Even without the bling, the massive shoulderpads, the gritty look or the grimdark weaponry I still like the Tau. Just like every faction in 40k they bring something unique to the table; and what's more unique than asian-inspired fish people with mechas n' shit? Is good.
The most interesting thing about the Tau is that when you think about it, they are basically the embodiment of every single trope/clichés that humanity usually have in most space opera and sci-fi stories. I mean just look at the list: The youngest and newest member to the galactic stage, idealistic and wish to explore the galaxy, prefer to use diplomacy when dealing when alien races, have a quick rate of technological and social advancement when compared to everyone else in a stagnant galaxy... etc. So the next time you see an Imperium fan dismissing or hating the Tau for being annoying and naive, you are getting a perceptive of how humans look through alien eyes in most other sci-fi settings. You will finally understand why the romulans and cardassians fight the Federation in Star Trek, or why the asari look down upon humans as brash and ignorant in Mass Effect.
***** The Tau as a whole suffers from what TVTropes refer to as 'Wrong Genre Savvy'. They act as if they're the protagonist in a space opera or traditional sci-fi setting, not realizing that they are in fact in a cosmic horror story. In which hope and happiness can only be born from ignorance of what true horrors lurk beyond.
***** Oh, PLEASE tell us how you are the arbiter of what IS and what ISN'T interesting. I (and many, many others) love 40k because it's this dystopian cosmic horror and NOT just another cliché sci-fi where everything is fine and dandy.
They weren't "grimdark" at all when first introduced. GW only added some of the nazi-like behavior later so that people would shut up about them and not complain so much.
The Enclaves were one of the expansion outings of the tau in which they managed to cross an extremely inhospitable warp storm barrier to get to the other side. when they got to the other side they were faced with a multitude of enemies from ork to chaos. In one chaos battle they wandered into a demon sacrifice alter surrounded by giant beast statues, but when a tau touched one they found these to be hundreds of sleeping bloodthirsters, farsight defeated them and took the leaders blade as a prize not realizing that the blade took the soul of those he killed and added their life energy left to his own ultimately meaning he is now hundreds of years old where as a normal tau lives to 150. after this battle farsight saw the truth and confronted the ethereal sent with the expedition because chaos had shown him that their was something fishy about the ethereals, in the end the ethereal died and the standing orders of such an event is to retreat and go back to tau space, but farsight now disillusioned of the ethereal way and with the support of his troops as he was the best commander the tau had ever fielded turned his back on the tau empire and forged his own, hence the name farsight enclaves. The enclaves have been a thorn in the taus side and even have the most advanced tech the tau has made meaning they have spies in the greater tau empire. They continue to struggle for survival and have legends of their legendary warrior founder who much like the imperiums legion of the dead appears when the time is most dire and Utterly Crushes the enemy and then disappears without a trace for a few hundred years. Theres alot more info but thats the basics, so their rebel tau who saw the hollow ways of the ethereals and are stealing tech from their brothers and their legendary leader is effectively immortal after killing thousands of beings with his demon sword unknowingly.
If you like being castrated/being made infertile then you are welcome. I dont know if it is Imperial propaganda or not but in some lore it is said they dont like humans outnumbering their ranks or something thus the reason of being made infertile when you join their ranks.
Mighty Roogna They only do that if the humans have resisted against them for so long. For Example, the Tau would sterilize the human population if they win the planet Kronus in the game Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, but before the planet had been ruled by the Tau for at least 200 years and for that entire time, the majority of humans had violently resisted them, despite every diplomatic tactic the Tau tried. So, yeah, the Tau will do something like that in order to end further resistance, but if there is no or little short-term resistance to begin with, then they have no real reason to sterilize an entire population.
It'd be pretty cool if you did more Tau videos. Otherwise, great channel, it's very helpful for people who want to understand the WH40K universe better!
nicely done cant wait to see vids of the dark eldar and of course the Necrons but guess u will have to do the new Necron codex which i haven't read but know that it basically screws over the original codex by changing tons. FOR THE GREATER GOOD!
Francis-Olivier Toba some of the old stuff still applies now that the Necrons have different factions in them as well. Being that some are still slaves to the Star Gods.
