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Sorry if this is the wrong forum, but it seemed the most appropriate.

Im more of a hobbyist / collector so I don't care if a Tau army sucks on the table. I like the look of the army and I like painting them.

Anyway, I am looking for more Tau centric fiction or fluff.

I have the 3rd and 4th ed codex, I read the black library book Fire warrior and I am now on the hunt for more material on the blue skins.

I know the Imperial Armour book Taros campaign is Tau centric, but its also god awful expensive.

Any help would be appreciated.

There is some stuff available in the Deathwatch RPG supplements published by Fantasy Flight Games but I doubt its enough to warrant purchasing the books if you're not also interested in the game.

I believe Black Library have announced a Tau book for 2013. Also, there was a short story called "The Arkunasha War" written by Andy Chambers and published in Hammer & Bolter.

Imperial forces fight the Tau in:

- Traitor's Gambit by Sandy Mitchell
- Kill Team by Gav Thorpe
- Courage and Honor by Graham McNeill
- Hunted by Braden Campbell (published in Hammer & Bolter)
- Unity by James Gilmer (published in Fear the Alien)
- Savage Scars by Andy Hoare

You forgot the best Tau novel so far: "For the Emperor" by Sandy Mitchell. Kill team is an odd novel written from the perspective of a paranoid psychopath, if you can live with that, it contains some useful information on Tau including Space travel and a Tau planet and garrison.

And if you want to learn about Tau, just forget "Courage and Honour" as well as "White Scars". They are just Bolter porn classifying Tau in "is hacked to death" and "is shot". Andy Hoare also wrote another book with tau presence, the predecessor of White Scars, but it also contains almost no info on Tau.

Taros campaign is a nice book with some military info on Tau. You will find a lot of sometimes controversial and sometimes contradictory info on Tau anatomy in the OOP book Xenology.

Kroothawk wrote:And if you want to learn about Tau, just forget "Courage and Honour" as well as "White Scars". They are just Bolter porn classifying Tau in "is hacked to death" and "is shot". Andy Hoare also wrote another book with tau presence, the predecessor of White Scars, but it also contains almost no info on Tau.

Courage and Honour had some good bits about Tau. Like the part at the end when all the Pathfinders go apeshit crazy trying to protect the Farseer.

Kroothawk wrote:You will find a lot of sometimes controversial and sometimes contradictory info on Tau anatomy in the OOP book Xenology.

Xenology is a good read - I'd recommend it for the entertainment value alone. Like with all of 40k there is no canon blah blah, but it's just fun to delve into this little "in-character report" of an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor and his investigations. It's pretty much a short story with lots of fluffy pics and notes like you see them in a Codex sometimes. Some of it is a good inspiration, too. Just keep in mind that the stuff in there is just one of many interpretations of the setting and you're good.

I don't have Xenology but it sounds like it needs to be read in the Spirit of the Uplifting Primer.

Manchu wrote:I don't have Xenology but it sounds like it needs to be read in the Spirit of the Uplifting Primer.

Well, the Uplifting Primer is deliberate propaganda intentionally falsifying facts (at times so much so that it reads like a parody), when Xenology is supposed to be the truth as uncovered by some Inquisitor.

Just treat it like any other Black Library novel and cherrypick the ideas that you think fit your own perception of the setting.

One of ther last chancers books has them undercover in tau space. Can't remember the name. Has some good stuff on tau ships and tau military camps

Try the website Lexicanum. They compile data from tons of sources, so you could use that info, or read one of the original sources

Here is the portal for the Tau http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Portal:Tau#.UAXq0PWiYsc

Redshade wrote:One of ther last chancers books has them undercover in tau space. Can't remember the name. Has some good stuff on tau ships and tau military camps

It's the "Kill Team" book mentioned twice in this thread.

Vulkan's Forgemaster wrote:Try the website Lexicanum. They compile data from tons of sources, so you could use that info, or read one of the original sources

The "compiling" bit might be the problem, given that many of these sources aren't even meant to be compatible with each other.
Lexicanum is good for finding said sources and then comparing them by oneself, though, and then deciding what to keep and what to discard - rather than letting a random wiki-editor do that. In 40k, juggling fluff from different sources is unfortunately always a matter of personal preferences. :(