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I play tau.
Okay, got that out of the way.

Say that someone wants to run a 30k campaign. Nids players have zoats, eldar can be more or less unchanged, ditto necrons. But what about my precious tau? When the fluff says that they were pretechnological ten thousand years ago, which AOS faction should I be bringing to a HH game? Lizardmen?

Tau wouldn't survive in 30K, they'd be so far behind the other races and so few in number in comparison. They basically only lasted that long because they were on the edge of the Galaxy and not in the pathway of anything to get noticed.

The only way you could do it would be to have a group of Tau somehow get sucked into some part of the Warp and then get spat out in the wrong timeline.

The other option might be a rebel group of Eldar who armed primitive Tau with their own weapons and armours. So basically Eldar Tau conversions - a test army constructed in secret to test the battle potential of the species

Alternatively you can use them to represent one of the countless alien empires encountered during the crusade. It wouldn’t be the Tau exactly but they could stand in for an advanced alien race.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
Alternatively you can use them to represent one of the countless alien empires encountered during the crusade. It wouldn’t be the Tau exactly but they could stand in for an advanced alien race.

This.

A Battlesuit heavy list sounds much like the Interex with their fighting platform things.

the Tau themselves where identified as stone age primitives by a Explorator fleet in M 35 (if anyone wants to know why the IoM will exterminate seemingly innocent non threatening xenos species BTW this is your best example) so yeah in the Horus Heresy they'd simply not be around. Honestly, for Heresy era campaign you'd be better off just starting a marine lsit designed for it.

Mmmm what about Kroot?

I know their guns would be probably garbo as iirc it was upgraded by the tau

but as a base army it might be interesting.

Sorry, tau were still cavemen then

 Brotherjulian wrote:
Sorry, tau were still cavemen then

they likely hadn't even evolved then.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
Alternatively you can use them to represent one of the countless alien empires encountered during the crusade. It wouldn’t be the Tau exactly but they could stand in for an advanced alien race.

Brilliant! Also, think of the conversion opportunities. Use the rules for a generic alien or even advanced human race.

I really like the idea proposed by a few others of having them be part of an Interex army. Maybe swipe out some bits of other model lines for conversions, like maybe Seraphon, since if I recall correctly, a large number of the Interex's forces were composed of some kind of reptile race. Tyranid and Kroot bits might work here and there, and maybe even the occasional Chaos bit since there was also a species of semi-wormlike creatures, like the Interex admiral. You could also have a whole bunch of Guardsmen models, with some of them maybe wielding Necromunda weapons and with some power armor bits; those weapons from House Orlock I think would look good due to their somewhat strange and futuristic designs. Repainted and maybe modified Skitarii radium weapons would also work for this purpose. Due to how similar in ideology the Interex's was to that of the United Federation of Planets, maybe you could paint up at least some of them with Starfleet colors:



These are just some suggestions. When it comes to 30K, especially in the area of non-Marine and Titan Chaos units and aliens, the sky is often the limit.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
Alternatively you can use them to represent one of the countless alien empires encountered during the crusade. It wouldn’t be the Tau exactly but they could stand in for an advanced alien race.

This.

A Battlesuit heavy list sounds much like the Interex with their fighting platform things.

Yeah, Interex are a great shout out for this. From my understanding, they were another human civilization that was as (or maybe more) advanced as the fledgling Imperium at the time. They also had alliances with various Xenos groups.
Another option could be the Cabal, which was another group of multiple Xenos races joined together.

So fluff-wise, you should have your T'au count as either of those, because the actual T'au during 30K were indeed just primitive savannah dwellers in their own Stone age.

Alternatively, you could always say your group of 40K T'au got sucked into a Warp Rift and came out during 30K, because that's just as plausible

-

The Tau are really just supposed to be an example of one of uncounted numbers of Xenos empires sprinkled around the galaxy, big enough to be powerful locally in their tiny pond but too small to really be significant on the galactic stage. For an HH game, they could stand in wonderfully for any number of Crusade era xenos factions that the Great Crusade encountered.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The Tau are really just supposed to be an example of one of uncounted numbers of Xenos empires sprinkled around the galaxy, big enough to be powerful locally in their tiny pond but too small to really be significant on the galactic stage.

