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

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

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

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

>>53770401
They aren't the weakest, they're the youngest. When has gw ever said tau were weak?

>>53770401
Despite the campaigns making it seem like the Tau are rapidly expanding, the truth of the matter is the Damocles Gulf has pretty much been a back-and-forth border between the Imperium and Tau, every time they expand past it they get pushed back, and every time the Imperium tries to crusade into the Empire they get BTFO'd.

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

>>53770401
because gw wants to keep selling models

>>53770458
I think OP meant weakest in terms of as an entire faction, in which case he's absolutely correct, but it doesn't really matter since nobody is focusing on the Tau with all their might anyway, usually because they're too busy fighting everyone else at the same time and believe their resources better spent elsewhere.

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

>>53770512
Every good game needs a token underdog. Tau are weak to 40k the same way the last seed in any sports playoffs are weak

>>53770512
I don't know, the imperial crusade launched in kauyon and montka was pretty huge and contained several space marine chapters including 2 first founding chapters. To really show how important this was, they even sent an execution force, something requiring the full vote of the high lords of terra. The imperium did direct its attention on the Tau with an appropriate sized crusade and still got BTFO on a single world

>>53770559
I have no issue with that philosophy and was one of the things that allowed me to feel as if the Tau actually fit into the setting in a weird way, they ignored all the 'dangers of technology' themes at the cost of not having any ancient superweapons or hypertech, just some practical and decent quality-over-quantity gear. They ignored the whole 'xenos can't be trusted, forget diplomacy' but their fluff was laced with times when that didn't work and they suffered for it. They struggled and had to fight for their beliefs inch by inch, with cost and determination.

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

>>53770591
Except the contingency had already been placed to light the Damocles Gulf on fire, and the whole point was that taking the planet was supposed to send a message. It was clear that it wasn't an intent to conquer the Tau, but just to crush their advancement and then leave.

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

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

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

>>53770718
I feel as if Tau need to be salvaged rather than deleted from the setting, go back to their earlier edition roots where they're actually struggling and pay the price for their philosophies instead of just being better than everyone else.

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

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

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

>>53770718

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

>>53770788
That's never stopped GW from canning an army before and it won't stop them in the future. Tomb Kings and Bretonnia were two of the most loved factions in WFB and they went straight into the trash bin when AoS came out.

>>53770787
This. Tau wank is worse not necessarily because they get away with more, but because of the deeper consequences of what they get away with.

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

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

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

*ahem*
>>53770838

>>53770559
Orks are already the underdog. They can never win but you can never get rid of them either. Tau are just extraneous.

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

>>53770401
It's a lot easier to defend a small area.

>>53770879
Tau are just more efficient. The Imperium is massive but is wasteful and slow to react. Plus the Tau are motivated versus press ganged Guardsmen treated as cannon fodder. Sure, in another 20k years, the Tau probably will go through their own Men of Iron revolt but right now they're in their expansion phase.

>>53770401
Tau tend to lose against eldar, and Orks give them a pretty rough time as well. I don't think the Tau have ever been anything but BTFO by the Necrons.

>>53770401
Ghazghkhull and his Bullyboyz BTFO'd an entire Tau colony that had a lot experience fighting Orks in 704999.M41, as I recall.

>>53772924
>>53773113
Funny, for all the taus bullshit, they seem to suffer most under the Orks

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Because the moment their plot armour drops this happens.

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

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

>>53770401
I love the Tau, but making them so small was a mistake. If the Imperium loses a planet it's not a huge deal, if the Tau lose a planet it's a massive blow. The Tau essentially cannot suffer defeats on the same scale as the other factions, or else it cripples them as an effective force. So they're essentially forced into always winning crucial engagements, because if they don't they're gone entirely.

>>53774420
But anon, Chaos has been deprived of attention for so long. The 4th Sphere Expansion will turn chaos so that Chaos can finally, at long last, appear in the fluff again.

>>53774443

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

>>53774465
Resilience != to immunity. Who knows how long in their subjective time they were in the warp. And imagine all the crazy new models they could sell.

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

Also plot armor.

>>53774504
Just give me updated units of these bad boys and half-spawn fire warriors being herded around by khornate Kroot

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>>53774545
and forgot my image

>>53770910
>Orks are already the underdog.
>Orks just handed the biggest nid Hive Fleet in the fluff its ass on a plater and said "Come back if you want seconds"

>>53770787
I always just headcanonned that they controlled that whole expanse of the eastern galaxy that wasn't covered by the Astronomican - it was an area humans couldn't control, so the Tau spread out there (I also give them a few thousand more years - what does it matter, when half the setting seems to start at 30,000 and the rest is blank space?)

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

>>53774605
>what does it matter, when half the setting seems to start at 30,000 and the rest is blank space?

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

>>53774605
That's all Sautekh territory though, and they don't plan on giving it up.

>>53774624
That's the fluff as it stands, the conversation is about headcanon and hypothetical retcons/what-should-have-been.

>>53774672
Well, the alternative is endless REEEEEEEing at each other. But fortunately /tg/ seems to have mostly burned out on that a week or two ago. I fucking hated that stretch last month when /tg/ was rendered fucking unusable for 40k by badwrongfluff wars

>>53774744

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

>>53774646
Would they have been awake a few thousand years ago? It could make for an interesting scenario even if they weren't - the Tau settle all these worlds, get torn through by two Tyranid fleets, and then these Necrons start rising up and destroying the heart of their space empire.

>>53774789
I don't really browse the main general too much, but the autistic shitfits were in every single 40k thread. Even 40krpg general, which tends to be a bastion of relative civility and far more open minded; collapsed into anarchy a few times.

>>53774813
>a bastion of relative civility and far more open minded

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

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>>53770401
hive fleet kraken destroyed a huge number of tau planets. they only survived cuz imperials eldar and crons fought off the hive. thats pretty BTFO.

>>53774789
>female marine REEEEing all afternoon today. Even had a dedicated femarine thread up.
>I miss this madness while I'm at work
Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing...

>>53774624
To clarify, I wasn't saying the Tau should be starting off as the same time as the Imperium. As far as I understand it, in the canon the Tau start expanding around M38. I'd start them around M36, giving them a few thousand extra years to expand out into the galactic east, with a little more speed than their actual expansions took. I figure if humanity can take about 200 years to finish the Great Crusade, the Tau can manage a rough sixth of it in a couple thousand.

>>53770627
Damn that perfectly encapsulates why the faction is out of place.

>>53770627
The sheer incomprehension they had to titans and gargants, as to why any intelligent race would waste so much time, effort and resources on such a ridiculous behemoth, and their use of orbital assets was a great counter to the rest of the settings ridiculous over-the-top insanity. The Taros Campaign book was great, it really gave a much better look at the realities of 40k warfare than most of the drivel released recently-just compare it to the mont'ka/kauyon books.

>>53774873

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

>>53774873
>comparing Warp travel that ignores time and distance altogether to non-FTL

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

>>53770401
what the fuck is wrong with that riptide?

>>53775121

They have FTL though

>>53775067

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

>>53774388
Tau are fucking braindead.

>>53775278
i still have thirty fire warriors and two hammerheads and exactly nothing bigger than a broadside
I havent bought a model for two editions, i guess this is what happened to fantasy players

>>53774672
Really, nothing needs to be changed that much. The issue is that writers completely ignore or fuck up what should be the Tau's greatest assets, density and logistics. The Tau should be winning because they can quickly reinforce themselves with forces from nearby areas to make up for technological deficiencies while the Imperium is waging a war on the sparsely populated edge of it's territory. Add on to that an efficient industrial base, functional R&D capacity, and effective communications and you've got solid reasoning for the Tau being able to counter the Imperium.

>>53775278

Not during their first two expansions.

>>53775345
Tau can't ever fucking win because they have socialist hugtime morals in a grimdark universe where the other races are genetically/mechanically/magically engineered killing machines.

>>53770401
Because fluff writing is done on a volunteer basis, to ensure the biggest fanboys always get to write for their own factions.

>>53775379

Do you WANT another Cruddex?

