I prefer the *"sure they've meet tons of messed up things and bizarre creatures in the Warhammer 40k galaxy but...that doesn't mean they have to become a bunch of jaded asholes like the so called ""edgy cool kids"" (the other factions), they don't need their approval nor their fanboys approval".*
Being the only "good" faction but unable to do good because if you make any sort of progress you will be squashed like an insignificant bug is in itself pretty darn grimdark. It is nuanced grimdark, sure, but not everything has to be on a 3rd grade understanding level, gw
Yeah, the Tau might attempt to brainwash me, but so will every other faction that will possibly not kill me on sight, and at least the Tau have OSHA guidelines.
I’m pre sure that’s only really applicable to some hive worlds? Plus, you just work for a slightly “nicer” caste system imperialist empire that isn’t as desperate nor fighting as many forces as your previous empire you left.
@@ivanivanovitchivanovsky7123 Frankly a lot nicer, your living in a society that is at least comparable to modern day earth, though frankly far more utopian in terms of materials, resources and life-style of many of them. Even the best Imperial worlds veer straight into nightmare territory at the drop of a hat, you still have people lobotomised or have to deal with horrifying things or horrid food or just in general the Imperial's laws being pretty terrible for the average person. Your never going to get any kind of recognition, your life-style is going to be bottom rung and your society by and large won't care about you. I would say the worst T'au world is probably better then the best Imperial world for the average person.
“The tau treat other races like second class citizens.” That is still a major step up for most imperial citizens, and is a huge step up for the ungodly amount of slaves.
@@AbstractTraitorHero Well, I'd sure as hell would rather be a second or even a third class citizen of the Tau empire than a half-starved manufactorum worker or being turned into a door opener for looking at the wrong person in the wrong way. Damn, they even use human beings in order to change the fuel elements in imperial spaceships - they simply cram them full with drugs, thrust them a fuel rod into their hands and now theeere you go, buddy... Yup, Tau and Greater Good all the way.
@@fifervonpiper6707 To be quite honest, it is likely pretty okay as well. What little description of T'au food and imagery we have seems to imply it tasting decent
I’ve always had the impression that the tau play the role a human faction would normally play in a scifi setting, the new kid on the block that knows how to network and do stuff good.
@@ravenwhiteduck6460 in wh 40k 1984 is a book filled with nice people who do not kill you even if you go against the regime which to empire sounds so bleeding heart liberal that we cannot even compare it to anything in our world.
@@ravenwhiteduck6460 Because 1984 people are as bad (if not worse) than the guys that literally lobomise millions of people, just to put their brain on a door (servitors), and if that wasn't enough, if you are good enough to be a servitor, they literally throw you alive and conscious into a meat grinder
The funniest and most thematically appropriate Tau story ever was that time a Fire Warrior army entered combat with some Emperor's Children who kept yelling about the glory of Slaanesh. The Tau eventually won, beat them back, and killed the warband's leader, at which point they proudly and gladly announced that they had beaten the Astartes known as Slaanesh.
to be fair, I think the warband was lead by a daemon prince of Slaanesh, which isn't half bad for a tiny little empire with no psykers (well, the nicassar are there but they only show up in space battles) and none of the tech that other species use to counter warp fuckery. And yeah, it is very funny how clueless they are the the scale of the horrors arrayed against them, but to be fair Great Crusade humanity (minus big E and his closest allies) was clueless as to the true scale of the evil out there in the galaxy. And EVERYONE was (and largely still is) clueless about the nids' true scale.
Either that, or you can take it as I do; they kicked the shit out of a horde of Chaos Astartes, and called their god a loser. I’ll take it that way, because it’s funny.
One thing I really love about T'au is that the framing of 40k has them as the most noble, bright, civilized faction for a human to live in. One of the few relatively morally decent factions. But if you threw them into Star Trek, they're essentially the Dominion. The second worst villain Starfleet ever faced. Seriously, look at the comparisons. The Dominion are an expansionist empire with many different species under their banner, each filling a different role suited to their skills. They are ruled by a small caste of leaders which the client species view with religious veneration. They value diplomacy as a tool to bring new worlds into their empire. And the T'au? The T'au are an expansionist empire with many different species and subspecies under their banner, each filling a role suited to their skills. They are ruled by a small caste of leaders which the client castes view with near-religious veneration. They value diplomacy as a tool to bring new worlds into their empire. The minor empire of 40k which is notable for being a somewhat acceptable place to live and one of the least bad nations in the setting... is directly comparable to some of the worst villains of Star Trek. Man, the 40k galaxy is fucked.
I would agree the Dominion was the worst enemy that Starfleet ever faced. Not even the Borg came close to as the Dominion did to wiping out the Federation.
thats the thing about 40k. lots of 40k stuff is things from other sci fi cranked up to 11. what other franchises see as extreme or outright impossible is considered normal in 40k usually. 40k is in a weird spot power scale wise. It can curbstomp mainstream sci fi franchises like star trek, star wars, and halo, but there exist franchises that can absolutely curbstomp wh40k, such as xelee sequence, supreme commander, and the culture.
@@Hyde-dg7ef star wars Celestials: Could move/destroy stars and blackholes across the galaxy. Had the kwa as a subservient species, who created the infinity gates(basicly a giant Stargate), and the star temple. The star temple was capable of destroying multiple star systems. Four killik nests were also servants, and that is not to be underestimated. 4 killik nests(37,000-40,000+ per nest) is enough to create fifteen nest ships(8km), dozens of shard capital ships(1.5-10km), and a hundred and fifty thousand dart ships in a year(swarm war). And this is without celestial tecknology. A proper breeding program can boost the number of killiks to 160 million members in just three years.
Another fun anecdote that indicates the Tau's naivete when it comes to how bad things are in the rest of the galaxy: That time when one of their worlds was invaded by a Chaos warband, they heard that the Warband served Slaanesh, and after killing their leader and taking back the planet, *assumed Slaanesh was the Warlord they killed.*
That's not even naivete that's just a case of people in setting not having all the knowledge of us who know the lore. You have to wonder how many space marines or imperial guard know what the chaos gods even are because of how tight lipped the imperium is about an enemy that can corrupt. I'm sure space marines in particular have a lot of knowledge of chaos due to the horus heresy but most of it is probably relegated to chapter masters, librarians, and chaplains just because of how much it can corrupt.
@@ridleydidnothingwrong I've always assumed that spending 20 minutes on the warhammer wiki gets you more knowledge than everyone except the most powerful of psykers and Emps. I'm not even talking about shit like the Thunder Warriors, because no one besides Big E probably knows about them, I'm talking about 41st millennium stuff.
Deldar: “Our greatest fear is our eternal nemesis: _She Who Thirsts, the Prince of Pleasure, SLAANESH.”_ Tau: “Oh him? Yeah, we killed that warlord in a battle last week.” “🤨” “😄” “…you serious bro? 😒”
Explaining the warp and its demonic monster gods is tricky and if no one explains it to you you wouldn't guess. Even Lorgar needed it explained to him and he's a religious fanatic. Horus Lupercal himself was completely blindsided by the demons of nurgle that one time and he nearly died because of it. The greatest advantage chaos has is that it's pretty much impossible to tell what it is at first glance. At first their followers just seem to be sadistic monsters, then you figure they're serving some greater king or master, then you realise they worship a dark and bloodthirsty god of some sort so you figure they're just a religious hierarchy, but then you get to research the demons they bring to battle with them and realise they're not physically possible under the normal laws of physics. Confronted with this revelation you gradually piece together that these people aren't just a religious order built around a god as a figure head but in direct contact with and service too unknowable extra dimensional beings who feed on varying forms of human suffering.
@@ridleydidnothingwrong the annoying thing about chaos in 40k and Warhammer in general is that it is periodically pinging a billion different points of contact with the material plane, trillions of people might go their entire lives without attracting the attention of chaos even when doing the things that fuel them, can even be on top of or adjacent to things relating to chaos for years then one day some makes a little slip and some taint in the environment or the bloodline of one person in 6 billion and they mutate into a shoggoth or vomit up demons or some such a thing.
The even funnier follow-up to the "Surely Titans aren't _real_ right?" is the part where the Tau responded to the existence of Titans by putting mass-produced Manta railguns on a mass-produced Tigershark airframe and promptly two-shotted the next Titan they encountered, killing the entire crew. The Imperium got somewhat more conservative about Titan use after that.
@@DurzoBluntsIf there are guns that can be mounted on Titans that can kill titans then it will always be more efficient to put that gun on a more mobile preferably air borne unit with a smaller profile and destroy the titan from a distance than to build another Titan just for fun.
Where is that tidbit in? I always see talk about how they didnt believe titans were real but never how the tau respond to it once they found it to be real.
My favorite story about the Tau was during the Damocles Crusade when they examined the remains of an Astartes Dreadnaught. First the scientists were shocked by the condition of the pilot, then they were absolutely horrified by the fact the Dreadnaught was older than their entire civilization.
Yeah, but the wonderful thing about that is that it's very achievable to surpass their tech level because they haven't properly updates that ship for the last thousand years or more.
Just utter cosmic horror, you can certainly expect that many of their scientists straight up committed suicide after that discovery, greater good be damned, no amount of ethereal pheromones are gonna wash that out of your brain. The far sight enclaves ran away when their ethereals got clobbered, the dreadnaught discovery could have turned all these fish people into religious fanatics lol.
@@gogodaal7273 my guess? Nah, they most definitely went something like "damn, that's a very primitive way to do it." And "damn, we took out one of their oldest soldiers" considering their civilization is a good 6k years old
I really liked the first chapter of the farsight book, trying to rationalize blood rain and demons as freaky aliens, farsight calling for peace to a bloodthirster
@@brok56 Tau don’t have a strong warp presence, nor do they have psychers or use warp travel so the only frame of reference they have is that demons are just butt ugly aliens. This is the same mindset the Imperium had for demons during the crusade. “Oh these are just warp aliens, they come from a different dimension but they aren’t gods or demons cause that would make the imperial truth a lie.” And some people still have this mindset, Fabius Biles unbelief in the divinity of choas actively hurts the demons who go near him lol
@@brok56 To be fair to Farsight, how was he supposed to know Bloodthirsters were avatars of the literal god of blood, war, and rage? This is what TV Tropes fans call an "Outside Context Problem".
I liked it more when Tau were the deconstruction of the setting. They were the one faction trying to be reasonable in a highly unreasonable galaxy. Everyone else's bullshit just blew their minds.
Honestly, the Tau being legitimate good guys might be MORE grimdark than making them semi-evil. The only decent faction in the setting, and their existence is a mere blink in the eye of galactic time. I know Pancreas says that they could be the next superpower, but right now they survive only because the other factions haven't gotten around to stamping them out yet. For all the good the Tau could do, they're shoved away into their tiny little corner of the galaxy, hoping and praying that one of the big dogs doesn't come up with a good reason to wipe them out. That's honestly incredibly depressing
Given where they are, they will have to deal with the nids at some point. At that point, I'd feel sorry for them at that point. The imperium can afford to burn the occasional world to slow down a hive fleet or throw enough men and machines at them to stop them, it would probably take the whole empire to successfully repel it. And even then, any lost ground is probably gone for good. It is also an arms race between research and development and mutation and adaptation. Tau would eventually lose that war due to logistics unfortunately
Meh the problem I have with the T'au being the good guy, is that they are boring "good guys", when they were released they were too good guys, and GW did a 180 on them, and painted them black forgetting the most interesting faction when it comes to moral are grey. That's why the Imperium is a better "good guys", because all of evilness is just their human flaw showing, they are also in a dark part of their history and know they can be better, and we know that because they were better before, they just kept falling onto the same vice that hold them back with the real question being will they be able to figth back against those vices to survive againt all of the existential horror of this universe. They also don't really fit the fighting you inner daemon themes that is one of the main focus of the Warhammer Franchise, they are no "good guys" in warhammer because being a good guys in this universe is a struggle often againt your own nature and flaws, also they don't have much to do with the warp which is a shame and a central part of the universe, and also don't fit the theme of decay. In 40k every "good" civilization has peaked and in now declining, except the T'au. They are a missed oportunity in my opinion, they were really closed to be a perfect fit they just needed more inner struggle, flaw in their society, and morale flaws, while still retaining some amount of free will to do good to be interesting. Also more emphasis on the multi species empire would have been nice. Though they are the only faction I would consider buying model from along side maybe space marines and voltan, I absolutely dig their look and combat philosophy, and the first 40k model I might buy in my life will probably be T'au.
Nope, won’t happen cause as strong as the other races are, they cannot consolidate enough to break tau defense cause other worlds will suffer if they do, as enemies on on all sides of everyone. Its like Risk when one player only has Australia while the other has all of Asia. Yes the combined Asian force may be many times that of Australia, but also spread thin due due to retaining control of such a large territory. Also Australia not in a strategic location for attacking anyone else beyond it, does allow someone to easily amaze a very significant defense of Australia and get ignored till the end of the game.
There were two White Scar invasions but they were both pushed back by perfectly timed Warpstorms, which where considered by the Tau to be the Winds of the Greater Good. The term "Winds of the Greater Good" would centuries later be used as the name for some rather controversial suicidal naval tactics, which shocked many members of the Imperium's Armadas.
Considering how often CA rips off history books im fully willing to believe It.. ..Except for the last part. The imperium would Absolutely NOT be phased, maybe a Little surprised the Tau specifically were doing It.
@@inserisciunnome Idk, seeing as the Tau can replace their cool space ships far quicker and easier than the Imperium and that this enemy that acts rationally most of the time starts acting like the Imperium to take out warships older than their entire history, I don't think any non-transhuman or heavily augmented human would not be shocked or at least concerned.
The Tau are like Grand Admiral Thrawn. Basic real world tactics are extremely effective in a world of “charge at enemy, shoot at enemy, don’t bother to reposition.”
I always wanted to hear a story about a human (Gue'vesa) living in the Tau empire. It would be a very interesting to see that not every human fights for the Emperor nor for Chaos.
@@Furzkampfbomber I dunno man, I heard stories of tau humans still worshipping the emperor as god but rolling with the tau. Granted it was from second hand accounts but still.
@@macks2337 I simply can not imagine how that is supposed to work. As far as I know, the Tau often take over imperial fringe worlds by establishing commercial relationships and then slowly but surely upping the ante and introducing the idea of the Greater Good. Which can only work when the imperial humans are _not_ happy with Imperium and Emperor. Also, most human worlds defecting this way must be surely aware of the fact that this makes them traitors and heretics in the eye of the Imperium and that once this machine gets rolling, it will inevitably crush them. I really think that this simply would not work. Accepting the Greater Good and fighting for the Tau, maybe even against imperial humans, is like pregnancy - you either _are_ pregnant or you are _not,_ there simply is no thing as 'a bit pregnant' or 'pregnant-ish'.