I think Tau are supposed to be relevent on the galactic stage. They have defeated a Tyranid Hive Fleet, a major Ork Waaagh! and an Imperial Crusade. Not only that, but following all those events, they have actually gained some territory. Their technology is rising and so are their numbers. That makes them relevent on the galactic stage, even if they are still a minor player on that stage.

epronovost wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The Tau are really just supposed to be an example of one of uncounted numbers of Xenos empires sprinkled around the galaxy, big enough to be powerful locally in their tiny pond but too small to really be significant on the galactic stage.

I think Tau are supposed to be relevent on the galactic stage. They have defeated a Tyranid Hive Fleet, a major Ork Waaagh! and an Imperial Crusade. Not only that, but following all those events, they have actually gained some territory. Their technology is rising and so are their numbers. That makes them relevent on the galactic stage, even if they are still a minor player on that stage.

They're big in their area, but all that takes place in essentially a tiny void between larger Imperial held regions. They held off a Hive Fleet yes...but with the assistance of the Imperial Guard/Navy, and Gorgon was a splinter fleet, not in the same size category like Behemoth or Kraken. Yeah they held off an Imperial Crusade, but IIRC that was a half dozen regiments (out of Billions of such regiments in the Guard) and a few marine chapters, IIRC fewer troops than were dedicated to stuff like the siege of Vraks. The Tau's FTL capabilities are some of the most limited of any 40k faction, and the extent of their empire is a small blip of a few dozen worlds in the Ultima Segmentum.

They could also represent one of the more technologically advanced, non-compliant human civilisations that was wiped out.

 Vaktathi wrote:

epronovost wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The Tau are really just supposed to be an example of one of uncounted numbers of Xenos empires sprinkled around the galaxy, big enough to be powerful locally in their tiny pond but too small to really be significant on the galactic stage.

I think Tau are supposed to be relevent on the galactic stage. They have defeated a Tyranid Hive Fleet, a major Ork Waaagh! and an Imperial Crusade. Not only that, but following all those events, they have actually gained some territory. Their technology is rising and so are their numbers. That makes them relevent on the galactic stage, even if they are still a minor player on that stage.

They're big in their area, but all that takes place in essentially a tiny void between larger Imperial held regions. They held off a Hive Fleet yes...but with the assistance of the Imperial Guard/Navy, and Gorgon was a splinter fleet, not in the same size category like Behemoth or Kraken. Yeah they held off an Imperial Crusade, but IIRC that was a half dozen regiments (out of Billions of such regiments in the Guard) and a few marine chapters, IIRC fewer troops than were dedicated to stuff like the siege of Vraks. The Tau's FTL capabilities are some of the most limited of any 40k faction, and the extent of their empire is a small blip of a few dozen worlds in the Ultima Segmentum.

god help the Tau if a tendril of Levithan ever hit them, they'd be killed and fast

 Vaktathi wrote:
Yeah they held off an Imperial Crusade, but IIRC that was a half dozen regiments (out of Billions of such regiments in the Guard) and a few marine chapters,

That's more accurate for the battle of Taros, a small human colony that defected to the Tau which saw combat between roughly 10 000 Tau vs 20 000 Imperial Guardsmen and Space Marines. The Damocles Gulf Crusade involved millions of guardsmen and at least 8 Chapters half of which were First Founding Chapters (White Scars, Raven Guard, Iron Hands, Ultramarine) and two of which were second Founding (the Novamarines and the Black Templars).

epronovost wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Yeah they held off an Imperial Crusade, but IIRC that was a half dozen regiments (out of Billions of such regiments in the Guard) and a few marine chapters,

That's more accurate for the battle of Taros, a small human colony that defected to the Tau which saw combat between roughly 10 000 Tau vs 20 000 Imperial Guardsmen and Space Marines. The Damocles Gulf Crusade involved millions of guardsmen and at least 8 Chapters half of which were First Founding Chapters (White Scars, Raven Guard, Iron Hands, Ultramarine) and two of which were second Founding (the Novamarines and the Black Templars).

