How would you change the Tau to make them more properly grimdark without forfeiting what makes Tau Tau, what makes them attractive to their fans?
How would you bend them to fit better without causing a newcrons kerfuffle?
>>48242794
Elaborate on the sick shit they do to the races that join the greater good. Make it a fact that working together is all lies, humans aad Kroot are used as cannon fodder, their worlds slowly sterilized and so on.
Make it official that Eatherals are actually working for their own goals and the Greater Good is just a slogan they use to mindwash other Tau.
Basically make them space best Korea turned to 11, as befits W40k.
I wouldn't.
Half the fucking problem with 40k, are the fans who don't think "X race is grimderp enuff". Whether it's Tau, Ork, Eldar, Guard, what the fuck ever. Yeah we get it. You hate whatever fucking army. But for all your autismal whining, all it does is drive potential sane players away.
The other half of 40k's problem is the shit rules and complete disregard for game balance.
>>48242794
Emphasize that it's not just new races that get absorbed getting shafted. Everyone involved, from the Ethereals to the Vespids are getting eugenics and having their rights forfeited. Everything is for the Greater Good, to an extent no human being would be comfortable with. It's a conspiracy to create the perfect society, but the people at the top are just as involved as the people at the bottom.
Basically just Brave New World turned to eleven.
>>48242794
Just make them what humanity was during the Dark Age of Technology. After all, they fill the exact same role as humans in any other setting (newcomers and upstarts).
>>48243540
Claiming than a problem stated by op is bullshit and then general shitting over the entire game with the same bullshit every 40k hater does really contributes to the discussion. Make sure to do that in half a dozen other threads.
>>48242794
"Our Benefactors" pulling the strings.
>>48242794
>add blings
>add more alien races
>add a little bit of skulls
>add honorabru heraldry and warpaints
>add more shady propaganda (skulls are officially used for decoration because the tau empire cares about the fallen of the enemy too; entire populations are brainwashed, indoctrinated or silently exterminated)
>add a little bit of close combat
>more weaboo looks
>advance to have reasons to war outside of their expansion sphere
>>48243540
Yeah. And how come it's always Tau who are subject to this whining?
Shouldn't Sisters of Battle ritually mutilate their faces and be circumcised to avoid inciting sinful thoughts in others and themselves? That would be grimdark and what some real life Christian religious sects have done.
>>48242794
Make them naive.
Imagine they're Starfleet in 40k. They try to be diplomatic and approach every situation with "well, this must have a logical explanation" while daemons just materialize out of the blue and suck their souls. Make them be the straight man in the insanity that is 40k, just trying to keep up and believing their curved surfaces and neon lights is superior tech to riveted plates of spacenium on a metal bawx powered by a smoke belching futurolium piston engine.
I liked it when they dipped into this sort of thinking with them blowing up stars trying to harvest fuel, battlesuits driving pilots insane, ion weapons irradiating their operators, etc. Yet they're going on, painting the dead as heroes of progress and continuing on, thinking nothing bad can happen to them. They need more parody in them. There needs to be that Best Korea levels of irony in what they believe and what reality is.
Right now they're just painted as a bunch of Mary Sues who can do no wrong. There's no humor in it, they're just awesome and teh bestest with the best tech, the best training, the best tactics. Eldar and Necrons are shit in comparison.
Just offer more hints that some alien is directing their rise to power for an unknown purpose. Just make sure it is not a Daemon.
>>48242794
Be like Brettonia & have an emphasis on the collateral damages caused by their actions i.e. A Questing Knight unknowingly starves a peasant to death by taking too much food.
Either that or have them be like the population of Apoklips in the sense that they're so brainwashed by their idology that the leaders cal literally shit on them & they'll call it gold. Have it be that the Tau are just as oppressed as everyone else but they're so 1984-esque in love with their leader that they'll kill themselves if asked.
>>48242794
The Ethereals are actually the avatars of Abominable Intelligence.
>>48243894
Mostly this.
Recent efforts have tried to emphasise the brainwashing, totalitarian aspects of the Tau, and whilst that's certainly an aspect, it's not unique enough to set them apart in the 41st Millenium. naivety, on the other hand, is a rare commodity in this bitter, war torn setting of ours.
Tau would greatly benefit from more 'How could we have known?' fluff. Things like Dark Eldar cultural exchanges, taking Daemon artefacts back for study rather than flushing them out the airlock, Event Horizon-style happenings, etc, etc.