>>53770627
Pretty much hit it on the head there.

>>53775067
>We just spent twenty years building an over the top, ridiculous setting, and now we're gonna hold it up to realistic standards
Genius.

>>53774388
It's fucking Mars Attacks

>>53772539
>Tau are motivated
I mean, the Tau have more effective brainwashing than the Imperium, I'll give you that.

>>53774558
Delet this

>>53775450

AK AK AK AK

>>53775403
>solving an outstretched nail with a hammer instead of an ICBM
>but now we get ICBMs too! Just 249.99 at your local Games Workshop!

>>53775345
But then there's the problem that the Tau can really only have fights on those terms. And it's hard to explain how they get involved in anything else - you can't have them fighting a few systems away, let alone across the galaxy. How is that fun for a wargame where you're supposed to be able to bash any couple factions together? Everything else can be everywhere or could be everywhere, but Tau.

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

>>53770859
That's a poor comparison. Beloved by the fanbase as they may be, compared to other armies they weren't selling as well. Tau are consistently one of 40ks top selling armies.

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>>53772539
Guardsmen not motivated? Tell that to any commissar.

>>53775487
>Tau are consistently one of 40ks top selling armies.
Which is probably the greatest proof imaginable that 40k just doesn't appeal to people.

>>53775487

Taunar seem to sell surprising numbers despite that cost

>>53775531

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

>>53774504
>Inb4 tau emerges from the warp with allied auxiliary daemons that have been enlighten by greater good

>>53775531
>40k just doesn't appeal to people
It's so appealing that they can jack up the prices every single year well beyond what inflation would dictate as reasonable, and people still buy into it and play.
The only games that are even close are X-wing and Warmahordes (which is just 40k for poorfags)

>>53775497
If you constantly have to resort to shooting them in the back of the head to stop them from leaving, that means they aren't very well-motivated.

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

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

>>53775487
wrong, upon the release of bretonnia and during the updates of tomb kings they were flying off the shelves as they weren't directly outclassed by other armies

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

>>53775668
And that's exactly it, Tau will never win because they aren't willing to do shit like that, even when it works.

>>53775487
>they may be, compared to other armies they weren't selling as well.
Of course they weren't selling, the latest release for brets was 15 years ago.

>>53775690
Only the ethreals survived from the 4th sphere. Warp flunged them to the past where they stop the genocidal tau civil war and unite the race.

>>53775646

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

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

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

>>53775766
LONG AGO IN A DISTANT LAND, I TZEENTCH, THE SHAPESHIFTING MASTER OF DARKNESS, UNLEASHED UNSPEAKABLE EVIL BUT A FOOLISH FIRE WARRIOR WIELDING A MAGIC SWORD STEPPED FORTH TO OPPOSE ME.
BEFORE THE FINAL BLOW WAS STRUCK, I TORE OPEN A PORTAL IN TIME AND FLUNG HIM INTO THE FUTURE, WHERE MY EVIL IS LAW.
NOW THE FOOL SEEKS TO RETURN TO THE PAST AND UNDO THE FUTURE THAT IS CHAOS!

>>53775796
Chaos corruption is a meme and like everyone but humans have a special pass to ignore it.

>>53775796
tau ai is not stronger
it's primitive and stupid

>>53775852
>Samurai Jack is now a Tau Fire Warrior
So what does that make the Scotsman? An Ork (I mean, they're the only ones who can deliver the proppa' amount of insults compared to the rest of the galaxy).

>>53775796

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

>>53775668

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

>>53775959
Well gunleg, so yes

>>53770401
P L O T
L
O
T

A R M O R
R
M
O
R

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

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

>>53775959
>Ork scotsman

I am decidedly okay with this

>>53772379
>How would the Tau fare against the Indominus crusade plowing into their empire?
Girlyman is too busy fighting chaos, and if anything he'd keep Tau around as a buffer state that causes way less trouble than the shit it buffers Imperium from.

>>53775796
Humans built the equivalent of Hal, Shodan, something like that. The Tau have built that silly Japanese robot that falls down a lot, only it hovers.

>>53775796
But human "AI" stands up to Chaos just fine (as well as anything else, at least). There's no canon saying that the Iron Men fiasco was due to Chaos, and even if it were, that can probably be chalked up to widely linked systems and an over-reliance on AIs taking care of humanity rather than the other way around.

>>53775959
YA ONE-EYED, 'ELMET-WEARING, FOUR-FINGERED, GROT-FACED, GOAT-LEGGED, etc etc

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

>>53776512
I doubt it. More auxillary alien races though perhaps.
Abhumans for imperials, Mercs for DE and Chaos, Aux for Tau, etc.

>>53776512

Tell me, what sells?
And what doesn't

>>53776512
They've been loving those mini-codexes lately. Maybe a few will pop up in those.

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

>>53776698
Ala' Squats

>>53770401
Mostly GW dosen't want to write fluff for 40 diffrent alien species, and make models for them that would directly compete with each other. There should be a ton of tau scale empires on the edge of impirial space. On the other hand they shouldn't be able to repel a major crusade.

The thing is 40k is a setting of massive scale. It should have space for whatever. There should be 100s of alien races just going about their lives, trying not to die from all the shit in space. Except that would take a lot of effort for very little return. So we get the tau, basically a stand in for all those races.

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>>53776512
>ywn be a Martian Pharaoh surrounded by hot Martian babes giving you earth-shattering dick kabooms
why live?

>>53776734
They were abhumans - they've brought back some bits of them, like Thudd Guns, but it doesn't seem like they're interested in making room for them. There's a bigger chance of the Demiurg getting on the table than them.

>>53775852
gotta get back
back to the past
shas'o jack
wacha!

>>53777080
Wait no, Shas'o doesn't sound right. Something something that rhymes

>>53776698
Zoats, Ambulls, Tarellian Dog Soldiers, Lizardmen, Enslavers, etc?

>>53776038
I just like that they are ranged specialists who use mobility and speed. IG do some of that so I play them too; but Tau, Necrons and Tyranids are what give them aesthetic of the whole game some (really any) variety.

>>53777086

Shas'O is the military rank. It means he's a commander or a general. Shas'el would be the next in line. Then you have by rank:

Shas'vre
Shas'ui
Shas'la
Shas'saal.

Alternatively, you can use one of their nicknames. A Tau can have many nicknames besides his rank/homeworld/caste etc.

>>53775796

Eldar used AI for 60 millions of years and nothing ever happened.

>>53775796

Humans had AI for thousands of years just fine until the Iron Men. One of the ideas is that they began to tamper with warp-based AI.

>>53777595
>Eldar used AI

Eldar souls aren't AI idiot.

>>53777678

Read the Eldar lore before the fall. They used AI to do all the work while they became hedonists.

>>53774367
Because Orkz don't play, son. They just break nerds.

They just need to add chaos tau its that easy

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What would a tyranid fleet adapted to counter Tau bullshit plot armor look like?

>>53779962
No massive swarms, just Tyranid Primes leading small squads of warriors on band of brothers style missions benefitting from their own massive plot armor

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>>53777934
>get rekt nerds

If the Orks are in melee with fire warriors, this battle is as good as done. Rare image of Tau BTFO

>>53770718
I've liked tau since 3rd and honestly I'd love this, as long as tau lived on as a "tau remnants" army. Like they become this scattered hit and run race...

>>53775650
>WH40k is kept afloat by obsessive fans who don't mind spending huge chunks of money.
Wow, how shocking.

>>53780101
Warriors are too slow, and tau trive on taking apart slow armies.
I'd bet more on hypermobile teams shrikes and raveners with trigons tunneling in expendable hordes of gaunts to cover them up

>>53780463
>40k is not appealing
>40k has enough obsessive fanboys to keep the game at the top of the heap for decades
pick one

>>53780350
>Farsight soldiers in melee
The orks are fucked.

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>>53776386
>YA ONE-EYED, 'ELMET-WEARING, FOUR-FINGERED, GROT-FACED, GOAT-LEGGED, etc etc
VEGGIE-EATIN', SNOTlING-BRAINED, SQUIG-LEGGED....

