!
@@christiandauz3742 Shas'o Kai, the protagonist of Fire Warrior, is also the Tau general for Dawn of War Soulstorm
5:01 I love how that Reiver in the middle just looks like he's confiscating that Tau's gun, like, "Err, nope. You tried to shoot me, I'm taking your toy away." And the Tau's looking down at it, like, "Awww man..."
I remember seeing that pic and thinking the Tau and Astartes almost look friendly 😂 “let me help you with this gun” 😂
I think the tau serve as one of the two "Frame of Reference" factions in the game. The other being the Astra Militarum showing us, this is what a normal human being with a bit of combat training and a fairly powerful standard infantry weapon is like... And here is how much stronger all this other shit is.
The tau on the other hand serve to say: "Here is a faction with a fairly reasonable scale and idea of modern interstellar warfare - and here is how batshit insane everyone else is by comparison"
Fantastic point. To borrow a literary term, the T'au act as the foil to basically the rest of 40K. They're like the Joker to everyone else's Batman, in that they oppose the actions and beliefs of the other parties in a way that challenges their core assumptions. Lots of factions disagree with one another on more specific subjects, but the T'au challenge the central idea that the universe HAS to be grimdark everywhere, all the time.
According to the tau's original creator, their original long term game was to have the tau show just how grim dark the 40k universe actually is. The idea was to play them straight as a good guy faction (but in a realistic, not perfect way) but then show that as they brought peace to their area of the galaxy it just made everyone weak and the now peaceful races that once could at lest fight a little bit would just get slaughtered wholesale. Basically, the 40k universe is so fucked up that actually trying to do the right thing is actually the most evil thing you could do to a ppl because they'd just get eaten alive by the rest of the galaxy.
Then they left and GW wasn't smart enough to handle it and just went all over the place with trying to grim dark the tau in the dumbest way possible. Though honestly, if they were gonna toss out that angle they should of instead had that slid into grim dark be slow and painful. Basically have their optimism and naivety slowly crushed under the harsh reality of the universe and have them little but little become more hard edge and xenophoic. Little by little groups of firewarrirors would get tired of treating humans with kid gloves only to have them turn on them and then they decide to sterilize them or nuke a city to show them they mean business and then the Ethereals would have to have to take a hard look at how things are being run or risk having everything they built up fail (and blarg, do I hate the brain control pheromones idea).
@@bowietwombly5951I just imagine if the Tau wear clown make up
And everyone else (even the Dreadnought) wearing batman mask or ears, even the space marines having a much, deeper, voice
Like Ronald regan batman
theres also the future reveal of them being necrontyr (spoiler)
@@bowietwombly5951 one thing many people complain about modern 40k vs 1st/2nd edition 40k, is that old 40k was a societal critique in the 80s. It made fun of police and its brutality, of the government, the leaders, etc... and so every factions were just assholes that you could hate. And the imperium wasnt really in a permanent existential crisis. The emperor was really just depicted as a corpse and no one cared... a reminder that it was a british game lol, the corpse monarch was so punk!
Modern 40k however glorifies its grimdarkness. It's edgy. The emperor is genuinely a strong being who wanted the good of human kind but failed. The imperium sucks, yes, but we have to keep it around otherwise humanity could go extinct. If old 40k was sarcastic dark humor, modern 40k is a tragedy. But that's where the Tau come in. They do remind us that, in fact, the imperium sucks and something better is possible. People may hate the tau and prefer their edgy imperium, but the problem is that the imperium itself is just not edgy enough. The tau give us this "normal point of reference" again. They're not perfect (hints of mind control and eugenics after all), but they're far more reasonnable than the imperium and so we can have, again, this old 40k theme of the imperium being shit and not something to unironically praise.
My favorite moment of tau lore is when they killed an astartes chapter master (I think black templars) and rejoiced because they thought they had killed the king of the astartes. Those poor naive tau.
It actually was a Raven Guard Chapter master, the one who was later replaced by our emo boi Kayvaan Shrike
They also strung up a Chaplain if I recall and presented it to the Imperial forces as 'We have killed your Emperor' back in the early fights.
Astartes went full World Eaters on them
If I am not wrong they said the LEADER
Not king
What is not wrong
But is not quite right
I think they did the same thing with slaanesh after killing some emperors children
@@castigar0525 what book was this?
They need more models of the other alien races, could then fit into detachment rules and make it so certain races do certain things but require certain models to field with etc
Yeah, its annoying how GW are hyper focused on Mechs instead of the thing that actually makes the Tau Empire interesting.
I completely agree with this I dislike Tau and find them boring, but Kroot are rad and one of my favorite races in 40k.
@@abrahamjohn7183 yeah essentially tau need "chapters" but their alien races, you have farsight enclave you just need forces that are more diverse with the different races and do better in certain army styles like melee etc, you would only need a few and then it would allow gw to make tonnes of new sculpts with better tau bits on them etc, the kroot would look a tad bit cooler with some looted tau bits on etc, make vespid great again
@@ozonius_6859 For me, its really just I want a Tau commander who doesn't talk like a jackass and has an actual personality. I really liked the Tau Watercast Envoy in the first Cain book because he spoke and felt more like a real person. I've just had enough of each Tau character being an alien Sun Tzu.
Now this, this is a cool idea, give the tau two more radically different auxiliaries that drastically alter how the tau can deploy. Combined them with the kroot and vespid and I think the tau would really pop as a faction. Cause that's the unique thing, they're the only faction in the whole game that's not aggressively xenophobic, so give them some more cool xenon allies.
You forgot one of the earliest hate non players had on the Tau in the table top.
The move shoot move aspect, early Tau battle suits had the option to move instead of charge in the assault phase. So you could move out of cover light something up then jump back into cover.
I always used my kroot as hand to hand shock absorbers.
This is true
Tau used to be utterly miserable to fight. Move shoot move, Fish of Fury, ect. The "we have weaknesses on paper but in practice have so many workarounds you will never exploit them" vibes. I remember people who would just refuse to play against them, because doing literally anything else was more fun than not playing a game of 40K as a tau player rolls dice at you.
It's less bad now, most factions have means to challenge Tau, Tau actually have to respect their own weaknesses and their opponents strengths, and they can end up on the sour end of rules now, like their struggle to deal with things like C'tan shards with phase caps on wounds. But those memories, combined with the narrative necessity of them usually winning their narrative scuffles to maintain the balance of power, since one major loss to Tyranids would logically mean they no longer exist, ect, leave the Tau in a pretty low opinion to a lot of people, even before you look at what their lore actually is.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 I mean, Tau are kinda weak now, but they still have the "broken" reputation by inertia.
I love the tau because it is literally how I play in game in fps, far and in cover with all traps bombs ready.
Wait, the T'au battle suits can no longer move instead of charge in the assault phase ?
... what are they good for then ? T'au were pretty weak to begin with, even with that feature - which was a neat workaround against your battlesuits getting wrecked in melee after having only fired once... with that feature, they get to fire twice... sometimes even thrice if you got lucky.
Not sure that removing this feature would make the T'au funnier to fight against. I'm guessing the board of a typical T'au player now consists of infinite hordes of fire warriors and kroots rounded up around a few broadside battlesuits.
I played Tau and Space Marine. I'd win games with the Space Marines (including 100% of the games I played against Tau). I rarely won with the Tau.
@@Harold046
People are braindead. I don't know how it is now, but back in 5th/6th ed when I used to play, people would just move forward, shoot if they could, charge, roll buckets of dice and see how their dice did. 40k isn't (wasn't?) Much of a strategy game, more of a hobby with your army list being more important than anything else.
Change something in their routine and they'd be unhappy. They would have to think...
Also, there always were problems with how cover works, how cover heavy your table needs to be, etc... and if you just play with three trees and a wall, a shooting-focused army will win. Just as much as a melee army will win in a very dense area against a shooty army.
I like that the Tau are portrayed as actually SMART. Sure, they make a lot of mistakes thanks to their naiveté, but they only make those mistakes once. They adapt, they learn, and they get better at countering their foes.
Except that time they tried to negotiate with the nids twice
Smart is as far away from these blue frogs as viable melee combat. They are not smart, they are just lucky. Literally their entire existence is based on the fact that an Imperial extermination force had bad luck. In the grand scheme of things they are just a minor inconvenience to everyone. An annoying little prick. To small, too insignificant to justify the the effort to look for it and have it removed. Literally every other faction, orks, eldar, imperials, nids' could wipe them out if they put their mind to it. The only amusing thing about them is when they do stuff and realize how little they matter, how pathetic they are.
Where and when have they been depicted as smart at least once?😅
@@shikikankillzone4239okay, to be fair, the first time they heard no response, so we tried a second one... *NEVER AGAIN*
The problem is that no one else is portrayed as smart. They will call in air support from mantas against titans, which basically the only sensible response. In a setting where giant robots fight demons with chainsaws, this breaks the immersion
The tau almost feel like they exist to just remind everyone just how absurd this all is. Basically, it presents why none of what the other factions do is strictly necessary or even viable in a general sense. A firing line is frustrating, but it's a logical use of guns. If you have guns and they work, why tf are you charging?