>>48243894
>>48245379
This. The Tau honestly believe in the concept of a Just War to protect their Just Peace, when all they're doing is living in a society that lives economically on creating war machines and sending them out to fight. Unlike the Imperium, all is well at home and all the troubles are far, remote, and in the process of being solved. Theirs is the hope before the fall.
>>48243962
I believe it has been expressly stated that if an ethereal ordered a tau to kill themselves they would be unable to disobey.
>>48245379
Basically make them humans from any standard scifi horror setting. Help the poor, unfortunate alien? It was but a scout for a daemonic invasion. New FTL drive? Highway to hell. Teleportation experiment? Gate to hell. Ancient ruins? Hell. Mysterious box? Hell.
>>48243830
That might be one of the best Tau art I've seen.
>>48243894
>>48245379
The 6th edition codex had this one text box in which an inquisitor noted that the Tau have AI and how it will probably fuck them over in the future-just like what happened to humanity.
There should be more allusions to the Dark Age of Technology- that the Tau are going through a similar era. That Humanity circa DAoT resembled the Tau Empire. Look at how idealistic the DAoT was. Look at how far Humanity has fallen.
>>48242794
Stop cockteasting with the fluff. The Tau, if anybody even remembers anymore, exist to show that a bright, noble civilization cannot survive in 40k. It will be consumed by the corruption and evil that is endemic to the universe. What needs to be done is to accelerate the fall of the Tau Empire into a twisted parody of itself more corrupted and evil than the Imperium even is.
>>48242794
Tau's main thing is that they're supposed to be less grimderp than other factions (don't glue skulls on everything, use reasonable strategies instead of just rushing at the enemy gunline with a chainsaw, etc.), so making them too grimdark would kind of ruin their thing.
Mostly, I'd just focus on the fact that while they're reasonable (by 40k standards), they aren't necessarily nice. The Etherials subscribe to the same notion the Emperor did, that nothing done for the benefit for humanity (or Tau in this case) can be evil, no matter how immoral it might seem, because the alternative is worse. Tau won't kill you just because you're not Tau, and they won't needlessly sacrifice the lives of their own soldiers, but if the course of action that most benefits the Greater Good involves forcibly annexing your planet and killing anybody who opposes, they'll do that without a second thought.
>>48243841
>mutilate their faces
They do. Ritual scaring is common according to the fluff. In one BL story they had pins covering their faces for an example.
This is rarely portrayed in the artwork though. Shame really, I find it odd that all males have such grim faces in the art while sisters are typically drawn with baby faces with skin which has never seen the sun.
>>48246077
I agree, but we already know this is inevitable. If we race ahead to that point, then the Tau are just another burnt-out husk of a civilisation in a setting where that describes literally every other faction. The misguided optimism is what sets them apart.
>>48245528
I'd put more emphasis on those parts & how badly the commoner has things yet blindly obeys.
A caste based communist society?
Shit, that's grimdark enough, man.
>>48243540
I agree about too much 'muh grimdark', but I don't think any of the other ones are ever called out for lacking the grimdark aspects; The Guard mercilessly fields millions to be slaughtered daily, Eldar are the dying relics of a race that took Hedonism up to an eleven, and Orks? No player in their right mind would bitch about orks. Except for their codex.
>>48243647
That's not really grimdark, that's more Fanatic cult status, and then you're just stealing from the Imperial Guard. If they made it more Covenant + Stalinist Russia, with corrupt leaders brainwashing the masses into mindless and murderous servitude, now that would be interesting.
>>48243841
While definitely stealing Roman Catholic motifs fucking everywhere, the Imperium, specifically SoB, is really not focused on a "don't sin" ideology and more "suffer not the heretic, the mutant, the Xenos." Plus how will the neckbeards buy SoB if they can't jack off to it once they finish the models?
>>48242794
Tau is probably populary with faggots that dont know what a melee round is
I like Tau as being the 'good' guys. Only good by 40k standards, sure, where the total genocide of your enemies is considered the only reasonable response to anything, but still the good guys.
If you want everything to be grimderp, you really need something in-setting to contrast it against. Otherwise it falls back into the parody-style fluff of the rogue trader days.
So yeah, I like Tau as idealistic and 'youthful' as a race: In my mind, they want to do the right things as a whole and have the drive to get there without turning into crazy cultists, but they're going to suffer in the process whether it's their own fault or external forces. They probably won't ever 'win' but they won't ever lose either. And taking in other races to their empire/alliance will bite them in the ass sometimes but just as often it'll prove to be a great advantage both diplomatically and in their warfare.
