What's with the Tau's reputation?

[Alexei F. Karamazov]

So I'm mostly a newcomer when it comes to Warhammer 40K, and throughout my journey to become more acquainted with the IP, it's come up a lot amongst fans that the Tau are laughable, poorly conceived, or otherwise just not up to par with the other races of the Warhammer 40K universe. I understand other sentiments amongst the fans, such as the "Ultrasmerfs" and their excellence at everything they put their mind to, but I'm not sure where this reputation comes from. Is there something I as a new fan haven't encountered yet to make me mock the Tau so readily?

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

When the Tau were released back in the early 2000's they were portrayed as a lot more benevolent, idealistic and good than the rest of the factions. By the fanbase back then they were widely considered a cheap cash grab meant to exploit the rapidly growing interest for manga and anime in the west. So most of the complaints revolved around either their fluff, which portrayed them as the only force of good in a grim galaxy and as the technology superior underdog (in a universe otherwise dominated by decaying tech), or around their aesthetics, which back then was basically just "boxy mecha".

With their continued development the fluff was turned darker, eventually introducing the ideas of concentration camps, brainwashing etc. and their aesthetics were broadened to make them look like more than just a bunch of boxes stacked on each other with a bunch of binoculars smashed into the top box. More than likely most people who hate on the Tau today just do so because it was what they learned to do from the older beards when they got into the hobby. Because most of us who remember why the Tau caught so much flak are in the age bracket where we are likely to have left the hobby.

 

[Batou667]

Yeah, what Geth said. Mostly lingering antipathy from when they were first released, although I'm not sure it was justified even then. I mean, were they really any less silly than Necrons or Dark Eldar?

In addition to the fluff, Tau got a reputation for being a cheesy static gunline army that can win by just getting a good deployment and then standing stock still and rolling bucketloads of dice every shooting phase - even moreso than Guard, or whatever it is they've been rebranded as. I think they may have been nerfed a bit since then, and they always had some significantly less-useful units like the Kroot and Ethereals, so their reputation has flip-flopped between being a cheesy insta-win army and a useless load of crap. How much of this is actually justified, I don't know, and while I barely keep up with 40K these days, some of their newer mechs look pretty good.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Yeah, what Geth said. Mostly lingering antipathy from when they were first released, although I'm not sure it was justified even then. I mean, were they really any less silly than Necrons or Dark Eldar?

Of course they weren't more silly. I think the problem was that their particular brand of silly wasn't "grimdark" like all the rest (because, let's be honest here, is any faction in 40k not silly?) but rather some sort of light side savior. For those of us who wanted to be cool and edgy at the time (hard to imagine today), it was unthinkable that a "good" faction should exist in our "grimdark".

In addition to the fluff, Tau got a reputation for being a cheesy static gunline army that can win by just getting a good deployment and then standing stock still and rolling bucketloads of dice every shooting phase - even moreso than Guard, or whatever it is they've been rebranded as. I think they may have been nerfed a bit since then, and they always had some significantly less-useful units like the Kroot and Ethereals, so their reputation has flip-flopped between being a cheesy insta-win army and a useless load of crap. How much of this is actually justified, I don't know, and while I barely keep up with 40K these days, some of their newer mechs look pretty good.

As far as I remember the problem was always that the Tau codex was firmly divided into two halves: Very useful shooting units and everything else because it sucked. Fire warriors were decently balanced core units (with their mediocre BS balancing out their powerful weapons) but the big problem were the Crisis Suits, since their modular nature allowed for plenty of cheese. On top of the Crisis suits their vehicles could get some pretty silly upgrades, both as weapons and as survivability enhancements. Apart from that the big Tau problem for their first iteration was that apart from the hammerhead and an overpriced Crisis Suit they had no reliable way of dealing with AV 12+ vehicles. So they were pretty much forced into taking 1-2 Hammerheads and 3-5 Crisis Suits or watch as a Predator/Leman Rus/Falcon tore through their entire army unmolested. This in turn only enhanced their reputation for cheesiness since all competitive Tau lists naturally included those 2 Hammerheads and 5 Crisis Suits. It was first with those insect dudes in their first updated codex that they got another AV option.

Talking about this is making me rather nostalgic.

 

[azukar]

Oh the Tau... My first and only 40k army (back in 3rd edition when they first came out).
They were definitely styled to cash in on manga and mecha (the creators more or less said as much in their White Dwarf article), and a lot of people didn't like their lighter tone.

I never found them overpowered (or maybe I just wasn't very good at the game!), but they hinged pretty heavily on a few key factors. You either mowed the enemy down with shooting, or got cut down in combat. There wasn't a lot of middle ground. Personally, I liked using a few Kroot units, as a screen if nothing else.

