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Hello fellows,

My main army is Tau, and I really like the 30k style of Warhammer, but they are incompatible because the Tau race juste started in M35 and was able to fight in M39. So it is impossible to play if I want to respect the Lore.

Could you find a good reason to play Tau in a 30k universe ? What could justify it ? Time travel maybe ?

I'm sure I'm not the only one to ask it, and I'd be very interested in your opinion.

There's plenty of other xenos races in the galaxy that could have been fought during the Great Crusade, so if you manage to find someone willing to play against you, you could use that.

I wouldn't expect it in the competitive sense, but if you're friends are cool with it, then I don't see a reason why you couldn't in friendly games.

The regular opponent of my Solar Auxilia and Questoris Knights are the Tau. We really don't bother that much with whether or not it should be possible, just passing them off as an unidentified race of high-tech humans or xenos encountered during the Great Crusade.

Like has been previously mentioned they could easily pass as an advanced Xeno race encountered in the Crusade, or by converging forces in the Heresy. Even advanced humans.

Also... the Warp? This happens in the 40k timeline. A Tau Attack Cadre boards a Space Hulk that appeared in orbit around one of their main Sept Worlds. Upon boarding and beginning to explore, the Tau find that the Space Hulk translates into the Warp... causing daemonic fun times. Due to the vagaries of the Warp, the Space Hulk returns to real space almost 10,000 years earlier... leaving the Tau to attempt to find a way home.

Hell, the Ethereals could be advanced descendants of such a force, returning home to find their people in a primitive warring state and using their advanced tech to rapidly progress the species to a level they're more familiar with.

This sort of time dilation happens all the time and goes both directions.

FORGE THAT NARRATIVE!

Also... if your opponents are too worried about the race, they're likely more worried about fluff than gameplay. Maybe find new friends to play with?

I'd say the best way is to say they're not Tau, but a highly advanced race similar to what the Tau will become. If you want them to be actual Tau, it may be harder to justify.

Technologically advanced human and xenos enclaves is the single easiest way to justify it.

as for army building, are you following all of the same list rules? if so, I'd actually want to know how the armies compare.

It's another xeno race like all encountered before it.
Just because it's not in the fluff does not mean it's not happened or its not possible

Just be careful running against legion lists as IMO, they hit a damn site harder than regular 40k marines and stack tons of special and heavy weapons.


Playing an EC legion would be hell for you as its ridiculously fast and drags everyone into CC as quickly as possible.
And I'd hate to see what fulgrim can do to tau :p

To be honest, you can make any army work if you want. However, there isn't really a ruleset for "30k" there are rules for running games set during the Age of Darkness or Horus Heresy. Now I'm sure I'm going to get flamed for being an elitist or pedantic here but to me, you can play your Tau against 30k legions for any number of reasons you can invent. That's fine, I would play you, however you aren't really getting into 30k if you are just using your 40k army and making up head cannon for it. Horus Heresy is Legions/Mech/Aux and militia. Yes yes, Eldar Orks 30k grumble. But those armies aren't factored into the balance of the HH game. If you play 40k armies against 30k ones then you are essentially just playing 40k as you aren't using any AOD rules.

This is just my opinion. I hope I don't sound like a jerk. But if you want to play your 40k Tau against HH armies then cool, but if you actually like the 30k game, then pick up a 30k faction as that is what the game is designed around/why it is so balanced. In a pick up game, I would totally play you, but if I was running a 30k event, I would expect people to bring factions from the forgeworld books.

There are no Tau. But there are other xenos with advanced technology.

As others have said, I'd go the route of using them as a high tech contemporary Xenos army. If you were playin against 30K armies in our group, all we'd ask is that you use one of the 30K FOCs, and not use formations. That's how we play 40K armies vs. 30K armies anyways, YMMV.

Of course, as you alluded to, time travel makes all fluff problems disappear, if it's important for you to maintain your Tau-ness. And the good people at GW have given you a huge, anything-goes Time Travel machine in the form of the Warp.

30k.. Good luck meeting a primarch in close combat....

That's going to hurt, alot, so many times.

 jhe90 wrote:
30k.. Good luck meeting a primarch in close combat....

That's going to hurt, alot, so many times.