@@AhmedMostafa-ir2bl Nope, if anything it was reinforced by the horrendous actions taken by the survivors of the 4th fleet against their alien auxiliaries, namely humans
@@kaleonpi ok so every faction/race have all most the same fighting plan the elder and drkary like hit and run tactic orks and neds and chaos like to send waves of themselves on the enemy and necrons will we don’t know they can do all of the battleplan except trench warfare only humans /imperial guardsman can do trench warfare bec that the best plan we have agents all the enemy in the galaxy we have the man power and resources to dig in and fight for years the orks and Ned’s may outnumber us but good luck trying to beat the dig in fort of guardsman with enough guns to full the sky with
I will always be pissy at GW for not giving as models for some of the xenos that are part of the Empire. Especially after giving some of them some very badass descriptions like: 1. Thraxians, multi armed bug people that are good at melee 2. Anthrazods, pretty much Trolls from fantasy. Big , strong and stupid 3. Nagi and Charpactin. Sapient worms and mushrooms that can brainwash/hypnotize people 4. Loxalt. Mercenary lizards that sometimes will worship chaos but are seemingly resistant to chaos corruption 5. Vorgh. LITERAL KAIJUS!!! I mean at the very least publish a book like the "Liber xenologist" but written by a Tau
I feel like the tau fit very well into warhammer as it shows how diverse the galaxy could really be, people often think of humanity as just grim dark, but look at them when they were in the “dark age of technology” where they had similar looking and much more advanced tech to the tau
20:06 And to be fair yes the t'au are right, it's incredibly stupid and wasteful building titans but because of "rule of cool" titans along with everything else in the Warhammer 40k galaxy is allowed titanic amounts of plot contrivances in order to function. The t'au just weren't aware of this meta-narative rule that governs everything in the setting.
@@NoNameAtAll2 my headcanon, I formed just now 30 seconds ago, is that the orks are secretly responsible for every strange magical thing happening. Why does every commander seem to believe charging mindlessly into battle is a good strategy? A bunch of orks willed it too be so, because the idea was cool. Titans? Orks idea. The emperor!? Orks just saw a human for the first time and all just thought they would be waaaay cooler if they were like 20 feet tall and had a flaming sword. It all makes sense now
@@bombocrusty4251 There is a theory that it's actually the Orks keeping Big E alive. They believe he is a god, so he is. I mean, they actually turned Yarrick into an unkillable demi-god, so...
My favorite bit of tau lore that I feel really just represents the Tau and the Imperium relationship. On Taros the Imperium was being butchered by hammerhead tanks. Couldn't get their tanks or flyers anywhere near the tau. The Imperium said fuck this and sent two warhound scout titans. The hammerheads Couldn't pierce the armor so they fell back to save lives. Because why would you fight a losing battle. However their air raids were successful in damaging one titan, so the tau being adaptive built custom tiger shark bombers. Absolutely butchered 2 titans and crippled a 3rd. The imperium astounded that their warmachines were being countered by the tau. The mechanicum suffered so many losses that they banned the usage of titans against tau unless air supierority can be won.
no, only one Warhound was lost on Taros, only 4 were sent in the first place as part of the admech rules lawyering their commitment to the battle effort, and the second they lost one the other 3 said "fuck this" and went home. Additionally the AX-1-0 wasn't built on Taros, it was in development for a while beforehand, it was simply deployed on Taros for the first time deliberately as a counter to the titans- they didn't adapt them after seeing the effectiveness of air power against titans on Taros, the Isthmus breakthrough battle was the first and only deployment of titans om Taros. Finally, Imperial air power was very effective against the Tau on Taros- one of the only branches of the Imperium that stood a chance against the high mobility hit and run tactics they were using. But they had 78 fighters and 12 bombers, vs the Tau's 144 fighters, but despite being outnumbered they were still a big enough issue that the Tau strategy was to target frontline airfields and force the Imperial pilots to make sorties from miles behind the front, eventually bleeding them dry of supplies and planes- at which point the Tau air superiority mopped up the Elysians during Comet, effectively ending the ground campaign for Taros
@@CyrodiilCome No, they famously did not. The Taros Campaign book gives hard numbers: The Imperials had 78 fighters, "mostly Thunderbolts", and 24 Bombers. The Tau had 140 aircraft. I have the book open right now, page 79 of the original printing of The Taros Campaign. If you have access to it, or the second edition one, the strength of both sides is given in the "Air War over Taros" section. And the Airfield raid destroyed a total of six (6) Thunderbolts, and this was enough to tip the balance in their favour. They did so because of how effective Imperial Air Power was at countering their fighting style.
The line at 5:51 about Marx punching anyone who would call Tau society communist in the throat is more legit than you'd think, he was known to get drunk as hell and get into bar-fights
To add to humorous Marx facts, I remember reading that he lost work because his handwriting was not great. There's also a touching story I read where Marx's daughter saw him sitting by his wife's bed when the couple were both advanced in age. She said at that moment, they both seemed young again.
Well, Marx would totally _hate_ the Tau society, because here, he would have to do what he never did even for one day in his useless life - he would have to work. Something he and his equally worthless buddy Engels tried to avoid at all costs for all of their lifes and which is basically why Marx invented socialism - so he could find reasons to leech of others. Just read their private correspondence, they were the most despicable beings imaginable. But the really fun thing is, Marx would have hated to live in a socialist society as well. I did and people like him would have been called 'anti-social elements' and then get a nice, long re-education.
@@shinrapresident7010 It surely is. But there is a middle way between pure utilitarianis/manchester capitalism and pure socialism. Also, Marx did not want social security for everyone, he gave a crap about workers, never spoke with even one of them and wrote to Engels that the prolatarian is only good as cannon fodder. What _he_ wanted is actually an oligarchy and total nepotism.
I just chalk it up to the ground forces lacking the range to hit it being so high up and fighters being unable to land a shot on something that isnt armor plated. Bit loose logic but it works...sorta XD
My favourite head canon I like to imagine is T’au saying there’s nobody stupid enough to pour planets worth of resources into a single robot; and then 1 Fire caste just says “Hey is that church moving or is my optics broken?”
Reminder that the first time the Imperium fielded Titans against the Tau, they destroyed it so badly the entire Titan Maniple retreated and the Admech refused to deploy Titans against them for the next 100 years.
@@klyk69 and they traded the Tau their less reliable ion tech. Hence how they got ion tech which I don’t like tbh it kinda downplays the Tau’s achievements a little or bit
@@deeperestmeme479 that part I believe was always part of tau lore. Tau are smart, but they also have assimilated the tech from the confederation and trade to better themselves - a feat not seen often if at all in 40k
I mean, its 40k. Saying dead meme Is a null and void statement, all of the setting's comedy Is made up of dead or Dying memes. That, and TTS, wich was straight up murdered by CA itself
I’ve never understood the hate for the T’au. I am a casual fan of the 40k world and of all the factions, I enjoy them the most. I wish they had stayed more wholly good than what recent updates made them into, because having a singular good, young, naive faction in a world of half a dozen ancient, selfish to evil and traumatic factions feels like it opens up many good storytelling possibilities.
@@CherryOpera The video briefly discusses it but in short, old T’au were outwardly good for the sake of it, naive and new to the wider galaxy. However, the new post-lore T’au have a sinister side, with implications that their fourth, highest caste, are psychic manipulators who are compelling the entire race and others the T’au assimilate, into a sort of connected subconscious of order and control. Thus, when members of the fourth caste die on the battlefield, the T’au will fragment but also start to fight one another, the subtext being that their Greater Good is almost totally artificial and no one in their Empire is actually there voluntarily, they’re all being compelled to serve the whims of the leadership.
@@morcbus123 I actually think the actual lore is much more fitting and works better within the setting of Wh40k. The Johnny Godshoes approach was not just _boring,_ it was something that would have survived for like three weeks within this universe. The idea that they are basically a totalitarian system and considered the _good guys,_ because that's what they actually are in the context of this universe, is a lot more interesting and fun in my book. And no, they do not just instantly fracture when an Ethereal gets killed, just look at Farsight and his enclave, which _does_ work without the control of an Ethereal. Also, it creates the interesting situation that, as Farsight saw it, the Ethereals are either lying about the Warp and the Ruinous Powers or in denial or in completely ignorance, which might cause some interesting developments in the future.
@@Furzkampfbomber well not all Ethereals are evil, some actually Benevolent. There’s Aun-Shi an Ethereal who does Melee Combat and fights alongside his fire warriors, a good example of the Benevolent Ethereal. Aun’va is an embodiment of an evil ethereal. And I remember a story somewhere where a Young Ethereal was actually very concerned when people around him willingly do things when he told them. I forgot the title but that’s what the short story is about.
My life consists out of waking each day in the hope of another do or don't, only to bang my head on a wall when disapointment comes. On the day a do or don't appears, I wash away the blood and take a moment to feel gratefull for the day. Thanks for these. The combo of lore and practicality scratches an itch I never knew I had.
All I’ll say is: I completely understand Kitten’s reluctance to be associated with Shadowsun; as I also have a blue skinned alien girl that’s after me.
@@noty2673 Emperor TTS. It is a parody of 40k. Kitten is a Captain-General of the Custodians who had a short, but heartbreaking romance with Shadowsun. Hilarious stuff, very much a recommend.
Even though the T’au have a minuscule Warp prescence, their backstory always makes me wonder. A sudden Warpstorm protecting their homeworld in the earliest days of sapience? 6000 years later becoming a galactic superpower? And a subspecies of them rising to power and having seemingly psychic powers over the others? To me that implies that the T’au we’re guided or chosen by an outside and still unknown power.
Well, for every race like the Tau there are probably a hundred that did not have luck with a warp-storm appearing in time to save them while they were developing. We just don't hear about them because they were wiped out in their bronze age development. Also, 6000 years might be quick, but it's not *that* quick. A unified empire with internal stability and peace may only need a few thousand years to go from ancient civ to interstellar empire. Just look at how far we have come in the last 1000 years, while constantly waging wars among each other.
I really wish Tau leaned more into they're basically 40Ks covenant like they have tau as basically the Elites, Kroot as Jackals, Vespid as drones so just a Brute and Grunt type auxiliary race would be great
They have a dozen or so auxiliary species. Such as psychic bears, and knight-sized giants. Why GW hasn’t written anything for this is beyond me. (Jk, the Imperium needs more damn lore, of course).
youre the only person Ive seen who can actually explain the lore properly but also tie it into the tabeltop for those of us who don't play it and wanna know how they actually work on it. Cool shit.
I will seriously never get over that gag for their placement in the galaxy, with the Tau trooper screaming as an entire Hive fleet descends on their backyard. Seen it several times, still makes me laugh.
I honestly just love the t’au pulse rifles and want to make an army purely because of a them. Also thanks for these videos man, they’re honestly some of the most entertaining on the site atm, can’t think of another creator Who’s videos I get this excited for
Personally I want another half guard half zeno army like the gene-cult but for the Tau. Just imagine it, it'll make the tau a more credible grimdark threat orchestrating a civil war among humanity and we get cool official kit bashes like baneblades with rail-guns.
@@wiccanthropy1956 IDK, I think the darck mechanicus should be more zeno tech.But that's just a personal opinion, 40K chaos just hit's different than fantasy chaos and not in a good way. I mean every race that's not human or eldar is basically immune to chaos corruption and the zeno factions are a more intimidating and interesting threat.
Heres a fun fact abotu the tau water caste. They are incredibly good at what they do. To the point that, in one instance, a water caste dipolomat actually got into the head of an Ultramarine nad made him hesitate in killing them despite being a Xeno. They basically pulled at the strings of his honor and his own morality by pointing out that they were a defencelss woman, who was compellty un-armed and if gulliman would approve of them doing this. They were so good at screwing with him, he had no idea what to do int hat moment. Until Cato Sicarius had one of his best moments and killed the dipolmat on the spot, not falling for that. The water caste are under-rated, cause they are probibly the most dangerous Tau out there, cause let me remind you. They can be so good at their job that they can make a SPACE MARINE, hesitate and doubt himself on weather killing a XENO was the right thing to do. Let THAT sink in for a second.
“Would your Primarch think you honourable for killing a defenceless female?” “Yes” That’s the TLDR of Chad McBigCock Cato Sicarius before blowing her to kingdom come
All kinds of goofy shit happens in the novels. It's best to think of them as only loosely canonical, or at least secondary in terms of canon to the army books.
My entire interest in the tau comes from their fliers and hover craft being named after sea creatures. They have an Orca transport. Thats enough for me.
@Adeptus Gloriam How would they even know those animals existed? Pretty much all but a few original terran flora, fuana, and fungi went extinct LOOONNGG before even 30k, with humans themselves being by FAAARR the most numerous terran descended creatures.
6000 years old is still younger than modern human civilization. 6000 years ago China, Egypt an Iraq had copper tools and cities. Meanwhile Tau were in their version of stone age 6000 years before 40k "current time"
I think he means oldest "continuous civilization" compared to modern human ones. Though were a civilization begins and ends is really muddy and kinda fruitless and pointless to try and define such ""points"" in history as if they were concrete.
Imo i think it'd be more grimdark if the Tau were actually noble in the setting. They only want to help and them being powerless to change the galaxy or even be able to defend themselves from the full attention of practically every faction just makes it even darker.
Look at it this way: The Tau ARE the most noble faction in Warhammer 40k, but only because of the sheer level of cartoonish evil that the rest of the galaxy is operating on at a regular basis. They are a galactic empire with a rigid, authoritarian caste system who seek to assimilate other “less enlightened” societies into their thrall through military supremacy. And the rest of the Warhammer factions make them look like fucking GANDHI. Because that’s just the thing, you can’t be the “good guys” when you’re participating in an expansionist war for dominance. There are no “good guy”. Any good guys who ever existed are either long dead, or have yet to be killed. THAT’S Grimdark.
So because I am an obsessive dwarf simp I looked into it before, the demiurg and the Leagues of votann are the same. Basically they maintain trade connections and one league may have joined the greater good or at least formed a military alliance with them. So the demiurg are just a small part of the leagues of votann, most likely with specific adaptations explaining their differences. I got this from someone else's notes on the loremasters video so this could have been wrong but I hope other people are also interested in this so I didn't waste time typing this out lol
it would make sense, according to the lore, the squats were left to die during the tyranic wars, it coild be that one of the... uhm... houses? decided to ally with the tau to survive after escaping the tyranids
@@Parasil leagues, very well. I think that it would be cool to make so that a parricular league of the squats decided to reside in the relatively calm and safe tau space after observing them.
I like the Tau. They are unintentionally hilarious. The water cast diplomat trying to talk the Smurf out of killing her, Farsight trying to pay off Daemons. Its all incredibly funny. Not to mention, anything that cracks pepper under Imperium fans noses, I am all for.
My favorite bit of Tau lore is when Farsight was dealing with daemons of Khorne, he assumed a lot of what they did like teleport into battle or shoot flames from their hands was due to the daemons being more technologically advance than them. He even tried to essentially bribe a bloodthirster to cease hostilities with the promise of gold due to all the brass that they wear. I also hope that due to them being a race not in decline GW uses that to make more new models for the faction, as well as add in more allied species to deploy on tabletop like human auxiliaries or the Demiurg. They might not get played as much as just standard tau units probably but I’d like to have some other options outside of just more fire warriors.
23:30 Yeah I agree 100%, the auxiliaries NEED tons of support! There is so much you could do with a federation of different species, so many options, so much fun, imagine the amount of delightful "tom-fuckery" you could do with a t'au army made up of several dozen auxiliary units from several species!
@@robberyproductions1363 I know right! So much potential, and it's not they'd overshadow the tau's mechs and gun lines, if anything it would complement and enhance them!
Something like this happend When I was playing a 2v2 with my friends like a month ago. I charged an Ethereal with three Bullgryns, but they didn’t managed to kill him, in return he killed one of them and managed to „scare away” the other two, only to be turned into a burned fish stick by a sentinel with a heavy flamer.