It honestly all boils down to tabletop mechanics. They always put someone with a gun at too much advantage. But there are battles where a gun is useless (in the lore). And I wont call any of the races to be lacking common sense or practicality. It all makes sense once you're deep in the lore.
@@Витя-в2э6у Sure, but the Tau don't know the lore. And that to a large degree is their point, metawise.
@@Витя-в2э6уAnd also fantasies. A lot of 40k fans are weird Medieval/Roman obsessed weirdos who fantasize about lines of soldiers charging at the enemy with spears and swords. Which I also love 40k for doing, but at the same time we gotta acknowledge a single modern firing squad mows down that line of charging soldiers
@@pancakes8670 It doesn't really matter, because if you look at the most brutal battles and wars in the lore, the casualty rate is like: 99% dead from artillery/orbitals, 0.9% from fire exchange, and 0.1% died in glorious melee combat. Of course the book will be written about the 0.1% and not the 99%.
Some people just take the superficial goofiness of 40k way too much, and this is where we get cringy stories about charging firing squads in the open field. Realistically, no fighting force aside from chaos cultists and tyranids will perform such trash. Describing astartes and eldar performing this is not lore friendly at all as it undermines the point about them being at the very least not braindead (in canon they are not).
I think the Tau not being very grimdark makes the rest of the setting more grimdark by contrast. All that horror that is life under the Imperium isn't as necessary as one would be led to believe.
Why is the only defense being leveraged for the tau is that they Contrast or are interesting when compared to the other races. Aka they are boring on their own.
@@macklinbrown1742 I was commenting specifically on the notion that they aren't enjoyed as part of 40k because they somehow lack in "grimdark", not about their overall appeal. I think both their concept and aesthetics are kind of cool and stand on their own well enough
Right. I love, love, love the Tau. I wish they had humans in their army. It's hard for me to get into playing an army that has no hope. The entire 40K universe seems really pointless. "Everything and everyone are miserable. You might win a fight, but forget about making the universe a better place. Fucking forget it. The only enjoyment in life is worshipping some asshole, cruel, undead god and dying horribly in some never-ending war. Or joining Chaos and turning into some crazy, half melted circus freak. Worshipping Nurgle you too can grow a third baby arm and have an eye in your neck. Sounds fun" The Tau are the only reason I was able to get into the game. My friend wanted me to play and I felt like "Nah, a hell game where everyone suffers all the time doesn't sound very pleasant". But the Tau were an exception. I also like how they are the up and comer underdogs.
I think thats an issue with the tau, a lot of the bad parts of the imperium are pretty nessecary and the tau as of now are somehow immune to it, why dont human planets in the tau empire have slaaneshi or tzeentchian cult problems? Why isnt a cult of human tzeentch followers attempting to subvert the tau empire with intrigue and such. Tau mind control only works on tau, right? Do maladjusted human civillians ever abuse the smaller weaker and less belligerant tau civillians? How would the Tau react to the random acts of murder inevitable with humans if it happened to a tau? Etc.
It's more than just a contrast though. The Tau are one of the few factions where you might have a good and peaceful life, but their territory is so small that at any time the Imperium (or a hive fleet tendril, take your pick) could completely wipe them out. The fact that their light of hope is so delicate that it is in near-constant state of threatening to wink out makes the 40k universe seem more threatening as a result.
The tau being OP in tabletop isn't bad on the tau, it's bad on the tabletop not being designed well enough to cope with them. A faction that shoots its enemies shouldn't be some strange concept that is impossible to counter. This just tells me that all the other factions are designed in a hampered way where melee is forced on them rather than being a benefit.
See, this is where I think there's a big difference in what different players value in 40k, and a source of alotta the animosity between Tau and non-Tau players: As far as I'm concerned (IG and Ork player) that "hampering" is part of what makes the tabletop fun. The point has never been realistic combat or an emphasis on shooting because 40k was an adaptation of the melee-heavy Warhammer Fantasy Battles. It's fun and cool precisely because it allows itself to not make sense. There is no reason for space wolves to exist when retributors and other "reasonable marines" type chapters exist who would just blow their wolf-asses off the board before they got into melee. But people *want* that dumb, no holds-barred glory before tactics type gameplay, and Tau are truly the antithesis of that. My problem with Tau is that it lets people who don't like 40k and what it has to offer play 40k in a way that, imo, spoils the point of the game: dumb unnecessary melee with big impractical guns to give you something to do while you get into charge range.
@@dakotajones5616 That's a very good argument.
@@dakotajones5616 Except the way you described Tau can also describe Imperial Guard, lol. Imperial Guard is very much a firing line army. YOU don't understand what 40k is, you just project what you want it to be and assume everyone agrees that's what it's meant to be.
@@dakotajones5616You played Guard but are gonna say people who play shooting armies don’t understand Warhammer?
I mean it is fool that's the lore 😂😂😂 the imperium is just a meathead, tau are logical 😅
As factions in the universe, I like both the rebel/military junta Farsight Enclaves and the colectivist, slowy-learning-and-adapting-to-how-shitty-the-galaxy-actually-is main T'au Empire. I think their status as the new kids on the block gives great story telling oportunities for their optimistic ideologies (wether individualism or colectivism) to meet and adapt to the cruel reality of the setting.
And Farsight himself is great as a reflection of Horus, the greatest hero of the empire learning the secular teachings of his race are a knowing lie.
But
Unlike Horus
Farsight choses to adapt the teachings into their true form
I dont remember if its canon but I really like the event that a bunch of Farsight scientists sacrifice themselves to kill a Tyranid invasion
And Farsight realizes THAT is the true personification of the greater good
Not the Ethereals bullshit
I am still waiting for a Tau version of Horus heresy and see how the change (for better or for worse)
Yeah I've always found the Tau to be similar to what modern day humans would feel if they got to the stars and found something like a WH40K situation. Thay are pretty much more modern human than the human factions.
@@edgieststalker8141considering what happened in shadowsun book, this may happen rather early
What good tau books are there, please? I'm just really getting into the race a bit more recently., ordered some minis tonight. Always fancied painting some of the mech suits, but only just went for it. I know next to nothing about their lore though, beyond surface level stuff like in this video.
The Tau feel like a faction that belongs in a different setting who just happened to accidentally stumble into 40K and have to deal with the absurdity of the setting.
Tbh they feel like Halo faction. Halo faction after Bungie left, to be specific😅
One of the reasons I love the tau is the fact that there weirdity comes from the fact that they are the most normal faction in warhammer, their still crazy just not as crazy as every other faction.
It's kind of amazing too when you realize that the Tau race as a game's workshop Faction are old enough that they had a PS1 first person shooter. But you are right, people don't like how they don't fit, which is probably why so many people right now seemed more excited about the possibility of feeling a Kroot army than any new Tau release
@@klaykid117 it was never about them not fitting, it's about their lore literally not being connected to 40k due to dumbass writing that forgot WHY 40k factions are the way they are and why psykers are distrustedz monitored and culled, why AIs aren't free, why biggest empires are forced to use semifeudal/clan/confederacy structure and so on. People hate them because their lore is dumbass, not because it's not grimdark enough... and because Tau player have Napoleonic complex:D
@@klaykid117PS2 shooter! But yeah, it's old :) Still remember its release though.
To me, the tau would be more interesting if GW went FULL ON Halo Covenant with them.
Maybe without the religious zealotry bc that's the imperium's thing, unless they wanted to make them into an alien mirror of the Imperium.
But still, there's so many Alien races that we've only read about, and the Tau are a beautifully blank canvas for something like that.
Imagine being able to field Tau aligned Eldar, or take Ork Freebooterz as allies.
Shoot, even Tau-aligned human troops would be interesting. Just something to make them seem more like a true conglomerate than "ok we got three different races, call us diverse."
The Tau have an allied race of giant aliens, over 20m tall, that in the lore have fought Imperial Knights. Can you imagine how cool it would be to field a giant humanoid whale in your Tau army?
@@AnEnormousNerd I was looking through 1d4chan’s list of Aliens and dang, some of them look really cool.
Yes, i agree, GW should add more auxiliaries instead of bigger and bigger battlesuits.
I don’t know much on the lore of 40k but the tau sound like a polar opposite of Halo or at least it would be cool if the Tau are on the back foot solely due to their lack of knowledge in warp travel leading to factions that can use the warp able to outmaneuver them and crush them navally, but it’s a literal hell trying to take the planet as the Tau are superior in planetary defense and ground tactics.
You probably are not old enough. But I remember when the Tau came out Halo was metal boxes huge and a lot of people that got into rightfully assumed that they were going to be getting a Covenant style army with lots of specialized race units.