 

[TheSYLOH]

The true origin of the Tau hate can be summed up in three words.

"FISH! OF! FURY!"

Basically, the weakness of Taus is and has always been assault.
Waaay back, there was a confluence of rules regarding skimmers that basically allowed Devilfish to form an assault proof bunker.
Anything that could destroy the Devilfish was ambushed by stealth teams, holed by Broadsides (They had str 10 railguns back then) or just drowned in str 5 pulse fire.

 

[Alexei F. Karamazov]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I've been thinking lately about which army I'd command if I were to get into the actual tabletop Warhammer 40K stuff. On one of the youtube channels I've been watching to get exposure on the tabletop (MiniWarGaming), one of the guys said that, for players interested in the tabletop, one's army should be decided primarily on interest in that army. Tau was one of the armies I was interested in, along with Chaos and maybe just "vanilla" space marines (not specifically Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Gray Knights, etc.). I could also go for Orks too, I suppose. At any rate, this new fold to the Tau is something to keep in mind if I ever DO get around to the tabletop.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I always thought they were extremely overpowered in the battles I fought against them. But then there were a lot of weird errata in that era that totally threw the balance of the game off (Necrons... holy hell did I hate the Necrons).

 

[The Bucket]

Yeah, what Geth said. Mostly lingering antipathy from when they were first released, although I'm not sure it was justified even then. I mean, were they really any less silly than Necrons or Dark Eldar?

It was less silly, and more it was extremely jarring to have a group of almost objective good guys in a universe where a quadzillion souls or whatever are sacrificed to the leader of the humans (the POV characters most of the time).

They added all the caste stuff and brainwashing stuff since, so they do fit much better now

 

[Nadia Castle]

I've only recently got into Warhammer, but I think a fair chunk of hatred towards the Tau (but by no means all) is just 'A 'GOOD' FACTION? THAT'S DISGUSTING DON'T YOU KNOW HOW SERIOUS AND GRIMDARK MY GAME IS?!?!'.

Not that different from the same daft mentality that poisons everything when it's fan base decide to take themselves super seriously. Personally I prefer the fun side of each faction. Then again I don't really play, I'm more into the painting and converting, which the Tau are a lot of fun to do.

 

[Haunted Serenity]

My friend hates the fact that my tanks and battle suits out range his puny elder weapons. The general hate I find is, why you are attempting to get into range, I will just kite around your force and smash them with my superior weapons range. Kind of troll-ing if you will. My khorne berserker force of nothing but berserkers and terminator has run afoul of that many a time.

 

[Colin Bagley]

Tau are one of my favourites.

A lot of the negativity towards them (Where I play, at least.) Stems from a dislike of the Gun Wall. (Or Tau-gis Defence Line). As stated before, simply deploying well, and pummeling targets at range, while not moving. Makes for a static game. Potentially boring. But also frustrating. Since a well played Tau Army will kill any melle troops long before they actually get useful. So the Tau's enemies spend the whole game running forwards and dying. Not Fun.

However, Tau can be highly mobile, if you chose to play them that way.
The Crisis and Stealth Suits have Jump Packs. Meaning that they get an extra random-distance move, at the end of their turn. (Which other armies either can't get, or get very few of.)
Also, their skimmers (Floating Tanks) are able to navigate the sort of terrain which would usually prove hazardous, without risk. Letting them safely land in a forest or suchlike. Giving more options for movement than other tanks.

If you ask me what the most static army is, I'd answer with Guardsmen. "I can't be bothered to actually move those 300 hundred soldiers."


If you want advice on which army you should start with on Table Top, then as much as I'd hate to suggest it; Go Ultramarines. Purely because all the game seems to use them as the base-line to compare from.

However, Orks do offer plenty of stupid-fun. And converting your own Orkish vehicles is great. They don't need to look like they actually fit together. Since Orkish Tech seems to be held together by shouting and threats. They don't need to make sense.

But if you want an army with a tonne of Flexibility (Per Model), then Tau, packing lots of Crisis Suits, is the way to go.
Table-top is expensive, money-wise. So it's good to know that your Crisis suit could be equipped to deal with a different combat role, game to game.
Give them a pair of Burst Cannons- Anti Mass Infantry.
Pair of Plasma Rifles- Anti Heavy Infantry.
Pair of Fusion Blasters, Deep Striking behind tanks- Dead Tanks.
And the Tau Units which used to suck, now have uses. Vespids now have armour that can actually save them. And Kroot have Sniper Ammo in their rifles. (Which lets them MAYBE ignore armour.)

 

[Frankster]

Tau were fucking annoying in the dawn of war games, less cheesy then the Eldar but at least the Eldar didn't kill off your army from across 2 screens away, they were incredibly aggravating to play against.