True, but from a Tau player's perspective, close combat only happens when you roll snake eyes on your Thrust move.

 Kriswall wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:
30k.. Good luck meeting a primarch in close combat....

That's going to hurt, alot, so many times.

True, but from a Tau player's perspective, close combat only happens when you roll snake eyes on your Thrust move.

The moment they do, dead as a dodo however.
And fire warriors etc, not even slow one down.

Well, if Primarchs and Tau lead to a mismatch, just don't repeat the mismatch.

Aye. But iton warriors can spam dakka well,death guard counter nc. Interesting match up

Nope.

.

From a historically non-Marine player, 30k's appeal has nothing to do with the Legiones Astartes or the Horus Heresy background. It's the promise of a more balanced 40k rule set.

Marine players can play either the severely unbalanced 40k or the more balanced (from what I can tell) 30k. Xenos players don't have that option. It's unbalanced, almost unplayable core 40k or nothing.

Is it surprising that people are constantly looking for ways to shoehorn Xenos into 30k? It's frustrating when the response is a simple "nope" or a long sales pitch on picking a Legion. I spent a ton of money on my Tau and Necron armies. I'd like to use them, but 40k isn't really fun anymore. 30k IS fun... but kind of elitist and not very welcoming.

The internet is full of opinions, but the only opinions that ultimately matter are you and your opponents opinions. If your opponents don't mind playing their 30K army against a Tau army, then go for it.

Truth be told, 30K isn't really much more balanced than 40K. I suspect most of the balance is due to the Legions all having the same core army list. However, there are aspects of the HH game that limit your army that aren't there in 40K. For example, there's a certain percentage of your points you can spend on Lords of War based on how many points you are playing. No formations, and FOCs are enforced. There's no reason these limits can't be used in 40K games.

One potential item of contention when mixing 40K with 30K is whether the 40K army should be restricted by the same HH restrictions as the 30K army. That's something you'd just have to work out with your opponent.

 Kriswall wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:
30k.. Good luck meeting a primarch in close combat....

That's going to hurt, alot, so many times.

True, but from a Tau player's perspective, close combat only happens when you roll snake eyes on your Thrust move.

unless you bump into Curze, or Corax, or Mortarion. ESPECIALLY Mortarion.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kriswall wrote:
but kind of elitist and not very welcoming.

IDK, Locally and on this post I see a lot more people willing to play with xenos no issue. the only hard part is getting both sides to agree on the army build rules (generally the 'no formations, just use age of darkness CAD' leaves many partially upset)

 jasper76 wrote:
The internet is full of opinions, but the only opinions that ultimately matter are you and your opponents opinions. If your opponents don't mind playing their 30K army against a Tau army, then go for it.

Truth be told, 30K isn't really much more balanced than 40K. I suspect most of the balance is due to the Legions all having the same core army list. However, there are aspects of the HH game that limit your army that aren't there in 40K. For example, there's a certain percentage of your points you can spend on Lords of War based on how many points you are playing. No formations, and FOCs are enforced. There's no reason these limits can't be used in 40K games.

One potential item of contention when mixing 40K with 30K is whether the 40K army should be restricted by the same HH restrictions as the 30K army. That's something you'd just have to work out with your opponent.

Pretty much this.

30k is so much more balanced because of less forces that FW needed to take into consideration when balancing it. After all, it's predominantly Marines, Mechanicus, Solar Auxilia or Cult Militia, with a smattering of Knights in there. That's it.

When you start bringing in the various xeno forces, balancing becomes a lot harder, and it's regarded that many xeno forces are very powerful without Formations.

If FW were to condone bringing in xeno forces, they should only bring in Orks, all varieties of Eldar, and then probably create something akin to the Militia Provenances, allowing for Not!Tau and Not!Necrons to be taken - creating the various xeno races that could have fought against the Great Crusade. Of course, each should be rebalanced to fit with the 30k armies.

And of course, the AoD detachment, LOW restriction and the lack of formations also helps greatly, and should be adhered to when playing against 30k lists.

30K has its own internal balance issues. Anything with a jump pack is criminally over-priced, the troop section in general is mostly a tax (so any Legion that has characters or rules that allow them to bring potent units as troops automatically move up in the rankings), and there are a few units that are just bonkers good (Whirlwind Scorpius probably most egregious).