>>48249386
If there is one thing they shouldn't ever do with the tau, it's making the ethereals generic hypocrites. Ethereals should be selfless to the point of creepiness, guys that would calmly walk to their death if that have even the slightest benefit relative to them staying alive. They should be literally without self, being whatever the greater good need them to be at the moment.
Have craftworld eldar embrace the greater good with consquences in mind.
Sharing wraithbone technology leads to a horrifying psyker admech style cult as gue'la offer children with psionic potential as living batteries to power the machine.
Eldar seers joining the Ethereals as mental advisors and bringing ruin to both countless amounts of tau septs and their kin in the long term for a short term benefit.
>>48242794
I'd actually say that GW is doing a good job of this themselves. With every new Tau book that comes out, they are revealed to be less like the Federation of Planets and more like North Korea or Soviet Russia. The way Aun'va is portrayed in Mont'ka especially highlights this.
>>48251451
That actually sounds like a really interesting idea. Making the Ethereals creepy in how willing they are to live up to their talk of sacrificing oneself for the greater good.
>>48245673
John Blanche concept art from when the race was first develloped.
>>48249433
>the Imperium, specifically SoB, is really not focused on a "don't sin" ideology
u havin a gigle m8
>>48251679
There's a lot of Imperial Japanese philosophy, with the Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Aun'va was always the Big Brother figure who kept calling Shadowsun a shamefur dispray.
>>48251451
I agree, and that's my problem with the majority of the ideas for them that get thrown around. Too much hypocrisy, too similar to the Imperium.
I want scary levels of actual communism. Selflessness to the point of suicide, no commissars or threats of death needed. They just also expect that level of indoctrination and self-sacrifice from all new converts. The Tau actually have a hope and a plan for a bright future, but it's built on the bones and trampled freedoms of billions or trillions of people.
>>48242794
They already are, all the greater good thing hides a far darker aspect
>their allied races unknowingly become mere slaves without any true influence in the tau empire decision making restricted to their owned planets under tau vigilance
>those who dare to oppose or question them are just silently banished on the night
>If they refuse to join are driven unto extinction either by military or like that imperial world that was destroyed with tectonical charges
>If their own citizens doesn't develop as expected are silently killed and never spoken of
>Do you like making sculptures but you're water caste? Well easy, you don't and expect being killed if you persist your wayward ways
>they have sterilised populations of other species
>they have mind controling bugs/tech to enslave other races
>they'll interrogate you the same way the imperium does
>They won't never truly respect you or acknowledge your value if you aren't a tau.
Need more?
>>48253706
>those who dare to oppose or question them are just silently banished on the night
>If their own citizens doesn't develop as expected are silently killed and never spoken of
>Do you like making sculptures but you're water caste? Well easy, you don't and expect being killed if you persist your wayward ways
>they have sterilised populations of other species
>they have mind controling bugs/tech to enslave other races
>they'll interrogate you the same way the Imperium does
What are your sources for these? I know it's mentioned that the Tau may have mind-controlled the Vespid, but this is always presented as a rumor, not hard fact. And I've heard the rumor that Tau make wayward members of the Empire disappear in the night on /tg/, but to my knowledge, this has never actually happened in any of the fluff.
>>48253836
Some silly novel recently published. The caste system is so ridicoulously enforced in that one that it becomes silly. Things like Earth Caste explaining to Firewarrkors how Crisis suits work, but it is meant to be gibverish to them on purpose etc. Also cloning, ethereal KGB hunting Water Caste artists because they arent meant to produce things etc.
>>48253836
The Tau codex and Tau BL content that's written by Phil Kelly.
>>48253706
Good, more Brave New World please. Complete with being weirdly utopian in really dark ways.
>>48243460
>>48243894
>>48245773
This. This. This.
Keep them as they are, i dislike tau, but not everything has to be to my taste. Only thing i would change would be to have face actual difficulty instead of seemingly facerolling all opposition.
Make them angrily hammer their fists in the table when shithole imperial planets just won't turn into nice compliant colonies despite being military pushovers, or when that one planet just keeps eating up manpower instead of being conquered, or klendathu happens, or when they don't get to fight on their premises. The problem with tau isn't the faction, it's that they never seem to encounter any of the issues everyo e else does without quickly overcoming them.
>>48254831
If Calgar can defeat hundreds of CSM with feudal peasants anything Tau have done is wholly reasonable in 40k.
Besides Eldrad confirmed that Tau will exceed the Eldar's greatest feats. If Eldar, or at least smart eldar, not dumbasses like Biel-tan, are willing to concede superiority the Tau must be the real deal.