As for tabletop, stopped playing by then so can't speak about that but I can't imagine they would be any more fun to play against (can you tell I tend to favor melee oriented and possibly swarmy armies?).

 

[Terminal Blue]

So most of the complaints revolved around either their fluff, which portrayed them as the only force of good in a grim galaxy and as the technology superior underdog (in a universe otherwise dominated by decaying tech), or around their aesthetics, which back then was basically just "boxy mecha".

This, basically..

I wasn't too keen on Tau when they first came out, mostly for the reasons mentioned. What's kind of weird in retrospect is that for all the criticisms of them being the "anime army", that only really made sense in the context of 40k's relatively subdued artistic direction around the 3rd/4th edition era. Nowadays, with every character looking like they were designed by Square Enix after a ritalin binge, I feel the Tau have actually fared pretty well aesthetically.

As for their fluff, again.. I don't feel it was particularly exceptionally bad. Every codex and new release always came with a bit of "this is the best army evar" style grandstanding. In more recent editions, it's gone into a bit of overdrive. Tyranid codices have become increasingly grandiose to the point of hilarity, and don't even get me started on the weird Skeletor direction the Necrons have been going. In a world where codex spiel is starting to sound suspiciously like the monologuing in a pro-wrestling match, again, the Tau fluff has retained a sense of scale.

Sadly, this seems to have come at the price of gameplay. Tau in 3rd edition were like nothing we'd seen before. Although the basic static gunline was possible, it was generally understood to be inferior to a guard army doing the same thing. The Tau metagame was heavily focused on mobility and mechanization, but unlike most mech/speed armies it was all about setting up shooting rather than charging headlong into combat. That was new and interesting and, sadly, seemed to disappear in 4th edition. The metagame shifted back towards the gunline and Tau became much more boring to play against.

Ultimately, I actually found Tau to be the most fun to write fiction for (I used write a lot of 40k fiction). Even more so than guardsmen, they are the innocent underdogs of the setting who have no idea how cruel the galaxy is and it allows for more of an emotional response than most of the grim, stoic stereotypes of what 40k is about.

 

[Bertylicious]

I never really understood the negativity around the Tau in gaming terms. When I played against them in 3rd ed they never seemed particularly OP, no more so than Eldar.

Thinking back, there was a lot of similarity between the Tau and the Lizardmen from fantasy: their units were all strong in one area and weak in another.

Sadly, this seems to have come at the price of gameplay. Tau in 3rd edition were like nothing we'd seen before. Although the basic static gunline was possible, it was generally understood to be inferior to a guard army doing the same thing. The Tau metagame was heavily focused on mobility and mechanization, but unlike most mech/speed armies it was all about setting up shooting rather than charging headlong into combat. That was new and interesting and, sadly, seemed to disappear in 4th edition. The metagame shifted back towards the gunline and Tau became much more boring to play against.

I stopped playing after 3rd ed but from what I remember the idea was to bundle all your Fire Warriors into APCs (Devilfish?), deploy them as close to the enemy as possible and then hoon it over so you could rapid fire, double shot them all with burst rifles on the first turn. I seem to vaguely recall that the burst rifle had a 30 or 36 inch range so it would have been an effective tactic no matter where your opponent deployed.

No opponent I ever played against did that. They'd always just sit at the back of their deployment zone whilst I chisled away at them with starcannon. I think everyone was too scared by the fragility of APCs to use them, I know that I was.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I stopped playing after 3rd ed but from what I remember the idea was to bundle all your Fire Warriors into APCs (Devilfish?), deploy them as close to the enemy as possible and then hoon it over so you could rapid fire, double shot them all with burst rifles on the first turn.

Pretty much it.

One problem of this is that these kinds of tactics depended very heavily on terrain, and most people just don't use the recommended amount of terrain when playing 40k, which resulted in huge fields of fire and ridiculous killzones. To be fair, it was even worse in Necromunda. GW always seem to balance games to be played with far more terrain than most players actually use.

The thing is, Devilfish weren't fragile. Skimmers in 3rd edition were extremely hard to kill if they kept moving, and Tau skimmers were very cheap for what they were even (Eldar skimmers were faster and had an upgrade which made them incredibly hard to kill, but they paid for it. Mechanized Eldar would have been a very small army compared to mechanized Tau). Sadly, 4th edition basically turned devilfish into expensive rhino tanks, which is a big part of why mech Tau just stopped happening.

I could never get into 4th edition. It felt a bit like it was trying to clear away some of the last vestiges of the rogue trader era "here's some random fun stuff" approach in favor of a tighter, more competitive experience. That's not really for me.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

As an old Rogue Trader grognard I do hate the tau, but only as much as I hate everything that has happened since GW introduced Njal Stormcaller & chums to befoul the last days of Rogue Trader with their stench.

