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Who or what would be the most "evil" or scary sect (?) faction (?) of Tau? I mean no prisoners, war crimes, complete destruction type deal. I am really thinking about making a Tau army. I have a lot of Kroot, Vespids, and some breachers. Im usually a "good" guy player and I want to branch out to some bad guy Tau.

I was thinking the Farsight Enclaves? But again, im really ignorant on the faction so any help or a point in a general direction would be cool.

Any member of the 4th Sphere expeditions.

The whole finding out the psychic races made the Greater Good a god made them go hyper Xenophobic.

 Gert wrote:
Any member of the 4th Sphere expeditions.

The whole finding out the psychic races made the Greater Good a god made them go hyper Xenophobic.

What is the 4th Sphere? And I want to field Kroot and Vespids (maybe 2/3 of the army). Wouldnt a xenophobic traits kinda shatter my lore?

To wedge the Tau into feudal Japan.

Farsight is your honorable Shogun.

The Ethereals are meddling ministers who care not for a Warrior's Code of Honor.

usmcmidn wrote:

What is the 4th Sphere? And I want to field Kroot and Vespids (maybe 2/3 of the army). Wouldnt a xenophobic traits kinda shatter my lore?

The 4th Sphere was the T'au's first use of Warp Drives, and it went disastrously bad when the entire fleet became stuck in the Warp after three quarters were annihilated by Daemons due to not having Gellar Fields to protect them.. The more psychic races basically started praying to the Greater Good to save them, which ended up manifesting a Warp Entity that did, in fact, save the 4th Sphere, depositing them in realspace.

The T'au in the 4th Sphere were horrified that the T'au'va had been perverted by the psychic races, which led to increased Xenophobia in their ranks. Auxiliaries were used as cannon fodder, or in some rare cases, slaughtered by T'au troops.
The 4th Sphere was brought back under the wider T'au umbrella when the 5th Sphere launched but many T'au escaped re-education and have formed a sort of subcult that believes no other race can truly accept the T'au'va without corrupting it.

usmcmidn wrote:
Who or what would be the most "evil" or scary sect (?) faction (?) of Tau? I mean no prisoners, war crimes, complete destruction type deal. I am really thinking about making a Tau army. I have a lot of Kroot, Vespids, and some breachers. Im usually a "good" guy player and I want to branch out to some bad guy Tau.

I was thinking the Farsight Enclaves? But again, im really ignorant on the faction so any help or a point in a general direction would be cool.

Farsight Enclaves are probably the least bad guys in all of 40K
GW increasingly gave the Tau some dark shades after their creation in 3rd edition, with evil agendas of the Ethereals and hints of mindwiping the allied species. Farsight though, just said nope to all that crap and does his own thing.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

usmcmidn wrote:
Who or what would be the most "evil" or scary sect (?) faction (?) of Tau? I mean no prisoners, war crimes, complete destruction type deal. I am really thinking about making a Tau army. I have a lot of Kroot, Vespids, and some breachers. Im usually a "good" guy player and I want to branch out to some bad guy Tau.

I was thinking the Farsight Enclaves? But again, im really ignorant on the faction so any help or a point in a general direction would be cool.

Farsight Enclaves are probably the least bad guys in all of 40K
GW increasingly gave the Tau some dark shades after their creation in 3rd edition, with evil agendas of the Ethereals and hints of mindwiping the allied species. Farsight though, just said nope to all that crap and does his own thing.

So how could I make some good head fluff lore with an army centered around Kroot and some Vespids? I want to field some blue fishy guys but not a lot (mainly support). I want to portray a very unmerciful army.

You would have to create your own justification.

ie you've got an expeditionary force that's been out on the fringes for ages and the tau are tired. They were almost slaughtered by an ambush by kroot and vespid auxilliary reinforcements showed up an pulled them out of the fire.

So this one particular tau army has jaded and aggressive tau with no mercy due to relentless attacks by horrors, but appreciates its auxiliaries for the loyalty and rescue. You get to do both.

Any of the founding Sept, they follow the ethereals without question, core commies.

usmcmidn wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

usmcmidn wrote:
Who or what would be the most "evil" or scary sect (?) faction (?) of Tau? I mean no prisoners, war crimes, complete destruction type deal. I am really thinking about making a Tau army. I have a lot of Kroot, Vespids, and some breachers. Im usually a "good" guy player and I want to branch out to some bad guy Tau.

I was thinking the Farsight Enclaves? But again, im really ignorant on the faction so any help or a point in a general direction would be cool.

Farsight Enclaves are probably the least bad guys in all of 40K
GW increasingly gave the Tau some dark shades after their creation in 3rd edition, with evil agendas of the Ethereals and hints of mindwiping the allied species. Farsight though, just said nope to all that crap and does his own thing.