This is perfect. I literally just bought a Tau army box set (and several other boxes of units). I'm trying to learn 40k, so I will be watching your videos and hoping to learn how to play
Just follow these two simple rules and you'll always be victorious. Rule 1: Don't let anyone close. Rule 2: DON'T LET ANYONE CLOSE. Also, lore videos are a bad place to learn tactics. I recommend advancedtautactica.com/
***** They have very different uses. But, in general, if I already had an equal amount of both already... Broadsides, without a doubt. The ability to deliver a S8 AP1 (if I'm not wrong and it's AP2) hit *anywhere* on the table is hilarious. Not to mention that you can use markerlights to boost that to be BS5 and Ignores Cover. And it's not just the ability to snipe things on the ground, but you can also *easily* take out flyers with one as well, by giving the Broadside Skyfire. Now, there's always the question of whether to take the missiles or the rifle. As a rule of thumb, you generally want the rifle against flyers and heavy infantry (think GK and marines in general), as you can deny almost all of the board to the enemy aircraft, simply by just sitting in your own side. You may also be able to pick off single-model high value squads.
missles are great for basic infantry tho but if there is any advice i can give make it an all round army something that can take care of flyers and armour and can deal with infantry with out to many losses (have a fuckton of kroot incase)
On DOW, the Tau are easily the best on long range engagements, who needs defense turrets when all you need a 4 squads of upgraded fire warriors, a couple of broadside suits and a squad of vespids just in case the enemy tries using stealth tech Vehicles wise, I do like using the Barracuda as it is a fantastic air support tool
Not that people are likely to care but some shellfish have blue blood, its caused by copper instead of iron (Haemocyanin instead of Haemoglobin). so it does work just not with cobalt.
Ah, thank you, thank you. Second only to Chaos itself, the Tau will always have a place in my heart. In short, it's easiest to sympathize with them, as opposed to, as it was explained, the more amoral factions.
Brilliant video!!!Have you covered the farsight enclave yet, if could you consider covering it in a future video as I'm a massive fan of tau and would love to know more about them.
Can you do Necrons soon? I know it is a kind of "niche" faction, but the quality of your story telling is marvelous and it may just put me over the edge to start a new army... thanks and long live vaults of terra!
One of the goals of a codex should be to hype players up and make them want to play as that faction. While this can be taken too far (many would accuse the recent grey knight and ultramarine codexes of this) the latest tau codex has the opposite problem. Every victory they had now has basically an asterisk after it in the new codex implying they just got lucky, ex the first Imperial crusade against them went from being a stalemate that was ended by the imperial forces being recalled to fight elsewhere and having to negotiate with the tau to pull back to being an imperial victory only averted by being recalled. Yes the Imperium is way bigger than the Tau empire and if they ever brought their full might down they would be f'ed (much like the Eldar) but who would want to get invested and play a faction who's own codex makes clear are only still around because no one has taken the time to squish them yet as appose to the new guys on the block capable of standing on their own? Also wasn't a fan of the grimdarkening in the latest edition as I didn't think it was necessary other to try and silence some whiners. There was already quiet a bit of grey to the Tau and I think the concept of dropping a faction that would be among the good guys in most other settings into the 40k universe was already pretty grimdark because everyone can already see how f'ed they are.
Dude's basically reading verbatim from the lexicanum :P Which is fine, whatever works :) In terms of the game universe, this is a wildly underutilized species. The inquisition alone should use them as corruption by chaos isn't possible making them perfect potential judges. Also clearly it would be possible to use them to actually mount a war against chaos on it's home turf. I often like to imagine what I would do if dropped into various game universes as myself knowing what I know now and what I would do (currently) if dropped into the WH40K is haul ass for the tau empire and start debating strategy. Since Tau cannot be corrupted, are very technological, and adept at trap setting they should create a portal into the warp by whatever means, and then start up a demon killing machine. Just slaughter demons by the millions constantly by means of this awesome trap. War of attrition, set up these warp cleaners everywhere. The imperium would be hard pressed to object honestly.
The thing is the Tau would never gain anything on war, and they have no use of the imperium anyways, since their main enemy who is disturbing them IS the imperium.
Expax Exactly. The objective would be two fold, serve the greater good, by making the warp and the universe less dense with cruelty. And in the short term give the imperium every reason to further lower the Tau on the target list. As the Tau weakened chaos, I believe the imperium of man would be more rational. Right now humanity is a cornered terrified degenerate (literally) species. The Tau are utterly free to do the wise thing, whatever that is, they are not cornered by arbitrary dogma or pride or species impulse. At least not to the degree any other species is. I can work with that.
hi ed I would like to ask if you could a video on the vehicles and battle suits of the tau. Could you include some more information on the Supremecy Suit? Great Videos I am really enjoying learning about the 40K universe.