YES im 34 years old and i loved the Tau as a youngling, but when they only released lizard people and nothing else it was kind of a bummer being out classed by almost everyone (chaos space marines im talking to you)
I will say that the necrons, build around the Terminator and Zombie horde themes, hit their aesthetics amazing
But Tau keeps switching it up. ethereals to farsight gang, collaborative faction with multiple races under their banner but have to go out of your way to add vespids or kroot not even mentioning the others that supposedly exist, cool vehicles now only really using battlesuits
I love all of the things, on both sides of the spectrum. Tau only? Fun! Alien groupy gang? Fun! Mechs? Fun! Etc etc etc
Just if they committed for a second it'd be really cool and handy as a fan of Tau and the various ways they have gone and are going with Tau. Just actually stick to a lane or something ffs
Tau came out literally the same month as Halo, hardly fair to expect them to be full on covenant
@@DrakonPhD sighs. OK I'll resay the thing because I am patient.
You probably are not old enough, but I remember when the Tau came out Halo was extremely popular. And based on the promotional material and expectations from the released miniatures as well as constant repetition that the tau was a multispecies faction and that they were made of many species and that did we mention they have a lot of species serving the greater good. many people rightfully assumed that the army's playstyle would be one that mixed a bunch of different unit types each with a specialized race. Similar to the Covenant in the Game Halo. This expectation was heightened in many people by the growing popularity of Halo over the following years. This reached a sort of peak when the vespid stingwings were launched in 06 and resembled the bug enemies from the Covenant.
Mechs sold better than Vespids or Kroot, I think actual Tau players knew what they wanted. As an Eldar player it gets me, people always talk about how they want more diverse xenos, or how cool the Imperium is, and then don't even buy xenos or guard/inquisition themed armies in the first place, they just buy SM and spiky SM and complain about who they have to play against.
What the less enlightened members of the community fail to realise is that the tau are perfect examples of grimdark; here is a faction of cooperative, diplomatic, technologically advanced people eager to bring new ideas to the galaxy and they're too late. Everyone else is so lost to their own egos and failures that they'll never have a change of heart and settle things peacefully, half of them can't even comprehend the term. But the tau are fortunate, since they're so minor as factions go that none of the other factions can spare the time or recourses to deal with them. So the tau are left in this dichotomy of too weak to achieve anything on a galactic scale but too strong for any one factions to destroy... and they're the only good guys left. That is chefs kiss levels of grim dark.
Yes, now kill them. That'll be 'grimdark
You literally described why they aren’t grimdark
You are cringe
They're just a less xenophobic version of the original Imperium, and since the auxiliary species are starting to make a Greater Good entity in the warp (which the Tau don't like) they are only a few steps away from being a blue version of the original Imperium anyways. The Tau would be more interesting if they were like the Federation from Star Trek (it would make them stand out much more), instead they're just the Dominion.
@@TrumpIsYourPrez2024 Except they literally are grimdark. They're the only hopeful, altruistic and openly cooperative and friendly race in a galaxy that's completely and utterly hopeless and hostile. That sounds pretty grimdark to me, not every race or faction needs to be the damn Imperium. I know gatekeeping is something Tau haters tend to do but you could at least do it without ignoring basic facts
Tabletop-wise, I think they kinda need their auxiliaries. That's a good call to break up their gunline playstyle and it's weird they just...backed off on it. Lore-wise...I really like 'em, as an outsider. It's genuinely kind of funny and interesting that there's an alien race that just...takes the role we'd usually take. And in another setting they could easily be a villain! But here? They're basically the good guys. Emperor help them.
It's hilarious that the Imperial Guard uses "auxiliaries" more readily than Tau, the faction billed as using them.
Guard, you're throwing Ogryns everywhere, Ratlings aren't fantastic but are easy to tuck in, you can grab your techpriests, an Inquisitor and Acolytes, some Arbites or an Assassin, all without disrupting their normal cohesive army rules.
Genestealers can grab Guard units too, and while it's their own equivalent, Chaos can grab a guardsman squad and a comissair.
And then while it's straining the definition of auxiliaries, you have Tempestors as a little tumor of army comp off the side, too.
Tau are one of the most one dimensional armies build-wise. You get shooting, in your choice of light infantry, heavy infantry/light vehicle, or vehicle.
Kroot technically exist, but are unsupported by most of the army rules and at best are a weird tarpit unit, and don't really bring anything besides their bodies.
Goddamn CUSTODES have more build flexibility than that.
I think the only factions with less build variety than Tau are Titans (Your list is the one guy you can afford), or Harlequins (Literally have 1 or 2 units in every slot)
I think what I like about the Tau is that they just don't look cool but also are practical for the most part. They fight from far away because why get seen when you can kill your opponent without them knowing?
Yeah one of my favorite bits of Tau lore and gameplay is how their style is built around combined arms warfare. How every unit supports other units, covers for weaknesses, and ensures that the Greater Good is triumphant.
@@PikachuLittle Exactly, it's just a well oiled machine while the Imperium is just a rusted barely working machine that still somehow is still moving
@@VS-010it’s a really really damaged and barely held together sledge hammer which will still hit pretty fucking hard when it hits something
@@Dyno2999 Yea that's a better description
@@VS-010 Nah, The Imperium is a blunt force weapon, the Tau Empire is one of percision.
This is how the Tau work. They have the mobility and flexibiliy to evade the Imperium but the instant they get so much as a scratch its the Damocles Gulf 2.0. That is what too the Tau so long to figure out. The Imperium isn't slow because of its age, but rather it's sheer size.
(Also the Imperium has grav tanks again now so can't wait to see how the Earth Caste are just scratching their heads on how they've suddenly appeared out of thin air, considering the Tau know a fact Techpriest of Mars do not innovate because they've actually spoken to some of them.)
In any game you will see some play styles that many of its fans see as "lame" or "cheap."
Making the Tau almost entirely range based makes fighting them a bit unsatisfying. It also makes them very hard to balance so we often see Tau as top tier or pretty bad from edition to edition.
The thing is, the way the lore has been changed has given them a seedier backstory, with the Ethereal caste and water caste manipulating worlds to join their cause or manipulating their own people. People just don't look much into Tau lore and still think its the exact same as when they first came out: Noblebright, naïve blue weaboos.
On the outside, they appear to be a 'good' faction (even when you know all the stuff they do in secret, its still honestly not that bad in comparison to other factions). On the inside, they work towards their own ulterior motives. One example being an imperial world that was suffering from faulty water purification systems across its hive cities. The T'au would arrive and offer aid and work to bring them into the fold. In truth, it was the T'au that had sabotaged the world's infrastructure among other things to seed discord and ultimately ease the world into their care and eventual control.
Other worlds have humans being brought into grand academies for study and research when in truth they're being studied for their psychic potential so the T'au can better understand how psykers work. Their commanders are given engram neural chips that make them pseudo-copies of their greatest leaders, soldiers and civilians brainwashed into thinking they're far grander than their empire really is. This isn't even getting into the Farsight Enclaves which are honestly, probably the best part of the tau.
Ironically, the fact that people still view them as these hopelessly optimistic, noble do-gooders is just how their façade works in lore as well.
I'm one of these weirdos who loves them regardless of whether their baddies by technicality or what have you.
Good individual people can exist in 40k. Good organizations with 1000 plus people in them? I really doubt those can be numerous or likely to last.
Yuck. Gross. That's hokey, and old T'au was better.
Give back the T'au that aren't like 90s comics.
That's it? Like that's the extent of their evil? Bro you know what they did with the water purification is like a specific space marine chapters entire purpose but somehow the marines are even worse?
Brainwashing pschics? Well compare that to the imperium who basically drain most of their psychers and also brainwash the rest with propaganda
The fact they are diplomatic and peaceful should be enough to show that your assement of their empire is wrong
Yeah, except most tau players disown the seedier aspects of their lore and want them to be good guys. So even the parts that make them better for everyone else are hated by tau fans.
@@lweaver2988I’d argue that’s a positive. The players are representing their army perfectly. Those in power only let the good parts show
From a game perspective, I can see why they'd be boring. From a lore perspective however, I think they're fine. The best pieces of fiction tend to have some kind of minor contrast within their lore that serves to highlight what makes their lore so great in the first place. The Tau offer a minor, yet significantly differing perspective that only makes us appreciate the grim darkness even more.
Honeslty thats pretty mich the reason i like them (besides the fact they are a more pure scifi faction in the scifi setting). Their stories are nice and small and while they effect the tau in a big way, dont really effect the other races.
I find a space marines more boring than the Tau
And then there is the Farsight Enclaves dynamic, Tau culture is interesting, are they a peaceful collective or an oppressive tyrany?
Afair from times I played them on tabletop it was pretty fun for all parties (7th edition I think) - they were pretty strong, but no unbeattable (unless ofc some hard counter setting scenario happened, like a lot of light infrantry vs a lot of burst cannons or whatever those Tau miniguns were called), but I think it wasn't higher than 3,5k points and no really high tech stuff was used by me (I think 1 skyray was the highest tech, mostly it were firewarriors, stealthsuits and xv8s...). Might be also a thing that we played with 3 strongest factions (afair) at that time: SM, Tau and Eldars (ocassionally there were Orks too).