So how could I make some good head fluff lore with an army centered around Kroot and some Vespids? I want to field some blue fishy guys but not a lot (mainly support). I want to portray a very unmerciful army.

9th edition stated that the Da'lyth Sept focussed on their kroot and vespid allies. Maybe read up on them and make of that what you will.
Unlike what the Internet myths say Tau are neither fish nor communist, instead they're rather imperialist. So, from the view of the upper class of an imperial World it's not hard to paint Tau in a more grim light, especially when they don’t want to liberate humans but eat them up like Kroot like to do.

Farsight Enclaves are still an explicitly militarist regime, though.

Kind of ironically, the original Tau codex did have Farsight provide the "darker" side that folks always said was missing.

For some reason it as often overlooked that he hadn't just said nope to the Ethereals-led version of the Empire, he was explicitly xenophobic and wasn't willing to work with other races in the way the Tau usually did (you couldn't take Kroot in an OG Farsight-led list).

I'm not that up to speed on the current lore, so I'm going to guess he's been retconned into yet another "noblebright" hero as GW seems to like to do these days...?

These Guys fit the bill...

 Gert wrote:
The 4th Sphere was the T'au's first use of Warp Drives

Not technically true. Tau have been using Warp Drives for quite a while, it's simply that theirs skimmed the surface of the Warp and made their ships about 5 times slower than Imperial vessels. The 4th Sphere was the first time they used Navigator guided Imperial style Warp Drives en masse since the initial test uses of them for Farsight's ill fated expedition that led to the creation of the Enclaves.

Piousservant wrote:

Kind of ironically, the original Tau codex did have Farsight provide the "darker" side that folks always said was missing.

For some reason it as often overlooked that he hadn't just said nope to the Ethereals-led version of the Empire, he was explicitly xenophobic and wasn't willing to work with other races in the way the Tau usually did (you couldn't take Kroot in an OG Farsight-led list).

I'm not that up to speed on the current lore, so I'm going to guess he's been retconned into yet another "noblebright" hero as GW seems to like to do these days...?

The enclaves have had a weird trajectory, because in the original tau book in 3rd edition, the mainline tau were consistently presented as a well run, positive place to live. Human auxiliaries were noted to be treated well, they are the only race really making technological progress, etc. So the Enclaves really were the darker side of tau, unrestrained by the ethereal. So they were more aggressive, hated orks, all that.

As 40k drifted from the "there are no good guys" of 2nd/3rd edition into the 6th/7th "everybody is a bad guy" concept of grim dark, the T'au were no exception, and Farsight seamlessly shifted from rash iconoclast to principled exile. Some of this is to avoid being handcuffed by the timeline, since Farsight left before certain suits were invented, and GW absolutely has zero interest in writing Enclaves rules that box out riptides. (Now, of course, you can rep Enclaoves with whatever detachment you want).

I don't think there's a particularly evil sect of Tau (by 40k standards) but they're pragmatically ruthless by default.

As Hellebore said it's easy to justify an exceptionally ruthless fleet of Tau that's cut off from supplies and resorts to taking what they need by force (even from potential allies). Especially if the Kroot are influential, since they have no compunction about killing (and eating) others to survive.

 Polonius wrote:

Piousservant wrote:

Kind of ironically, the original Tau codex did have Farsight provide the "darker" side that folks always said was missing.

For some reason it as often overlooked that he hadn't just said nope to the Ethereals-led version of the Empire, he was explicitly xenophobic and wasn't willing to work with other races in the way the Tau usually did (you couldn't take Kroot in an OG Farsight-led list).

I'm not that up to speed on the current lore, so I'm going to guess he's been retconned into yet another "noblebright" hero as GW seems to like to do these days...?

The enclaves have had a weird trajectory, because in the original tau book in 3rd edition, the mainline tau were consistently presented as a well run, positive place to live. Human auxiliaries were noted to be treated well, they are the only race really making technological progress, etc. So the Enclaves really were the darker side of tau, unrestrained by the ethereal. So they were more aggressive, hated orks, all that.

As 40k drifted from the "there are no good guys" of 2nd/3rd edition into the 6th/7th "everybody is a bad guy" concept of grim dark, the T'au were no exception, and Farsight seamlessly shifted from rash iconoclast to principled exile. Some of this is to avoid being handcuffed by the timeline, since Farsight left before certain suits were invented, and GW absolutely has zero interest in writing Enclaves rules that box out riptides. (Now, of course, you can rep Enclaoves with whatever detachment you want).

The key point of difference between the Farsight Enclaves and the main Tau empire is who gets to determine what is the Greater Good. The main empire is ruled by the Ethereals who say they are the only ones to judge the Greater Good. Farsight believes the other Tau castes can determine and achieve the Greater Good without the Ethereals being in charge and that their leadership (via pheromones or whatever the means is by which they achieve unquestioning obedience in their presence) is tantamount to slavery of the other Tau.