While I didn't win the fight, I DID have a squad of fire warriors who slogged it out in melee with a unit of SM bikers for 4 whole turns because the bikers kept plinking off armour and the FW refused to break XD
In my head canon, I don't think that the Tau are bad at melee, or don't know how to fight hand a hand. I think they're just physically outclassed by every other possible army they could face on the battle.
@@johnmccarron7066 I don't think that's headcanon, I think that's legit lore; pretty sure it states in one of the codes that even fully trained fire warriors are still just physically inferior to most trained guardsmen. Hence the auxiliaries who can do the melee better.
Fully agreed. The haters can get fucked, Tau are great. Overwhelmed good guys is the exact thing I want to play in 40k. Sure some like the power fantasy of the various space marine derivatives but for me its all about being the naieve underdog who fights for what is right in spite of a cruel galaxy. When they started adding more grimdark elements to the tau lore I just repainted my army Farsight colours and was even happier about my choice of faction than before.
Personally I want to see what happens when a master of possession shoves a daemon up the rear of one of these naive underdogs. Much more interesting in my opinion.
@@Oppen1945 look the dude was just expressing his opinion man, and why he likes the faction. No need to come in here and shit on him or be petty just because you don’t relate. You can Like whatever you want and hangout with whoever you want, nobody cares. There’s plenty of the universe and franchise for anyone to find something they enjoy in it..
And you can get bent, in a setting where the fun is everyone being an asshole, the goody two shoes are the least interesting faction, hell they even break canon by having AI, you know, the thing that always concludes that to defeat chaos, it has to kill everything. Add they look like they belong in a different setting then 40K, add to the fact Tau players are so fucking self righteous.
@@Trynt33 I hate the Tau, and my favorite space marines are the Salamanders, and I played Orcs on the table top, so yeah, like all tau lovers your nothing but a self righteous prick.
The Tau and the Enclaves being the “good guys” serve a valuable purpose: It (the galaxy) didn’t have to go the way things did a better future is possible as exemplified by the Tau…but it’s very possible it’s to far to gone to go back.
@@thexenoist3493 GW literally promoted them as the good guys when they released, so yeah, add to the fact they only added to the "grey" due to people not liking them. They where made and marketed by GW as the good guys, and it pissed people off.
@@pizzapicante27 they sold because they were broken. Frankly the release of the tau and the release of the new squats are super similar in that regard.
The Farsight Enclaves might textually be straight up good guys there is a possibility they're corrupted by Khorne (red armour, fond of melee relatively speaking, 'the 8', the fact that Farsight literally had a vision of himself as a chaos champion chocking out his former peers)
The only true good guys being champions of war the entire time without changing anything pre-established would be the best fucking grim dark twist if and when we get 40k: End times
What's the point of having an insane universe if you don't have a rational observer to horrify? Let's be honest. If the average 40k human came out of the warphole they'd probably be institutionalized within a week. A Tau? They'd find a way to live a somewhat fulfilling life.
I instantly gravitated towards the Tau as a kid. As a Halo kid they felt a lot like the UNSC expanding into the Galaxy and bumping into the Imperium, not realising what it is they just discovered
Casually glosses over how the Damocles Gulf Crusade nearly ended in my favorite factions total extinction. Also *ahem* The Farsight Enclaves is just Outer Heaven, and Farsight is 40k Big Boss, and I love him for it.
Damocles wiping out the tau is a lie. Crusade got ground to a stalemate at dal'yth which is a Sept world the tau have 20 of, all fighting was done on newly colonized planets and backwater worlds at that point. Dal'yth may be an economic backbone of the tau but it wasn't a fortress or anything. The crusade basically had 2 options at that point. Wait for reinforcements the segmentum would not likely spare because they underestimated how strong the tau were for their size or pull out to deal with other threats. The arrival of the nids sealed the deal.
@@THENemesisXX99 So for the T'au O'Shovah is history's greatest soldier who became disillusioned with his nation's government after learning its dark secrets. Who then went awol to form his own mini nation run by soldiers for soldiers. In a strict, but true meritocracy, and fights for an idealized goal having mastered an incredibly aggressive form of fighting, utilizing scant resources to overcome numerically superior opponents.
I've never considered a tau army because of all of the memes and how much they get shit on, but this video has told me they're the perfect army for me thanks homie, love your work
Something I'd like to see in the future from the Tau lore wise is if they went further into factionalisation. Have the Tau Empire be destroyed, be it by a Waaagh or a Hive Fleet or a Demon invasion or an Imperial Crusade, and splintered into like a half-dozen subfaction, each with their own lore specialisations on the tabletop like the Eldar Craftworlds. Then put them back together, but make them more disparate, more like the Covenant from Halo with lots of internal tensions and power struggles, but held together by philosophy and the need to present a strong front to the threats all around them. You already have the Farsight Enclaves for melee enthusiasts, maybe there are subfactions that are dominated by Vespids or Kroot or even Humans, because their territories mostly consists of planets inhabited by those races. You could have a Psyker focused Etherial faction based on the original capital world of the Empire, kind of like a Tau Vatican, who are super salty about loosing control of their empire and now they have to actually play nice with all the others, which would just be really funny.
Humans: "Die, xeno scum!" T'au: "We have hamburgers and pizza." Humans: "To hell with the Imperium, death to the Emperor! All hail the Greater Good!" T'au: "We did not even mention free healthcare..."
Your analysis of the real-world influence for the Tau was spot on! Personally I see a little Qing Dynasty influence as well through Tau preference of wearing a Queue-esc hairstyle, the dynamic between Fire caste and auxiliaries resembling the 8 Banner system of the Qing military, and their Greater Good resembling the Mandate of Heaven. Just a subjective observation :)
Shoutout to that one Tau player that did a funny drone meme build instead of corner camping with battlesuits. I know everyone's experience is different, but in my experience in the 40k fandom it seems like Tau get more hate for the playstyle rather than their lore (or hate for the former lead into hate for the latter).
The Tau seem like they would be a good player in a Sci Fi verse like Homeworld and Battletech. But if they were to fight a group like the Covenant in Halo by themselves though they would give them a good war their numbers and FTL really hurts them against that level of a interstellar empire. Maybe even the Sith Empire would beat them with superior FTL. If they were in the Culture verse they would be pretty chill with everyone.
I think the sith empire and tau are on par, but I think the Tau would win in a war. Sith imperial navy: 13,000+ Warships made up of Harrower class dreadnoughts(800m), BSX-5 Horrower dreadnought(600m), four other horrower types including silencer types that could destroy an entire fleet with a megalaser, Terminus class destroyers(500m), Delta class carriers, Gage class transports, Sun raizer(Harnessed the energies of certain stars to create multiple super weapons in a few years. There was 1 but six more were planned to be built), the Gauntlet( had light speed cannon that targeted ships in hyperspace), the emporers shadow(cloaking technology), and Keizar-Volvec bulk cruisers. Imperial army: 6,240,500-38,324,500 Tanks/Walkers: 124,000-766,490 Sith: 1,000-50,000 Territory: Systems: 22+ Planets: 120-400+ Planets Vehicles: Siege tanks, and Walkers. Droids: X4-Z2 Enforcer droids, war droids MK I, war droids MK II, MK IV assault droids, DK-27 guardian droids, MK IV sentinel droids, Ravager droids, Sith Hierarchy: Dark council Sith lords Darths Apprentices/Adepts Acolytes Neophytes Sith Types: Warrior- Marauder Juggernaut Inquisitor- Sorcerer Assassin Force abilities: Telepathy, mind trick, force barrier, force repulse, increased strength/durability/speed, limited precognition, force slam, force push, force crush, force lightning, force heal, force slow, force storm, static barrier, force whirlwind force neck snap, force grip, thundering blast, cloud mind, and force throw. Infantry types: Heavy imperial troopers Imperial troopers Imperial commandos Shock troopers Snipers Operatives Agents
@@thorshammer7883 Who do you think would win between the Vajra and tyranids? Vajra(Milky way galaxy) Navy: Hundreds of thousands-Millions of capital ships, incorporated by Bishop class mobile fortresses(10-20km), knight class carriers(3-4km), heavy battleship vajra(4-5km), and destroyer vajra(2-3m) Vajra soldiers: 16,000,000-240,000,000 Flyers/Walkers: 4 billion-270 billion Territory: Unknown, other their homeworld Weapons: •Pulse beam cannons •Macross grade canon(10s-100s of gigatons) •Heavy beam gun turrets/point defense •Triple barrel quantum beam gun turrets •Bio micro missiles •Beam cannons •Heavy quantum beam cannons(hundreds of gigatons) •Flagellum Vajra: The vajra are a biomechanical insectoid species that naturally utilize foldspace, by mining, and absorbing fold quartz. They are a hive mind constantly in communication(via foldspace), and are extremely adaptable. They were able to create super heavy soldiers that could resist reactionary weapons, which are more powerful than nuclear warheads in just days. Any damage, and events happening to one vajra is instantly known to the rest in the galaxy. They are incapable of communicating via normal means, and thus attempt to infect other races with a virus. However the virus/microorganism kills the host after it reaches their brains. With the help of an infected human, and song(they use song to mate with other vajra from other galaxies) they realized humans were individuals that could understand each other through expression they accepted humans, and allowed them to settle on their homeworld. Their living ships have long range fold capabilities(a light year every 6 minutes at least), and their fighter/soldier class have short range folding capabilities. The protoculture that created the Zentradi/Meltrandi, and ruled the galaxy respected the vajra as god-like beings, and based their technology off of them. Sub-queen's are hundreds of meters long, travel aboard mobile fortresses, where they command fleets of carriers, battleships, and destroyers until they find worlds to settle in which they will eventually become full queens. A full queen is hundreds of kilometers long, and has the manpower and resources to build a ring of shards around her planet, which encompasses her. They also have a level of time space manipulation, slowing down time to a crawl, and creating a space displacement shield. Sub queens(Their armor can also tank 30mm rounds) at least, lay hundreds of eggs a day and are armed with a quantum beam blade. These eggs, at least for soldiers, and smaller vajra can hatch slightly over a week. Vajra emit frequency waves which neutralize homing weapons. Their capital ships wield fold barriers that disperse energy from damage into foldspace. Due to exploring space for billions of years, it's highly likely they are present in every galaxy in our local group and beyond, making their true numbers 66-300 times larger than the amount in the milky way. Soldiers: Soldier vajra are mobile armor fighters. Basic mobile vajra soldiers' energy conversion armor can tank multiple 30mm rounds, flies at mach 4-5+, and are 15-20 meters long. Heavy vajra soldiers are 40-50 meters, and are commander types, with a single sub-queen having up to seven hundred in her fleet. Meaning 1,000s to well over 10,000 smaller vajra soldiers. Super heavy vajra soldiers are 100-150 meters, and have a cruiser level heavy quantum beam cannon, or turret(10s of kilotons). Smaller vajra: Flyer, and walker vajra are the smallest type of vajra aside from larvae small enough to move about human ships, and corridors . They can bisect, and skewer a human, with their antenna, and tongues. They both come with pulse beam weapons that can penetrate, and destroy mobile armor. Either some can fire more powerful rocket like projectiles, or they can increase their firepower.
@@myduckisonqauck7227 The Sith seem to have an advantage in FTL speed and a more mobile military. They would probably analysis the Tau before going on the offensive.
You can pilot a gundam, build a gundam, pilot a jet to transport or support a gundam or travel the galaxy warning people to join or get blasted by a gundam. Good enough for me.
The Tau are exactly what Imperium fan boys think the Imperium is: the (relatively) good guys, outgunned, outmanned, unequipped to face the horrors of the galaxy and yet soldiering on regardless.
I always find it surreal how Imperium and SPACE marine fanboys have the audacity to claim that the Imperium is always on the back foot or on the brink of collapse and so they're the sympathetic, outgunned, out manned, ""underdogs"" and yet will simultaneously declare them this unstoppable, unbeatable, monolithic, gargantuan faction that could oh so easily steamroll everyone else, especially the "vile aliens" like they were sickly, starving dogs being kicked by the iron boot of the Imperium's massive military might. I role my eyes every time I hear both of these depictions at the same time, often in the same comment without the poster skipping a beat or pause. I seriously think the Imperium should get the late weastern Roman empire treatment, in that they truly are on the back foot, constantly losing territory, large chunks of territory infact to those hordes of sopposedly weak barbarians their apologists claim are so easily defeated. Heck even have a battle were dare I say...the Imperium's huge numbers of bodies is rendered ineffectual, if not leading to their humiliating defeat! Basically don't tell me the Imperium is a failing empire, SHOW ME THAT IT IS. They, the Imperium and even the SPACE marines could do with much less "plot armor" or "author fiat".
@@ivanivanovitchivanovsky7123 I think the point was more that Imperium fans, and especially Space Marine fanboys, think the Imperium is this super weak, super fragile thing that can break at any moment. The fact we still don't have multiple human factions outside of the Imperium and Chaos due to simple political and cultural divides shows this is a complete and utter lie.
Would love to see a rant about Genestealer Cults. Show up for 2nd, get a Citadel Journal during 3rd. Go missing from 4th to 6/7th that show up in a random box game to get a codex at the end of 7th and proceed to just get nerf directly and inderectly from 8th onwards.
Maybe Warhammer isn't for you? Like not every IP is going to be for everyone. Personally I'm only vaguely interested in Warhammer 40k because of how overly grimdark they go, but I wouldn't rip that away from anyone else who enjoys it with a self-insert faction that I can finally relate to. That just ruins the whole narrative of the setting. If the appeal is the grimdark nature, why would you add a good faction? So that good faction can die and reinforce the grimdark? Well I have the Tau die soon then, because they've been riding along merilly for a long time.
@@GarrulousHerald I like 40k because its grimdark but the T'au are a bit of fresh air and the fact that they are not grimderp everything sucks is good because its different. The setting is for everyone interested, and wanting to see something different from ye olde reliable is a sign of a setting being able to do different things and stay flexible
Thanks to your work and espacially this video (and the Farsight one) I started the hobby again and almost painted a 2k army (as well as a HH one). It has given me a lot of joy. Thank you elf lover. All hail Karl Franz !
Honestly other comments saying that Tau are too idealistic and naive to survive in 40K dont make much sense. The Tau are nothing but sharply focused and practical, they cooperate with different species if possible, giving them access to unique capabilities and techs. When cooperation is impossible (such as with Orks) they recognize it and seek to exterminate. They are much more efficient with their ressources than the imperium They don't waste time on ressources on extensive rites, ornaments and other religious silliness, they have a few rituals and cultural practices for unity and bonding but its much more streamlined. Their problem is being late to the game, not the way they function, if they had even 1/10 of the Imperium's ressources and decent warp technology (or perhaps even figure out the necron way of FTL travel eventually) then they'd wipe the floor with them.
One of the reasons I love the tau, besides their unique futuristic look, is that while they are a thousand steps up in terms of morality compared to everyone else (besides the farsight enclave) they still have that edge that I think every faction in 40k should have, there can be a “good” faction like the tau, but there should be something at least a little questionable
I always forget how close the Tau are to Ultramar. Meaning if any Space Marines come their way, they’ll most likely be Ultramarines. It trully is a miracle they’ve survived up to this point.
Between the plague wars, tyrranic wars, and the fact that the entire Ultramar sector is being surrounded by the Sautekh dynasty, the Ultramarines have other shit to worry about. Sending a few hundred space marines and a few million imperial guard has been tried both times, both times it wasn't enough. Sending more than that means leaving Ultramar open to the Tyranid, Death Guard or Necron and potentially losing one of the greatest bastions in the Imperium.
