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I'm just thinking about it... it would be pretty cool to see a Dark Eldar equivalent of the Tau, kind of like a Dark Tau. The paint schemes would be nothing short of awesome, and I think it could fit the models well. What are your thoughts? Thread!

No, just no.. .please no...

If you want to play 'evil' Tau, play Farsight Enclaves.

Why would this happen? They're not susceptible to warp energy so it's not like they can go all Chaos here. The closest thing to renegade Tau is Farsight's cadre, who aren't Chaos or anything like that.

Okay so maybe the Dark Eldar was a bad example. I'm not thinking about the Chaos aspect of anything, though that would be cool. I was just thinking of a pirate-themed Tau equivalent. I'd definitely play it because I think the models would be totally rad. I guess I'm coming at this from mostly a modeling aspect, but I also think the fluff could be fun.

Farsight Enclave please !

You can paint them any colour scheme you like at the moment.

Ilove40k wrote:Farsight Enclave please !

Seriously, I want to see it. There is huge potential for awesome background story here.

The term Dark Tau is just wrong, if you want rouge or pirate Tau come up with a more original term.

blood reaper wrote:The term Dark Tau is just wrong, if you want rouge or pirate Tau come up with a more original term.

Ugh, you people are taking this way too literally. I don't care about the name, I just said Dark Tau because I was thinking of a Tau-like army sort of related to the pirate-like theme of the Dark Eldar. I wouldn't know what to call them. I would say do a Farsight Enclave codex but I'm thinking of an army that is much, MUCH more sinister than the Enclave. If you want to rip the name fine, but if you're going to rip something at least contribute back with something positive and quit trolling.

Codex: Tau Caliginous

There, a cool word, happy? It represents a shrouded, more sinister Tau.

Sinister Tau? That's really just not in their nature, the Pirates of the Eldar are far different than any other race or army.

Kilkrazy wrote:You can paint them any colour scheme you like at the moment.

I get that Kil, but it's one thing to paint them whatever you'd like, but it's another to have a dedicated army with it's own dedicated model line. That's really what I'd like to see, but apparently nobody else wants to see it. I don't see the harm in it, personally.

Still sounds too cliche for me.

peebzguy wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:You can paint them any colour scheme you like at the moment.

I get that Kil, but it's one thing to paint them whatever you'd like, but it's another to have a dedicated army with it's own dedicated model line. That's really what I'd like to see, but apparently nobody else wants to see it. I don't see the harm in it, personally.

Look at it like this.
You essentially want 'Evil Tau'. From the established Tau background this doesn't really suit them all that well (unless they regressed to their pre-Greater Good stage)
It isn't really in character for them though in theory you could do it...

peebzguy wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:You can paint them any colour scheme you like at the moment.

I get that Kil, but it's one thing to paint them whatever you'd like, but it's another to have a dedicated army with it's own dedicated model line. That's really what I'd like to see, but apparently nobody else wants to see it. I don't see the harm in it, personally.

The harm in it is that there already are 10 "Dark" factions and creating another one just dilutes the effort for no real gain. Remember, Necrons, Tau, Eldar, Orks and SoB are still waiting for a 5th edition upgrade.

But no-one is stopping you from writing up unofficial Dark Tau if you want, so rock on with the idea.

So a group of Tau who have given themselves over to the Mont'au. That would definitely create a "dark" Tau. They would be murderous, violent and probably not averse to close combat (and probably quite good at it with spear like weapons a favourite).

I could see this as a group of warriors who live by raiding human worlds. It's likely that instead of the upper end Tau gear they would be using a mixture of human gear sprinkled with some rare surviving Tau items.

Or just model spikey bits to your Tau models. That is pretty much how GW shows an army is "Dark".

I think you have a good platform to make some origional models... my question would be why do they need to be evil/ renegade tau?

the tau are a resourceful people... not to the extent of orks btu they are very technilogically inclined

I can see you makign a back story of how your particular group was fighting against a dark eldar incurtion and drove those S&M elves back into the webway. ... they unfortunatly had badly damaged equipment and thus using thier tech skills had to salvage DE parts and incorperate them into thier own equipment to makeit off the planet

thats just an idea I'm sure you could come up with a hundred reasons why they have the pirate or dark eldar theme... coudl be cool link models if you decide to do it. I can see some cool hybrid hammerhead/raiders

helgrenze wrote:Or just model spikey bits to your Tau models. That is pretty much how GW shows an army is "Dark".

Spiky Tau? I kind of want to see that now. I'm imagining Spiky Crisis Suits with scary looking skulls all over them. Yeah that would be an awesome new race!

Jefffar wrote:So a group of Tau who have given themselves over to the Mont'au. That would definitely create a "dark" Tau. They would be murderous, violent and probably not averse to close combat (and probably quite good at it with spear like weapons a favourite).

I could see this as a group of warriors who live by raiding human worlds. It's likely that instead of the upper end Tau gear they would be using a mixture of human gear sprinkled with some rare surviving Tau items.

I'm supporting this - it says somewhere that before the ethereals came the Tau where very sinister in several ways, fighting amongst each others. Pretty uch as dark as Tau can be, I think.

edit: yay LEET post count!

Wha6t evr the f<$k anyone else says, I quite like the idea. Like the Farsight Enclaves, but piratical, travelling across the galaxy, models a cross between IW and Tau as that would suit them, then some nice fluff about how they split away and previous victories.

Saintspirit wrote:

Jefffar wrote:So a group of Tau who have given themselves over to the Mont'au. That would definitely create a "dark" Tau. They would be murderous, violent and probably not averse to close combat (and probably quite good at it with spear like weapons a favourite).