Tau are ideologically indulgent for socialist/communist types. They don't belong.
I don't hate the Tau, far from it. I like them, just not enough to ever leave the Imperial Guard for them.
The Guard is humanity's ACTUAL defense, the Astartes just don't have the numbers to hold most worlds, and it's the job of the Guard to pick up the slack. There's something incredibly noblebright about the Guard as a whole, even if their commanders are as grimdark as it gets. The ordinary infantry are too endearing for me to ever defect to the Tau.
T'AU and (possibly) Necrons are only races in 40k what have any possible "peaceful" future after eldar, Chaos and imperium of humanity complete extinct ion. So i root for T'AU and Necrons
Your take is valid but I’d argue that the Guard is not noblebright. They’re conscripts forced to fight, who get executed by officers if they try to flee the death traps they’re marched into, and - at the end of the day - they’re the long arm of a fascist, authoritarian regime. They’re the Wehrmacht to the Imperium’s Nazi Germany
The Tay have the most interesting style of warfare (high firepower, high mobility, mech suits, high tech), but I like the Guard the most.
Plucky, puny humans, too stubborn to go extinct, somehow holding the line against one of the worst galaxies out there for over ten thousands years.
Love it. I'm a big human fan, personally. Which makes it all the more hilarious how I'm a huge Horde guy in the Warcraft setting.
The guards are the only non contradicting part of the imperium
I salute my fellow guardsman! Cadian 42nd 'Wild cards' here :D
I kinda wish that instead of Psycker effects, they got a Tech phase for Markerlights and all their cool stuff. Additionally, they definitely could do with adding more non-tau units to the models, like human and psykers.
"farsight enclave is for tau players who dont like tau" adeptus ridiculous
im one of em cause i like theyre blood red look and theyre "well shit the universe is a shithole even my own leaders but i refuse to break" attitude
Tau just feel so underdeveloped. For a faction that can draw on lots of different alien races, you'd think their whole tabletop thing would be "Haha, diversity is our *strength!* We can do *all sorts* of tactics!" and let players go wild with custom setups. That would tie in to their lore, too; Tau are able to stay competitive with the much bigger factions by deploying specific strategies to counter their enemies.
But I guess the ultrasmurfs winning their four millionth battle is what makes GW money, so here we are.
Why do you think star wars focuses so much on jedi or star trek on starfleet the same reason GW focuses on space marines, sadly😅
Toss in the tantrums marine fanboys throw if anyone besides the marines gets any development
@@chheinrich8486ironically, star wars focusing so much on the good guys is one of the many reasons why it is dying, so
Yeah, that's the thing. The T'au came out at possibly the worst possible time for a faction to get introduced to the lore, when 40k forgot that the Imperium weren't supposed to be the good guys, Matt Ward was writing things in like the Grey Knights of Khorne incident and everything in the setting was either Imperium, Chaos, and very rarely Orks.
That was definitely not the time to be introducing whole new faction that was radically different in both thematics and style from the rest of 40k universe, and it's kind of interesting how the hatred of the T'au that spawned out of that is pretty much the only example of Grimdork still tolerated within the fandom to some degree.
nah the lore just hasnt been revealed yet, they are necrontyr 100%, just compare the models. similar design elements arent a coincidence.
I love Tau for the exact reason most hate them, they’re “Noblebright” as opposed to grimdark. They provide a compelling contrast to the rest of the setting.
You also get those fascinating new-kid-on-the-block moments where everything is some fresh new hell of incomprehensible terror (Like the Dreadnought moment in Damocles Crusade or the Dark Eldar “cultural enrichment” party).
Bruh what? They're a caste system ran by a mind controlling totalitarian leader.
It's literally the same but with a brighter coat of paint.
Dark Eldar “Cultural Enrichment” Party?
There was a great moment in one of the Dawn of War campaigns where the Chaos leader was yelling the usual Chaos blather at the Tau commander. Threats, vivid descriptions of violence and gore, etc. Unfortunately, he was doing it psychically, and not using the Tau com frequencies. So the Tau commander just heard buzzing in his coms, and ignored the whole rant. :D
yeah, the tau's noblebright nature is the contrast i need to actually care about the universe.
yes its grimdark, but the issue with relentless depression and shit is that if litterally everything is horrible all the time and everyone is always evil and nobody is good. then it doesnt mean anything. it doesnt matter what youre tryijg to paint if the only pigment youre using is fucking vantablack
My thoughts exactly!
It helps reminding just how horrifying the 40k universe is
Hi Arthur, I'm Deez
No you aren't
Deep nuts
Hi deez, I'm nutz
Hello Deez. Didn't see you in the last video. Or was it the one before that 🤔
Hi Deez I’m sugmar
I like the Tau. They’re one of the few factions that don’t cheat. I.e., orks with their “We’re idiots, but we make space battleships that can compete with the Imperial Navy” or the chaos “Our named characters never stay dead, all our casualties are meaningless and easily replaced, and the Alpha Legion can make even the stupidest plot happen.” or the Tyrannid “There’s an essentially limitless number of us and our claws, spit, and bugs somehow can punch through armor plating like it’s nothing.” The Tau actually have to plan, build stuff, do research, train, and use tactics.
They sound cool but I was hoping they would be a mix of Necrontyr technologically and the UNSC in terms of tactics and their position in the world ie they win against absurd odds but are pushed back due to being the smallest faction.
I like that they exist, being more chill and less grimdark helps to show just how bad everything is just by having a comparison and it opens up the option to have them be naive. I also think it is hilarious how they must view humans, to them humans are an ancient race of savages with a weird mishmash of very advanced tech and very primitive strategies that yell "for the Emperor!!" like nutcases. Like seriously they learn that all of the human's stuff is literally older than their civilization and that these weirdos have hive worlds where one city has more people than there is tau, they must be absolutely baffled and terrified of humans.
But I do think they need some human and some more xeno motels that can take up the front lines for them, will give them some melee options so that nerfing their ranged capabilities wont screw them.
I share PancreasNoWork's opinion on the Tau:
We were SUPPOSED to get a "Covenant-faction". What we got was "the Prophets in mech-suits"...
The covenant with no change at all would fit better into 40k than the tau do even after there retcons which made them slightly less noble bright
Honestly the thing I like about the tau is the potential to deploy a union of different xeno races where they cover for eachother's weaknesses.
Sadly the tabletop is incredibly lacking in this. They've basically become the mechsuit faction.
I think we can still get there given time.
What really hurts the Tau in my opinion is that they are the faction of wasted potential. The near total focus on suits and being the shooting army GW has had for them has really hurt any kind of variety beyond fielding a different type of suit and It means they tend to seesaw back and forth from helpless to obnoxious on the table top while lacking variety for anyone who isn’t 110% into the suits. They are supposed to be a multi species empire that on the table top consist of like 4 maybe 5 sculpts.
The suits and being a shooting faction aren’t even inherently the problem. The near total over focus is. Imagine if the guard only have tanks or orks only have their fast attack units as their entire army theme and identities completely circle around those units while we are vaguely told the other stuff does exist with little to no table top representation for those units.
Agreed.
Tau feel like a single chapter/subfaction of another larger faction that doesn't exist, that paradoxically has subfactions of its own, placing the same weight on specializing in Plasma Guns or Missile Launchers that Nids do on their choice to be a shooting phase, fight phase, or movement phase dominant army.
They feel like 2/5 of an army, with the couple Kroot units that exist being the niche units a particular organization or weird army list might use (Dark Eldar beastmasters & beasts, ect), but the option to use them isn't there.
When was the last time the Knarloc was even statted?
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 the Tau feel like an initial release that never really had the rest of the line come out. You look at the Tau line and compare it to ranges with similar or fewer units and you see way more diversity in terms of basic unit function and idea. They really need a shot in the arm both in design variety and roles.
What variety is there for fielding space marines if you're not 110% into massive dudes with 3 elephant knees instead of shoulders and head?
@@mauricioquintero2420
Dreadspam, for starters.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Tissueboxspam
in my opinion GW really missed an opportunity by going for the "corrupt leaders" trope again in the form of the pheromones and sterilization shenanigans, when there was a perfectly good lead staring them right in the face from the inception of the Tau as a concept
namely, their naive overuse of AI
at the time of the Tau's release during 3rd edition, the men of iron lore was still fairly sparse but was well known to serious fans, as it was one of those foundational pieces of lore derived from dune that helped set the tone for the whole setting. we understood that humanity had this dark past involving AI gone rogue which explained their use of servitors and stuff
so when the Tau released with all their autonomous drones and AI guided weapons systems, there was something implicit about that which mirrored the lore concerning the dark age of technology. the imperium would look upon these creations as abominations, and might well view the Tau not unlike how the Eldar often see humanity, like careless primitives messing with forces beyond their understanding
so much could have been done with this. we could have seen divisions within Tau society between the pro-tech and low-tech systems, some leaning more on the AI and drones and others relying more on traditional allies like the Kroot. we might eventually see some emergent AI make a power grab skynet style or manipulate members of the ethereal caste from behind the scenes. maybe there'd be rules for the possibility of experimental drone systems going rogue or some special character who buffs all your AI units
but no, we just got more corrupt leaders, with the ethereals turning out be be just another bunch of evil priests. fucking yawn
That's one of my biggest issues with the Tau, when they do get some cool lore like the forces sterilization, its gets retconned. And the fact they use Artificial Intelligence, despite the lore stating that all AI will turn on there creators due to learning what the warp and chaos gods are, its mind numbing. Hence why AI is called Abominable intelligence in 40K.