@@ravenwhiteduck6460 I mean... no it wasn't? It took back some of the Imperial worlds, but the Imperium essentially conceded the entire Damocles Gulf to the Tau empire. Creating a barrier neither side could cross to stop the Tau from invading the Imperium.
I liked the tau I just wish they had more diversity in theyr models for a multi species empire all you get are robots and blue guys like I wanna see some of the other species in some kickass tau armor
They, the t'au have the kroot who are like a cross between the covenant's "jackals" and "brutes" (depending on what they've been eating..) and the vespid are slightly scarier looking "drones" from Halo.
"Imagine sneaking in a Bethesda game when the skill's maxed out and you've got a pretty good idea of what it was like for them, just not intentional". That's got to be the simplest yet most effective way to explain Tau relations to the Warp i've ever heard.
This made me have a thought: What would happen if another race approached the Necrons, asking to become vassals? Unlikely, if impossible, that it'd actually happen, but at the same time, Necrons are just trying to get what they perceive as their rightful territory back. Furthermore, Necrons need organics for their other end-goal, to get new bodies, so I imagine it's actually not completely impossible they might accept such an offer, in exchange for a tithe of... test subjects.
theres a necron lord that looks over some humans called diggaz, he protects them from orks. Although in his eyes they are more like pets but still he doesnt want them to die so basically it depends on the necron lord
18:03 The funny thing about that artwork is it's supposed to make the Tau look feeble, but the dude on the bottom right is a split second away from liquifying the center marine. XD
@@fcomolineiro7596 Emperor only revealed himself after humanity had already became a galaxy-spanning civilisation, a rival to even the ancient Aeldari. Humanity had made it clear they were a threat on a galactic scale long before Emps got involved.
@@AnEnormousNerd yeah and after that he decided to use slavery and esoteric mean to run the imperium, do I have to remind you what the mechanicus do in a daily basis?
@@fcomolineiro7596 Oh, yeah, the Emperor was pretty horrible, but admittedly much less so during the Great Crusade than a lot of the stuff that happens in the modern era.
20:08 Newer lore on the tau has their population being much higher than than it was previously in older lore (which makes sense given the meta-narrative of Tau continuously expanding and improving) with their most populous world having a population of around a trillion. Keep in mind, the quality of life for this world in particular is not as good as other planets in the Tau Empire. I am going to preface this next statement by saying I'm not 100% certain how accurate it is, but it *seems* like even the most populous world for Tau has a better quality of life than most Imperial hive worlds.
*lore states most hive worlds predate the imperium of man* yeah, I’d assume a new and high tech species could out do a literal mountain of metal that’s been sitting their since the dark age of technology pretty easily in the quality of life department.
@@cecrops9289 the wacky population numbers are probably a result of them occupying a couple aforementioned mountains of metal. Remember that the tau are utilitarian. They wouldn't bulldoze existing architecture unless it didn't serve a purpose.
@@cecrops9289 Oh of course, though I'm more referring to the tau achieving a higher quality of life (when compared to hive worlds) on a world with a population of around a trillion while most Imperial hive worlds aren't directly stated to be near a trillion (at least in terms of hive world populations we have hard numbers for) Though admittedly, I don't keep up to date with the lore regarding Hive Worlds. So it is more than likely 2 more zeroes got added to the populations of those planets between the time the lore was written and now, in order to keep the galactic populations of humans massive
@@ridleydidnothingwrong I’d honestly like to see them try to dismantle a hive city. Even orks have to drop fucking meteors on them to actually wipe them out completely.
@@georgekerscher5355 I understand your point, and I’d say honestly it’s just tau authors being autistic with their numbers, because like you pointed out, humans in 40k breed like rabbits. It’s literally encouraged Within the imperium to pump out babies. Now if you include mortality rates, even in a decent imperial hive city (like Krieg pre civil war for example) hive cities had tens of millions tops. Which when you think of the logistics in supplying even 20-30 million people in a single area is almost mind boggling. That being said the tau are autistic with their societal structure and the ability of the earth class to overcome any challenge. So I’d say they could do hundreds of millions at most, but a trillion? At that point you have to question how the tau have the pure quantity of raw resources to even supply a population center like. Either way, I just mark it down to fudged writing.
My main issue with Tau is that they should have been the minor xenos conglomerate faction. Every xenos race too small or narrow of focus should've gotten units in the tau alliance so as to expand the setting and game while held together by the core gunline of the tau themselves. Instead every release has just been more and more mecha crap completely forgetting the point of the Greater Good alliance and making the tau themselves seem more important and major than they should ever be. Then you could have the tau be legitimately good, played straight without jobbing but still dealing politically with various kinds of actual monsters that just needed better tech for a ride or protection to strike out at imperial worlds like they did of old.
16:50 Damn, you should have also shown the taunar supremacy armor for a more traditional titan unit (i.e. big mech). That thing is pretty big, though not as big as the Manta admittedly.
Yes, thank you. Confucianism not Communism. It even goes with the whole gundam theme and their long-term thinking non-aggressive diplomacy style found in modern iterations of many east asian nations. I also assume they dropped the "o" for a "u" when naming the Tau.
Pretty much the main reason I hate the Emperor and Imperium can be summed up by the Imperial Creed. The militant anti-theism can be justified, cause Chaos, but a blanket extermination order on mutants and aliens is just, stupid. Yes, the universe is filled with species where peace would never be possible, which makes every ally you can get even more valuable. Besides, it’s not like the Emperor was even consistent, given the Imperium’s use of Bullgryns and Jokaeros.
Ah I remember one of my most infamous games as the tau. We're I got hosed by my opponent playing guard like khorn. He battle bonded like 40 guards ( this was back when you could merge guard infanty like that) behind his lord commsar, a lemon Russ. Three pyskers a squad or two of conscripts held in reserve and a heavy weapons team with if I recall correctly mortars I had a beast of a commander who was good at one thing, killing infantry and buy God he was good at it. Two squads of fire warriors, a kroot squad also in resevere, stealth suits, some part finders and a sky ray gun ship. Each each had one object each at the star of the game as a kind of capture the flage I did the tipical tau thing and put my fire warriors and sky ray ontop of it. And my commander infront conferdent that the wall of guns would easily blast apart his hoard of infantry and while they were doing that my parth finders and stealth suits could take out the heavy weapons teams And ware down the lemon Russ as I used the parts finders and to call down rockets from the sky ray. My obante pointed his lord commsar and 40 meat shelds towards my object and charged. And my commder and fire warriors unleashed hell My commder alone must have killed over half the hoard by himself but just as the commsar and like three other dudes left. he charged and broke my commander moral making him flee and kill him in the retreat then hit my fire warriors gun line pulling them into the melee Mean while my stealth squad got tired up slap fighting with the guys pyskers. I don't think eather squad took any casualties it was down right comedic. It was like 4 rounds of then just shaping each other My parth finders mean while couldn't hit the board side of a barn half the time and tgey did get good rools when I used them to call in rockets form the sky ray on either the Russ or the heavy weapons teams. Those rockets did bassicly nothing, I think I killed one out of the three heavy weapons teams and knock out one gun on the Russ. But has expended all my sky ray rockets in doing so Thankfully his morta teams or what ever they were just as inactive but the managed to tie up my parth finders till the Russ was in range and the dude didn't even have the decently to fire its guns more than maybe twice He just used it to run over my path finders. Which was smart as they and my stealth suits were the only things I had that had wargear that could even hurt the thing And the guy managed to call his conscripts to the side of my main force. Luck of lucks I was able to do the same with the kroot and they managed tie the conscripts up before they could hit my gun line from behind But by that point I was done. While my gun line was final able to put the lord commsar and his three body gaurd down. I'd lost half a fire warrior team to do it. My path finders were dead My stealth team was still slap fighting with his pyskers. Which he said was a good thing as he couldn't pull of his smights and other mind power bs. I had nothing left that could hurt his Russ and his morta teams were finnaly rolling well themselves Other than I tiring to ram my tank into his to prevent the Russ just rolling up and fireing into what was left of my fire warriors. In theory I could have had the kroot relave my stealth suit so they cloud bring their fusion cannons to bear on the Russ but but the conscripts tied them up and if I tried to retreat the kroot towars my stealth suits that would have just let the conscripts to hit what was left of my gun line from behind
I actually have my own homebrewed Tau commander who was a former inquisition officer who decided to say screw the imperium I'm joining the small blue guys who have cool guns, and as such he joined the fire cast completely overhauled the military industrial complex, and used his centuries of experience to lead a highly competent army with the basic approach being overwhelming firepower, and more guns. On the table top he gives his troops a minor moral boost, and lets ranged units shoot more often which in a Tau army is very good.
Taussy.
Commissar this man right here
The king has arrived !
Blueberry bussy
Stick'em chainsword right in there
This man inquisitor this is the man that said the heretical word.
Gonna be real, I like the Tau as being completely out of their depth instead of “secretly as bad as the imperium”, aka The Covenant But Nicer
I love that because they are the galaxy's only hope at a good ending and they will lose, I think that's more grimdark then any form of mind control!
The fact that they trigger the crabs in a bucket known as Imperium fanboys is a nice bonus. Also the Eldar are bigger weebs.
I like that too. The imperium are literally every conceivable thing I hate about Humanity now
I prefer the *"sure they've meet tons of messed up things and bizarre creatures in the Warhammer 40k galaxy but...that doesn't mean they have to become a bunch of jaded asholes like the so called ""edgy cool kids"" (the other factions), they don't need their approval nor their fanboys approval".*
Being the only "good" faction but unable to do good because if you make any sort of progress you will be squashed like an insignificant bug is in itself pretty darn grimdark.
It is nuanced grimdark, sure, but not everything has to be on a 3rd grade understanding level, gw
Forget the moral reasons for why a human may defect to the Tau. I'd defect just to get some actual fucking food
Yeah, the Tau might attempt to brainwash me, but so will every other faction that will possibly not kill me on sight, and at least the Tau have OSHA guidelines.
@@InquisitorThomas the imperium does more brainwashing then the tau does tbh
what do you mean that ground up starch of my guard neighbor crammed into a can isnt real food?
I’m pre sure that’s only really applicable to some hive worlds? Plus, you just work for a slightly “nicer” caste system imperialist empire that isn’t as desperate nor fighting as many forces as your previous empire you left.
@@ivanivanovitchivanovsky7123 Frankly a lot nicer, your living in a society that is at least comparable to modern day earth, though frankly far more utopian in terms of materials, resources and life-style of many of them. Even the best Imperial worlds veer straight into nightmare territory at the drop of a hat, you still have people lobotomised or have to deal with horrifying things or horrid food or just in general the Imperial's laws being pretty terrible for the average person.
Your never going to get any kind of recognition, your life-style is going to be bottom rung and your society by and large won't care about you. I would say the worst T'au world is probably better then the best Imperial world for the average person.
“The tau treat other races like second class citizens.” That is still a major step up for most imperial citizens, and is a huge step up for the ungodly amount of slaves.
It is essentially residency living status from stellaris, but still with high as hell living standards.
@@AbstractTraitorHero Well, I'd sure as hell would rather be a second or even a third class citizen of the Tau empire than a half-starved manufactorum worker or being turned into a door opener for looking at the wrong person in the wrong way. Damn, they even use human beings in order to change the fuel elements in imperial spaceships - they simply cram them full with drugs, thrust them a fuel rod into their hands and now theeere you go, buddy... Yup, Tau and Greater Good all the way.
@@AbstractTraitorHero You also get food that isn't the mushed up remains of your neighbor's sewage.
Much better than being a slave to dark elves
@@fifervonpiper6707 To be quite honest, it is likely pretty okay as well. What little description of T'au food and imagery we have seems to imply it tasting decent
I’ve always had the impression that the tau play the role a human faction would normally play in a scifi setting, the new kid on the block that knows how to network and do stuff good.
By good stuff you mean 1984 people, yeah "good stuff"
@@ravenwhiteduck6460 in wh 40k 1984 is a book filled with nice people who do not kill you even if you go against the regime which to empire sounds so bleeding heart liberal that we cannot even compare it to anything in our world.
@@ravenwhiteduck6460
Because 1984 people are as bad (if not worse) than the guys that literally lobomise millions of people, just to put their brain on a door (servitors), and if that wasn't enough, if you are good enough to be a servitor, they literally throw you alive and conscious into a meat grinder
Someone says: "T'au aren't grimdark."
Then I say: "Imagine you are Farsight. Is there a more grimdark view of the galaxy than his?"
@@tyrant-den884what’s his view?
The funniest and most thematically appropriate Tau story ever was that time a Fire Warrior army entered combat with some Emperor's Children who kept yelling about the glory of Slaanesh. The Tau eventually won, beat them back, and killed the warband's leader, at which point they proudly and gladly announced that they had beaten the Astartes known as Slaanesh.
to be fair, I think the warband was lead by a daemon prince of Slaanesh, which isn't half bad for a tiny little empire with no psykers (well, the nicassar are there but they only show up in space battles) and none of the tech that other species use to counter warp fuckery.
And yeah, it is very funny how clueless they are the the scale of the horrors arrayed against them, but to be fair Great Crusade humanity (minus big E and his closest allies) was clueless as to the true scale of the evil out there in the galaxy.
And EVERYONE was (and largely still is) clueless about the nids' true scale.
Either that, or you can take it as I do; they kicked the shit out of a horde of Chaos Astartes, and called their god a loser. I’ll take it that way, because it’s funny.
@@tergartcunninghan2013That is the way to go, imo
One thing I really love about T'au is that the framing of 40k has them as the most noble, bright, civilized faction for a human to live in. One of the few relatively morally decent factions.
But if you threw them into Star Trek, they're essentially the Dominion. The second worst villain Starfleet ever faced.
Seriously, look at the comparisons.
The Dominion are an expansionist empire with many different species under their banner, each filling a different role suited to their skills. They are ruled by a small caste of leaders which the client species view with religious veneration. They value diplomacy as a tool to bring new worlds into their empire.
And the T'au? The T'au are an expansionist empire with many different species and subspecies under their banner, each filling a role suited to their skills. They are ruled by a small caste of leaders which the client castes view with near-religious veneration. They value diplomacy as a tool to bring new worlds into their empire.
The minor empire of 40k which is notable for being a somewhat acceptable place to live and one of the least bad nations in the setting... is directly comparable to some of the worst villains of Star Trek.
Man, the 40k galaxy is fucked.
Good tau fans coping at reading this
I would agree the Dominion was the worst enemy that Starfleet ever faced. Not even the Borg came close to as the Dominion did to wiping out the Federation.
@@Dragonwolfworm Indeed! I miss em. Loved the Dominion. Wish they'd do something with them in the new Treks.
thats the thing about 40k. lots of 40k stuff is things from other sci fi cranked up to 11.
what other franchises see as extreme or outright impossible is considered normal in 40k
usually. 40k is in a weird spot power scale wise. It can curbstomp mainstream sci fi franchises like star trek, star wars, and halo, but there exist franchises that can absolutely curbstomp wh40k, such as xelee sequence, supreme commander, and the culture.