ITT: We come up with creative insults ScotsOrk says to Shas'ui* Jack.
* Shas'vre would technically make more sense because it means 'hero', but like shas'o it doesn't exactly rhyme well, so we can go with Shas'ui for now I guess?

>>53770401
They are the skaven of the setting.
Every writer and autist loves them for the technology and opressive regime imagery, they are said to be masters of battle able to snipe eldar millions of miles away and got a super federation of waifus going but in the end they just sit in a corner jerking off while the fans talk them up.

>>53770401
>Have Tau ever been blown out in the fluff?
I believe that happens pretty regularly given how little they've actually expanded.

>Tau occupy a tiny region of space and yet continuously BTFO forces way bigger than than them.
When you have better toys but nowhere near enough of them that is prone to happening. Tau is a tall empire instead of a wise one.

>How the fuck do you stop them?
Same way they're being stopped regularly in the fluff, make them overextend and spread too thin or just keep throwing cheap dudes at them since you can replace them faster than they can their own losses. You won't wipe them out easily, but you'll keep them from making permanent advances.

>>53781842
>Tau is a tall empire instead of a wise one.
wide*

Though Farsight excluded I might agree with my typo anyway.

>>53770656
Lays the Guard codex says the intent was to crush the Tau once and for all.

>>53775327
Necron are sentient and can be reasoned with. The Lord in that event just wasn't in a merciful mode,

>>53770401
Because the moment they do the Tau cease to exist

>>53775327
>Tau are fucking braindead.
Well, it DID take two groups of Water Caste Ambassadors getting massacred by confused/amused/annoyed Orks for the Tau to understand that the greenskins don't like the idea of 'The Greater Good'/a peaceful galaxy, so yeah, they're not quite the brightest stars in the Milky Way.

Although the thought of them trying negotiate an alliance with the Ork diplomat Bezhrak (or whatever his name was) from the Beast Arises novels does sound mildly amusing to me.

>>53780510
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaLsg3M7jOs

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>>53782205
Dude, you are the one that's retarded. The Tau have met dozens upon dozens of peaceful or reasonable races in the galaxy. The outright hostile races that the Tau met are so few compared to the hundreds of races that they formed relations with or just assimilated.

So the Tau have no reason to change the way to do thing since their way is working and is making them stronger by forging alliances with other races and drawing their strengths into their empire.

The races of the galaxy (with the exception of the Orks) yearn for peace and the Tau are there to grant that wish.

>>53770401
Because then they would piss off Tau players with 3 riptides.
Even more than now I mean. It's always funny to see Tau ship from Salt Lake city in Ebay.

>>53770401
Two words. Plot Armor.

>>53770788
>But they can't. People are invested, both emotionally and financially, in them
Oh sweet summer child.

>>53775959
>yer a git and weedy as a grot
>but yer ded shooty

>>53775852
>>53775959
>>53776024
>>53776095
>>53776386
>>53781784
>>53782463
Okay, I seriously want a drawfag to make a picture of Aku-Tzeentch, Tau-Jack, and ScotsOrk now.

It's just too damn perfect not to pass up...

>>53774578
>>Orks just handed the biggest nid Hive Fleet in the fluff its ass on a plater and said "Come back if you want seconds"
This never happened though?

>>53770401
Tau win every fight because they don't fight the ones they'd lose.
They also reproduce quickly and stay adaptable that way.
Mass producing Titan-Tier weaponsystems also helps.
They're also not as threataning as Necrons, Nids, or Chaos so they're easily ignored most of the time.

>>53782600
>This never happened though?
Ghazzy showed up on Octaria during the Octarius War, got the exhausted Boyz on Octaria all fired up again and then all the boyz on the planet proceeded to murderstomp every single nid there, including a Swarmlord (and in the system, since Leviathan sent a bunch of tendrils toward that planet after this happened).

So yeah, 'handing the biggest nid Hive Fleet its ass on the platter and saying "Come back if you want seconds"' is an accurate (if simplified) description, because it turns out the bugs really want that second helping!

>>53770401
Imperium keeps finding bigger fish to fry, nids keep turning towards Imperial targets, Orks don't have a huge contingent near them, space elves can't be bothered, same with Chaos.

>>53777579
I know m8, was trying to think of a rank as short as "samurai" and rhymes with it.
Shas'ui didn't roll nicely so I went with Shas'o
Should've just said Sha'murai Jack, but then someone would get triggered

>>53782401

Financially invested is what counts to GW

>>53782996
Shas'O Guy?

>>53779962
Replace man-(or tank-)sized bugs with massive swarms of nano-bugs.

It would be a lot less cool, though.

>>53770401
Survivor bias.

The Imperium is huge so they can win big someplace and lose big someplace else with little impact on the general scheme of things.

The Tau empire is relatively tiny and a proper stomping that would hardly register for the IoM at large could wipe them out entirely.

Getting the stories of the civilizations which DID get stomped immediately isn't very interesting, so we're getting the story of one which didn't (yet).

>>53783408
Hey, that fits
WACHA

>>53775796
We literally gave our AI souls, thats how they get corrupted.

>>53782922
Find me a source for ghaz killing swarmlord

>>53770879

The IoM and its methods have never been the best at what they do. They literally cannot be, because the IoM is riding on the coattails of the previous much more advanced human civilization that it is living in the ruins of. It has always been the case that the Imperium was wasting its potential due to oppression, dogma and fear. After all, in 25,000 years the IoM hasnt regained more than a fraction of the power and glory that humanity once invented from nothing in less than half that time.

The Tau are just the faction acting like Humanity used to back when the Humans were not terrified of their own shadow. And getting similar success as a result.

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>>53783898
Not him, but you won't find it because the swarmlord being present at Octarius was retconned in the latest tyranid codex. Faggots will try to claim he was totally there because of fluff in the 5e codex, and got killed by no name Orks even though there is absolutely no evidence of such a thing happening. But several details changed in the story across editions. For instance, in 5e the entire tyranid fleet is wiped out and only a single ship makes it to ghorhala where the Nids have to rebuild their numbers back up from a few hundred. In 6e only a small tendril of the fleet heading towards ghorhala got jumped. The rest continued to spread throughout the system and BTFO the Orks off of several worlds.


Ghaz showed up unexpectedly with a large hardened core of elites and ork heavy machines, right as the tyranids were preparing to finish off the broken and reeling defenders. The Nids weren't ready for this or having all the Orks get super charged on WAAAGH and got wiped out on one planet. That's the only time that happened to the Nids, every other battle was either a stalemate or Nids BTFO Orks

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>>53770656 See >>53781906
The imperium was definitely taking them seriously. To put it in perspective, they didn't send nearly this kind of force to defend cryptus from the leviathan tendril, or Sanctus reach, or octarius or any number of far more important battlefields. They were supposed to wipe out the Tau with that force, and they couldn't even take a single planet. That's why everyone calls bullshit on the Tau. The crusade should have at least plowed through several worlds and only been stopped at great cost by the Tau or because the imperium needed those troops for other conflicts.

>>53784499

The IoM is getting worse every time they fight the Tau, and the only thing that might change that are Primaris marines.

Why? Because every time the IoM goes to fight the Tau, the Tau have some new shit that they have never seen before, but the IoM brings the same toys every time.

As time goes on, the Tau just get better at countering the same IoM tools and tactics, and the IoM never adapts back.

>>53784761
In theory, Tau and IoM toys should be respectively bow and arrow and H-bombs. The fact that Tau keep perfecting their bows and arrows shouldn't be a factor.

>>53784761
I want to see how Guilliman reacts to the Tau. I really hope we get some fluff where gill man personally faces the Tau and we finally get to see nerds get rekt

>>53784965

Considering Ventris was professing his adoration for Tau to Guilliman
Lol we'll see

>>53776512
Maybe dwar-BLAM

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>>53784761
And the Admech, if they can be fucked to do it. The Admech has enough strange toys to keep going back with new shit for longer than the Tau have been spacefaring, and it shows. Skitarii totally owned the Tau when they fought, even in TauWank: The Series where Marines and Guard were being annihilated on Agrellan. They are just completely disinterested in normal military victory, so they don't help much. Show up, win battle for interesting new xenotech to stash away, leave x2, then test one of their cool superweapons while sending the Tau a parting "lol@you".
Forge Worlds have to have the vast majority of their defenses magically ignored to be conquered in fluff, the Tau only managed it once before, and the Admech only brought out unsupported Russes and a Baneblade to defend themselves rather than using anything they'd actually consider military just to wank off the Riptide.