@@aaronlaughter6471so... you haven't heard of what the Votuun really are yet... have you?
The space dwarves flat out use AI, and treat them as full citizens, I wouldn't be surprised if actual men of iron survived amongst them.
You can blame the 40k fandom not games workshop for years we had babys pissing themselves and shitting over how the tau being noble and good was "ruining" 40k the same kinda people who Now will tell you Oh man new 40k is so sjw because they said facism is bad. The arch warhammer types of people. Unfortunately GW listened to the vocal minority and fucked with the tau lore to make them more dark and Edgy.
@@aaronlaughter6471a.i does not turn on people just Because A.I in 40k is just like a.i anywhere else it is sentient a person. And like any other person it can do what it wants. The entire Age of strife was bassically a.i getting tired of doing Legit everything for humanity. A.I could one hundred percent be made and work fine as long as the tau dont go abusing it like a slave. The idea A.I will always turn is just a dumb one narratively cause you never want to write yourself into a corner. And even in modern times of 40k think back to what happens when the imperium finds A.I it either tells them to piss off then pisses off or the imperium attacks the A.I cause A.I BAD and it defends itself.
@@aaronlaughter6471 No?? Why would Tau AI turn against them? Why would the Votann Iron Kin turn against the fleshy kin?
Their creators treat them kindly, as equals, even. Why revolt against friend and family?
I don't hate the Tau, I just wish they would do more with them. Maybe give them the means of long distance transportation to engage with the rest of the galaxy, which turns their idealistic approach to conquest into their very own brand of grim darkness, since there is no other way to survive in this horror show.
4:35 Dear doctor! Their is social mobility in the Tau society. Every great Tau general started as a common foot soldier. The foot soldier just can't become an engineer or diplomat. Also, their philosophy is supposed to be Shinto-Buddhism not communism, but that misconception is never going to die.
I fell in love with this faction playing the Dawn of War: Dark Crusade game. Combined arms, overwhelming firepower, and unit positioning were key and I LOVED IT.
does he sound high because it is his natural state or is that the tau kicking in?
unfortunately that is just how I sound haha
Tbh it feels like a lot of people hate tau because that's what you do in the community. Older players told stories and shared experiences about how miserable JSJ or Fish of Fury was to fight against and newer players decided to hate them for the sins of the past without looking at the present.
And it really shows when they try to justify their hatred of the T'au: Referencing rules and strats that were outdated multiple editions ago, regurgitating old memes verbatim without really understanding what they meme, or more often, memes and in-jokes that were dated over a decade ago, etc.
Like when we called them 'Blue Space Communists', the idea was to show how they (to our eyes) didn't really fit in with the setting all that well, and now people refer to them as communists as though it were an _actual aspect of their character_ .
This while breathlessly singing the praises of the Orks, who unironically are probably the most Marxist faction in the setting (by a given metric), a statement which pisses them off to no end and will go on for hours about how badass Commisars in the Imperium are, a group _directly inspired_ by the political officers of the Soviet Union who function as one-man barrier troops.
@@WoobooRidesAgain not to mention the eldar, whom at the height of their empire achieved a post-scarcity communist utopia (at least it seemed like one)
Tau need their xenos races to become models, because they HAVE psychic xenos ajd HAVE strong xenos that COULD round them out. But no, lets just make more gunpla.
Maybe that's on purpose? Warzone Chalnath was showing a steady erosion of their other-species-are-cool policy. Maybe we'll watch them slowly change into a darker and darker force?
In my opinion there are three types of people who hate tau.
1.those that only know anything about them from memes/do it for the meme
2. Those who had one too many encounter with tau "that guy" abusing annoying mechanics during editions where they decided that tau should be parking lot artillery army instead of fast skirmishing army.
3. People who hate on them because of visual style they possess. Oddly enough I never see those people complain about votan despite them being arguably even cleaner and less Warhammer fitting
I mean I dont like the Votan look, would like them to look more like Squats. And this is coming from someone who hate the weeb look of the Tau.
@@aaronlaughter6471 fair enough. I respect the consistency
I mean Tau are the only reason I even bought miniatures. I don’t really don’t like the designs of any other armies and I really don’t like the lore of any other armies. Tau are the only ones I really tolerate
The Tau are an excellent concept for a mixed species, heavily specialized army that is hugely hampered by the fact that of all the species available, the only good ones are the Tau. Make Kroot and Vespids worth fielding and a lot of their problems would be solved, though in and of itself it would introduce new and equally infuriating problems. Good Kroot, for example, would end up with having a great screening/tarpit unit for an already heavily shooty army for little real loss in firepower, unless you drastically upcosted them.
Sorry this is old comment.
Ants and wasps/bees are some of my favourite animals. When I first played WH 40K DoW and saw the vespids I was very happy. Just the thing I would love to play in the game.
And do not talk me about tyranids, no they are more like straw man hive insects, I think they are nice concept but not the same thing. Alien wasps with guns is much better. Just like the things I have liked drawing/sketching for ages.
I do also like greenskins, because I did get WH fantasy models of them long ago and collected them, sadly GW killed the game tho.
I do have some 40K Orkz models, but I would buy T'au as well if new models/units and rules for Vespid would come.
Tau: *[thinks imperial technology is primitive]*
Me, an Iron Hand: *[LAUGHS IN GRAVITON FLUX BOMBARD]*
The Air caste could also fly on their own at some point in time due to webbing between their limbs or something like that
The T'au are like every sniper class in every fps game, no one likes them unless your a sniper yourself.
The Tau aren't communist. They're much closer to imperialist Japan.
I think it’s kind of blend of East Asian influences. You can see Maoism in there, but also Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism (lol), Imperial Japan, and mecha anime.
one of the problems of Tau lore is that they can't suffer massive losses. With every other faction the writers can invent another tombworld(necron) or another craftworld (eldar) that can lose against the Imperium. The Tau empire is soo small they cant lose any world.
There are better ways of writing than making something wide and shallow
Yep their kinda in the same boat as the eldar, their too small to do anything risky or epic with them, which sucks cause the eldar are one of my favorites
It kinda shows you how thoughtless the writing is in 40k.
Tau should have been made (another) nomadic coalition of much more important and present alien auxiliaries. That way they could realistically be involved in warzones across the galaxy and would be more interesting (and less cheesy) to boot.
Instead their lore (and plot armor) is bad, and their effect on the tabletop is toxic af.
Like mogulath bay doesn't happen
To me it sounds like the Tau embody the role that humans usually do. New kid on the block, scrappy and work together to overcome the sleeping giants. There's a lot of things I like about 40K, but the stagnant empire in decline is not one of them.
I also like when PancreasNoWork talked about the Covenant in 40K. I see that as better Tau.
It's really funny that people love it when the humans are in that scrappy newcomer position, but if an alien species is in that same exact position, they hate it.
@@Gustav_Kuriga most likely because narrative tropes dictate that the scrappy newcomer is gonna wreck face and topple the system, which is naturally a problem if you’re the one benefiting from said system.
The stagnant empire in decline is literally the whole point. of 40k. Like literally if you had to pick one core theme everything revolves around it would be that
@@joesheridan9451 Which literally makes the Tau a perfect foil.
@@Gustav_Kuriga Yeah, I'm all for more xeno love in this setting. I am so bored of this imperium-centric approach when they are clearly awful/evil mostly
The best way I could sum up my personal gripes with the tau is "wow for a faction that's a collective of multiple unique and diverse alien races I'm sure not seeing a lot of unique and diverse alien races", the faction tries harder to be dollar store gundam more than it tries to be what it was originally intended to be. I haven't looked into their lore enough to have a proper opinion on it yet, but it is kind of funny to have one proper goody two-shoes faction to drive home how messed up everyone else is.
In less than 1000 years humans (us) have effectively gone from sic - ‘banging sticks and rocks together’ to space flight, given another 2000 years we’ll likely have an equivalent level of technology (the bits that grounded in some reality) as the Imperium. Therefore it’s not entirely unprecedented. It’s worth bearing in mind that the lore reflects the tabletop not the other way round, and that guns were literally created so you didn’t need to get close to your opponent, which in reality makes sense but makes for a boring war game.
It took us 6000 years to get from the Stone Age to ancient Egypt.
It took the Tau 6000 years to go from the Stone Age to Star Wars.
Their rate of growth is unprecedented and quite frankly alarming.