@@Hyde-dg7ef star wars
Celestials: Could move/destroy stars and blackholes across the galaxy. Had the kwa as a subservient species, who created the infinity gates(basicly a giant Stargate), and the star temple. The star temple was capable of destroying multiple star systems. Four killik nests were also servants, and that is not to be underestimated. 4 killik nests(37,000-40,000+ per nest) is enough to create fifteen nest ships(8km), dozens of shard capital ships(1.5-10km), and a hundred and fifty thousand dart ships in a year(swarm war). And this is without celestial tecknology. A proper breeding program can boost the number of killiks to 160 million members in just three years.
Another fun anecdote that indicates the Tau's naivete when it comes to how bad things are in the rest of the galaxy: That time when one of their worlds was invaded by a Chaos warband, they heard that the Warband served Slaanesh, and after killing their leader and taking back the planet, *assumed Slaanesh was the Warlord they killed.*
That's not even naivete that's just a case of people in setting not having all the knowledge of us who know the lore. You have to wonder how many space marines or imperial guard know what the chaos gods even are because of how tight lipped the imperium is about an enemy that can corrupt. I'm sure space marines in particular have a lot of knowledge of chaos due to the horus heresy but most of it is probably relegated to chapter masters, librarians, and chaplains just because of how much it can corrupt.
@@ridleydidnothingwrong I've always assumed that spending 20 minutes on the warhammer wiki gets you more knowledge than everyone except the most powerful of psykers and Emps. I'm not even talking about shit like the Thunder Warriors, because no one besides Big E probably knows about them, I'm talking about 41st millennium stuff.
Deldar: “Our greatest fear is our eternal nemesis: _She Who Thirsts, the Prince of Pleasure, SLAANESH.”_
Tau: “Oh him? Yeah, we killed that warlord in a battle last week.”
“🤨”
“😄”
“…you serious bro? 😒”
Explaining the warp and its demonic monster gods is tricky and if no one explains it to you you wouldn't guess. Even Lorgar needed it explained to him and he's a religious fanatic. Horus Lupercal himself was completely blindsided by the demons of nurgle that one time and he nearly died because of it. The greatest advantage chaos has is that it's pretty much impossible to tell what it is at first glance. At first their followers just seem to be sadistic monsters, then you figure they're serving some greater king or master, then you realise they worship a dark and bloodthirsty god of some sort so you figure they're just a religious hierarchy, but then you get to research the demons they bring to battle with them and realise they're not physically possible under the normal laws of physics. Confronted with this revelation you gradually piece together that these people aren't just a religious order built around a god as a figure head but in direct contact with and service too unknowable extra dimensional beings who feed on varying forms of human suffering.
@@ridleydidnothingwrong the annoying thing about chaos in 40k and Warhammer in general is that it is periodically pinging a billion different points of contact with the material plane, trillions of people might go their entire lives without attracting the attention of chaos even when doing the things that fuel them, can even be on top of or adjacent to things relating to chaos for years then one day some makes a little slip and some taint in the environment or the bloodline of one person in 6 billion and they mutate into a shoggoth or vomit up demons or some such a thing.
The even funnier follow-up to the "Surely Titans aren't _real_ right?" is the part where the Tau responded to the existence of Titans by putting mass-produced Manta railguns on a mass-produced Tigershark airframe and promptly two-shotted the next Titan they encountered, killing the entire crew.
The Imperium got somewhat more conservative about Titan use after that.
Yah, gotta love the tau mantra for failure: if first gun does not penetrate, use bigger gun.
Bros saw a titan and went
Hit it... With the big gun
@@DurzoBluntsIf there are guns that can be mounted on Titans that can kill titans then it will always be more efficient to put that gun on a more mobile preferably air borne unit with a smaller profile and destroy the titan from a distance than to build another Titan just for fun.
theres a reason they thought they didnt exist, who would be stupid enough to use something that is so easily able to be shot
Where is that tidbit in? I always see talk about how they didnt believe titans were real but never how the tau respond to it once they found it to be real.
My favorite story about the Tau was during the Damocles Crusade when they examined the remains of an Astartes Dreadnaught.
First the scientists were shocked by the condition of the pilot, then they were absolutely horrified by the fact the Dreadnaught was older than their entire civilization.
Yeah, but the wonderful thing about that is that it's very achievable to surpass their tech level because they haven't properly updates that ship for the last thousand years or more.
Just utter cosmic horror, you can certainly expect that many of their scientists straight up committed suicide after that discovery, greater good be damned, no amount of ethereal pheromones are gonna wash that out of your brain. The far sight enclaves ran away when their ethereals got clobbered, the dreadnaught discovery could have turned all these fish people into religious fanatics lol.
@@seekingabsolution1907 who? Tau or Imperium?
It wasn't a scientist, it was a curious fire warrior who used a sampling device in the foot of his battlesuit
@@gogodaal7273 my guess? Nah, they most definitely went something like "damn, that's a very primitive way to do it." And "damn, we took out one of their oldest soldiers" considering their civilization is a good 6k years old
In terms of "don't judge the book by its cover", I'm sure Dark Eldars counts as Necronomicon.
The Imperium is good guy in 40k, my source...trust me bro.
No source more reliable than “dude trust me” on the planet.
@@pancreasnowork9939 of course, do you not trust him?
@@matthewmillward939 of course I do, what do you think all of my sources are?
..I trust this man with my Life.
This is the kinda bro you just trust when they say that
I really liked the first chapter of the farsight book, trying to rationalize blood rain and demons as freaky aliens, farsight calling for peace to a bloodthirster
Pffffft
Tried to Sue for peace with a bloodthrister?
Bruh.
@@brok56 Tau don’t have a strong warp presence, nor do they have psychers or use warp travel so the only frame of reference they have is that demons are just butt ugly aliens. This is the same mindset the Imperium had for demons during the crusade. “Oh these are just warp aliens, they come from a different dimension but they aren’t gods or demons cause that would make the imperial truth a lie.”
And some people still have this mindset, Fabius Biles unbelief in the divinity of choas actively hurts the demons who go near him lol
Also tried to bribe the Flamers of Tzeentch.
@@brok56 I can almost guarantee no one else had tried it, so why not lol
@@brok56 To be fair to Farsight, how was he supposed to know Bloodthirsters were avatars of the literal god of blood, war, and rage? This is what TV Tropes fans call an "Outside Context Problem".
I prefer playing as the Tree people truth be told but Fish Mommy is best leader easily.
Fish Lips Mommy Milkers is going to conquer the galaxy, and I am going to help her
@@blob643 what the fuck?
@@blob643 i can't get that voice out of my head
@@blob643 oh no he's here, the merchant guild smells blood and gold
Fish mommy and using money to speed up everything is definitely a way to go. The bullshittery of the Vaulters is hilarious thiugh
I liked it more when Tau were the deconstruction of the setting. They were the one faction trying to be reasonable in a highly unreasonable galaxy. Everyone else's bullshit just blew their minds.
If 40k were a dinosaur book, the tau are the little man standing next to the t-rex. They're there for scale.
@Beans I mean they’re fundamentally bad since they’re an expansionist empire that are just going to invade if peace negations don’t work out
@@dozencatfish1667 but unlike the t-rex that little man is capable of higher thought and will build weapons capable of yeeting the dinosaurs
@@dozencatfish1667 that would be guardsmen thank you very much
@beans1557idk, they seem insanely evil to me.
Honestly, the Tau being legitimate good guys might be MORE grimdark than making them semi-evil. The only decent faction in the setting, and their existence is a mere blink in the eye of galactic time. I know Pancreas says that they could be the next superpower, but right now they survive only because the other factions haven't gotten around to stamping them out yet. For all the good the Tau could do, they're shoved away into their tiny little corner of the galaxy, hoping and praying that one of the big dogs doesn't come up with a good reason to wipe them out. That's honestly incredibly depressing
Given where they are, they will have to deal with the nids at some point. At that point, I'd feel sorry for them at that point. The imperium can afford to burn the occasional world to slow down a hive fleet or throw enough men and machines at them to stop them, it would probably take the whole empire to successfully repel it. And even then, any lost ground is probably gone for good. It is also an arms race between research and development and mutation and adaptation. Tau would eventually lose that war due to logistics unfortunately
*Cuba noises*
Meh the problem I have with the T'au being the good guy, is that they are boring "good guys", when they were released they were too good guys, and GW did a 180 on them, and painted them black forgetting the most interesting faction when it comes to moral are grey.
That's why the Imperium is a better "good guys", because all of evilness is just their human flaw showing, they are also in a dark part of their history and know they can be better, and we know that because they were better before, they just kept falling onto the same vice that hold them back with the real question being will they be able to figth back against those vices to survive againt all of the existential horror of this universe.
They also don't really fit the fighting you inner daemon themes that is one of the main focus of the Warhammer Franchise, they are no "good guys" in warhammer because being a good guys in this universe is a struggle often againt your own nature and flaws, also they don't have much to do with the warp which is a shame and a central part of the universe, and also don't fit the theme of decay. In 40k every "good" civilization has peaked and in now declining, except the T'au.
They are a missed oportunity in my opinion, they were really closed to be a perfect fit they just needed more inner struggle, flaw in their society, and morale flaws, while still retaining some amount of free will to do good to be interesting. Also more emphasis on the multi species empire would have been nice.
Though they are the only faction I would consider buying model from along side maybe space marines and voltan, I absolutely dig their look and combat philosophy, and the first 40k model I might buy in my life will probably be T'au.
@@benjaminparent4115 too much words didnt read, I'll stick with blue alien booba thank you
Nope, won’t happen cause as strong as the other races are, they cannot consolidate enough to break tau defense cause other worlds will suffer if they do, as enemies on on all sides of everyone.
Its like Risk when one player only has Australia while the other has all of Asia. Yes the combined Asian force may be many times that of Australia, but also spread thin due due to retaining control of such a large territory. Also Australia not in a strategic location for attacking anyone else beyond it, does allow someone to easily amaze a very significant defense of Australia and get ignored till the end of the game.
“Better destruction than bondage”
“So says the slave to the free man” raw as fuck
Honestly yeah, I loved that line so much.
on the contrary, bondage is pretty neat
There were two White Scar invasions but they were both pushed back by perfectly timed Warpstorms, which where considered by the Tau to be the Winds of the Greater Good. The term "Winds of the Greater Good" would centuries later be used as the name for some rather controversial suicidal naval tactics, which shocked many members of the Imperium's Armadas.
Oh thats SPICY
Bruh this is literally a Mongolia attempts to invade Japan reference.
Considering how often CA rips off history books im fully willing to believe It..
..Except for the last part. The imperium would Absolutely NOT be phased, maybe a Little surprised the Tau specifically were doing It.
@@inserisciunnome Idk, seeing as the Tau can replace their cool space ships far quicker and easier than the Imperium and that this enemy that acts rationally most of the time starts acting like the Imperium to take out warships older than their entire history, I don't think any non-transhuman or heavily augmented human would not be shocked or at least concerned.
@@altechelghanforever9906 yes.
The Tau are like Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Basic real world tactics are extremely effective in a world of “charge at enemy, shoot at enemy, don’t bother to reposition.”
I always wanted to hear a story about a human (Gue'vesa) living in the Tau empire. It would be a very interesting to see that not every human fights for the Emperor nor for Chaos.
There are a couple of those:
-Voice of Expirience
-Broken Sword
-The Greater Evil
Dont the humans in the tau empire, or atleast the majority of them, still worship the emperor?
@@macks2337 Nope. At some point they will _have_ to decide, or else.
@@Furzkampfbomber I dunno man, I heard stories of tau humans still worshipping the emperor as god but rolling with the tau. Granted it was from second hand accounts but still.
@@macks2337 I simply can not imagine how that is supposed to work. As far as I know, the Tau often take over imperial fringe worlds by establishing commercial relationships and then slowly but surely upping the ante and introducing the idea of the Greater Good.
Which can only work when the imperial humans are _not_ happy with Imperium and Emperor. Also, most human worlds defecting this way must be surely aware of the fact that this makes them traitors and heretics in the eye of the Imperium and that once this machine gets rolling, it will inevitably crush them.
I really think that this simply would not work. Accepting the Greater Good and fighting for the Tau, maybe even against imperial humans, is like pregnancy - you either _are_ pregnant or you are _not,_ there simply is no thing as 'a bit pregnant' or 'pregnant-ish'.
Tau allied humans would be pretty valuable considering theyre the only species Tau have that could theoretically do trench warfare for 20 years
and the only species that has a warp presence which funnily enough the manifestation of the greater good saved them one time while in the warp
@@themagalanium9491 didn’t that lore get retcond by James workshop
@@AhmedMostafa-ir2bl Nope, if anything it was reinforced by the horrendous actions taken by the survivors of the 4th fleet against their alien auxiliaries, namely humans
The only ones that can do trench warfare? Why?
@@kaleonpi ok so every faction/race have all most the same fighting plan the elder and drkary like hit and run tactic orks and neds and chaos like to send waves of themselves on the enemy and necrons will we don’t know they can do all of the battleplan except trench warfare only humans /imperial guardsman can do trench warfare bec that the best plan we have agents all the enemy in the galaxy we have the man power and resources to dig in and fight for years the orks and Ned’s may outnumber us but good luck trying to beat the dig in fort of guardsman with enough guns to full the sky with
"Windmill of friendship and tolerance" got me good
All I see is blood around that windmill . I think it's normal .
I laughed disruptively at that one
Oh is that what he said? I thought he said "windmill of french intolerance" which was way funnier to me
@@iwillbecomeimmortalordietr8506
That will do .
@@iwillbecomeimmortalordietr8506 no, that's any windmill made by the English
I will always be pissy at GW for not giving as models for some of the xenos that are part of the Empire. Especially after giving some of them some very badass descriptions like:
1. Thraxians, multi armed bug people that are good at melee
2. Anthrazods, pretty much Trolls from fantasy. Big , strong and stupid
3. Nagi and Charpactin. Sapient worms and mushrooms that can brainwash/hypnotize people
4. Loxalt. Mercenary lizards that sometimes will worship chaos but are seemingly resistant to chaos corruption
5. Vorgh. LITERAL KAIJUS!!!
I mean at the very least publish a book like the "Liber xenologist" but written by a Tau
We just need more Xenos in general, where's my Rak'ghol dammit!
@@the_corvid97 hrud supremacy!!
The Tau has a chance to GW's version of Halo's covenant but its like they don't want money.
Psychic. Pancake. Polar Bears.
3d printer time
I feel like the tau fit very well into warhammer as it shows how diverse the galaxy could really be, people often think of humanity as just grim dark, but look at them when they were in the “dark age of technology” where they had similar looking and much more advanced tech to the tau
I love them for most mechs per capita, modern tactics, and for being the straightman locked in the assylum.
20:06 And to be fair yes the t'au are right, it's incredibly stupid and wasteful building titans but because of "rule of cool" titans along with everything else in the Warhammer 40k galaxy is allowed titanic amounts of plot contrivances in order to function. The t'au just weren't aware of this meta-narative rule that governs everything in the setting.
"rule of cool" aka orcs like it
@@NoNameAtAll2 my headcanon, I formed just now 30 seconds ago, is that the orks are secretly responsible for every strange magical thing happening.
Why does every commander seem to believe charging mindlessly into battle is a good strategy? A bunch of orks willed it too be so, because the idea was cool. Titans? Orks idea.
The emperor!? Orks just saw a human for the first time and all just thought they would be waaaay cooler if they were like 20 feet tall and had a flaming sword. It all makes sense now
@@bombocrusty4251 There is a theory that it's actually the Orks keeping Big E alive. They believe he is a god, so he is. I mean, they actually turned Yarrick into an unkillable demi-god, so...