I could see this as a group of warriors who live by raiding human worlds. It's likely that instead of the upper end Tau gear they would be using a mixture of human gear sprinkled with some rare surviving Tau items.

I'm supporting this - it says somewhere that before the ethereals came the Tau where very sinister in several ways, fighting amongst each others. Pretty uch as dark as Tau can be, I think.

edit: yay LEET post count!

If by somewhere you mean the Tau codex, yeah, pretty much.

We see hints of it in modern Tau as well. When pressed hard and/or without close Ethereal supervision the Tau have proven to be as violent and genocidal as any other race. See the stories of Brightsword and Farsight.

I'm just the kind of guy who likes a light and dark side to everything!

Now this is the discussion I had in mind I was thinking about this during the meeting I was in, and was pondering - if the Ethereals use their abilities to influence the minds of the Tau (whether through pheromones or psy ability, as has been eluded to in fluff). I dunno, there's a lot of ways you could go with. If you want to go the psy route, I would say that within the Ethereal caste there was a random mutation which allowed for psy abilities, and thus could be influenced by the Warp. The Tau race, having never been exposed to Warp energies before, the few Ethereals with the mutation easily succumbed to the Ruinous Powers of Chaos... Or the pheromone route... I dunno, can't think of one right now, but I love the mutation route

Sooo many conversions going through my head right now, I love this hobby.

I'd say: Join the queue. Every second teen starting 40k has the naughty naughty idea of THEEVULZ Tau with spikes and tentacles and thinks he is the first to have this idea. I named this phenomenon the Paladrin syndrome, after WoW, where every second teen made a corrupted Paladin called "Dark Avenger of Death" or something like that. WoW eventually bowed to the demand and made a special epic character class for all those teens, available to all classes, called Death Knight.

So if you feel the need to do Chaos Tau, Chaos Eldar, corrupted Grey Knights, boob themed Sororitas, female Space Marines or any army painted PINK (muahahaha), join the naughty club but be aware that most members are not older than 16

Kroothawk wrote:I'd say: Join the queue. Every second teen starting 40k has the naughty naughty idea of THEEVULZ Tau with spikes and tentacles and thinks he is the first to have this idea. I named this phenomenon the Paladrin syndrome, after WoW, where every second teen made a corrupted Paladin called "Dark Avenger of Death" or something like that. WoW eventually bowed to the demand and made a special epic character class for all those teens, available to all classes, called Death Knight.

So if you feel the need to do Chaos Tau, Chaos Eldar, corrupted Grey Knights, boob themed Sororitas, female Space Marines or any army painted PINK (muahahaha), join the naughty club but be aware that most members are not older than 16

I'm not claiming to be the first guy to come up with the idea, as I'm sure someone thought of it right when the Tau came out in 2001 or 2002, or whenever it did. Rather, it was a new thought for me and I got excited about it. After all, that's what it's all about right? I just don't understand why people feel the need to put something down because they feel it's dumb. I realize it's an open community and you can say what you want for the most part, it's just not something I would do personally, which is why it bothers me. I'm well beyond 16, by the way

Anyway, now I'm torn, I don't know whether to start my quirky Tau army or wait for the impending Necron release, as I've been waiting for Necrons for, oh, years :( Decisions decisions...

For the Greater Evil

FuryTheBerserker wrote:For the Greater Evil

For Mont'au

Genuine question - the Culexus Assassin has no warp presence and puts dread even into daemons, so why don't the Tau have even a slightly similar effect on daemons?

Howard A Treesong wrote:Genuine question - the Culexus Assassin has no warp presence and puts dread even into daemons, so why don't the Tau have even a slightly similar effect on daemons?

They have a tiny warp presence, it's barley readable in the Warp by Daemons. They are not blanks.

Kroothawk wrote:I'd say: Join the queue. Every second teen starting 40k has the naughty naughty idea of THEEVULZ Tau with spikes and tentacles and thinks he is the first to have this idea. I named this phenomenon the Paladrin syndrome, after WoW, where every second teen made a corrupted Paladin called "Dark Avenger of Death" or something like that. WoW eventually bowed to the demand and made a special epic character class for all those teens, available to all classes, called Death Knight.

So if you feel the need to do Chaos Tau, Chaos Eldar, corrupted Grey Knights, boob themed Sororitas, female Space Marines or any army painted PINK (muahahaha), join the naughty club but be aware that most members are not older than 16

+eleventyone billion!!!!!1!!11eleven!!1

Sorry, but Kroothawk is right. Yes, in and of itself, it might look like a good idea, but immediately when you put it into context - id est the 40K universe - it becomes a silly, silly idea, because this universe is anything but black&white. Tau are not the good guys, they are an imperialistic, dogmatic, communist caste society trying to rule the galaxy and killing everyone who doesn't agree with them. Yes, compared to the fundamentalistic, fascist IoM, they look like the good guys, but there you go: there are no good guys, only different levels of evil.

But most importantly, making an evil version of everything that seems to be nice is just what Kroothawk said: juvenile. And once you aren't a youth anymore, you tend to dislike juvenile things.

Also, as they don't have the means to make use of the Web-Way, Tau Pirates are going to be a.... very local problem. Even if they are, somehow, using a stolen DE ship to get around in... they have no real concept of the Warp, or the Web-way (if at all) and, given that there's not a whole lot of "rogue DE" just flying about the galaxy, these Tau will be hard-pressed to repair their DE-derived technologies, as there won't be a ready source of replacement parts.

This is second to the fact that battle casualties will not be easily replaced. Humans might want to join the Tau for the Greater Good.... but most humans will abhor anything appearing like the Dark Eldar. Gue'la auxiliaries will be very hard to come by.