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 Irbis wrote:

leerm02 wrote:
mildly Asian/anime inspired roots

"Midly"?

They literally wear katanas and Ashigaru armour, meditate, have Asian themed hats and haircuts, rigid castes are arguably very Asian development (Indian ones being most famous but Japan has them too), they reject individuality in favour of collectivism, Ethereals use Far Eastern martial arts and monk clothing, mechs and tanks are really inspired by anime designs (down to guns and antennae), round emblems evoke many Asian flags - you'd literally struggle to make more East Asian civilization in 40K even if you tried...

Hell, what flag does Tau art remind you of?

The Tau Empire is also on the Eastern fringe of the Imperium, iirc.
The Tau do indeed take heavy influence from East Asian history and cultures, predominately the Japanese.
The Ethereals don't operate like the Japanese Emperor though (the Japanese Emperor historically didn't have that much direct political control and was more of a cultural /religious figurehead) and instead are just shady oligarchs. Which I think is a pity because the concept of an Empire ruled by a military dictatorship pretending to work in the best interests of their (powerless) sovereign has some potential. I guess GW didn't want to ape the Japanese Empire (or just Feudal Japan for that matter) completely.

On the sociopolitical front the TAU resemble a lot the Chinese.

Taoism abd the Greater Good politic philosophies have some obvious connections.

Furthermore the Tau cast system mymics the one in the PRC... 4 cast arround the ethereals... 4 classes arround the leading party... As you can see in the Flag.

Hardly a coincidence.

Tau were originally conceived as the 40k counterpart to Lizardmen. The 4 castes came out of the earth/wind/water/fire, plus overlords, they didn't start by copying castes per-say.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Tau were originally conceived as the 40k counterpart to Lizardmen. The 4 castes came out of the earth/wind/water/fire, plus overlords, they didn't start by copying castes per-say.

Huh that's interesting. What was the initial concept art like? Were they more reptilian?

https://gavthorpe.co.uk/2017/06/26/the-origins-of-the-tau/

Yeah, they actually started as Gav Thorpes personal faction before he even worked at GW!
Although the concept evolved into something quite unrecognisable, only keeping the 5 caste system.

Vatsetis wrote:
On the sociopolitical front the TAU resemble a lot the Chinese.

Taoism abd the Greater Good politic philosophies have some obvious connections.

Furthermore the Tau cast system mymics the one in the PRC... 4 cast arround the ethereals... 4 classes arround the leading party... As you can see in the Flag.

Hardly a coincidence.

And some of their warriors fly around with big daos.

I wish they'd kept the multi-species federation aspect more prominent, but I guess they don't sell as well as gigantic mech suits.

 Da Boss wrote:
I wish they'd kept the multi-species federation aspect more prominent, but I guess they don't sell as well as gigantic mech suits.

I feel like they would sell if they actually put out some decent models and rules for the auxiliary units. Outside of the Kroot infantry, everything else was metal?/failcast which was both harder to source in store while also being less appealing to many. Compound onto this the terrible rules they often had which made the models very unappealing for most. I mean in 6th/7th for example, Fire Warriors ended up being better in melee than Kroot due to the fact that 4+ armor and defensive grenades made them have some degree of staying power in melee while the Kroot just died to a stiff breeze and didn't really do all that much in melee with their garbage defense and low volume of melee attacks.

But yeah... GW really doubled down on the mecha side of things after the success of the Riptide with the Ghostkeel (a decently cool model all things considered) and the lore bending Stormsurge and Tau'nar (which are imo far less cool and an ill omen for the future direction of the Tau). Personally I loved the look, lore, and playstyle of a Tau mechanized (as in infantry, armor, plus some suits for support) over the mecha-ized style GW seems to lean into more and more.

I find the organisation of the Tau much more similar to Platos perfect system to anything on real Life.

You have the worker class that are given much more personal freedom in the earth caste.

Then you have the Warrior.caste were even breeding IS dictated by the state and they live comunally without even knowing Who IS father of Who in the fire caste.

And then you have the caste of philosofers Kings with ethereals.

Add pilot caste because scifi and the diplomatic caste because RPG and voila.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
https://gavthorpe.co.uk/2017/06/26/the-origins-of-the-tau/

Yeah, they actually started as Gav Thorpes personal faction before he even worked at GW!
Although the concept evolved into something quite unrecognisable, only keeping the 5 caste system.

That's really interesting - thanks!

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Irbis wrote:

leerm02 wrote:
mildly Asian/anime inspired roots

"Midly"?

They literally wear katanas and Ashigaru armour, meditate, have Asian themed hats and haircuts, rigid castes are arguably very Asian development (Indian ones being most famous but Japan has them too), they reject individuality in favour of collectivism, Ethereals use Far Eastern martial arts and monk clothing, mechs and tanks are really inspired by anime designs (down to guns and antennae), round emblems evoke many Asian flags - you'd literally struggle to make more East Asian civilization in 40K even if you tried...

Hell, what flag does Tau art remind you of?