@@bombocrusty4251"Umies would be more fun ta foight if dey wuz tallah and 'ad big choppa's"
And then the Tau eventually said "Screw it," and they built the Super Tuna.
My favorite bit of tau lore that I feel really just represents the Tau and the Imperium relationship. On Taros the Imperium was being butchered by hammerhead tanks. Couldn't get their tanks or flyers anywhere near the tau. The Imperium said fuck this and sent two warhound scout titans. The hammerheads Couldn't pierce the armor so they fell back to save lives. Because why would you fight a losing battle. However their air raids were successful in damaging one titan, so the tau being adaptive built custom tiger shark bombers. Absolutely butchered 2 titans and crippled a 3rd. The imperium astounded that their warmachines were being countered by the tau. The mechanicum suffered so many losses that they banned the usage of titans against tau unless air supierority can be won.
no, only one Warhound was lost on Taros, only 4 were sent in the first place as part of the admech rules lawyering their commitment to the battle effort, and the second they lost one the other 3 said "fuck this" and went home.
Additionally the AX-1-0 wasn't built on Taros, it was in development for a while beforehand, it was simply deployed on Taros for the first time deliberately as a counter to the titans- they didn't adapt them after seeing the effectiveness of air power against titans on Taros, the Isthmus breakthrough battle was the first and only deployment of titans om Taros.
Finally, Imperial air power was very effective against the Tau on Taros- one of the only branches of the Imperium that stood a chance against the high mobility hit and run tactics they were using. But they had 78 fighters and 12 bombers, vs the Tau's 144 fighters, but despite being outnumbered they were still a big enough issue that the Tau strategy was to target frontline airfields and force the Imperial pilots to make sorties from miles behind the front, eventually bleeding them dry of supplies and planes- at which point the Tau air superiority mopped up the Elysians during Comet, effectively ending the ground campaign for Taros
@@stevenagelutton4322 they had more fighters, they just got brutally destroyed before they took off because the tau attacked the airfields
@@CyrodiilCome No, they famously did not. The Taros Campaign book gives hard numbers: The Imperials had 78 fighters, "mostly Thunderbolts", and 24 Bombers. The Tau had 140 aircraft. I have the book open right now, page 79 of the original printing of The Taros Campaign. If you have access to it, or the second edition one, the strength of both sides is given in the "Air War over Taros" section.
And the Airfield raid destroyed a total of six (6) Thunderbolts, and this was enough to tip the balance in their favour. They did so because of how effective Imperial Air Power was at countering their fighting style.
@@stevenagelutton4322 And this is part of the reason Aeronautical Imperialus takes place there cause you can actually have sweetass dogfights.
@@stevenagelutton4322 Schooling these Imperium sympathizers like a hound in a chicken coup. well done my friend
The line at 5:51 about Marx punching anyone who would call Tau society communist in the throat is more legit than you'd think, he was known to get drunk as hell and get into bar-fights
To add to humorous Marx facts, I remember reading that he lost work because his handwriting was not great.
There's also a touching story I read where Marx's daughter saw him sitting by his wife's bed when the couple were both advanced in age. She said at that moment, they both seemed young again.
A boozer commie, commander of legions of screeching multicolored hair legions. 👏
I think there be tons of people since his death that claim to be communist Marx would certainly want to punch in there faces.
Well, Marx would totally _hate_ the Tau society, because here, he would have to do what he never did even for one day in his useless life - he would have to work. Something he and his equally worthless buddy Engels tried to avoid at all costs for all of their lifes and which is basically why Marx invented socialism - so he could find reasons to leech of others. Just read their private correspondence, they were the most despicable beings imaginable.
But the really fun thing is, Marx would have hated to live in a socialist society as well. I did and people like him would have been called 'anti-social elements' and then get a nice, long re-education.
@@shinrapresident7010 It surely is. But there is a middle way between pure utilitarianis/manchester capitalism and pure socialism.
Also, Marx did not want social security for everyone, he gave a crap about workers, never spoke with even one of them and wrote to Engels that the prolatarian is only good as cannon fodder. What _he_ wanted is actually an oligarchy and total nepotism.
I like how the Manta has "Hard to Hit" as an ability, as if it isn't blotting out the sun.
Suprisingly agile for its size, it's basically a mega flying fortress that can zip around like an angry hornet!
I just chalk it up to the ground forces lacking the range to hit it being so high up and fighters being unable to land a shot on something that isnt armor plated. Bit loose logic but it works...sorta XD
My favourite head canon I like to imagine is T’au saying there’s nobody stupid enough to pour planets worth of resources into a single robot; and then 1 Fire caste just says “Hey is that church moving or is my optics broken?”
"Why did those guys just drop a building in from orbit?"
"Better question: Why does it have legs?!"
Reminder that the first time the Imperium fielded Titans against the Tau, they destroyed it so badly the entire Titan Maniple retreated and the Admech refused to deploy Titans against them for the next 100 years.
Tldr: Demiurge was retconned to be just a name the Tau gave the Leagues of Votann. Same goes with the term squat.
Saw it today in their codex, pretty cool
@@klyk69 and they traded the Tau their less reliable ion tech. Hence how they got ion tech which I don’t like tbh it kinda downplays the Tau’s achievements a little or bit
Called it!
@@deeperestmeme479 it was always from the Demiurg iirc
@@deeperestmeme479 that part I believe was always part of tau lore. Tau are smart, but they also have assimilated the tech from the confederation and trade to better themselves - a feat not seen often if at all in 40k
Finally, a sane take about the Tau's ideology
Yes, Inquisitor, this man right here
@@heavystalin2419 Dead meme
@@heavystalin2419 Dead meme.
I mean, its 40k. Saying dead meme Is a null and void statement, all of the setting's comedy Is made up of dead or Dying memes. That, and TTS, wich was straight up murdered by CA itself
@@inserisciunnome Just because it is doesn't mean it isn't bad lol.
The new Votann codex specifically confirms that the Demiuge were a fleet of Votann explorers.
so the votann dont exactly hate tau, nice. also it might be that one of their groups is their ally, it is interesting
I’ve never understood the hate for the T’au. I am a casual fan of the 40k world and of all the factions, I enjoy them the most. I wish they had stayed more wholly good than what recent updates made them into, because having a singular good, young, naive faction in a world of half a dozen ancient, selfish to evil and traumatic factions feels like it opens up many good storytelling possibilities.
What did recent updates made them into or did the video summed it up perfectly?
@@CherryOpera The video briefly discusses it but in short, old T’au were outwardly good for the sake of it, naive and new to the wider galaxy. However, the new post-lore T’au have a sinister side, with implications that their fourth, highest caste, are psychic manipulators who are compelling the entire race and others the T’au assimilate, into a sort of connected subconscious of order and control. Thus, when members of the fourth caste die on the battlefield, the T’au will fragment but also start to fight one another, the subtext being that their Greater Good is almost totally artificial and no one in their Empire is actually there voluntarily, they’re all being compelled to serve the whims of the leadership.
@@morcbus123 man that's kinda dumb ngl
@@morcbus123 I actually think the actual lore is much more fitting and works better within the setting of Wh40k. The Johnny Godshoes approach was not just _boring,_ it was something that would have survived for like three weeks within this universe. The idea that they are basically a totalitarian system and considered the _good guys,_ because that's what they actually are in the context of this universe, is a lot more interesting and fun in my book.
And no, they do not just instantly fracture when an Ethereal gets killed, just look at Farsight and his enclave, which _does_ work without the control of an Ethereal.
Also, it creates the interesting situation that, as Farsight saw it, the Ethereals are either lying about the Warp and the Ruinous Powers or in denial or in completely ignorance, which might cause some interesting developments in the future.
@@Furzkampfbomber well not all Ethereals are evil, some actually Benevolent. There’s Aun-Shi an Ethereal who does Melee Combat and fights alongside his fire warriors, a good example of the Benevolent Ethereal.
Aun’va is an embodiment of an evil ethereal. And I remember a story somewhere where a Young Ethereal was actually very concerned when people around him willingly do things when he told them.
I forgot the title but that’s what the short story is about.
My life consists out of waking each day in the hope of another do or don't, only to bang my head on a wall when disapointment comes.
On the day a do or don't appears, I wash away the blood and take a moment to feel gratefull for the day.
Thanks for these. The combo of lore and practicality scratches an itch I never knew I had.
All I’ll say is: I completely understand Kitten’s reluctance to be associated with Shadowsun; as I also have a blue skinned alien girl that’s after me.
Idk what you are talking about, must be non canonical.
@@noty2673 Emperor TTS. It is a parody of 40k. Kitten is a Captain-General of the Custodians who had a short, but heartbreaking romance with Shadowsun. Hilarious stuff, very much a recommend.
@@insanity9329 pretty sure he knew what it was and was referencing kitten saying "NOT FUCKING CANON"
@@insanity9329 i know, the joke is kitten screeching that "it isn't fucking canon" once the empreror shows shadowsun dumping him
@@insanity9329 that joke just completely flee over you, I'd say you gotta keep on yer toes
Even though the T’au have a minuscule Warp prescence, their backstory always makes me wonder.
A sudden Warpstorm protecting their homeworld in the earliest days of sapience? 6000 years later becoming a galactic superpower? And a subspecies of them rising to power and having seemingly psychic powers over the others?
To me that implies that the T’au we’re guided or chosen by an outside and still unknown power.
Well, for every race like the Tau there are probably a hundred that did not have luck with a warp-storm appearing in time to save them while they were developing. We just don't hear about them because they were wiped out in their bronze age development.
Also, 6000 years might be quick, but it's not *that* quick. A unified empire with internal stability and peace may only need a few thousand years to go from ancient civ to interstellar empire. Just look at how far we have come in the last 1000 years, while constantly waging wars among each other.
Sounds a lot like the old ones.
I remember hearing that the necrons helped the Tau for weird reasons
@@fcomolineiro7596 Coinciding goals, like a fight against Chaos?
@@williambell3304 maybe? Or maybe because they kill the shit out of Tyranids
I really wish Tau leaned more into they're basically 40Ks covenant like they have tau as basically the Elites, Kroot as Jackals, Vespid as drones so just a Brute and Grunt type auxiliary race would be great
Don't they have Tarellian auxiliaries? Those are basically Brutes, and for the grunts i don't know, maybe Squats?
Literally every tau player wants more auxiliaries. Dont get me wron we like the mechs but we arent tau just for them
They have a dozen or so auxiliary species. Such as psychic bears, and knight-sized giants. Why GW hasn’t written anything for this is beyond me. (Jk, the Imperium needs more damn lore, of course).
@@carlzerris6566 well now we got a kroot refresh with new models to boot. Allowing for a small army within an army.
youre the only person Ive seen who can actually explain the lore properly but also tie it into the tabeltop for those of us who don't play it and wanna know how they actually work on it. Cool shit.
I will seriously never get over that gag for their placement in the galaxy, with the Tau trooper screaming as an entire Hive fleet descends on their backyard.
Seen it several times, still makes me laugh.
I honestly just love the t’au pulse rifles and want to make an army purely because of a them. Also thanks for these videos man, they’re honestly some of the most entertaining on the site atm, can’t think of another creator Who’s videos I get this excited for
Personally I want another half guard half zeno army like the gene-cult but for the Tau.
Just imagine it, it'll make the tau a more credible grimdark threat orchestrating a civil war among humanity and we get cool official kit bashes like baneblades with rail-guns.
I'd like to have the ability to ally in the following groups: votan gsc and guard.
@@wiccanthropy1956 Exactly, Tau Guard just make since.
@@ianyoder2537 but I also think mechanicum should be allied with chaos. At least as a stop gap to true dark mech.
@@wiccanthropy1956 IDK, I think the darck mechanicus should be more zeno tech.But that's just a personal opinion, 40K chaos just hit's different than fantasy chaos and not in a good way. I mean every race that's not human or eldar is basically immune to chaos corruption and the zeno factions are a more intimidating and interesting threat.
Heres a fun fact abotu the tau water caste. They are incredibly good at what they do. To the point that, in one instance, a water caste dipolomat actually got into the head of an Ultramarine nad made him hesitate in killing them despite being a Xeno. They basically pulled at the strings of his honor and his own morality by pointing out that they were a defencelss woman, who was compellty un-armed and if gulliman would approve of them doing this. They were so good at screwing with him, he had no idea what to do int hat moment.
Until Cato Sicarius had one of his best moments and killed the dipolmat on the spot, not falling for that.
The water caste are under-rated, cause they are probibly the most dangerous Tau out there, cause let me remind you. They can be so good at their job that they can make a SPACE MARINE, hesitate and doubt himself on weather killing a XENO was the right thing to do.
Let THAT sink in for a second.
Disgusting. Their gene-seed must be purged from that weakness. Killing Xeno's is ALWAYS the correct course of action.
In what book did this scene come from?
@@june570 Blades of Damocles.
“Would your Primarch think you honourable for killing a defenceless female?”
“Yes”
That’s the TLDR of Chad McBigCock Cato Sicarius before blowing her to kingdom come
All kinds of goofy shit happens in the novels. It's best to think of them as only loosely canonical, or at least secondary in terms of canon to the army books.
My entire interest in the tau comes from their fliers and hover craft being named after sea creatures.
They have an Orca transport. Thats enough for me.
@Adeptus Gloriam
How would they even know those animals existed? Pretty much all but a few original terran flora, fuana, and fungi went extinct LOOONNGG before even 30k, with humans themselves being by FAAARR the most numerous terran descended creatures.
@@navilluscire2567i call that...GW forgetting looooorrrreeeee!
*A crowd erupts into cheers as if its an old game show*
This was great :D. Loved this!
Fun fact about the manta
Not only it is an entire army's worth of points, it can carry an entire army's worth of points.
6000 years old is still younger than modern human civilization. 6000 years ago China, Egypt an Iraq had copper tools and cities. Meanwhile Tau were in their version of stone age 6000 years before 40k "current time"
I think he means oldest "continuous civilization" compared to modern human ones. Though were a civilization begins and ends is really muddy and kinda fruitless and pointless to try and define such ""points"" in history as if they were concrete.
Only like two modern human *cultures* not countries like modern china.
Imo i think it'd be more grimdark if the Tau were actually noble in the setting. They only want to help and them being powerless to change the galaxy or even be able to defend themselves from the full attention of practically every faction just makes it even darker.
That’s what they were when they were first released
Look at it this way: The Tau ARE the most noble faction in Warhammer 40k, but only because of the sheer level of cartoonish evil that the rest of the galaxy is operating on at a regular basis.
They are a galactic empire with a rigid, authoritarian caste system who seek to assimilate other “less enlightened” societies into their thrall through military supremacy. And the rest of the Warhammer factions make them look like fucking GANDHI.
Because that’s just the thing, you can’t be the “good guys” when you’re participating in an expansionist war for dominance. There are no “good guy”. Any good guys who ever existed are either long dead, or have yet to be killed.
THAT’S Grimdark.
