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I hate to be new on a forum and the first thing i post is a new thread asking for help but I can't find what I'm looking for.

I haven't played Warhammer in about 15 years but i finally decided taking up the hobby again.
My first thought was that I wanted to play a only T'au sept army but after looking at several army lists I couldn't find a single one that was pure T'au sept.

Is it that sub optimal to play T'au sept only?

8th ed is all about allying ATM. Even those who don't have allies in form of another codex(like imperium resulting in typical imperium army having 2 codexes as minimum, more typically 3) within same codex you are heavily encouraged to take more than 1 sept/chapter/dynasty/regiment/whatever to maximize benefit unit gets from free rules. This is why for example you don't see any blood angel devastators but instead have those as raven guard or dark angels(this despite fluff saying blood angels have equally much devastators but these traits etc aren't generating fluffy armies anyway). Why have extra oomph in h2h when you can have -1 to hit or rerolling 1's if you stand still(which devastators like to do)?

So you don't see much tau sept alone because tau armies often have units that benefit more from other septs. You take tau units that benefit most to tau sept and others to other septs.

For T'au if you're not taking Sa'cea Markerlight Marksmen (and their Stratagems) or Vio'la QFB Commanders you're intentionally hobbling yourself.

The pure Tau Sept player in my group is proving hard to beat. It's viability (as with most things) presumably depends largely on what lists and mindset your regular opponents bring to the table.

While you can do this... the question has to be why would you?

Sure there is a lot of controversy between allies right now, but that is mostly imperium and eldar soups.

Tau going single sept is like a marine player going only primaris. You can do it, but not sure it gives you much, and it feels a little too hair shirt for me.

 Lokke wrote:
I hate to be new on a forum and the first thing i post is a new thread asking for help but I can't find what I'm looking for.

I haven't played Warhammer in about 15 years but i finally decided taking up the hobby again.
My first thought was that I wanted to play a only T'au sept army but after looking at several army lists I couldn't find a single one that was pure T'au sept.

Is it that sub optimal to play T'au sept only?

Soup is all the rage these days, but you don't have to do it.
I play pure dynasty trait lists, and I can do just fine in my little pond. So if you want pure T'au just go for it.
The resident T'au player at my FLGS plays T'au, and it does pretty well, especially against armies that really want to get into melee.

ReemuleMade, I would like to play only one sept because I like to have the same color scheme on all my models.
I have 2 reasons for this, it's looks great when the whole army is the same color scheme and I don't have to repaint or buy new units every time I'm going to change my list in some way.

I guess I could magnetize all shareholderpads and paint them in different colors to show what sept they belong to.
should be reasonably easy to change sept then.

I play pure Emperor's Children. Its what my army is, and what my army always will be. I haven't taken the plunge with any allies yet, and my army works fine in my meta. I know I'm holding myself back, but i have never had a problem in casual pick up games, and have beaten tournament lists with a bit of luck on my side.

If you don't want to play different Septs, don't feel obligated. Your army may not be the flavor of the month optimal, but you aren't going to gimp yourself too badly. At the end of the day play what you like and play to have fun. Understanding how your list works is even more important than the quality of the list itself.

You'll barely lose any efficiency going pure Tau. A few re rolls here and there maybe that could be put into the Sept that allows a single re roll per unit (sacea I think). You can certainly be highly competitive without mixing septs

Going pure Tau won't harm you nearly as much as, say, going imperial knights, and not taking allies to cover their major weaknesses (CP and scoring objectives).

I'll try to find a good list that I can modify to work with only tau sept. then when I have a greater understanding of the army and the tau sept I can always add some other septs later on.

Thanks for the help

 Lokke wrote:
ReemuleMade, I would like to play only one sept because I like to have the same color scheme on all my models.

The Tau are practical enough to use all the same color scheme on their forces even if they come from different Septs. It's not like Tau Septs are space marine chapters.

