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Do the Tau have what it takes to defeat the untold horrors of the 40k universe? Will they be able to stop the green tide of orks and the floods of tyranids? Will there be a day when the tau banner flies over all of the universe? Or will the mighty Imperium or the Chaos forces crash down and completely wipe them off the map?

Only time will tell.

This is a set up for a good ol' fashioned Tau bash. Yeeeehaw. Let's wait until all the parties concerned arrive.

No, they don't have what it takes currently. Their FTL travel is sub par. Not up to task when it comes to a Galaxy wide empire. They still use short warp jumps like the humans of the way gone times. It works for them now because they're small but it won't work later.

"Deleated"

I do say. The Tau relating to George Takei? Hmph

The Imperium is too bogged down in other wars. Chaos wants nothing to do with them. Necrons would respect their honor. Dark Eldar only raid. Eldar will mostly leave them alone. Orks can't unite on the scale required to deal with them.

Tyranids are their only real existential threat.

BrainDeleted wrote:This is a set up for a good ol' fashioned Tau bash. Yeeeehaw. Let's wait until all the parties concerned arrive.

You mean Coa and Tadashi, right?

Skarwael wrote:

BrainDeleted wrote:This is a set up for a good ol' fashioned Tau bash. Yeeeehaw. Let's wait until all the parties concerned arrive.

You mean Coa and Tadashi, right?

Don't forget Corporal Rev

He'd hate to miss a Bluie-Bash

This weeks slot for "Tau genocide fantasy threads" is already occupied:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/412954.page
Get your dose of tau hatred there.

ironhand45 wrote:Do the Tau have what it takes to defeat the untold horrors of the 40k universe? Will they be able to stop the green tide of orks and the floods of tyranids? Will there be a day when the tau banner flies over all of the universe? Or will the mighty Imperium or the Chaos forces crash down and completely wipe them off the map?

First let me show you how big universe really is ( well not the universe itself, but what we can see with HABL ):



And the answer is: NO.
Without the Imperium Tau would get eathen twice already by Tyranids.
They never face big Ork WARGHHHHHH!!!!
Or a great Daemon invasion scale of Armageddon one.
Or a Imperial Crusade scale of Solar Macharious one.
They have inferior technology when it comes to big guns and FTL travel.
and so on....

And this is for my good old Tau friend Beef and Kroothawk:




P.S. The funny thing about this video is: Tau didn't kill even one Sister, why they killed bunch of Tau + Grater Knarlock. Emperor's blessing indeed

Funny thing about that Soulstorm game, I killed thousands of Sisters of battle, Blood Ravens, orks ,eldar etc with my Tau and ultimatly drove them from the system, so does that make it offical as well, or just a freaking game.

BTW Coa, for someone who thinks so little of the Tau, you sure do talk about them alot....maybe your a closet Tau, just cant face the truth.

Leave them alone and go paint some minis and play some actual games, and lay off the fluff for a bit, it seems to have adled you faculties.

Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:Funny thing about that Soulstorm game, I killed thousands of Sisters of battle, Blood Ravens, orks ,eldar etc with my Tau and ultimatly drove them from the system, so does that make it offical as well, or just a freaking game.

Actually, Relic stated that IG won the campaign in Soulstorm. Driving every other faction out there. There is even war gear in DoW II to point at this.

BTW Coa, for someone who thinks so little of the Tau, you sure do talk about them alot....maybe your a closet Tau, just cant face the truth.

Leave them alone and go paint some minis and play some actual games, and lay off the fluff for a bit, it seems to have adled you faculties.

I would play minis if I had more money to buy some, I have 360 point army thus far.
And I talk about them so much because they are lot of thread about them, and 50% of them are on the same subject.
And how am I a traitor if I know a lot about one xeno race? I know history off all xeno races in most sci-fi genres.
I will read as much as I want whenever I want, unless to much reading is bad for people...