The Tau Empire is also on the Eastern fringe of the Imperium, iirc.
The Tau do indeed take heavy influence from East Asian history and cultures, predominately the Japanese.
The Ethereals don't operate like the Japanese Emperor though (the Japanese Emperor historically didn't have that much direct political control and was more of a cultural /religious figurehead) and instead are just shady oligarchs. Which I think is a pity because the concept of an Empire ruled by a military dictatorship pretending to work in the best interests of their (powerless) sovereign has some potential. I guess GW didn't want to ape the Japanese Empire (or just Feudal Japan for that matter) completely.

I would assume that factual discrepancies between the Tau and real-life cultures come from the Tau aesthetic being based on a surface-level pastiche of Asian (but predominantly Japanese) culture, rather than a deliberate stylistic alteration based on a thorough understanding of Japanese history.

In other words I doubt anyone made a deliberate choice to avoid directly copying feudal Japanese politics; I think someone started with 'samurai/mecha are cool' and pasted that visual style onto a nascent faction concept. Their caste system is closer to Plato as someone already mentioned- it's mostly the really shallow things (they wear kabuto! they meditate! big robots!) that are overtly lifted from real-world inspiration.

I have heard that part of the reason GW went so heavy on the suits in the last decade was to try to break into the Japanese gunpla market; I have also heard that this failed horribly, as the price:quality ratio of GW's kits is pretty bad compared to gunpla. If that is the case then maybe we can see a pivot back towards the multi-species confederation and away from all mecha all the time.

The caste system is clearly inspired by the varnas. Ethereals are pretty spot-on for the Brahmins and the Fire Caste, the Khastriyas. It gets more harder to exactly map from there.

 catbarf wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Irbis wrote:

leerm02 wrote:
mildly Asian/anime inspired roots

"Midly"?

They literally wear katanas and Ashigaru armour, meditate, have Asian themed hats and haircuts, rigid castes are arguably very Asian development (Indian ones being most famous but Japan has them too), they reject individuality in favour of collectivism, Ethereals use Far Eastern martial arts and monk clothing, mechs and tanks are really inspired by anime designs (down to guns and antennae), round emblems evoke many Asian flags - you'd literally struggle to make more East Asian civilization in 40K even if you tried...

Hell, what flag does Tau art remind you of?

The Tau Empire is also on the Eastern fringe of the Imperium, iirc.
The Tau do indeed take heavy influence from East Asian history and cultures, predominately the Japanese.
The Ethereals don't operate like the Japanese Emperor though (the Japanese Emperor historically didn't have that much direct political control and was more of a cultural /religious figurehead) and instead are just shady oligarchs. Which I think is a pity because the concept of an Empire ruled by a military dictatorship pretending to work in the best interests of their (powerless) sovereign has some potential. I guess GW didn't want to ape the Japanese Empire (or just Feudal Japan for that matter) completely.

I would assume that factual discrepancies between the Tau and real-life cultures come from the Tau aesthetic being based on a surface-level pastiche of Asian (but predominantly Japanese) culture, rather than a deliberate stylistic alteration based on a thorough understanding of Japanese history.

Most likely, yes. Pastiches are what 40k is built on.
I just mean as a fluff concept it would have been an interesting bit of background to build around.

I'm not saying the asian influences don't exist, but I can say for my group of players we didn't recognize them because noone is into Anime or an expert on Asian culture. For us the Tau are just the "generic sci-fi aliens" in 40K. Little grey men, if you will. Of course they have the best tech, flying tanks and battle suits, because that's what Sci-Fi Aliens like to do.
The asian tropes are usually much more pronounced by 3rd party producers like WGE.

If you asked me which 40K Xenos faction represents stereotypical asians? Clearly Saim-Hann!

I've heard that Ork rumor before in my lgs. Except it was in regards to the cobbled together Ork craft and flyers/engines working during a waagh because of the psychic power (the orks believe it to work so then it does).

I don't really see the asian connection with saim hann, most of the eldar craftworlds are just misspelled gaelic/celtic stuff.

You can go multi-species and still go mecha. Either the Earth caste designs species specific suits to be supplied to allied species, or perhaps the different species design and build their own suits to ape the core Tau combat philosophy. Some other reason with equally valid logic could also be formulated.

The alien suits from District 9 would fit particularly nicely, for instance.

 Flinty wrote:
You can go multi-species and still go mecha. Either the Earth caste designs species specific suits to be supplied to allied species, or perhaps the different species design and build their own suits to ape the core Tau combat philosophy. Some other reason with equally valid logic could also be formulated.

The alien suits from District 9 would fit particularly nicely, for instance.

Seeing Vespids wear what is basically Advanced Power Armor from Fallout 2 would be pretty cool.

With Tau having a heavy asian influence, I'd assumed the vehicle naming conventions had come from the Maru naming convention of japanese ships, choosing aggressive shark species for warmachine names - until the relatively new Riptide and Stormsurge. Perhaps the next suit will be named Tsunami?