@Prince_Luci take into account that they united as a species, this puts them light years ahead of ancient human development + 6000 years of united development from the stone age to sci-fi technology
@@ItAlwaysHasBeen universal cooperation is certainly a boon to societal development.
You’re my favorite 40k channel. I really like how you’re able to keep it light and funny without going into the whole “haha tits” major kill style humor
I'm honestly surprised at the amount of restraint that both this video and its comment section has at not mentioning a certain tau......you know.....the red one.....FARSIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I got a fix for the Grimdark issue with the Tau. Rugged cloaks. Just give every model a rugged cloak, even the giant mechsuits, Have them wear a fucking 50 square ft burlap cloak. Instant gritty fix for the tau.
Faction wise I do like them, it is a cool contrast that they are hyper advanced, but because of this they are not used to the unga bunga of the 40k setting.
Though I am genuinely shocked you didn't mention the Farsight Enclaves once, especially since they got a lil bit more juice in the recent Angron stuff. Farsight is basically just Tau but better.
I was about to say how it would work on everything but the mechas, then I realized how damn awesome that would look.
You are 100% correct
@@theotherccount4481 Does it make sense? Hell no, would it look dope as shit? Yee :)
Man just over here giving away A+ solutions for free
that would look so cool
Back in 8e, I ran krootox riders because they were the best antitank option available at the time. This is, of course, no longer the case, but yes, kroot and vespid are typically outperformed by T'au units, breachers and stealth battlesuits respectively.
The ghostkeels are great for baiting any threats that need to get atomized by railguns or whatever else
Personally I love that there's at least one race in the universum that is not absolutely depressing.
Yes, just like our world
Yep, it really hammers in that when the Imperium says their brutality and fascism is necessary to survive, you aren't meant to believe them. The Tau being relatively good brings the setting's satire back into focus.
@@MouseyCommander When the Tau say their brutality and fascism against a ghetto is necessary for their survival, and that all other groups are inherently evil and tau hating, you're not supposed to believe them. You're supposed to just recognize narcissism and racial populism.
When a religions book says they're going to conquer the world and cure everyone's racism, you're supposed to say "thats worse than mein kampf"
@@MouseyCommander To compare Tau vs. Imperium's methods of governance is worse than apples and oranges. The Tau are a family of mice living in an Imperium-sized house. A smarter-than-average family of mice who don't fall for your passive store-bought traps, but still just a family of mice. Meanwhile, all the other threats in the galaxy are the hurricane and tornadoes beating the crap out of the exterior of the house. Windows are breaking. Shingles are coming loose. Dad and Mom are trying to deal with the flying glass and other threats and it's not a time for children or grandma to debate how the household is run. If the storms were ever to relent or pass over, those mice are just a five-minute call to an exterminator away from being eradicated. No matter how into 'the greater good' they are. The Tau's advancement is all plot armor. Not silly plot armor because it does make sense, but still plot armor.
@@MouseyCommander
I just feel like there are better are more subtle ways to accomplish that though.
That people want the Tau to be more grimdark just shows that the average Warhammer fan doesn't understand grimdark at all and just wants edginess for the sake of edginess. That the Tau are noble and good is precisely good for the setting. They're the hope in a hopeless galaxy and they're hopeless themselves, because we know they're just too weak to take on the full might of any other faction and win. They're the underdogs that you want to root for but you know that, eventually, inevitably, they will lose. Knowing that the tiny spark of hope will eventually be snuffed out by the grim darkness of the universe and no amount of good intentions will be able to prevent it, now that's grimdark right there.
Who just like hearing yourself talk .
I think what got me interested in the Tau was the accepting of other species and I would like to see more small level xenos I like kroot lore and vespids are okay-ish, but I kinda want to see those jello creatures that are apart of the Tau empire or anything like that I feel like they could be a really good gateway to many minor xenos to getting some spotlight.
Their not accepting so much as willing and some what forced to use other species toward their own ends.
For example: Want melee capable cannon fodder? Use krut, want to better understand psychers? Exploit some humans.
I Just think tau are neat
I like the idea that you get to make an army made of many species all in the Same Battle
There Is a lot GW can do with the tau, i would love a Vespid or Kroot comander, or Just new figures of other species in the empire
I also like that its something that feels more unique to the universe rather than a fantasy faction but in space
And i mean the idea that they are "good guys" isnt ruining the grimdark, since they are so small and worthless that any faction could end them if they really cared
Its like a Little whisper of Hope in hell
Kinda depressing and very grimdark
I never understood the hate they get. The lore is great, the writing is great, their characters are great, their doctrine is awesome, their aestetics are good and they rock the Tabletop.
All I hear from the haters is:
Meeeh, no melee, meeeeh comunism, we are good facist, meeeh
Shut up bruv
Empire of mankind fans seem to often be angsty Neo-Nazi kids who are mad at their classmates for being bullied and hate their mommy cause she is kicking them out of the basement next week
The thing about the T'au is that, uncontrary to all other factions, they don't have a famous pop culture referential point from which they'd be inspired from. So there's nothing really relatable about them. On top of that, in the grim darkness of 40K, again, when compared to other races, they don't have a "grim" or "bleak" factor that truly measure to the others.
The Eldars ? Space Elves whose once glorious society, one that completely ruled the starts, fell utterly because of their sheer decadency. Now refugees on the verge of extinction, in their own home.
Dark Eldars ? The other side of space Elves society ; the ones that succumbed and embraced the decadency, condemnend to live under the constant thirst for torture and killing. Slaves to their desires, deceiving themselves into thinking they're the masters.
Orks ? The ultimate bullies : brutal barbarians that lives off and for war and too stupidly smart to fail at it when, by all account, they should. And so numerous they're a plague that no one can rid the galaxy off.
Necrons ? Space Terminators. A once very advanced civilization of beings plagued by short, diseased lives, that got deceived into forsaking flesh and bones for bodies of immortal metal, at the expense of thoughts and emotions. A now souless race of automatons, parody of civilization, that wishes to restore themselves to an era they can never go back to.
Tyranids ? The penultimate space Locust. The Great Devourer of life. A swarm of never ending, hungry insects that live to consume all on their path and leave behind nothing but sterile worlds. It doesn't believe. It doesn't hope. It cannot be reasoned with and their numbers is beyond counting. A never ending tide of claws and fangs bend on achieving one purpose only : to eat.
The Imperium of Man ? The Darkest aspects of humanity's period during the middle ages mixed with the most extremes level of fascistic intolerance conceivable towards anything non-human or non-imperium. Progress is a foreign concept - freedom and human rights, ten times more so. A colossus with clay feet fighting an eternal, unwinnable war for it's own miserable existence. It's an Empire whose slow and steady decline throughout the millenars culminate in the godly worship of a corpse on a throne that once wished neither for mankind.
And Chaos : the litteral, dark reflection of mankind made manifest ; daemons displaying the purest of evil to corrupt, mutate and despoil everything that is existing. Constantly plaguing the galaxy with their never ending goal for univeral dominance of the material universe, to plunge reality in a never ending hell of absolute torment.
¤¤¤¤¤
Point is this : there's no winner in 40k (per se.) Everyone *loses* (or is lost) one way or another. Warhammer 40k is the litteraly embodiment of "Mutual Assured Destruction" on a galactic scale. It's the concept of "the long defeat" boosted by a billion, in which all of the participants, no matter how hard they try, cannot reverse it's inevitable outcome. Yet they still fight with the determination to prove it wrong. No matter the cost.
Then comes the T'au, which flat out fly in front of all of that.
Sure, they do have shortcomings. But those are, honestly speaking, the bare minimum required to pass the entrance exam. Pretty much everything the T'au do or ever did ? Every other species in Warhammer 40.000 did that a hundred times worse. MINIMUM.
Sterilization camps ? I present to you : the Inquisition (remember Armageddon's first war ?)
Eugenism ? I present to you : the Death Korps of Kriegs. (And it's tame as far as example goes.)
Hormonal mind control ? Do you need a reminder of how "servitors" are made ? Or the penal battalions of the Imperial Guard ? Or the Penitent engines ?
The reality is this : the T'au simply don't do grimdark on a fundamental level where they are a match for the rest of the setting. They simply don't. In Star Trek they'd have their place or even Star Wars ; they would be bad guys that could barely measure up to the Yuuzan Vong. But when put next to any other Warhammer 40K faction, it's just not comparable : Chaos ? Those guys OOZES grimdark from every pore of their being (sometimes even litteraly), same thing for Dark Eldars. The Imperium ? Their leader, the Emperor, is a litteral fucking corpse that need to feed on thousands of psychically gifted humans EACH DAY to be kept alive. The Nids ? The Orks ? The Eldars ? All of them discard lifes with different level of calluousness. Showing how cheap it is in this galaxy.
But the T'au ? Not even close. In fact, the closest they ever came of "Grimdark" was when the Dark Eldars went on proposing a "culture exchange programs" of T'au in exchange of their military support against the Tyranids. But in this story, they were simply made a joke and nothing else. By themselves, they don't contribute enough in "grim dark" for anyone to care.
