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Why is Tau leadership so low? Fluff wise it doesn't make sense. They are all commited to the greater good (aside from kroot and vespid), and therefore they are willing to give their lives to the larger cause of spreading their religion. So why is Tau leadership a 7 on troops and 8 for everything else? Their leadership should be on par with marines. Granted this was probably done by GW to make them different, but I think fluff wise it doesn't make sense. HOWEVER, I do not think they should be a fearless army (nids, and orks). Because while I do think Tau would fight on to the last man, their falling back would be more for tactical reasons than fear.

Thoughts?

The Tau aren't relgious zealots like the imperium. Zealotry is the reason people like the taliban and WW2 japanese were able to blow themselves up in such large numbers.

There needs to be differences. For example, marines are always described as fearless throughout the novels and codexes, willing to sacrifice anything throughout the course of battle, yet they do not get fearless. Necrons, it a similar vain, cannot know fear, it's impossible, they are metal and wire, incapable of fear. You can go down the list of races and find they would all either be Ld. 10 or fearless, but then it'd be a boring game. Tau can have lower Ld. as they don't take psykic tests, ever, and aren't supossed to be in CC.

Fluff doesn't equal rules. As much as it makes sense for tau to have a low leadership and either a re-roll for it or a special rule, they don't.

Might as well ask why soulless metal machines try to run from combat that they know they are too slow to get out of.

Answer: No one can be as good as space marines.