So because I am an obsessive dwarf simp I looked into it before, the demiurg and the Leagues of votann are the same. Basically they maintain trade connections and one league may have joined the greater good or at least formed a military alliance with them. So the demiurg are just a small part of the leagues of votann, most likely with specific adaptations explaining their differences. I got this from someone else's notes on the loremasters video so this could have been wrong but I hope other people are also interested in this so I didn't waste time typing this out lol
what if the demiurge become a new tau unit in 10th
@@steaksoldier by the description of them the new ultuar the destined model could be considered a demiurg already
it would make sense, according to the lore, the squats were left to die during the tyranic wars, it coild be that one of the... uhm... houses? decided to ally with the tau to survive after escaping the tyranids
@@michelecastellotti9172 oh yeah I didn't even think about that option! I hope they cover it more. Also the term would be leagues here
@@Parasil leagues, very well. I think that it would be cool to make so that a parricular league of the squats decided to reside in the relatively calm and safe tau space after observing them.
I like the Tau. They are unintentionally hilarious. The water cast diplomat trying to talk the Smurf out of killing her, Farsight trying to pay off Daemons. Its all incredibly funny. Not to mention, anything that cracks pepper under Imperium fans noses, I am all for.
My favorite bit of Tau lore is when Farsight was dealing with daemons of Khorne, he assumed a lot of what they did like teleport into battle or shoot flames from their hands was due to the daemons being more technologically advance than them. He even tried to essentially bribe a bloodthirster to cease hostilities with the promise of gold due to all the brass that they wear.
I also hope that due to them being a race not in decline GW uses that to make more new models for the faction, as well as add in more allied species to deploy on tabletop like human auxiliaries or the Demiurg. They might not get played as much as just standard tau units probably but I’d like to have some other options outside of just more fire warriors.
23:30 Yeah I agree 100%, the auxiliaries NEED tons of support! There is so much you could do with a federation of different species, so many options, so much fun, imagine the amount of delightful "tom-fuckery" you could do with a t'au army made up of several dozen auxiliary units from several species!
Remembering they essentially have Smaller Kaijus as an Ally, Yeah they do
@@robberyproductions1363
I know right! So much potential, and it's not they'd overshadow the tau's mechs and gun lines, if anything it would complement and enhance them!
@@robberyproductions1363 care to elaborate I'm curious
@@robberyproductions1363 Which species is that, I want them to expand on the auxiliaries alot since it makes the Tau so cool
@@danielburks2257 The kaiju race is Vorgh
I always love to read Tau winning melee in table top stories.
Something like this happend When I was playing a 2v2 with my friends like a month ago. I charged an Ethereal with three Bullgryns, but they didn’t managed to kill him, in return he killed one of them and managed to „scare away” the other two, only to be turned into a burned fish stick by a sentinel with a heavy flamer.
Drop kicked a Space Marine Captain with Crisis battlesuit
Killed him in 2 rounds
Had amazing rolls to survive his personal guard attacks
:)
While I didn't win the fight, I DID have a squad of fire warriors who slogged it out in melee with a unit of SM bikers for 4 whole turns because the bikers kept plinking off armour and the FW refused to break XD
In my head canon, I don't think that the Tau are bad at melee, or don't know how to fight hand a hand. I think they're just physically outclassed by every other possible army they could face on the battle.
@@johnmccarron7066 I don't think that's headcanon, I think that's legit lore; pretty sure it states in one of the codes that even fully trained fire warriors are still just physically inferior to most trained guardsmen. Hence the auxiliaries who can do the melee better.
Fully agreed. The haters can get fucked, Tau are great. Overwhelmed good guys is the exact thing I want to play in 40k. Sure some like the power fantasy of the various space marine derivatives but for me its all about being the naieve underdog who fights for what is right in spite of a cruel galaxy. When they started adding more grimdark elements to the tau lore I just repainted my army Farsight colours and was even happier about my choice of faction than before.
@@Oppen1945 Oh look a boring person, I bet you like Ultramarines
Personally I want to see what happens when a master of possession shoves a daemon up the rear of one of these naive underdogs.
Much more interesting in my opinion.
@@Oppen1945 look the dude was just expressing his opinion man, and why he likes the faction. No need to come in here and shit on him or be petty just because you don’t relate. You can Like whatever you want and hangout with whoever you want, nobody cares. There’s plenty of the universe and franchise for anyone to find something they enjoy in it..
And you can get bent, in a setting where the fun is everyone being an asshole, the goody two shoes are the least interesting faction, hell they even break canon by having AI, you know, the thing that always concludes that to defeat chaos, it has to kill everything.
Add they look like they belong in a different setting then 40K, add to the fact Tau players are so fucking self righteous.
@@Trynt33 I hate the Tau, and my favorite space marines are the Salamanders, and I played Orcs on the table top, so yeah, like all tau lovers your nothing but a self righteous prick.
I can listen to your brutal honest and down-to-earth style of narration all day, Sir!! Stay safe, and healthy, always!! Cheers!!
The Tau and the Enclaves being the “good guys” serve a valuable purpose: It (the galaxy) didn’t have to go the way things did a better future is possible as exemplified by the Tau…but it’s very possible it’s to far to gone to go back.
Weirdly enough, Tau got me into 40k.So I was super weirded out to see them get hated on so much.
Because in a setting where everyone is a different shade of grey, having a race and faction be known as "the good guys" doesn't really seem to fit.
@@aaronlaughter6471 The tau are a shade of grey, a lighter one yes but they only look while by comparison.
@@thexenoist3493 GW literally promoted them as the good guys when they released, so yeah, add to the fact they only added to the "grey" due to people not liking them.
They where made and marketed by GW as the good guys, and it pissed people off.
@@aaronlaughter6471 Neckbeards didn't like them, the T'au themselves sold just fine without being realigned into stupid-evil.
@@pizzapicante27 they sold because they were broken. Frankly the release of the tau and the release of the new squats are super similar in that regard.
The Farsight Enclaves might textually be straight up good guys there is a possibility they're corrupted by Khorne (red armour, fond of melee relatively speaking, 'the 8', the fact that Farsight literally had a vision of himself as a chaos champion chocking out his former peers)
The only true good guys being champions of war the entire time without changing anything pre-established would be the best fucking grim dark twist if and when we get 40k: End times
@@datguy3907 No not another end time trash look what happen to fantasy bec of the end time i don`t want warhammer end up like it
They could be the representation of the good parts of khorne tho I guess
So homie had an intrusive thought about beating his co-workers, who hasn't? But yea maybe.
@@blimp9741 Honor and Honesty?
What's the point of having an insane universe if you don't have a rational observer to horrify? Let's be honest. If the average 40k human came out of the warphole they'd probably be institutionalized within a week. A Tau? They'd find a way to live a somewhat fulfilling life.
As an ork fan. I would rather live with an ork. Literally not even a joke. I just love them to much.
Digahz gang rise up
I instantly gravitated towards the Tau as a kid. As a Halo kid they felt a lot like the UNSC expanding into the Galaxy and bumping into the Imperium, not realising what it is they just discovered
Would be great if the next character video is about the melee loving boy Farsight and his merry band of badasses
Casually glosses over how the Damocles Gulf Crusade nearly ended in my favorite factions total extinction.
Also
*ahem*
The Farsight Enclaves is just Outer Heaven, and Farsight is 40k Big Boss, and I love him for it.
Damocles wiping out the tau is a lie. Crusade got ground to a stalemate at dal'yth which is a Sept world the tau have 20 of, all fighting was done on newly colonized planets and backwater worlds at that point. Dal'yth may be an economic backbone of the tau but it wasn't a fortress or anything. The crusade basically had 2 options at that point. Wait for reinforcements the segmentum would not likely spare because they underestimated how strong the tau were for their size or pull out to deal with other threats. The arrival of the nids sealed the deal.
Elaborate. I'm genuinely curious on the comparison.
farsight is 40k char aznable and the farsight enclaves are the AEUG. orks literally call farsight the red comet and everything!
@@THENemesisXX99 So for the T'au O'Shovah is history's greatest soldier who became disillusioned with his nation's government after learning its dark secrets. Who then went awol to form his own mini nation run by soldiers for soldiers. In a strict, but true meritocracy, and fights for an idealized goal having mastered an incredibly aggressive form of fighting, utilizing scant resources to overcome numerically superior opponents.
I've never considered a tau army because of all of the memes and how much they get shit on, but this video has told me they're the perfect army for me
thanks homie, love your work
Something I'd like to see in the future from the Tau lore wise is if they went further into factionalisation. Have the Tau Empire be destroyed, be it by a Waaagh or a Hive Fleet or a Demon invasion or an Imperial Crusade, and splintered into like a half-dozen subfaction, each with their own lore specialisations on the tabletop like the Eldar Craftworlds.
Then put them back together, but make them more disparate, more like the Covenant from Halo with lots of internal tensions and power struggles, but held together by philosophy and the need to present a strong front to the threats all around them.
You already have the Farsight Enclaves for melee enthusiasts, maybe there are subfactions that are dominated by Vespids or Kroot or even Humans, because their territories mostly consists of planets inhabited by those races. You could have a Psyker focused Etherial faction based on the original capital world of the Empire, kind of like a Tau Vatican, who are super salty about loosing control of their empire and now they have to actually play nice with all the others, which would just be really funny.
Humans: "Die, xeno scum!"
T'au: "We have hamburgers and pizza."
Humans: "To hell with the Imperium, death to the Emperor! All hail the Greater Good!"
T'au: "We did not even mention free healthcare..."
Does at least some Gue'vesa still worship the Emperor? I heard they built for them worship places but dont know about that.
Imperium: oh no...they have free helthcare...EXTERMINATUS
Your analysis of the real-world influence for the Tau was spot on!
Personally I see a little Qing Dynasty influence as well through Tau preference of wearing a Queue-esc hairstyle, the dynamic between Fire caste and auxiliaries resembling the 8 Banner system of the Qing military, and their Greater Good resembling the Mandate of Heaven.
Just a subjective observation :)
Shoutout to that one Tau player that did a funny drone meme build instead of corner camping with battlesuits. I know everyone's experience is different, but in my experience in the 40k fandom it seems like Tau get more hate for the playstyle rather than their lore (or hate for the former lead into hate for the latter).
The Tau seem like they would be a good player in a Sci Fi verse like Homeworld and Battletech. But if they were to fight a group like the Covenant in Halo by themselves though they would give them a good war their numbers and FTL really hurts them against that level of a interstellar empire. Maybe even the Sith Empire would beat them with superior FTL.
If they were in the Culture verse they would be pretty chill with everyone.
Well, in the Culture verse you are either chill with everyone, or your existence is about to be cut very, very short.
@@intlidave
Well the Culture is willing to extend a bit of mercy and grace to the native population.
I think the sith empire and tau are on par, but I think the Tau would win in a war.
Sith imperial navy: 13,000+ Warships made up of Harrower class dreadnoughts(800m), BSX-5 Horrower dreadnought(600m), four other horrower types including silencer types that could destroy an entire fleet with a megalaser, Terminus class destroyers(500m), Delta class carriers, Gage class transports, Sun raizer(Harnessed the energies of certain stars to create multiple super weapons in a few years. There was 1 but six more were planned to be built), the Gauntlet( had light speed cannon that targeted ships in hyperspace), the emporers shadow(cloaking technology), and Keizar-Volvec bulk cruisers.
Imperial army: 6,240,500-38,324,500
Tanks/Walkers: 124,000-766,490
Sith: 1,000-50,000
Territory:
Systems: 22+
Planets: 120-400+ Planets
Vehicles: Siege tanks, and Walkers.
Droids: X4-Z2 Enforcer droids, war droids MK I, war droids MK II, MK IV assault droids, DK-27 guardian droids, MK IV sentinel droids, Ravager droids,
Sith Hierarchy:
Dark council
Sith lords
Darths
Apprentices/Adepts
Acolytes
Neophytes
Sith Types:
Warrior-
Marauder
Juggernaut
Inquisitor-
Sorcerer
Assassin
Force abilities: Telepathy, mind trick, force barrier, force repulse, increased strength/durability/speed, limited precognition, force slam, force push, force crush, force lightning, force heal, force slow, force storm, static barrier, force whirlwind force neck snap, force grip, thundering blast, cloud mind, and force throw.
Infantry types:
Heavy imperial troopers
Imperial troopers
Imperial commandos
Shock troopers
Snipers
Operatives
Agents
@@thorshammer7883 Who do you think would win between the Vajra and tyranids?
Vajra(Milky way galaxy)
Navy: Hundreds of thousands-Millions of capital ships, incorporated by Bishop class mobile fortresses(10-20km), knight class carriers(3-4km), heavy battleship vajra(4-5km), and destroyer vajra(2-3m)
Vajra soldiers: 16,000,000-240,000,000
Flyers/Walkers: 4 billion-270 billion
Territory: Unknown, other their homeworld
Weapons:
•Pulse beam cannons
•Macross grade canon(10s-100s of gigatons)
•Heavy beam gun turrets/point defense
•Triple barrel quantum beam gun turrets
•Bio micro missiles
•Beam cannons
•Heavy quantum beam cannons(hundreds of gigatons)
•Flagellum
Vajra: The vajra are a biomechanical insectoid species that naturally utilize foldspace, by mining, and absorbing fold quartz. They are a hive mind constantly in communication(via foldspace), and are extremely adaptable. They were able to create super heavy soldiers that could resist reactionary weapons, which are more powerful than nuclear warheads in just days. Any damage, and events happening to one vajra is instantly known to the rest in the galaxy. They are incapable of communicating via normal means, and thus attempt to infect other races with a virus. However the virus/microorganism kills the host after it reaches their brains. With the help of an infected human, and song(they use song to mate with other vajra from other galaxies) they realized humans were individuals that could understand each other through expression they accepted humans, and allowed them to settle on their homeworld. Their living ships have long range fold capabilities(a light year every 6 minutes at least), and their fighter/soldier class have short range folding capabilities. The protoculture that created the Zentradi/Meltrandi, and ruled the galaxy respected the vajra as god-like beings, and based their technology off of them. Sub-queen's are hundreds of meters long, travel aboard mobile fortresses, where they command fleets of carriers, battleships, and destroyers until they find worlds to settle in which they will eventually become full queens. A full queen is hundreds of kilometers long, and has the manpower and resources to build a ring of shards around her planet, which encompasses her. They also have a level of time space manipulation, slowing down time to a crawl, and creating a space displacement shield. Sub queens(Their armor can also tank 30mm rounds) at least, lay hundreds of eggs a day and are armed with a quantum beam blade. These eggs, at least for soldiers, and smaller vajra can hatch slightly over a week. Vajra emit frequency waves which neutralize homing weapons. Their capital ships wield fold barriers that disperse energy from damage into foldspace. Due to exploring space for billions of years, it's highly likely they are present in every galaxy in our local group and beyond, making their true numbers 66-300 times larger than the amount in the milky way.
Soldiers: Soldier vajra are mobile armor fighters. Basic mobile vajra soldiers' energy conversion armor can tank multiple 30mm rounds, flies at mach 4-5+, and are 15-20 meters long. Heavy vajra soldiers are 40-50 meters, and are commander types, with a single sub-queen having up to seven hundred in her fleet. Meaning 1,000s to well over 10,000 smaller vajra soldiers. Super heavy vajra soldiers are 100-150 meters, and have a cruiser level heavy quantum beam cannon, or turret(10s of kilotons).
Smaller vajra: Flyer, and walker vajra are the smallest type of vajra aside from larvae small enough to move about human ships, and corridors . They can bisect, and skewer a human, with their antenna, and tongues. They both come with pulse beam weapons that can penetrate, and destroy mobile armor. Either some can fire more powerful rocket like projectiles, or they can increase their firepower.