Skitarii and Tau armies are pretty even, honestly, but the Admech has way more shit and can keep scaling up until the Tau can't handle it anymore with superweapon and new unit after superweapon and new unit.

>>53776353
Actually yes, the fall of the Iron Men is directly linked to them becoming tainted by Chaos.

>>53770910
But the Orks are winning. This world of constant warfare and struggle is their version of heaven.

>>53786052

Back that up with anything canon. Its something a lot of fans regurgitate, but its never been substantiated by anything.

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>>53779962
Spunky teens with 'tude.

>>53784761
>and the only thing that might change that are Primaris marines.
They won't. And major progress against the Tau by any faction threatens the existence of one of GW's best selling model lines.

>>53786140
>Its something a lot of fans regurgitate,
Are you really surprised though? It's a perfectly logical conclusion given the fluff around it and the concurrent events at the time; even if there's nothing that outright says it.

The universe is fine so long as the Nids don't get lead into a warp storm, or retrieve the perpetual Carnifex.

>>53786936
They don't need to wipe out the Tau, but it would be nice to see the chadmarines kick their asses off of a few worlds or completely turn back one of their attempted planetary conquests.

I also want to see more Tau vs chaos, and Tau vs craftworld eldar. Those fights don't happen very often

Hey when the Tyranids nom a planet they absorb the genetic advantages of the species consumed, right?

Well, what is the Tau's advantage if not an abiding allegiance to the Greater Good?

Imagine Tauranids that picked up on this, started programs of cooperation and peaceful coexistance for mutual betterment? In a galaxy this big there'd be loads of uninhabited planets for them to consume; or if they need biomass we could cooperate to seed enormous asteroid fields with simple biota like moss and such. Everyone wins.

>>53787248
>Tau vs Craftworld Eldar

Well... why would there be a reason to? Tau isn't the IoM, they're aren't over the top xenophobic, well versed in the field to diplomacy and all that. If Eldars needed to say retrieve an artifact from a planet, they can just go right ahead and ask, there is no necessary bloodshed between the two.

>>53787361
Eldar don't ask though. They're better than you, so if you resist, you need to be taught your place VIA shuriken catapult. And if you survive, just be glad Biel'Tan's gone because they believe all non-Eldar must be eradicated in "endless campaigns of xenocide."

>>53770401
Nobody can beat the tau because if the tau are destroyed go can't justify making new models or titans for them

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>>53787248
>but it would be nice to see the chadmarines kick their asses off of a few worlds
>Tau losing a few worlds
Their whole empire fits on a single map.

>>53786973

Based on evidence of plenty of forms of AI in the setting that HASNT gone 'lolchaos', an even more logical conclusion is that the Men of Iron turned on humanity of their own will, though the timing of it coinciding with the first recorded emergence of psykers makes me believe that is related.

IMO, the AIs never actually intended to exterminate humanity, just drastically reduce its population to avoid human psykers from destroying the universe. Cull us down to a manageable number until we evolve some self control, and only then let us expand again.

Its in keeping with AI logic (ultimately, its the best way to save humanity in the ling term) and it explains how we survived the war again them, because killing us all was never the real plan.

>>53784012
exactly this. Tau are like humans pre Men of Iron

>>53782314
goddamnit anon, I cannot stop laughing at INCREDIBLE ANIME POWER

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>>53770627
>>53775403
40k's setting has always been an incredible, over the top joke. It's screaming insanity that's way the fuck out there, and for years, it was missing one thing.

A straight man.

You can't do a good routine without a straight man, and the Tau are IT. They're so young, dumb, and idealistic and we get to watch them react to the twisted freakshow that is the 40k galaxy. So we get to here the tale of the brave Shas'el that killed Slaneesh with his Fusion Blaster and howl over their incomprehension of the situation. We get to watch Ethereals trade with Dark Eldar and then slowly come to the realization of what that means. We get to watch Tau try to befriend Orks, and get their teeth kicked in for the trouble. They fit in perfectly by not fitting in - they're the Arthur Dent of the setting.

>>53782314
Damn, that battle song was nostalgic even if it sounded like a remix.

>>53770512
actually, aren't they bigger than BA, DA, SW, or IF? Each individual chapter is only 1000 space marines. This is basically what they killed in the Damocles crusade (there were 9 chapters there actually).

>>53784824
If you technological advancement is something the IoM has done in the last 25,000 years you misunderstand them.

When you stagnate for 10s of thousands of years the factions that don't stagnate will catch up. Quickly.

>>53787361
Because this is 40k where the most violent, inane conclusion is always right

>>53788027
The Admech does do a fair bit of research, but it's heavily restricted and monitored because it's blown up in their faces from Chaos or Xenos bullshit far too many times. Give the Imperium six thousand years of peace and no Chaos and I'll bet you have just as much advancement going on, but ATM it's slowed down for good reason, and the only reason the Tau haven't had the slightest difficulty yet is a combination of pissweak souls and plot armour. Sooner or later they're going to run out of practical applications for their current theoretical understandings, and they don't exactly have time to find new ones anymore with Nids, Crons, Genestealers and Orks all bearing down on them.

>>53788277
>ATM it's slowed down for good reason
No it's not. It's slowed down because of not only restriction of research to the highest levels, and bureaucratic red tape that can keep the highest levels from getting anywhere for literal centuries. But also because they have the organizational skills of a spas and technological has literally slipped through their organization gaps, AND every archmagos is a paranoid schizo who will take his research to his grave with him. Nevermind Forgeworlds having shadow wars with each other to steal each other's exclusive Tech.
Admech "research" is a catastrophe and not for good reason. It's a miracle they got anti-phase bolts out as fast as they did.

>>53775771
I would like to read this.

>>53770401
They lost on Taros, they had partial success on Typhea V, they got blown out by oldcrons

>>53781927
>Necron are sentient and can be reasoned with.
Not when that fluff was written.

>>53788361
They have poor organisation skills because the lower reaches of places like Mars are infested by the leftovers of seventy different apocalypses. You're right about the internal feuding, but looking at Farsight and Company the Tau aren't doing so hot at the internal unity thing at the moment. The red tape was nearly always put there for a decent reason originally, or did all of the Chaos and Necron problems Tech-priests tend to have escape you? They're by no means united and well-organized in that regard, but progress does happen, as is pretty fucking obvious from Cawl unleashing a whole bunch of new bullshit.

Doesn't change my point much, anyway. The Tau are probably not going to be able to sustain this rate of tech progress for very much longer at all, since as shown by that Supremacy Suit gun that can be fired six times, they're running out of avenues of research that can be explored with available resources. Also, they aren't immune to slipups, or did them turning several of their own stars nova trying to set up a Dyson Cloud pass you by. Half their newest toys recently depend on one inventor, and Tau have short lives.

>>53788499
>They lost on Taros,
No they didn't. It's an Imperial Armor campaign. The Space Marines and guard got routed and Taros is now the mining station T'ros.

>>53788531
Nope, 5th ED is when they started introducing the Newcrons. Solemance which is Trazyn's home tomb world is mentioned in the very same codex.

The Silent King was also mentioned allying with the Blood Angels 5th ED codex.

Sir, you are a liar.

>>53787361
Craftworld Eldar will give you a reason, if only because you stepped onto a Maiden World they haven't bothered to look after in 10,000 years.
Also, they're massive dicks who will have some bullshit vision of the future, where they absoluteley, positively HAVE to kill your guys, so something doesn't happen in the future, or happens in the right way. Until it doesn't, because the Farseer in question was a chump.

>>53788499
>they got blown out by oldcrons
To be fair, who didn't?