I remember killing thousands of space marines and sisters of battle when I played as the Imperial guard.

Back to the thread at hand, how do the Tau overcome their limitations and strike out beyond the Eastern Fringe?

BrainDeleted wrote:Back to the thread at hand, how do the Tau overcome their limitations and strike out beyond the Eastern Fringe?

Maybe GW will give them some neutrino FTL tech. That's current, right?

Space Magic?

BrainDeleted wrote:Back to the thread at hand, how do the Tau overcome their limitations and strike out beyond the Eastern Fringe?

By assimilating what they conquer and recruiting new Alien species into the Tau. I have a very strong suspicion that the Tau have the technological ability to extend the quantity of raw matierals and 'limited' raw materials, so one of the colonies resources lasts longer and begins to grow.

If the Demiurg are coming about in the new codex, then Tau get another advantageous boon of Demiurg Ship Technology.

Its through small victories and strong alliances that will allow the Tau to reach into such territories as Ultramar and the Ghoul Stars. The future of the Tau is bright, and even the Eldar see great potential within them.

Which of those races has reliable FTL travel?

There are two known options here: Warp travel and Webway travel. It's highly unlikely the Tau will be able to penetrate the Webway. No one's done it besides the newcrons. I mean penetrate as in make their own webway gates, not just jack an open one. That's not reliable FTL.

Warp travel is much easier to achieve, they actually have...Sort of. They use a method that harkens back to the early days of humanity: Short, controlled warp jumps. Like skimming the warp. It works but it is not fast enough over large distances unlike the Imperium's warp jumps which can go from point A to point B entirely through the warp. Why can the Tau not achieve this? Because they lack the psykic potential to 'navigate' the warp as well as a 'landmark' or beacon in the warp to navigate by which the Imperials have the Astronomicon for...So the Tau have to either develop a psykic potential within themselves or make use of some xenos. Possible, I suppose, but they also need something equivalent to Gellar Fields to protect them in the warp. Then they need warp drives capable of the task. I suppose that is possible through reverse engineering Imperial tech though that would be quite a task and everything would have to be adapted to the specific needs of the Tau.

Or they could invent something else entirely which...Ha...That's it's own set of problems.

Why not have a device that does mutiple short jumps through the warp. It removes the rather dumb idea of confining the tau and its not as good as the older races warp drive. Or am I wrong?

Space Crusader

Who knows what the next bout of fluff can bring until it arrives, they can easily set the entire fluff nazi's world on end by saying the Tau develop a artificial wormhole drive, or somesuch as a way for them to overcome the tech gap, or they just pat their head and say booga booga, and they are there...its just lines of text in a book to them, but to the fans its gospel.

Funny ole world ain't it.

Hilarious.

Space Crusader wrote:Why not have a device that does mutiple short jumps through the warp. It removes the rather dumb idea of confining the tau and its not as good as the older races warp drive. Or am I wrong?

Space Crusader

I don't know what you're asking. AFAIK the Tau do just that currently...Short jumps. It's slow, too slow. Like you said?

I doubt GW will add the Demiurg because they really dont have much to them just as being trade partners with the Tau. The Imperium rarely sees them too. The Tau could always to the orky way and take junk Imperial ship drives and adapt them to Tau ways. Or take it, study it, make their own version, and prosper.

The problem is more about navigation. The Tau have no way to navigate the warp on their own. They would need to capture Imperial navigators to achieve this or use some other race somehow...Either way, not too reliable.

Step 1: Unite the Eastern Fringe.
Step 2: Bridge the technological gap in travel methods.
Step 3: Double empire size every 50 years. (C:SM)
Step 4: Take Macragge.



Not like any of these steps are even required though, humans surrender to the Greater Good so fast, it's almost always a war of reclamation on the Imperiums part.

ironhand45 wrote:I doubt GW will add the Demiurg because they really dont have much to them just as being trade partners with the Tau. The Imperium rarely sees them too. The Tau could always to the orky way and take junk Imperial ship drives and adapt them to Tau ways. Or take it, study it, make their own version, and prosper.