The biggest thing keeping 30K more "balanced" is the far smaller amount of asshats playing it. In the past, the barrier was mostly cost, so you could expect the players to be mature adults with more serious problems in their lives (careers, kids, etc) than to get hot and bothered about toy soldier games like children with nothing better to do (include everyone still in college in this, so the vast majority of the 40K player-base).

Background wise, as you say, you can't be 'the Tau'. But a race of high tech xenos isnt unrealistic as a force being attacked by or attacking the Imperium. There was a human civilisation called Gardinaal which had high tech levels and combat walkers almost but not quite able to engage titans.

Game wise, you've not got much of a leg to stand on in formal events, but in a game with friends I dont see why it's an issue.

You essentially have three options:

Use a straight out of codex and supplement Tau army. Not recommended as formations and special detachments are usually picked out as people's big issue with the game today.

Use the tau codex but with age of darkness rules. That means only fire warriors and kroot can take objectives, extra HQ and elite slots, and I believe it recommend doubling allowable squadsizes.

Use a counts as force. Pick a 30k army list to proxy. If your force is mostly battlesuits, Legio Cybernetica might work well. If
Fire warrior heavy, consider either solar auxilia or militia grenadiers.

You could say they were interex and the kroot are the kinebrechs. Would work well and make some sense.

 Kriswall wrote:
From a historically non-Marine player, 30k's appeal has nothing to do with the Legiones Astartes or the Horus Heresy background. It's the promise of a more balanced 40k rule set.

Marine players can play either the severely unbalanced 40k or the more balanced (from what I can tell) 30k. Xenos players don't have that option. It's unbalanced, almost unplayable core 40k or nothing.

Is it surprising that people are constantly looking for ways to shoehorn Xenos into 30k? It's frustrating when the response is a simple "nope" or a long sales pitch on picking a Legion. I spent a ton of money on my Tau and Necron armies. I'd like to use them, but 40k isn't really fun anymore. 30k IS fun... but kind of elitist and not very welcoming.

This is not really true. If 30k seems more balanced to you it's because 30k armies are designed to be balanced against each other and competitive Tau don't mesh. So saying you want to play with your army could well displace the balance you say you desire.

I don't think eldar or Tau will fit well in a 30k campaign - they aren't designed to fit into the heresy background. 30k armies are typically prohibited from 40k tournaments so that's not going to happen often. I think eldar and Tau are best suited in a 40k environment. If you read the posts in this forum a lot of people who play actual 30k armies got into it because they are turned off by 40k so an eldar or Tau player looking for a game of 30k are going to have a hard time finding games - especially if they play a competitive list which is a turn off to lots of 30k players looking for an alternative.

People use 40k marines in 30k so why not tau?

To answer the OP, no I wouldn't want to play against Tau with my 30k army because I already know how it would go. The amount of twin linked, ignores cover AP2/3 they can put out would decimate my 30k army.

Anyone who doesn't want to use AoD detachment when playing 30k needs to read the part of the red book where FW specifically tell you that's the best way to mix 40k and 30k. If you restrict 40k armies to AoD detachment, 1 LOW limited to 25% of the points, only troops score and play an age of darkness mission they can almost be balanced games. If you let the 40k player use their rules while you're stuck with AoD, you're going to have an uphill battle. 30k is not meant for multiple formations, free vehicles/upgrades, 5 wraithknights at 2k points, etc. Those are the specific reasons I got away from 40k to begin with. I would rather paint than play against Tau, Eldar or Necrons using their decurion detachments. Actually I would rather swallow my dice one by one than play against that.

Bottom line, if you want to play 30k, get a 30k army or at least play by the age of darkness rules completely. If you use something that doesn't have an HQ (Harlequins or Skitarii), just nominate one of your ICs to be your Warlord and count him as your compulsory HQ.

 Toofast wrote:

Anyone who doesn't want to use AoD detachment when playing 30k needs to read the part of the red book where FW specifically tell you that's the best way...

Who the feth is Forgeworld to tell me what's the best way to play games. They. Work. For. Us.

I do agree with a bunch of your army limitations...I'm a limitations guy, so to speak, I love em....but FW makes rules for us to consider, not rules for us to cut our wrists by.