>someone in this thread ventured to claim Orks are underdogs
...

In the end, there will be Nids and Orks. Or there will be Necrons only.

>>53788872
Solemance existing changes nothing, and the 5e tyranid codex came out before the 5e BA codex

He ain't lying, and you're acting in a typically obnoxious manner.

>>53788995
No, he is lying. Newcron behaviour started showing up in the 5th Ed starting with the Necron intro in the main rulebook. They ceased being Oldcrons for awhile by then with each release showing Newcron location and character names.

He is a liar trying to make a unfunny joke. The Necrons in 5th ED Nid codex were Newcrons. Period.

>>53789193
>He is a liar trying to make a unfunny joke

I don't get where you're getting even the most basic impression of that from, but yes, 5E was where the Newcrons were slowly being phased in. That being said, negotiating with Necrons is still a pretty terrible move from a meta-perspective, because other than immediate bodies or meatshields there's nothing you can really offer them that they can't just exterminate one's planet of life and take.

>>53770559
Tau basically is A twisted version of humanity from typical sci-fi like Star Trek. Young and poorly established but adventurous and ambitious. Also not able to wield spacey mind magic.

They can't lose because they are the "human" "good" guys

>>53788535
>They have poor organisation skills because the lower reaches of places like Mars are infested by the leftovers of seventy different apocalypses.


So, here's an idea.

What if

hold on let me finish,

WHAT IF the AdMech just moved their base of operations to LITERALLY ANYWHERE ELSE and just started researching shit instead of trying to crib everyone else's notes.

Obviously alien technologies can backfire on you, Necron and anything warp related being really high tier on that list. But lots of alien tech is pretty safe, in almost every case Tau tech is safer to handle than its imperial equivalent. But the AdMech are such bumblefucks that they have declined to upgrade space marine bolters into railguns that pop tanks and demons like soap bubbles because, and I cannot be more serious here, the AdMech on site said he didn't like the noise it made when it fired.

But even ignoring that, if the AdMech just took 100 dudes and put them on some moon in the ass end of nowhere and said "try shit, let us know if you come up with anything interesting" they would have new inventions every year while risking fucking nothing in the process.

Maybe it works for a couple decades before someone makes a mistake and vaporizes the moon or turns it into a demon or something. Who gives a shit, you got the return on your investment a long time ago. Pick another 100 dudes and find a new moon. Keep the ball rolling.

>>53789332
Bull fucking shit. The 5th ED necrons codex mention Necron diplomats asking for the return of old territories and relics from the lesser races. It has Necron Overlord offering terms of surrender to Imperial worlds. Also it has Necrons demanding the lesser races to fuck off of their planets or die.

Dude, shut your whore mouth. You know nothing about Necrons.

>>53789413
>The 5th ED necrons codex mention Necron diplomats asking for the return of old territories and relics from the lesser races. t has Necron Overlord offering terms of surrender to Imperial worlds. Also it has Necrons demanding the lesser races to fuck off of their planets or die.

And it also has a lot of scenarios in which they just destroy systems and take what they want. Necrons are not benevolent or interested in negotiations except for when it's easier for them to benefit from underlings over actually commuting resources to just erasing the problem and taking it for themselves.

>>53789482
It depends of the Overlord and even the most bloodythirsty among them tends to go by the Honour protocols which dictates offering the foes a set period time (usually entire solar month ) to either surrender, prepare to fight, or just leave.

Necrons are honour bound and traditional to the extreme. The Triarch Praetorian which accompany the royalty enforce this attitude. So you speak falsely.

Sp speaking with the Necrons and understanding what exactly do they want is a good idea and will save your life most of the time.

>>53789373
Because the Admech are the kind of autistic guys who, at least in lower tiers, kneel to the ground and start praising the Omnissiah whenthey see a titan walk by.

>>53789568
I am fully aware that the Necrons are bound by the ancient honour engrams, but this doesn't mean all Overlords are even remotely benevolent or that all of them will grant opponents a choice or warning at every turn, we've seen plenty of situations where the Necrons just turn up and start killing, even after 5th, because they saw warnings as beneath them or presumably the need was too great to even consider the scraps of honor that lesser races deserve.

So talking to them won't necessarily save your life most of the time, it's entirely dependant, and chances are they'll probably offer the ultimatum for you to take, why would they be even remotely interested in what the lesser races have to say? Submit to their demands or be purged like the inferiors you are, there's no real indication anywhere that any Necrons are above that line of thought, though presumably there'd be exceptions.

And can I just point out this seeming dedication to saying your opponent during the argument is either lying or speaking falsely is redundant and perhaps indicative of some kind of projection? Especially when arguing over something that can be taken in multiple ways depending on the viewer's overall biases.

>>53780350
> only one riptide
There's your problem

>>53789682
> but this doesn't mean all Overlords are even remotely benevolent or that all of them will grant opponents a choice or warning at every turn,

In most chases they do and it's not about benevolence, you moron.

In the case of the Tau, they at least knew why Anrakyr wanted them dead. They just had bad luck and found him in a bad mood. In a similar event, Anrakyr was merciful towards the Imperial Guard and offerd them terms.

Like I said, even the bloodthisty necrons like the bloody Maynarkh Dynasty Necrons offered the Imperials a month to leave the sector in accordance to the ancient laws.

>So talking to them won't necessarily save your life most of the time

will save it most of the time. Most of the shown Necrons are not totally insane or homicidal. The Sautekh Dynasty have accepted the suffered of 500 aloen worlds and are receiving tribute from them.

>why would they be even remotely interested in what the lesser races have to say?

Crippling ennui. Desire to see other races bow before them? Wanting to not waste their forces and resources? Trade?

Heck, there is a dynasty of Necrons that acts as mercs for other races.

>Submit to their demands or be purged like the inferiors you are, there's no real indication anywhere that any Necrons are above that line of thought, though presumably there'd be exceptions.

Except the whole Baal saga by the Silent King was about teaching the Imperials that the Necrons can be reasoned with which ended with the Blood Angels viewing the Necrons as an honourable faction.

>And can I just point out this seeming dedication to saying your opponent during the argument is either lying or speaking falsely is redundant and perhaps indicative of some kind of projection? Especially when arguing over something that can be taken in multiple ways depending on the viewer's overall biases.

Nah, you are just a lying jackass. That ain't no projection. You just weaselling through the fluff trying to push a false narrative.

>>53789830
> word of the silent king shows how BA think necrons are HONORABLE
Try reading the story fuck off. Dante gets played, realises in the end he was played, and has the history books altered to save face (almost word for word to spit in Wardian fluff from BA 5th edition codex)
BA don't trust the necrons at all.

>>53789888
Try reading the Dante novel. Which came out like a few months ago. He views his alliance with the Necrons warmly and believes that there is some goodness in them.

>>53789972
Related text.

>For all his early life, Dante had been taught to mistrust the alien. It was true the least offensive xenos harboured a deep perfidy. Lenience towards xenos species bought a bounty of betrayal. But in all his long years, he had never truly hated them, not as some of his brothers did. Non-humans strove only to survive as mankind strove. Dante had gleaned enough of the galaxy’s history to know that more often than not, folly and hubris had undone the great civilisations of the past, humanity’s first stellar empire included, and not external threat.

>Mankind had more in common with other sentient species than the adepts of Terra would admit. He supposed that was why aliens were so easy to hate. Not for him. Besides the treacheries and atrocities he had witnessed by xenos hand, he had seen nobility, honour and mercy. Twice recently, he had been forced to fight alongside the necrons against the tyranids. On neither occasion had these most arrogant of aliens betrayed the alliance. Flashes of the virtues and the graces were in all living things.

>In the tyranids, he had finally found something to hate, and powerfully. His loathing for them was the strongest emotion outside of the thirst he had felt for centuries. There could be no accommodation with the tyranids, only war. They had no redeeming features. When he had seen them as beasts, he had regarded them as a problem. When he had learned of the existence of the hive mind, he had come to view them as an existential threat. Now that mind was proving to be as vindictive as the cruellest man, he had grown to despise it.