They had ships and fluff in Battle Fleet Galactic.

The Tau cannot conquer the Imperium militarily as they are.

However, they don't need to. The Imperium's own policies drive heresy and treason. All the Tau need to do is say the right thing to the right people and entire systems fall without a shot being fired.

Now the FTL question is an interesting one. Those wh say Tau FTL doesn't use the Warp are incorrect. What happens is the Tau skim along the very edge of the warp, rather than plunging inside of it. So far this limits them to short jumps, but if they could find the way to keep riding the edge of the Warp potentially they could go as far and as fast as those that go into the Warp, without the excessive side effects.

The tau have access to those able to navigate the Warp already (Demi-urg, human allies and even the Kroot possess some ability in these regards) plus the Tau are currently able to navigate their Warp's edge style jumps.

So the Tau don't necessarily need to develop new warp technology, but could get away with improving what they got.

However, the Tau are also known for their ability to trade for technology. Relations between the Eldar and the Tau seem decent enough and there are persistent rumours that the Eldar have altered the Tau in some fasion. Perhaps in time the Eldar access to the Webway could be negotiated by the Tau.

But again, I suspect that these are developments that would be more salient in a game of WH45K than WH40K.


Ultimately though, th Tau do not want to destroy the Imperium. What they want to do might not even be fully described as conquering them. Ultimately, what the Tau want to do is to teach the Imperium about the benefits of giving themselves over to the Greater Good.

Kroothawk wrote:This weeks slot for "Tau genocide fantasy threads" is already occupied:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/412954.page
Get your dose of tau hatred there.

I'm not a Tau hater but in all fairness I do think there's a lot of Imperium genocide fantasy threads as well (look at all the "will the Imperium fall" and "how will the Imperium die" stuff) and to a lesser extent Craftworld Eldar. It comes with being seen as the "better guys" (I don't use good guys to describe them).

Harriticus wrote:
I'm not a Tau hater but in all fairness I do think there's a lot of Imperium genocide fantasy threads as well (look at all the "will the Imperium fall" and "how will the Imperium die" stuff) and to a lesser extent Craftworld Eldar. It comes with being seen as the "better guys" (I don't use good guys to describe them).

Thank you good sir

ironhand45 wrote:Do the Tau have what it takes to defeat the untold horrors of the 40k universe? Will they be able to stop the green tide of orks and the floods of tyranids? Will there be a day when the tau banner flies over all of the universe? Or will the mighty Imperium or the Chaos forces crash down and completely wipe them off the map?

First, the Orks. No, if the Eldar couldn't do it at the height of the their Empire, and the Imperium couldn't do it during the Great Crusade, then the Tau can't do it either.
Two, the Tyranids. Impossible. The Imperium has to increase recruiting 500 percent just to defeat the Tyranid Hive Fleets not yet arrived, and when you consider that the Imperium rules over a million worlds, the Tau just can't defeat the Tyranids completely.
Three, the Tau conquer the galaxy. Impossible. Even if they reverse-engineer other races warp technology, they couldn't use it because it needs psychic abilities to use. The Ethereal Caste forbade further psychic research after the Fall of Medusa V. So it's not gonna happen.
Four, will the Imperium or Chaos destroy the Tau Empire? The Imperium has other, more important concerns to waste it's time on the Tau. As for Chaos, it's only a matter of time before a gue'vasa psyker gets influenced by Chaos and opens a daemonic portal, or something similar happens. Without psychic abilities and true awareness of the warp, it's impossible to fight Chaos effectively.
To sum it up, the Imperium probably won't end the Tau, it'll be the Orks, the Tyranids, or the Forces of Chaos.

The Greater Good died on Ancient Terra long ago, it will die again in the grim, dark, future...