Well this list seems to be only T'au and won the "biggest event of last week". No idea what that was or how relevant, but there you go: http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2018/09/40k-top-list-of-the-week-september-26th-dao-of-tau.html

 BaconCatBug wrote:
For T'au if you're not taking Sa'cea Markerlight Marksmen (and their Stratagems) or Vio'la QFB Commanders you're intentionally hobbling yourself.

Wrong - Commanders have great overwatch ability with 4 heavy weapons. Taking a non tau spet commander gimps your overwatch hugely with that whole detachment. Plus - none of them can benift from the +1w stratagem which is basically the only reason to play a tau army.

Tau sept for your whole army is actually fine - in fact - optimal.

It really only makes sense if you take a 3 marksmen vanguard - but then you lose out on 4 CP...4 CP is too good to pass up.
You can do a battalion but then now you even have firewarriors that can get +1 to wound. Now the benifits of a few rerolls to hit on markers lights - that you can get twice from shadowsun already...who is...tau sept. I see approx 0 benefit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lokke wrote:
I'll try to find a good list that I can modify to work with only tau sept. then when I have a greater understanding of the army and the tau sept I can always add some other septs later on.

Thanks for the help

Full Tau sept is actually the best.

Go for it. It's how I play it.

 John Prins wrote:

 Lokke wrote:
ReemuleMade, I would like to play only one sept because I like to have the same color scheme on all my models.

The Tau are practical enough to use all the same color scheme on their forces even if they come from different Septs. It's not like Tau Septs are space marine chapters.

The Tau may be practical, but it is considered bad sportmanship to do it that way. Your opponent needs to be able to identify your models by sight.

 Crimson Devil wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

 Lokke wrote:
ReemuleMade, I would like to play only one sept because I like to have the same color scheme on all my models.

The Tau are practical enough to use all the same color scheme on their forces even if they come from different Septs. It's not like Tau Septs are space marine chapters.

The Tau may be practical, but it is considered bad sportmanship to do it that way. Your opponent needs to be able to identify your models by sight.

Yeah I realized very quickly how unpractical it is to take models painted the same can give them different army traits. It is uncool - it's un sporting - and in many cases - not even worth the effort. There are some cases that it is worth the effort and that is what i call bad game design.

For example. There is no reason to ever take Ultramarine Vanguard vets. Vanguard vets are always better being white scars or black templar. Very bad design.

 Crimson Devil wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

 Lokke wrote:
ReemuleMade, I would like to play only one sept because I like to have the same color scheme on all my models.

The Tau are practical enough to use all the same color scheme on their forces even if they come from different Septs. It's not like Tau Septs are space marine chapters.

The Tau may be practical, but it is considered bad sportmanship to do it that way. Your opponent needs to be able to identify your models by sight.

would it be good enough if the only difference between the septs are the color of the units sholderpads?

 Xenomancers wrote:

Full Tau sept is actually the best.
Go for it. It's how I play it.

Great, then I'll start with a pure tau sept army.
Maybe I'll ad some other septs in the future.

 Lokke wrote:

 Crimson Devil wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

 Lokke wrote:
ReemuleMade, I would like to play only one sept because I like to have the same color scheme on all my models.

The Tau are practical enough to use all the same color scheme on their forces even if they come from different Septs. It's not like Tau Septs are space marine chapters.

The Tau may be practical, but it is considered bad sportmanship to do it that way. Your opponent needs to be able to identify your models by sight.

would it be good enough if the only difference between the septs are the color of the units sholderpads?

Yeah, as long as there is some sort of clearly defined form of identification. It just has to be consistent. I personally never bothered, and just ran pure dynasties. Less book keeping and I don't like soup.

I play a T'au Sept only list, and it is a lot of fun. I am also pretty new to playing the game(I think I have played seven or eight games), and I am just playing against friends for fun.

With my list I have beaten:

Grey Knights - Three wins against them, but that isn't saying much considering how bad their codex is right now.

Orks - I played them once and tabled them. Again, they only have an index right now, so not exactly noteworthy.

Blood Angels - This one was pretty one sided as well because my opponent failed his opening charges.