-"Dante"

"On neither occasion had these most arrogant of aliens betrayed the alliance. Flashes of the virtues and the graces were in all living things".

Necrons are A-okay in his book.

>>53787253
The Greater Good is a philosophy, not a genetic trait. That means no space commie bugs.

>>53770401
Some Haemonculi Coven casually wiped out a Tau planet because of an insult.

>>53789373
The AdMech are, and have always been, a combination of medieval trade/craft guilds and monasteries. It's not just religion, but politics - external and internal, money, power, prestige, influence, and control, that keep the AdMech working like they do.

You stick a hundred guys on a moon and let them do whatever you're going to get other Magos questioning why they can't do the same. You have a bunch of Magos tinkering around with shit to see what works and you'll get non-AdMech people wanting to know why they can't. You start grabbing xenotech and copying it people start to wonder why you have such restrictions on it in the first place. When that xenotech is better or safer than what you've been putting out for thousands of years people start to wonder why they bother with you.

>>53788958
Orks, Tyranids, and Necrons seem to me as the only possible survivors of this galactic war. Orks and Tyranids reproduce at insane rates and are almost completely resistant to chaos, and Necrons have the greatest tech and durability of all races. Plus the 7e Necron codex mentioned the total Necron Tombworld population to match the Imperium.

>>53790131

As long as everyone agrees that the reason that Imperium has been eating shit with a spoon for the last 20000 years is that they say they like the taste.

>>53790028

When you think about it, to the Necrons humans must look pretty damn similar.

We don't think of humans as being especially short lived, but the Necrons compared themselves to literal immortals. To any Necron lord that remembers what it was like to be alive, I wonder if they can help but see us as they once were. Temporary beings empowered by technology, screaming defiance into the void. We might have a few decades on them, and with rejuve treatments of our own creation we can stretch that to a couple centuries, but in the end its the same problems and the same hardships.

>>53790219

They've been eating shit because they have to eat something, to not eat means the extinction of mankind. It's the AdMech's fault for only producing shit from their food factories until Guilliman came by and said why the fuck are you feeding us shit instead of food.

>>53790838

To be fair, the Emperor had the chance to slap the AdMech around a bit and not have them be completely fucking retarded when he first got to Mars, but said "eh, this is fine. Not worth spending the time to fix it."

>>53790891

LET THEM EAT SHIT

I don't think anyone has really focused on them long enough to exterminate them.

>>53770401
Concentration of firepower.

They are high tech. They fight on a narrow front.

If the imperium or anyone else wasn't fighting a million other wars, chances are they could flick tau away like a booger.

It isn't like they're expanding at an alarming rate.

>>53790994

The Imperium thought they did once. Back peddling apologists now say that the Damocles Gulf crusade was only a minor effort and it was never really intended to do harm, but it was a modest fleet with space marine and Titan support. Their goal was to exterminate the Tau empire and their dangerous ideology before they could foster any more rebellion in the fringe worlds.

They underestimated the Tau then, and their track record hasn't been super great since. Every time the Tau unveil a new weapon, space marines die in droves. Really, killing the space pope with their lolhax assassin is kind of the only real win the IoM have scored, and is not a great sign that you can only win if the entire enemy force is incapable of pulling the trigger on you.

>>53790994
The imperium tried once but had to pull out due to the tyranids. The tyranids have rekt a few Tau worlds, as have the Orks, but nothing as major as destroying an entire sept. Then the imperium tried again with a force large enough to steamroll the Tau and somehow got BTFO on a single planet

Do Tau outnumber the eldar or is their empire even smaller than the craftworlds?

>>53791360

Tau as a species probably are fewer than the total number of Eldar, but the Tau as a faction (aka including their allied races) are more numerous.

>>53791239
>The imperium tried once but had to pull out due to the tyranids

While that is true, the Imperium had a lot of reasons to pull out of Damocles. The first sept world they tried to attack, they lost 1/3rd of their fleet to the orbital defenses. Tau navy reinforcements were on route, and the Tau expected to win the fight upon their arrival against the weakened remaining crusade forces.

Maybe the Imperium could have won that particular fight, but it was pretty clear that the crusade wasn't going to get past that planet. Maybe they destroy that world, but in doing so they were going to exhaust themselves beyond any hope of attacking a second world of any import.

>>53784191
>Faggots will try to claim he was totally there because of fluff in the 5e codex, and got killed by no name Orks even though there is absolutely no evidence of such a thing happening.
>Implying the fact the Swarmlord's not mentioned in 6e means he was somehow retconned out of the war
You're just a salty bug-lover who's pissed Swarmy died to random Orks and greenskins aren't affected by your little Shadow in the Warp crap.

Think of it this way: Swarmlord getting krumped by nameless greenskins is a great way for the Hive Mind to realize that "Maybe it's time to build a better Swarmlord."

>>53775852
>>53775959
Daily Reminder that Draigo has long been said to be a Samurai Jack expy.

>>53792603
>Daily Reminder that Draigo has long been said to be a Samurai Jack expy.
So... Tuska Daemon-Killa is the Scotsman equivalent in that scenario?

>>53792358
>the main character of a faction being there in one edition is not there in the next edition
>this is not a retcon
Sure thing dude. Until there's actual evidence swarmlord got killed by Orks at any point, that's just your head canon

You know, /tg/ seems to dislike the Tau so much, but realistically, what could be changed to make the faction palatable to this board?

>>53788499
>they got blown out by oldcrons

They did that story again post retcon and it went the same way, except Imotekh accepted flowers and peace medals before annihilating the populous.

>>53791360
Craftworld/exodite eldar probably just barely outnumber the Tau as a species but don't replace their losses nearly as fast. Dark eldar outnumber both to a large degree.

GW has no sense of scale whatsoever so the Tau population could be anywhere from a few tens of billions to hundreds of billions. Craftworld eldar are the prime example of "as many elves as the plot demands." In some stories craftworlds have populations in the thousands and an eldar force of 7000 is considered mighty. In other source craftworlds are teeming with billions of eldar and there are scores of not hundreds of them scattered throughout the galaxy.

>>53793235
As many anons have mentioned before, GW backed themselves into a corner by making the Tau too small. They can't really suffer any major defeats like the other factions do without seriously hindering their whole empire. As a result, they seem to win disproportionately against forces that should have been able to wipe them out. The entire faction has space marine first founding chapter level plot armor, except even space marines tend to do poorly against their techno bullshit.


Still, the eldar are in even more danger of being wiped out and they still suffer their fair share of major defeats. Let the Tau get blown out a few times. Have one of their septs suffer a tyranid tendril on the scale of cryptus, or an ork WAAAGH rek their shit, or an imperial crusade actually get past the first planet. They're surrounded by Necrons, let them get a taste of what it's like to be completely outmatched technologically

>>53790338
I believe many Necrons see a future in humanity.

Either to return to flesh or as a client race.

Necron end is far from worst for the IoM

>>53793235

Need to take their lumps and grow as a society, instead of being able to instantly "innovate" something new to handle any threat they face.

It's like the difference between Dragonball characters suddenly gaining power levels to confront a threat vs say, Luke recovering after losing his hand to Vader and returning as a different person who is still Luke at the core.

Look at how much the Imperium changed and restructured to deal with the new reality that it is facing, and how little the Tau changed despite arguably being under more relative pressure.

>>53793199
>Until there's actual evidence swarmlord got killed by Orks at any point
>"until I see a body there's no proof he's dead!"
Considering not mentioning something in the fluff isn't retconning it outright (otherwise a lot of stuff would be 'retconned by omission' these days).
Honestly, we're both going to be stuck arguing over this until GW decides to tell us what the fuck happened during the last hundred years over in the Octarius sector instead of focusing on Rowboat Girlyman and the marinewank for five seconds come 8th edition.

>>53793405
Big thing in the Eldar's favor on that point is that they're so vague - sure their lore is based around them slowly dying, but their craftworlds can be anywhere in the galaxy, and we can't say how many there are or how many Eldar are on them. If a minor Craftworld gets invaded to show how awesome Slaanesh's daemons are, they can do that without having to put the Eldar on the off foot, sort of like how minor Space Marine chapters can get wrecked, random Imperial Guard regiments can get slaughtered, etc. Can't really do the same with a Tau Sept since it's in such a set space.