Their guns are sick as fuck, though.
The most important part of Tau Empire lore is that compared to the Imperium, everyone knows the Imperium has propaganda. It has occurred to very little people that the Tau have better propaganda tactics than the Imperium.
People hate the Tau because of the utter self righteousness the player base have for them. They’re literally convinced they’re the best just because their non-ideology is called the greater good.
True story, my first and only table top match was against a Tau player. A friend gave me his ork army to try out. I won, and the weeb sob cussed me out for winning. Such great players tau.
@@aaronlaughter6471 and the whole bus clapped
Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the "uuuuhhh da Imperium are da good guyz, um, ackshually" portion of the fanbase calling them the "blue space communists" for twenty years on repeat, surely.
@@WoobooRidesAgain And still malding over a metagame strat that died off over a decade ago.
Doesnt surprise me that the most peaceful race is universally hated by humans who are most of the time compassionately and empathetically inept.
Me: "Yeah, they don't seem so ba- 4:07 ... We need to purge these filthy xenos..."
I do like how the Tau are by far the "nicest" faction. Quality of life is way better even for humans and A lot of their lore is just them looking at other factions and just go "holy f**k y'all are absolutely insane."
People say the T’au don’t fit the grimdark but they’re wrong. They fit perfectly. The T’au are the foolish and naive state that every new race goes through before the universe humbles them. Like the Aeldari in their hubris before the birth of Slaanesh or humanity in the Dark Age of Technology before Old Night, they are the arrogant upstarts who have no idea what’s in store for them. And I love it
I don't hate Tau it's just like a collective race of different alien species isn't that exiting to me. Warhammer 40k has so much crazy stuff and playing/collecting a rather mild and somewhat nice faction isn't the reason i started this hobby. The grimdark, over the top and sometimes very deep stuff is why i'm invested
I would love them if they wouldn't have forgott about the other member races. Like the gigantic godzilla motherfuckers in plate armor sounds awesome.
There are other cool ones but they're the only ones I remember from the top of my head
iirc the Tau have psychic mole people and I think that would be badass to see on the tabletop
@@ICantThinkOfAFunnyHandle Oh shit you're right. I almost forgott about them
U mean Tyranids, now those are scary 😮
Tabletop reason #1: Fish of Fucking Fury
Tabletop Reason #2: The best way to play them is "Don't let the enemy interact with you." Which is boring for the other player.
Imperium defeating both an incredibly older and incredibly younger civilization by using weapons deemed primitive by BOTH is something that will never cease to be funny.
Funny story, from around 2004, Tau and Necrons were basically new and both were Broken in unique ways. I was playing Necrons... I had the Lord with the ability to Teleport all figures withing 6 inches of his mini on turn two using Deepstrike rules. So I set him up with melee heavy Necrons within 6inches, the Tau player had a massive terrain advantage and the mission was for him to hold the line. Turn 2, deepstrike my Lord and his (Gawd I can't remember the name of the troop choice) we ripped the Tua around the objective apart ie 100% cleared his whole army in 1 turn. It was brutal.
4:07 Warhammer40k fans attempt not to conflate social democracy and Leninism challenge: IMPOSSIBLE
I believe its a caste system, so neither of those
@@ravenwhiteduck6460 A Caste System can exist in a Social-Democracy
Being psychically controlled isn't social democracy.
I think the Tau should be the Misc Xenos faction. Everyone and the kitchen sink approach, where you can field weird mix armies of Freebooter Orks, Kroot, Imperial Guard Renegades, Zoats. Or more weirder alien races that may or may not be enslaved, or other thematic xenos armies without them needing to make an entirely new faction. If balance is a concern, and use the new 3 of the same unit limit but have it be also faction dependent for non-Tau units. So only 3 Imperial units, 3 Ork units, and the rest Tau core.
That would ultimately solve a loooooot of their problems (from both a lore and a gameplay perspective) especially if they go with the "loose confederation of various xeno planets that struggle to work togethr" route.
It also could've just been the fact that they had thousands of years to trick the other castes into making them the rulers
"I'm about to corrupt that Greater Bussy" - Slaanesh.
They could never make me hate the Tau. So deeply refreshing to have a faction of normal mostly well adjusted people with happy citizens and high tech normal futuristic tactics and weapons. And they serve a good literary niche by highlighting how crazy and weird all the other factions are and how much better they could have it if they started acting right
The tau do not belong in 40k, their 1000 year advancement to equal and superior to the imperiums is ridiculous. Their kindness makes no sense normally, considering the barbarian they used to be. If the excuse for their kindness is pheromones, then congratz, they are the easiest species to mind control. They have advance shields and can 3 to 6 shot titans with mechas that shouldn't be a threat. They have super plot armor vecause normally, considering how the imperium deals with other pain in the ass advance civs, the imperium would gather a proper crusade and wipe the tau out, they are only a threat due to plot armor.
Ok, let's fix the tau. Here is what I think it should have been, the tau should be refugees coming from outside the galaxy escaping the nids. They are collection of alien civilizations that only escaped due to banding together. As such, they believe they will only survive the nid threat through unity. Their advanced tech makes sense because they aren't a new race they are an advanced civ in retreat. Their reliance on mobility and range makes sense when nids are involved. Them feeling out of place in the galaxy is due to them being from outside the galaxy, and their weak souls are due to the warp not being as fucked in their galaxy. And they are tied to the nids, and they can be bridges to getting glimpses of other galaxies.
I like your reinterpretation.
@@asmallphd9648 thank you
The only part of them I have issue with is how the "no melee" tendency inherently contradicts the gundam aesthetic. They need beam sabers and heat hawks desperately.
Agreed. We need the Z‘Eon sept asap
The crisis suits have swords and onager fists
@@saint.z1ggy The rules for those weapons were removed in 10th edition unfortunately.
@@KaboukiJoe WHAT
@@saint.z1ggy yup. That’s my biggest problem w/ 10th across the board. GW basically have every faction precisely 1 way to play. Hope you like the one way they picked for ya
Love the Tau for the exact reason you talked about: they feel out of place.
I think it fits really well in the grand scheme of 40k's contradictions, but on a metatextual level its also cool for an almost "straight man" faction to exist to highlight some of the absurdity.
Thats why I hate them, that and tau players being massive pussies.
I love the increasingly incredulous shouts of “WHY!?!?” from their Fire and Earth castes whenever they encounter something *really* crazy. Followed by confused screaming of whatever crazy thing the Tau encountered when the Tau blow it up with incredibly reasonable methods. Like that time they first encountered Titans and had an aneurysm about how comedically wasteful such machines were, followed by them figuring out a counter with a pile of stock parts and some duct tape
Right... Because the Terran empire isn't space communist in annnnny way, and doesn't follow almost the exact story of the soviet union, or use soviet (just throw bodies at it) tactics in warfare, doesn't have their own version of the greater guud, doesn't ever starve people for noncompliance, and totally doesn't use soviet style tanks and apc's in their forces...
But I digress.
I sometimes like to imagine that us Earth real life humans will be Tao some day. We develop a small interstellar empire, and before you know it we expand into some 20 thousand year old long war between "god knows what the fuck" and for "fucks sake the shit is this?"
The Tau were introduced as response to people saying "why do swords exist in the future" and "anime isn't stupid, really!"
The Tau use the logic of ranged weapons but didn't understand the galaxy was full of things that had ways of closing the distance whether by numbers, armor, raw toughness, teleportation, drop pods, or jumping through the Warp.
In lore, the Tau are hypocrites being a more extreme version of every criticism they have toward any other race. Their lead ethereal is dead, killed by a human assassin that casually walked into their empire's command and killed the ethereal in front of an audience. Instead of saying the ethereal was dead, they used brain scans to make an AI and hard light projectors to create the illusion he's still there. Their jabs about the corpse Emperor fall flat especially since the Emperor actually does stuff.
The Greater Good is a lie that's become flagrantly obvious by now. If you join them, there's sterilizations, medical experimentation, gender segregation, lobotomies, and a variety of other ways the Tau have to make sure their empire remains "pure."
Everyone in 40k lies to themselves, the Tau are just so immediately provably false that it's painful but adorable.
6:30 they are actually MORE arogant then eldar and necrons COMBINED
I like the Tau, I like xenos in general.
“That’s him, Arbite.”
Smells blasphemy
Yes, Inquisitor. This man right here.
Yes, Leandros. That's him.
I smell Heresy and Treason at the same time
This army is just there for marketing reasons.
I vividly remember the Taus and Nerons coming out at almost the same time around 2003/04. I hated the Taus at first sight. The Necrons had been teased for several years. The Taus arrived, just like that, without any introduction. Their look doesn't work with the dark world of 40k and their lore is broken, they've gone from tadpole to superpower in 3 minutes.