Ultramarines - I have beaten them twice. The first one was very close on points, but I nearly tabled my opponent. The second game was much closer as far as models getting killed goes, but I won pretty big on points.

Mechanicum/Knights - Faced these guys once and won. It was very close. Knights are legit.

Like I said, I play friends for fun, so none of us are running optimized lists. If you want to do tournaments you will probably need to go multi-Sept, but for fun games you can still be very competitive with just the T'au Sept.

 Crimson Devil wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

 Lokke wrote:
ReemuleMade, I would like to play only one sept because I like to have the same color scheme on all my models.

The Tau are practical enough to use all the same color scheme on their forces even if they come from different Septs. It's not like Tau Septs are space marine chapters.

The Tau may be practical, but it is considered bad sportmanship to do it that way. Your opponent needs to be able to identify your models by sight.

That's what showing your army list at the start of the game and declaring septs during deployment is for. Yes, it's potentially confusing, even to yourself, if you mix and match heavily, and I'd recommend using colored stickers on the bases or something to be clear.

But I wouldn't go so far as to call it bad sportsmanship unless you completely blindside your opponent with it during play. Make it clear before you start, and generally the mix and match approach tends to use specific models, you're not likely to see three battalions, each with a different Sept. It'll be a Sac'ea Vanguard or something similar.

Strictly speaking you could paint them all to be hyper-canonical T'au sept from a specific year, month and week, and you could still use whatever Sept rules for the detachment you wanted.

Just paint some shoulder-pads different to appease those who dislike playing by the rules and be done with it. Or paint their base edges differently.

Pure tau sept with 3 battalion or 2 batallions and a brigade let you spam the tau stratagem every single turn which can let your 100 ish tau fire warriors (784 points with supports)in rapid fire range kill a knight a turn.

Just one use for pure tau sept i use. Im sure others exsist.

If you are rushing to play in competitive tournaments and want to do as well as you can then yes, putting in some other septs to get their stratagems is sensible and will likely improve your results.

If you are not playing in that 1% or so of the hobby it really doesn't matter. Tau are probably an "A-" tier codex right now, and in a meta which isn't dominated by soups they are extremely good - mono sept or otherwise.

 Lokke wrote:

would it be good enough if the only difference between the septs are the color of the units sholderpads?

Septs are distinguished by their markings, not by their main colours. The main colours are based on where they're fighting. If two septs are fighting somewhere arid then they'll both be painted brown primarily.

Those white flashes denote Tau sept - any sept might be brown if that's the appropriate colour for where they're fighting and Tau sept could be any color.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Lokke wrote:

would it be good enough if the only difference between the septs are the color of the units sholderpads?

Septs are distinguished by their markings, not by their main colours. The main colours are based on where they're fighting. If two septs are fighting somewhere arid then they'll both be painted brown primarily.

Those white flashes denote Tau sept - any sept might be brown if that's the appropriate colour for where they're fighting and Tau sept could be any color.

Fluff wise as above, totally cool.

Game wise, just ask yourself: is it reasonable to ask my opponent to remember which is which?

If it's pretty clear at a glance what the difference between the factions is then it's all good!

 Stux wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Lokke wrote:

would it be good enough if the only difference between the septs are the color of the units sholderpads?

Septs are distinguished by their markings, not by their main colours. The main colours are based on where they're fighting. If two septs are fighting somewhere arid then they'll both be painted brown primarily.

Those white flashes denote Tau sept - any sept might be brown if that's the appropriate colour for where they're fighting and Tau sept could be any color.

Fluff wise as above, totally cool.

Game wise, just ask yourself: is it reasonable to ask my opponent to remember which is which?

If it's pretty clear at a glance what the difference between the factions is then it's all good!

Gamewise and fluffwise match just fine in this instance - it's just that unlike marines, for example, the difference between septs is the color of those little flashes, not the primary color.

This is an important distinction because lots of people think that brown primary color means Tau sept which is incorrect. (same as people think green and tan is Cadian which is also incorrect)