>>53793235

No point pandering to some neckbeards, waste of time and effort.
They've got their selection of plastic dolls to fondle, no need to curb faction variety for their sake.

>>53789413
Can you find a single source before the 5e tau codex that has negotiations with Necrons ending well? Because the twilight between 5e core and 5e Necrons hadn't entirely shed all of the Oldcron stuff.

>>53789336

Don't forget the Orwellian undertones.

>>53787609
This is actually a really solid theory. I like it.

>>53787609
Could have been intended to have a matrix-like scenario, but I imagine pyskers could easily throw a monkey-wrench into that even if humanity hadn't successfully fought back.

>>53784499

I like how the T'au started using nukes in the history. Well, not nukes, more like they started sabotaging their reactors to explode as such. It's rare to see nukes in 40k.

>>53787457

Not anymore. Now you can see the Empire on the galactic map.

>>53782366
>being this cucked

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>>53795434
You may be new, but we have solved the cuck problem on /tg/ years ago.

>>53775744
>even when it works.
>Implying commie-czar executions motivate anyone but the specific brand of brainwashed Imp Guard sent to be killed by the villain of the day.

Just because it's edgy doesn't mean it's effective, duderino.

>>53793235
It's not even worth bothering. The people who truly hate the Tau hate them enough that only squatting the Tau entirely would satisfy them. The diehards who have despised their fluff since their introduction aren't going to change their mind anytime soon, even if it means forgetting the Tau have actually been around longer in 40k's history than vice versa.

Personally I got nothing against an empire that relies on logistics, diplomacy, and scientific innovation in a world that finds those concepts foreign. It adds some variety to the factions. My main issue with them is less the Tau themselves and more how GW handled their fluff. If the Tau was at least 2-3 times bigger, it could actually afford to lose in big ways without compromising the survival of the empire itself.

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>>53795505
>fucking the other guy in his ass as you hold him down while he screams and cries and begs and thrashes, all while you smile at your girl and tell her that she'll never be able to satisfy you, and she'll never cum as hard as her new faggot boytoy is about to once you've turned his prostate into a bitch buzzer

>>53793914
Blood Angel 5th ED codex. There.

And the Tau had no 5th ED dex, you underage fgt.

>planet Tau gets destroyed
>Tau lose resistance to chaos as a result and become dark tau
y/n

>>53770656
Bullshit.

They went in to crush them. The marines was expecting to push through them, and thrn continue pushing them back. It wasn't a "stop them here" plan. The imperium does not throw 3 space marine chapters at a threat to keep them at bay.

AdMech employed a last ditch "fuck every fleshbag on that and any planet on the Damocles gulf." Move, because they dont give a flying fuck about losing guardsmen or marines.

>>53797358

You, guys, have an unhealthy obsession with Chaos T'au. There aren't Chaos Eldar/Tyranids/Orks, not enough to make an army anyway. Why Chaos T'au? They don't even have psykers.

The Tau have lost horribly to the Necrons, Dark Eldar and the Craftworld Eldar.

They just win against the Imperium because the Imperium is too bureaucratically bogged down to mark the Tau as a real threat.

Give the Deathwatch enough leeway and resources, and the entire Tau empire will be gone in a few years.

>>53797514
No, they didn't

The Tau defeated the Necrons at least twice.

The Tau also defeated the Dark Eldar in some events.

And the Tau never lost to Craftworld Eldar.

> too bureaucratically bogged down to mark the Tau as a real threat.
>Give the Deathwatch enough leeway and resources, and the entire Tau empire will be gone in a few years.

Nice headcanon, fgt. Too bad the fluff says otherwise.

>>53797514
Imperiums greatest issue is that they insist on underestimating Tau, just like you are right now ironically.

Oh they are shit in CC. Let's just surround them and smash them with bikes.
>Gets crushed as they try to smash into the nicely placed bait, and gets demolished by heavy fire from literally everywhere
Oh look, a Tau commander, let's kill it!
>Gets oneshotted by a melta as he goes for the bait commander

It goes on and on. The imperium just isnt giving them the respect they need, and neither would the Deathwatch, who are even further up their own asses than regular marines.

It is literally the theme of the imperium as a whole. Hubris is causing them to decay like this.

>>53797907

Oddly enough, the Sisters would likely be a valuable asset if they went and played smart.

The Sisters Dialogus are experts at turning up to a planet and quietly spreading the imperial faith and getting the population ready to support the imperium when it arrives.

The Tau are very dependent on a tech and information advantage over the opposition, having to deal with sudden rebellions damaging support infrastructure would really ruin their day.

It's still one of my favourite Ecclessiarchy stories about how a member spent a full decade working a chaos-held world and managed to take it back without any outside forces, just uprisings and local support.

>>53797806

>No, they didn't

I don't think he ever said they only ever lose to them but the Dark Eldar and Necrons did beat the tau.

>>53797963
So does every fucking faction. Why single out the Tau? The Tau had many battles with these factions and won a fair share of them.

The Tau in the War of Blackfathom were shown to be superior in some aspects to their Necron counterparts. Throwing a fit every time a faction loses and acting like the faction didn't give as much as it taken is very childish.

>>53797806
>never lost to craftworld eldar
They got tricked into attacking an exodite world by dark eldar, and ended up getting rekt by beil tan in return. Got rekt another time because they were trying to study wraithbone constructs. Also got rekt by harlequins while investigating a lost craftworld, and pech itself was invaded by haemonculi who took what they wanted and left. Only time I can find of Tau beating eldar is when they BTFO a corsair raid that tried to trap them

>>53798593
>exodite world
>craftworld
Bruh.

>>53798861
>attack exodite world
>biel-tan btfo tau in response
>biel-tan
>not a craftworld
Bruh

>>53796864
Actually, the wife holds the guy down while you rail him.
Because, see, it's REALLY HOT for her.

>>53787693
100% this

>>53790131
>top 10 pranks gone too far

>>53798593
You are retarded. It was Iyanden and the war was even between both factions. With the Tau losing the first battle and then winning the second battle and then stalemating until the treachery was uncovered.

Harlequins =/= craftworlders

Dark Eldar were defeated once and twice by the Tau.

So no. There isn't a single event that has craftworlders winning against the Tau.

>>53797950
Cloak and dagger game of water caste diplomat in his shiny office and dialogus dirty in the streets working in the shadows trying to win over the population.

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>>53800309
Not anymore.

>>53801576
Iyanden faggots. Beil Tan would have made sure no Tau made it off that planet alive

Don't people of the galaxy, even the Imperium, confuse Dark Eldar from Craftworld Eldar all the time?

>>53802877

How is Bieltan these days anyway?
Oh wait lol

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>>53803225
H-hey shut up blueberry

>Tau are the ones who understand what manoeuvre warfare and combined arms are.
>All battle art they are in is the standard both enemies are super close to each other with massive lines like a medieval battle

>>53803349

Should've just submitted to the Greater Good instead of being brutes, spiky eared Guela

>>53803349
Biggest and strongest craftworld and it took only one ugly slut to tear it down forever.

>>53789332

So you could say by then that the oldcrons were phasing out

>>53783516
This. The hive ship just dumps shitloads of spider-scorpion-wasp-cockroaches and leaves. Deadly venom. They get into everything. You'll never kill all of them and they breed like mad. They like to chew on wires. They're Tyranids so they quickly adapt to anything you throw at them. Then ten years later, after the Tau have been driven ragged by these bastards, the hive ships come back and mop up the survivors.

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>>53775472

>>53779962
They are the t'au. One of the first vanguard organisms in the 40k galaxy. Only way to fight the mary sueness was to become THE mary sue.

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>>53804090
You know, why don't tyranids use viruses and bacteria to kill a planet's population? Canifexes can be taken down by anti-tank weapons, but viruses can't

>>53804341

It takes too long.

>>53804341
Because every virus would have to be tailored for a narrow range of target creatures to do anything, and would then have to contend with any immune system. A carnifex is far less discriminating, and much harder to vaccinate against.