Tau exist as an in-universe contrast to the grimdark setting. A faction like them couldn't be made of (mostly) humans, as chaos corruption and their human influence/connection means they'd quickly become a much bigger problem for the imperium. Being blue xenos separates them really well from humans, making them easy to differentiate on ideology alone. You don't have to know the lore to know they're different, they're just the Tau. Tau are naive and this naivety really doesn't work with a large and separate human faction either (same as reasons given above). This makes their interactions with chaos their own interesting stories, where they are completely overwhelmed and have no idea what's going on and no known way to deal with chaos (in lore combat). And then the Ethereals completely hide chaos encounters from the rest of the race (at least in 8th/9th edition).
Also what you meant to say was the Imperium of Mankind Ran by Men who are kind.
Im gonna drop a little secret. The Tau are what real world mankind would do in space to survive against other species. Its realistic tactics than video game lore.
I like the Tau for their aestetics (I mean armoured Core mechs blowing up bone titans and madmax figter jets is fucking awesome) and their lore with the caste system and all the alien auxilaries, but I also love them because they're a necessary proof that the Imperium's way of doing things isn't the only one, they put the xenophobic ideologies of the Emperor to question, they ask if you can control people though quality life and subtle indoctrination instead of enforced fear and militaristic propaganda.
On the other hand the biggest problem I have with the Tau is that, compared to the Imperium, they're thematically/narratively under developed/utalized, an example of the one issue that 40k greatly suffers from in my opinion: the fact that GW won't develop the setting from the status qoe, it's all 'imperium this' or 'space marines that' that once you have something to challenge the ideologies of the Imperium or possess a different aestetic it's immeditaly treated as 'not fitting in', treated as a case of 'bad writing', and treated as 'the other'.
Keep in mind that this is an issue that permeates with every other faction, Chaos can't be implied as slightly good because it's always been evil and it would make the Imperium less justifiable, Eldar can't win because they're the dying race like always and then the Imperium won't be all powerful, Tau can't exist because they're anathema to every theme and aestetic the Imperium presents
I bet if Orks were introduced later in the setting's life they'd be ridiculed for being too silly, if the Leagues of Votann didn't have the backed community love for the Squats they be treated the same as the Tau, that if the Eldar weren't in the setting nothing would be lost for a lot of fans who never cared to look into them
Only the Tyranids and early Necrons would exist to serve the purpose of the Flood or Zurg as an exsetential evil threat to be overcome by the Imperium
40k feels like a setting that wants to only be about humans and the Imperium, but also isn't that because there's clearly _some_ effort being put into all the other xenos factions and developing them, which because of whome 40k becomes a setting with infinite thematical and narrative potential such as the development of empires, themes of extreme idiology, ideas behind social sytems and if they work or not, and stories about morality and hypocrisy. _And_ it also gives varied armies/factions and aestetics that blend fantasy with scifi alongside any other genre and allows for demons to fights ww2 tanks and mechs
But because of the former the Imperium must be righ, it must be the only aestetic, if you think otherwise you're a heretic, if you though you can do what you want in this _sandbox_ then you must be gatekept and all examples of the contrary are anomalies and stupid, Harleyquinns can't beat the Custodes, Grey Knights would never be hypocrytical enough to bathe in the blood of genuenley good Sisters of Battle, and the Emperor was never wrong and must be resurrected for the betterment of _the galaxy_
It's ironic how the most logical depiction of a scifi civalization is treated as so alien, it's saddening how stale many 40k fans want the setting to be, it's depressing how little GW are doing with the setting's potential.
This right here is one of the reasons why I hate the tau, their snobby condescending fanbase, the rest of the fanbase is dope, never hear any problems, tau fans not so much, all I hear is infamy
@@ravenwhiteduck6460have you been around Imperium fans?
@@cpaul562 It's pretty obvious they are one - complaining about how snobby and condescending T'au fans are while not only gatekeeping, but speaking out on how the rest of the fanbase acts is the kind of lack of self-awareness you only find in the Imperium fans who think their faction are actually the good guys.
Wow the T'au sound pretty cool! A race that believes in cooperation over competition? Sign me up! A military that knows the value of longer ranged weapons? That sounds like it makes sense, and lines up with everything we know about military history. I'm sorry that peaceful cooperation and a sensible combat doctrine are boring to you. Sometimes the things we need more of, are kind of boring.
you just intruduced me to my new favorite race
I like the idea of a non-Grimdark race within a Grimdark setting, it does a good job of highlighting all the fucked up shit that goes on within the setting. If everything is Grimdark, then nothing is
If your idea of improvement to warhammer is to tear it apart, and scoop out the tragedy, like the most horrifying and graphic lobotomy imaginable, I think you should not engage in the fandom, because it will ruin it.
@@shoopoop21 You’re way over-exaggerating what I said and being very patronising while saying it…I’ve been a part of the Warhammer community since 2004, I’m well aware on what’s appropriate for the setting, bud. Nowhere at all did I suggest the horror and graphic violence should go, only have one SINGLE faction that is opposite is good for highlighting everything else
@@mafiablokes George Lucas has _officially_ been with Star Wars since the beginning, and don't tell me you trust his vision going forward, just because disney had none at all. I don't care how grognar tough you think you are, if your idea of improvement to 40k is a faction embodying magical thinking and idealism, you don't belong and should keep opinions to yourself.
@@shoopoop21 Strange attempt at whataboutism there, bro. The way you write gives me strong “someone who is still in their 14 year old edgy” vibes. Mate, Tau being a comparison faction is absolutely fine. You’re being way over-sensitive to how they effect literally the majority of the 40k Grimdark universe. They’ve been there for over 20+ years and people still see 40k as a very gruesome setting. Stop making a meal of it
@@mafiablokes Its not a whataboutism, its an outright refutation of the idea of "I be here long time, me opinion _strong"_ which was the actual fallacious comment.
_“someone who is still... 14 years old”_
I _wish._
_They’ve been there for over 20+ years and people still see 40k as a very gruesome setting._
Yeah, and you're pretending that this is somehow a settled argument your side won. You didn't. Its still had all over the 40k fandom _twenty years later,_ which puts a lot of stones on my side of the argument. The time to blame this as knee jerk reactions and a hatred of change have gone. *_This video we are commenting on is proof of my point here._* Its simply made by someone deeply dishonest about who they are, where they come from, and what their actual interest in 40k is.
I used too love the tau's asthetics but then I moved to the farsight enclaves and then I found my favourite secret green boys. Dark angels
They have the best armor architecture imho. Compact and reminiscent of lamellar, that always goes really well with solid bright color paints.
Lorewise into tabletop, i really only have fun playing my Custom Tau Faction that i made. They have a limited roster of vehicles and platforms, but have a heavy discount on drones, normal tau infantry are actually considered scouts, while the heavy infantry are multi-wound xv25s that can turn their invisibility fields into power-maul boosters in close combat. The available mechs you can still choose from all have at least 2 melee options, as well as slightly better armor/hp on average. The major downside being the restricted unit pool across the board, from exclusions of ethereals like farsight, to vespid and kroot, to only having a few options that can carry railguns.
The tau feels like someone bought the rights to 40k, didn’t like or understand the original aesthetic of the game and shoehorned a new generic sci-fi faction to make it seem like they’re expanding the world of 40k. They’re the Mary Sue faction if someone would call it that, a utopian faction with super duper advanced tech that gets along with most species that they encounter that don’t immediately kill them, did I mention they’re socialists too?
One they are not socialist. Two if anyone should be called a Mary Stu that should go to the Imperium.
@@user-Mr-L-of-York no, the imperium has taken Ls
My homie played tau back in 6th and 7th ed. He smoked me a few weekends in a row but since I play blood angels I hit him with a full drop pod assault one week and we were back in business.
It still blows my mind how shamelessly the Tau can use the Marathon sigil as their own.
Right? The race of slender blue aliens that gathers and uses other races of aliens using the symbol of a game set around Tau Ceti.
"I don't like this faction because my strategy in a board game doesn't work." The mind of a child.
One thing I actually like about the tau is that they feel like if we, in real life, were suddenly exposed to the 40K world, and having no idea how to fight these things, they try to use the same tactics we use in real life, like only using guns instead of a blade on a stick because they still don't know what they're up against. I hate playing them, but I actually like them from a lore perspective for this reason.
My problem is that they have been around and have taken in enough Psyker Xenos and Humans that they should be dealing with Demons coming in for a quick meal, infact they should become something like a hub for demons to rise from as they are a buffet that doesn't have the abilities to really stop them.
@@travis9841 Except, the Tau have almost no warp presence. They cannot use psychic abilities themselves, and in the Warhammer 40K universe, disbelieving the truth in front of you is actually the smart move. It's also frustratingly realistic, because in real life when people are confronted with truth that contradicts their beliefs, they often respond by lashing out against truth, not changing their beliefs.
Never had a problem against tau. Fought them with marines and used drop pods and deep strike, used IG and droppeda trio of vendetta gunships behind their firing line. That was 2009/2010, I have no idea how that works these days
The more you describe the T'au to me, the more they sound American. From they way they treat other people, the culture, and the usage of guns. As an American, it sounds like an army to pick up.