I hope you're going to do a video on all of the races the Tau have saved and allowed them into their realms no matter how little fluff there is on them
Only in 6000 years Tau has risen from hunters and gatherers to Interstellar force? Man, that's quite a leap. Tau empire really feels like it was based on Asian philosophy, especially their caste system reminded me of Sun Tzu's Art of War or Miyamoto Musashi's The Book of Five rings
Conflict lasting for decades, thousand of death and they call it the terror I'm sorry but I think you should reserve that name for a conflict a little bit more challenging, in the setting they are , a conflict that obnly last decades and kill under a million people is what they call a vacation.
Any conflict that kills people can be considered an horror. Also you should take in consideration that this conflict probably had no end goal other than kill enough people rather than take control of the situation.
Additionally, the Tau race was almost annihilated. Certainly a war that was the most destructive in their history and almost resulted in the total annihilation of their race would qualify for the moniker "the terror."
Think I remember reading in their new fluff that they only recently discovered a way to go at near warp speed, and are now getting ready to launch a 4th expansion. that was years ago however so IDK if I'm remembering it correctly.
They should change the metal in the Tau blood to "Trace elements of Tungsten" as that actually can cause "Tungsten Blue". It even sounds just as cool as Cobalt.
Hey Vaults of Terra, could you do a, maybe 5- or 6-minute, video specifically about the specialized infantry of the imperial guard. Like the stormtroopers, ogryns and ratlings? That would be interesting, cuz it goes into the human-sub-species stuff.
As far as interbreeding between the Tau species in the book "fire warrior" there is a reference to a Ethereal ran selective breeding program between the castes.
The Tau shall now be my new alien race mostly for the their technology and how it looks, what they stand for though a bit harsh but I am willing to work with them. I just wish they looked a little bit better that is all.
Personally I like Tau being the sort of "light in the darkness", but don't like how the can completely destroy any close combat army, but beside that I like this race and can't wait for more on them.
Hey, on the subject of Tau blood, they probably have hemocyanin in their blood, which is copper based. Hemocyanin, for example, is found in the blood of horseshoe crabs, which is baby blue, or a cancer productus crab, where it's purplish.
Can you talk about the knight orders of the Impirium? They are fairly new in the table top game, but supposedly have existed since the time of the Emperor so it messes up the cannon a little.
All things dies and all will fall for the glory of Chaos and Papa Nurgle. It is the way of life, inevitable truth, useless to deny it. Only if you accept it, you accept Nurgle and you can stand against the test of time.
Hello, add the kor´vattra (if possible all fleet including spaceships, dropships and fighter/bombers), please. Nowhere on youtube is a lore regarding the Tau navy.
Its possible that instead of cobalt in their blood, the tau has copper which would mean they have some form of hemocyanin or copper based respiratory pigment. Many marine animals on earth have blueish dexoxygnated blood due to hemocyanin
Actually that says the year 40,000,000 so if the Tyranids don't devour the Tau and the rest of the galaxy then I suppose they would be faction to be a part of.
They also allow some gundam style fighting, the riptide can be used like the ZZ gundam. I know of one tau army user who uses gundam seed invoke as its theme song.
Scattman101 It's pretty cool to know that the Tau are just servants of Chaos, and that some Tau have discovered the truth and cut themselves off from the empire.
Skyrim brothers they do that only to humans who actively fight them when under the Tau rule. Otherwise there are legions of Gue'vesa fighting fo the Greater Good while still believing in the Emperor of Mankind.
Despite the Tau not being able to have a presence in the warp or know anything of Chaos, they stand to have a high chance of beating the Chaos Masters back if the Imperium would ever enter into a peace treaty or alliance with them, but it is the Imperium for you.
Although anything about the ethereals is idle speculation at this point in the races lore development. An interesting hypothesis is that the tau were allowed to develop as a weapon against the warp taint in the galaxy. Perhaps by remaining Old One's or another unseen force that wishes to protect the material world, potentially at the expense of psychic races that currently catalyse the affects of/in the empyrean and allow it to manifest. Humanity was corrupted before it could master it's powers like the Eldar had; and although the Orks are physically effective against Chaos incursion, their blood lust still indirectly powers a fraction of the creatures of the warp. The Tau passification of other races would seem to counter that dilemma. At least this is how i've interpreted the introduction and nature of the race.
If the Tau had hemocyanin in their blood rather than hemoglobin their blood would be a light blue color. Some crustaceans do posses blue blood because of it.
William o'brien Not good idea. Not only Tau are too short to high five with any other race, but given their physical strenght, high five would probably break their arms.