Didn't Damocles Gulf end when the Tyranids forced the IoM to redeploy more then anything else? if one word can sum up the Tau it's IMHO "Lucky"

BrianDavion wrote:

epronovost wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Yeah they held off an Imperial Crusade, but IIRC that was a half dozen regiments (out of Billions of such regiments in the Guard) and a few marine chapters,

That's more accurate for the battle of Taros, a small human colony that defected to the Tau which saw combat between roughly 10 000 Tau vs 20 000 Imperial Guardsmen and Space Marines. The Damocles Gulf Crusade involved millions of guardsmen and at least 8 Chapters half of which were First Founding Chapters (White Scars, Raven Guard, Iron Hands, Ultramarine) and two of which were second Founding (the Novamarines and the Black Templars).

Didn't Damocles Gulf end when the Tyranids forced the IoM to redeploy more then anything else? if one word can sum up the Tau it's IMHO "Lucky"

I mean they are Blue

Literally cavemen

epronovost wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Yeah they held off an Imperial Crusade, but IIRC that was a half dozen regiments (out of Billions of such regiments in the Guard) and a few marine chapters,

That's more accurate for the battle of Taros, a small human colony that defected to the Tau which saw combat between roughly 10 000 Tau vs 20 000 Imperial Guardsmen and Space Marines. The Damocles Gulf Crusade involved millions of guardsmen and at least 8 Chapters half of which were First Founding Chapters (White Scars, Raven Guard, Iron Hands, Ultramarine) and two of which were second Founding (the Novamarines and the Black Templars).

It's possible I mixed up Damocles and Taros, even then however, millions of guardsmen is an irrelevant and trivial counting of the Imperium's strength on a galactic scale, when there's tens or hundreds of trillions of them. Elements of 8 chapters may have been involved, but not the entirety of each chapter, and that's only 8 of 1000 chapters. Even that is basically just matching the scale of the Vraksian rebellion on one world that was considered a sideshow blip of a backwater warzone for most of its duration. The Tau are undoubtedly powerful matched combatant for combatant, it's just that the big players have several orders of magnitude advantage in scale.

BrianDavion wrote:

epronovost wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Yeah they held off an Imperial Crusade, but IIRC that was a half dozen regiments (out of Billions of such regiments in the Guard) and a few marine chapters,

That's more accurate for the battle of Taros, a small human colony that defected to the Tau which saw combat between roughly 10 000 Tau vs 20 000 Imperial Guardsmen and Space Marines. The Damocles Gulf Crusade involved millions of guardsmen and at least 8 Chapters half of which were First Founding Chapters (White Scars, Raven Guard, Iron Hands, Ultramarine) and two of which were second Founding (the Novamarines and the Black Templars).

Didn't Damocles Gulf end when the Tyranids forced the IoM to redeploy more then anything else? if one word can sum up the Tau it's IMHO "Lucky"

That's basically the story of the Tau. There's a lot going on in the galaxy and all the big players have more important things to worry about than a small conglomeration of a couple dozen worlds when they lost twice as many systems in the last week to bigger fish

 Vaktathi wrote:
The Tau are really just supposed to be an example of one of uncounted numbers of Xenos empires sprinkled around the galaxy, big enough to be powerful locally in their tiny pond but too small to really be significant on the galactic stage

Honestly before the mech suits really became popular I think the Tau were going to be a catch-all army comprised of all the hanging on Xenos. A means for GW to have some creative xenos forces without having to make a whole army for them. However the Crisis suits and the whole mech-appeal of the army really took off in a big way. Even the main ally, the Kroot, have been left in the dust (so to speak) compared to the advances in mech suits. Heck FW has a huge number of mech suits and parts way above what many other Xenos factions got from FW (even the long standing Tyranids have a tiny offering compared to Tau).

A twinkle in their grand pappy's eye.

Otherwise...play'em as some other xenos race present in 30k, but gets crushed by the IoM before 40k.

 Red Marine wrote:
A twinkle in their grand pappy's eye.

Otherwise...play'em as some other xenos race present in 30k, but gets crushed by the IoM before 40k.

call them the Sigmatari it sounds warhammerish, and Sigma is the letter that comes before Tau in the greek alphabet

echoing the notion that they cannot really lore wise be Tau in 30k as they were not even finished evolving yet (though cool modeling potential for caveman tau there with maybe slings instead of pulse rifles) Also as stated they could represent nay number of alien species the imperium ran into or even some human culture who kept advancing technology and everybody uses a form of advanced armor and laser weapons.

xenos from planet weeb