@@myduckisonqauck7227
The Sith seem to have an advantage in FTL speed and a more mobile military. They would probably analysis the Tau before going on the offensive.
You can pilot a gundam, build a gundam, pilot a jet to transport or support a gundam or travel the galaxy warning people to join or get blasted by a gundam. Good enough for me.
Given the R34 art i've seen of Tau women, I think Tau have a lot going for them and would definitely be the best species to be in the 40k universe.
The Tau are exactly what Imperium fan boys think the Imperium is: the (relatively) good guys, outgunned, outmanned, unequipped to face the horrors of the galaxy and yet soldiering on regardless.
I always find it surreal how Imperium and SPACE marine fanboys have the audacity to claim that the Imperium is always on the back foot or on the brink of collapse and so they're the sympathetic, outgunned, out manned, ""underdogs"" and yet will simultaneously declare them this unstoppable, unbeatable, monolithic, gargantuan faction that could oh so easily steamroll everyone else, especially the "vile aliens" like they were sickly, starving dogs being kicked by the iron boot of the Imperium's massive military might. I role my eyes every time I hear both of these depictions at the same time, often in the same comment without the poster skipping a beat or pause.
I seriously think the Imperium should get the late weastern Roman empire treatment, in that they truly are on the back foot, constantly losing territory, large chunks of territory infact to those hordes of sopposedly weak barbarians their apologists claim are so easily defeated. Heck even have a battle were dare I say...the Imperium's huge numbers of bodies is rendered ineffectual, if not leading to their humiliating defeat!
Basically don't tell me the Imperium is a failing empire, SHOW ME THAT IT IS. They, the Imperium and even the SPACE marines could do with much less "plot armor" or "author fiat".
Yeah no the tau aren't relatively good the idea they're good guys is retarded
Outgunned? Hardly. Outmanned? Yeah. Outequipped? Hell nah.
They’re like a smaller Great Crusade but with Tau and no humans or supersoldiers.
@@ivanivanovitchivanovsky7123 I think the point was more that Imperium fans, and especially Space Marine fanboys, think the Imperium is this super weak, super fragile thing that can break at any moment. The fact we still don't have multiple human factions outside of the Imperium and Chaos due to simple political and cultural divides shows this is a complete and utter lie.
Would love to see a rant about Genestealer Cults. Show up for 2nd, get a Citadel Journal during 3rd. Go missing from 4th to 6/7th that show up in a random box game to get a codex at the end of 7th and proceed to just get nerf directly and inderectly from 8th onwards.
I like the Tau because they're actually different and unique as well as not being another copy and paste 'grimderp, everything sucks' faction.
Yeah, change what made 40k fun, grimdark and over the fucking top.
Maybe Warhammer isn't for you? Like not every IP is going to be for everyone. Personally I'm only vaguely interested in Warhammer 40k because of how overly grimdark they go, but I wouldn't rip that away from anyone else who enjoys it with a self-insert faction that I can finally relate to. That just ruins the whole narrative of the setting. If the appeal is the grimdark nature, why would you add a good faction? So that good faction can die and reinforce the grimdark? Well I have the Tau die soon then, because they've been riding along merilly for a long time.
@@aaronlaughter6471 Exactly! A breath of fresh air!
@@GarrulousHerald Enjoy the Tau is valid, stop gatekeeping, that's cringe.
@@GarrulousHerald I like 40k because its grimdark but the T'au are a bit of fresh air and the fact that they are not grimderp everything sucks is good because its different. The setting is for everyone interested, and wanting to see something different from ye olde reliable is a sign of a setting being able to do different things and stay flexible
Thanks to your work and espacially this video (and the Farsight one) I started the hobby again and almost painted a 2k army (as well as a HH one). It has given me a lot of joy. Thank you elf lover. All hail Karl Franz !
Most people are saying they would defect for food safety not dying…I am going after that tau tussey
Honestly the whole faction I can accept just because of the art out there of lady Tau with their greater goods.
Honestly other comments saying that Tau are too idealistic and naive to survive in 40K dont make much sense.
The Tau are nothing but sharply focused and practical, they cooperate with different species if possible, giving them access to unique capabilities and techs.
When cooperation is impossible (such as with Orks) they recognize it and seek to exterminate.
They are much more efficient with their ressources than the imperium
They don't waste time on ressources on extensive rites, ornaments and other religious silliness, they have a few rituals and cultural practices for unity and bonding but its much more streamlined.
Their problem is being late to the game, not the way they function, if they had even 1/10 of the Imperium's ressources and decent warp technology (or perhaps even figure out the necron way of FTL travel eventually) then they'd wipe the floor with them.
One of the reasons I love the tau, besides their unique futuristic look, is that while they are a thousand steps up in terms of morality compared to everyone else (besides the farsight enclave) they still have that edge that I think every faction in 40k should have, there can be a “good” faction like the tau, but there should be something at least a little questionable
I always forget how close the Tau are to Ultramar. Meaning if any Space Marines come their way, they’ll most likely be Ultramarines. It trully is a miracle they’ve survived up to this point.
Between the plague wars, tyrranic wars, and the fact that the entire Ultramar sector is being surrounded by the Sautekh dynasty, the Ultramarines have other shit to worry about. Sending a few hundred space marines and a few million imperial guard has been tried both times, both times it wasn't enough. Sending more than that means leaving Ultramar open to the Tyranid, Death Guard or Necron and potentially losing one of the greatest bastions in the Imperium.
@@AnEnormousNerdyet it was enough to take back everything the tau stole and ended with a meteor field blocking them off from further invasion
@@ravenwhiteduck6460 I mean... no it wasn't? It took back some of the Imperial worlds, but the Imperium essentially conceded the entire Damocles Gulf to the Tau empire. Creating a barrier neither side could cross to stop the Tau from invading the Imperium.
"And then the churches started walking towards them." That is simply hysterical.
I liked the tau I just wish they had more diversity in theyr models for a multi species empire all you get are robots and blue guys like I wanna see some of the other species in some kickass tau armor
I'd love a Halo Covenant like army. Big tough guys, small skittish guys, flying guys, etc.
They, the t'au have the kroot who are like a cross between the covenant's "jackals" and "brutes" (depending on what they've been eating..) and the vespid are slightly scarier looking "drones" from Halo.
@@navilluscire2567cool two species
one that haven’t had new models in forever
And another that looks like a space hobo
"Imagine sneaking in a Bethesda game when the skill's maxed out and you've got a pretty good idea of what it was like for them, just not intentional".
That's got to be the simplest yet most effective way to explain Tau relations to the Warp i've ever heard.
This made me have a thought:
What would happen if another race approached the Necrons, asking to become vassals?
Unlikely, if impossible, that it'd actually happen, but at the same time, Necrons are just trying to get what they perceive as their rightful territory back.
Furthermore, Necrons need organics for their other end-goal, to get new bodies, so I imagine it's actually not completely impossible they might accept such an offer, in exchange for a tithe of... test subjects.
theres a necron lord that looks over some humans called diggaz, he protects them from orks. Although in his eyes they are more like pets but still he doesnt want them to die so basically it depends on the necron lord
Been watching your channel for awhile. Finally bought an audiobook and set of tau to paint this weekend to try out the hobby. Thanks.
18:03 The funny thing about that artwork is it's supposed to make the Tau look feeble, but the dude on the bottom right is a split second away from liquifying the center marine. XD
The guy in the middle looks like hes going "SQUARE UP"
Wow, I just binged Auspex Tactics Tau videos. Neat. I love the Tau.
The emperor: HOW, HOW COULD I'VE BEEN BEATEN IN "HOW TO RUN A DECENT IMPERIUM" BY, BY FUCKING GOAT PROPLE
The goat people were small enough to not have 4 different gods actively trying to fuck them over.
@@AnEnormousNerd so was the emperor at the start, yet he still was a monster
@@fcomolineiro7596 Emperor only revealed himself after humanity had already became a galaxy-spanning civilisation, a rival to even the ancient Aeldari. Humanity had made it clear they were a threat on a galactic scale long before Emps got involved.
@@AnEnormousNerd yeah and after that he decided to use slavery and esoteric mean to run the imperium, do I have to remind you what the mechanicus do in a daily basis?
@@fcomolineiro7596 Oh, yeah, the Emperor was pretty horrible, but admittedly much less so during the Great Crusade than a lot of the stuff that happens in the modern era.
20:08
Newer lore on the tau has their population being much higher than than it was previously in older lore (which makes sense given the meta-narrative of Tau continuously expanding and improving) with their most populous world having a population of around a trillion.
Keep in mind, the quality of life for this world in particular is not as good as other planets in the Tau Empire. I am going to preface this next statement by saying I'm not 100% certain how accurate it is, but it *seems* like even the most populous world for Tau has a better quality of life than most Imperial hive worlds.
*lore states most hive worlds predate the imperium of man* yeah, I’d assume a new and high tech species could out do a literal mountain of metal that’s been sitting their since the dark age of technology pretty easily in the quality of life department.
@@cecrops9289 the wacky population numbers are probably a result of them occupying a couple aforementioned mountains of metal. Remember that the tau are utilitarian. They wouldn't bulldoze existing architecture unless it didn't serve a purpose.
@@cecrops9289
Oh of course, though I'm more referring to the tau achieving a higher quality of life (when compared to hive worlds) on a world with a population of around a trillion while most Imperial hive worlds aren't directly stated to be near a trillion (at least in terms of hive world populations we have hard numbers for)
Though admittedly, I don't keep up to date with the lore regarding Hive Worlds. So it is more than likely 2 more zeroes got added to the populations of those planets between the time the lore was written and now, in order to keep the galactic populations of humans massive
@@ridleydidnothingwrong I’d honestly like to see them try to dismantle a hive city. Even orks have to drop fucking meteors on them to actually wipe them out completely.
@@georgekerscher5355 I understand your point, and I’d say honestly it’s just tau authors being autistic with their numbers, because like you pointed out, humans in 40k breed like rabbits. It’s literally encouraged Within the imperium to pump out babies. Now if you include mortality rates, even in a decent imperial hive city (like Krieg pre civil war for example) hive cities had tens of millions tops. Which when you think of the logistics in supplying even 20-30 million people in a single area is almost mind boggling.
That being said the tau are autistic with their societal structure and the ability of the earth class to overcome any challenge. So I’d say they could do hundreds of millions at most, but a trillion? At that point you have to question how the tau have the pure quantity of raw resources to even supply a population center like. Either way, I just mark it down to fudged writing.
My main issue with Tau is that they should have been the minor xenos conglomerate faction. Every xenos race too small or narrow of focus should've gotten units in the tau alliance so as to expand the setting and game while held together by the core gunline of the tau themselves. Instead every release has just been more and more mecha crap completely forgetting the point of the Greater Good alliance and making the tau themselves seem more important and major than they should ever be. Then you could have the tau be legitimately good, played straight without jobbing but still dealing politically with various kinds of actual monsters that just needed better tech for a ride or protection to strike out at imperial worlds like they did of old.
16:50
Damn, you should have also shown the taunar supremacy armor for a more traditional titan unit (i.e. big mech). That thing is pretty big, though not as big as the Manta admittedly.
Yes, thank you. Confucianism not Communism. It even goes with the whole gundam theme and their long-term thinking non-aggressive diplomacy style found in modern iterations of many east asian nations. I also assume they dropped the "o" for a "u" when naming the Tau.
The term "ork goon squad" is so captivating
Pretty much the main reason I hate the Emperor and Imperium can be summed up by the Imperial Creed. The militant anti-theism can be justified, cause Chaos, but a blanket extermination order on mutants and aliens is just, stupid. Yes, the universe is filled with species where peace would never be possible, which makes every ally you can get even more valuable. Besides, it’s not like the Emperor was even consistent, given the Imperium’s use of Bullgryns and Jokaeros.
This channel has really helped me get into 40k and every new upload is a highlight to my day. Thanks for the good content, king.
"The T'au don't have a titan."
*KX139 Ta'unar Supremacy Armour Online*
pancreas may not work but you sure do. thank you
Ah I remember one of my most infamous games as the tau. We're I got hosed by my opponent playing guard like khorn.
He battle bonded like 40 guards ( this was back when you could merge guard infanty like that) behind his lord commsar, a lemon Russ. Three pyskers a squad or two of conscripts held in reserve and a heavy weapons team with if I recall correctly mortars
I had a beast of a commander who was good at one thing, killing infantry and buy God he was good at it.
Two squads of fire warriors, a kroot squad also in resevere, stealth suits, some part finders and a sky ray gun ship.
Each each had one object each at the star of the game as a kind of capture the flage
I did the tipical tau thing and put my fire warriors and sky ray ontop of it. And my commander infront conferdent that the wall of guns would easily blast apart his hoard of infantry and while they were doing that my parth finders and stealth suits could take out the heavy weapons teams
And ware down the lemon Russ as I used the parts finders and to call down rockets from the sky ray.
My obante pointed his lord commsar and 40 meat shelds towards my object and charged. And my commder and fire warriors unleashed hell
My commder alone must have killed over half the hoard by himself but just as the commsar and like three other dudes left. he charged and broke my commander moral making him flee and kill him in the retreat then hit my fire warriors gun line pulling them into the melee
Mean while my stealth squad got tired up slap fighting with the guys pyskers. I don't think eather squad took any casualties it was down right comedic. It was like 4 rounds of then just shaping each other
My parth finders mean while couldn't hit the board side of a barn half the time and tgey did get good rools when I used them to call in rockets form the sky ray on either the Russ or the heavy weapons teams. Those rockets did bassicly nothing, I think I killed one out of the three heavy weapons teams and knock out one gun on the Russ. But has expended all my sky ray rockets in doing so
Thankfully his morta teams or what ever they were just as inactive but the managed to tie up my parth finders till the Russ was in range and the dude didn't even have the decently to fire its guns more than maybe twice
He just used it to run over my path finders. Which was smart as they and my stealth suits were the only things I had that had wargear that could even hurt the thing
And the guy managed to call his conscripts to the side of my main force. Luck of lucks I was able to do the same with the kroot and they managed tie the conscripts up before they could hit my gun line from behind
But by that point I was done. While my gun line was final able to put the lord commsar and his three body gaurd down. I'd lost half a fire warrior team to do it. My path finders were dead
My stealth team was still slap fighting with his pyskers. Which he said was a good thing as he couldn't pull of his smights and other mind power bs.
I had nothing left that could hurt his Russ and his morta teams were finnaly rolling well themselves
Other than I tiring to ram my tank into his to prevent the Russ just rolling up and fireing into what was left of my fire warriors.
In theory I could have had the kroot relave my stealth suit so they cloud bring their fusion cannons to bear on the Russ but but the conscripts tied them up and if I tried to retreat the kroot towars my stealth suits that would have just let the conscripts to hit what was left of my gun line from behind
Had to re-evaluate how much I actually wanted to watch this video after I heard how you pronounced the word annexing
Tau are also just neat because Artillery and blowing things up from a distance in style is just...neat.
I actually have my own homebrewed Tau commander who was a former inquisition officer who decided to say screw the imperium I'm joining the small blue guys who have cool guns, and as such he joined the fire cast completely overhauled the military industrial complex, and used his centuries of experience to lead a highly competent army with the basic approach being overwhelming firepower, and more guns. On the table top he gives his troops a minor moral boost, and lets ranged units shoot more often which in a Tau army is very good.