As plenty of people have said, their look was pretty closely inspired by various mecha/cyberpunk/sci-fi etc manga and anime so if you were familiar with that then, Tau were a bit like finding a new bald Jedi called John Luke Pickard with his droid D4T4 crowbarred into Star Wars. It's something you've seen elsewhere that is it's own distinct thing and constantly reminds you of that. Personally I do like the models and even the original tau fluff before it got all grimdarkified but the models themselves don't feel right to me in 40K, maybe Infinity, that's suitably animu.

Spoiler: It can be summed up visually by this

Gameplay wise I couldn't comment. I play blue book Rogue Trader only.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

The thing is, Devilfish weren't fragile. Skimmers in 3rd edition were extremely hard to kill if they kept moving, and Tau skimmers were very cheap for what they were even (Eldar skimmers were faster and had an upgrade which made them incredibly hard to kill, but they paid for it. Mechanized Eldar would have been a very small army compared to mechanized Tau). Sadly, 4th edition basically turned devilfish into expensive rhino tanks, which is a big part of why mech Tau just stopped happening.

I could never get into 4th edition. It felt a bit like it was trying to clear away some of the last vestiges of the rogue trader era "here's some random fun stuff" approach in favor of a tighter, more competitive experience. That's not really for me.

Transports were pretty sturdy in 4th ed too really. I ran a mechanized Witch Hunter force, centered on Sisters of Battle in Rhinos and Immolators with Stormtroopers in Chimeras, and with smoke launchers you were pretty much guaranteed to reach the spot you wanted your units to be at by turn 2, with only modest casualties. Among my friends my Witch Hunters were almost undefeated, due to the ridiculous amount of firepower that I could bring to bear as soon as my squads got out of their transports.

 

[Alleged_Alec]

It doesn't help that the mainstay Tau army for a large part of the last year and a half or so were just minimal troops and a spam over overpowered Riptides and Forgeworld/splatbook variants of them. Despite their fluff getting better, they just weren't really fun to play against. This, plus their insane ability to make any weapon ignore cover saves or improve chances to hit with markerlights meant that they could outrange and outshoot most other armies and, just like against certain sorts of IG lists, a game against most Tau players boiled down to "will enough of my units make it into CC".

It also doesn't help that 40K in general is accepted by most of the fans to be over-the-top silliness and grimdark, with most of the races falling either into a "woe is me" fighting a losing battle for survival or "we'll destroy/take over the entire galaxy when we can be arsed to" mustache-twirling evilness. Fans really liked it for its openness about being sort of silly this way (although this attitude seems to be losing ground). Tau as depicted are not really fitting well into the setting, and people dislike the dissonance, although later books have rectified this somewhat.

As plenty of people have said, their look was pretty closely inspired by various mecha/cyberpunk/sci-fi etc manga and anime so if you were familiar with that then, Tau were a bit like finding a new bald Jedi called John Luke Pickard with his droid D4T4 crowbarred into Star Wars. It's something you've seen elsewhere that is it's own distinct thing and constantly reminds you of that. Personally I do like the models and even the original tau fluff before it got all grimdarkified but the models themselves don't feel right to me in 40K, maybe Infinity, that's suitably animu.

Sorry, but I don't buy this. Eldar have always been an animu race in 40K and no one has had real issues with this. The only difference is that Eldar go for rounded, sleek mecha's while Tau go for more blocky ones.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah, what Geth said. Mostly lingering antipathy from when they were first released, although I'm not sure it was justified even then. I mean, were they really any less silly than Necrons or Dark Eldar?

Of course they weren't more silly. I think the problem was that their particular brand of silly wasn't "grimdark" like all the rest (because, let's be honest here, is any faction in 40k not silly?) but rather some sort of light side savior. For those of us who wanted to be cool and edgy at the time (hard to imagine today), it was unthinkable that a "good" faction should exist in our "grimdark".

Well, the fluff did specify, over and over again, that it was totally unthinkable for there to be anything except grimdark.

"It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods."

All of a sudden, the foundations of 40k don't apply anymore, you've got some tiny race in the middle of nowhere that suddenly has better tech than the Eldar, and has to be mentioned in relation to absolutely everything for no reason.

And to follow that up, they came up with the C'tan. Sigh.

Nowdays, their fluff isn't more appalling than anyone else's, I guess, nor their models more ridiculous.

I am annoyed that the Tau Empire is so Tau. You can't have a battleforged army without them, no Kroot Shaper with lots of Kroot Squads, for example.