And the hive mind may not have the kind of understanding necessary to do such a thing. As a collective of large-ish multicellular creatures, that is all it knows and makes.

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>>53804341
Because humanity is a disease.

Part of it is their centralized force, the entirety of the Tau army is in a position of rapid response en masse due to their small size and while a much smaller force the fact they bring the entirety of their small empires force to bear gives them an advantage in individual combats. Every battle lost to them by the Imperium is not even a 1/100th of a percent of their fighting force meanwhile the Tau threw their entire weight into said fight. They win because no one has been bothered to muster a large enough army to crush them utterly, not because they cant but because they are not worth it to any major powers as they have bigger problems to worry about.

>>53804579
Literally fake news. This has been debunked like 3 times in this thread only. Latest Damocles crusade was made to annihilate t'au once and for all and it failed. Imperium could not annihilate t'au.

>>53804341
They do, most of the people killed in a tyranid invasion die to all the toxin spores and parasites in the air. And that's without venimthropes or toxicrenes getting involved

>>53804341
That would just supercharge Nurgle.

>>53807010
I believe you but can I get some source?

>>53807384
Tyranids don't give a shit about Chaos.

>>53810259
I just had a link but lost it. If anyone has that story where the guardsmen watch the Lamenters get BTFO They mention the tyranids seeding the atmosphere with spores until they rained down and turned an arid plain into a swampy jungle and killed anyone not wearing a rebreather. I think they also talk about the spores in the leviathan rising collection, I'll have to double check

>>53804341
Tyranids would be doing nurgles work for him. The plagues themselves might not be nurgle, but the despair the victims feel still fuels him and he's the perfect god to pray to if you don't want to die of tyranid pox

>>53811657
well, except for that whole warp shadow thing.

>>53774558
This was only ever a conversion and nothing more.

>>53811773
Doesn't completely block out all access to the warp, if that were the case the daemons would have been banished by the shadow in the warp back on shadowbrink. They were still able to use their powers to a degree, I think everyone misinterpreted that scene where the zoanthropes dispel the GUO sorcery as the shadow completely blocking out the warp

>>53804579
Dude no, the imperials tried, the high lords themselves called the crusade, hell they even sent a full execution force. It's not like they sent shit guardsmen either, the vast majority of them were cadians. Plus 2 first founding chapters and the raven guard chapter master aka "King of the space marines." What kind of force does it take to convince you they were trying? Guilliman himself at the head of an army of every single primaris marine?

>All these people saying the Imperium isn't trying
Of course they are. There's not just a lot you can do against codex plot-armor. I mean, you can justify it away all day by telling yourself that the Imperium wasn't really trying, but at the end of the day you know.

The Imperium can lose a thousand worlds, the Dark Eldar can hide in the webway, the Eldar have hidden Craftworlds, the Orkz can bounce back from a destroyed WAAAAGH, and the Tyranids and Necrons will always have more offscreen, but the Tau will never suffer a major loss because they can't. You know the Imperium trying, but they can't win, and will never win, because no matter how much sense it'd make, no one will ever meaningfully beat the Tau because they have a codex. That's why you hate them in the first place.

>>53814601
If an imperial crusade actually managed to plow through an entire sept or 2, that would be great. Tau can afford to lose that and it would have been like their cadia or beil tan. An imperial crusade big enough to stomp their empire getting BTFO on one planet just reeks of Tau wank. It was absolutely undignified for guardsmen and marines, only the mechanicus and the culexus had good showings, everyone else crumpled under the weight of Tau plot armor

>>53785997
It'll be interesting to see how Fires of Cyraxus depicts the Tau invading a Forge World. I doubt it will be a pleasant experience for them.

>>53814601
>plot armor of having untold planets
>plot armor of having [plot] amount of craftworlds
>plot armor of having magical extra realm that you can use at whim but no one else can
>plot armor of "can't lose cuz lol! Waagh!"
>plot armor of being withoutnumber
This is ok

>plot armor of fighting off threats
Unacceptable! Fucking blue fish commie fucks! How dare they they be strong in a setting with off-the-chart power levels by winning some meaningles backwater planets!

8e should have shattered the status quo of the story more than just lol new™ bigger™ marines™.

>>53801651

It would honestly be a pretty cool book. Likely to involve very few dramatic battles (Though I can totally see a few back alley fights with bolt pistols and pulse carbines) so GW would never greenlight it though.

Especially since both are mirrors of each other. Both would be going with 'You can be part of something bigger than yourself'.

>>53815463
Also the Dialogus would have to be some sort of wizard to do her stuff covert in a orwellian t'au society.

>>53815439
I don't think you understand what plot armor is. The imperium being able to field a fuckhuge army isn't plot armor, it's how they're established in the setting. Tau blowing out an imperial crusade repeatedly stated to be far in excess to one needed to take a Tau planet, surviving 3/4 assassination attempts and having farsight show up that early was fucking plot armor

>>53815501

Yeah. It would be a very fun scheming and plotting story rather than marching armies and fighting demons.

>>53815515
Imperium losing constantly in every front is how they're established in the setting. Damocles crusade 1&2 is no different from losing all those nameless meaningless planets everywhere against whatever, getting your empire split in half by great rift etc.

>>53770718
They should start fuck around with A.I and then go trans-tau, have them make up for their lack in numbers with machines. Then a rouge A.I could fall to chaos and we get a new faction of demon terminators.

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>>53793405
>The entire faction has space marine first founding chapter level plot armor, except even space marines tend to do poorly against their techno bullshit.
The White Scars and Raven Guard are an embarrassment. Two first founding chapters jobbing to some tiny alien empire. The Raven Guard chapter master even got killed when the Tau oustealthed him.

They both should have collectively committed ritual suicide to cleanse themselves of shame.

>>53770401
No one cares enough to kill them
Like ANYONE could kill them REALLY easily but aside from the orks and nids, no one gives enough of a shit

>>53815853
>No one cares enough to kill them
This argument has been destroyed multiple times in this very thread. The Imperium has tried to destroy them on multiple occasions and gotten completely BTFO each time. They've fought off dedicated extermination crusades. Stop repeating retarded memes.

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>>53815865
and tau

>>53815439
>Says "this is ok" listing valid fluff built into the various factions that justify their continued existence.
>Thinks going on a sarcastic rant will defend "fighting off threats" as an excuse even remotely as valid as the others.
kekeroni. This is why only taufags like the Tau, and no one likes taufags either. And the best part is you proved his point. He says everyone hates the Tau because they always win, while everyone else has some sort of plot armor to allow them to lose; and your response is "well there plot armor is winning!".
Jesus Christ, how stupid can a man be.

>>53817182
Everyone else exist thanks to asspulls and deus exes but you only get mad when tau does it. Indeed how stupid can a man be.

>>53789568
'Honour is honour. It does not change to suit circumstance, and it does not stoop to encompass squalid creatures such as you.'
-Vargard Obyron

Honour protocols are for the honourable, namely Necrons. If other people count, the Overlord in question is just a nice guy.

>>53817372
Yeah but those asspulls tend to come after lots of hard fighting. If other factions had Tau level plot armor like in the Damocles war, the Blood angels would have stopped the tyranids at the cryptus system, the loyalists would have won at istavaan, Iyanden would have lost barely a fifth of its population during krakens invasion, and abandons entire black crusade would have been stopped at cadia

>>53819839
wasn't abbadon's black crusade stopped at cadia like 500 billion times?

>>53819839
Is it really a lot of hard fighting when you are without number anyway? Those casualties are basically meaningless when you can just pull more fodder from your ass. Hell the newest lore is perfect example of this. Galaxy splitting warp rift appears and cuts imperium in half with heavy implication that the half on the wrong side is 110% fucked. Pretty bad, eh? Nope, Cawl just conjures up super marines and Guilliman pushes chaos back and reconquers everything in 100 years and is now on a road to close the rift too.

>>53814563
>Crickets.

>>53820035
Abaddon has the opposite of tau plot armor when it comes to the black crusades usually.