>>48242794
>without forfeiting what makes Tau Tau, what makes them attractive to their fans?
I make a bunch of stupidly huge gundam mechs to push easy sales, then get the fluff writers to deal with justifying it in-setting.
I'm still fucking mad about what they did to a faction I found interesting.
Tau shit me because they don't really follow the grimderp rules the rest of the factions do.
They do things "sensibly" and "not-retarded" to quote others- but then why do all the other factions not do this? That's what annoys me about them: the setting has a level of internal consistency based upon retardation that they shatter with their mere existence.
I would fix tau by making them a part of the wh40k universe.
Here's some shit
>tau have tiny souls
>every other race needs a soul to be soulful
>souls are eaten by daemons
Lack of a soul makes you a disturbing, machine-like cunt (necrons, blanks) and denies you FTL communication and long distance, fast FTL travel.
So Tau are universally hated by all other races when they actually meet. No matter how reasonable, diplomatic and amicable they may be, every species with a soul is repulsed by them (much like 40k oldfags).
The majority of their military actions consist of jetting about their little Empire to fend off alien attacks, only to find they're too late and everyone is dead. So they recolonise and write up some propaganda about a new planet being brought into the fold.
>tau use AI
>AI gets posessed by daemons even more easily than people with souls
Constant drone uprisings, constant malfunctions, constant "friendly-fire" incidents. The earth-caste is engaged in a cyber war against rogue AI fragments infecting the Tau's heavily networked machines.
>tau make friends with other aliens
>every other species is out for themselves and fucks each other over at first opportunity
Tau have to force all their allied races into compliance with the same propaganda and indoctrination they apply to themselves. There is a long list of alien races the Tau were allied with that eventually rebelled, forcing the Tau to exterminate them, cordon off their home planet or lobotomise them all whilst justifying it as liberating them from their inherent weaknesses. Newer allies of the Tau are mislead about the past allies.
>>48246357
>I find it odd that all males have such grim faces in the art while sisters are typically drawn with baby faces with skin which has never seen the sun.
Thats just in the always, always, always shitty fan-art though, the actual art of SoB makes them look tough and grim, while still being women, while still not being ugly butch-macho amazons.
>>48253912
Lol wot. I'm absolutely sure one or more of the codexs has mentioned water caste as being the artists.
>>48256045
>Eldrad confirmed
no he didn't
>"In time I believe they will exceed even our greatest feats and master the darkness within their souls."
Eldrad also "believed" he wouldn't get outsmarted by necrons and killed like a chump.
>>48256822
>Tau shit me because they don't really follow the grimderp rules the rest of the factions do
They do though, they're just at the naive prefall stage of civilization. Theyre already starting too have too make the choice between survival and being good. The inevitability of their corruption or extinction is the Taus grimdark.
>>48256984
What a looker!
>>48257041
Perhaps, but it's all working out for them pretty well right now.
>>48257143
At the DAOT worked out well for humanity for a time. The pre fall eldar had things pretty good too.
>>48257162
LOOKIT ALL THESE MARY SUES
I DEMAND THE ORKS SUFFER AN APOCALYPSE, THEY'RE TOO HAPPY
>>48257189
Did they get kicked down pretty good in the dark crusade.
Plus that fight they've got going with the nids is shaping to potentially be a big loss for them.
>>48242794
>Whole point of the Tau is that they're NOT GRIMDARK Edgy faggots like every other race and act like a real race and use real tactics
Fuck off with this
>>48243894
it would be the same issue of the Old Crons
you can only do so much until it because stupid, the Dark Eldar can only really fuck them over once
>>48243841
Well for one the Tau aren't retards like the Imps
I think the ideal is the Tau are in an Area were only the Ultramarines are the main imp force too
>>48257392
Then why does the Imperium get away with 10,000 years of retardation?
>>48257523
The Imperium used to be less retarded, more competent and capable force.
>>48243460
i like it
>>48257549
I dunno, HH novels make them out to be quite the bunch of grimderp retards.
>Hurr durr make Tau more edgy
They are already set up for a civil war now Space Pope is dead and a hologram and Farsight realizes how much he misses his people.
>>48258339
That's because BL found it to be easier to make everyone an idiot and or a jerk.
>>48251627
Why would the eldar join in partnership a species that are the evolutionary equivalent of those fish that have managed lungs and can drag themselves out of the water?
>>48257523
They aren't as retarded, they outsmarted the tau during the second battle for Agrellan and had to be rescued by O'shova to gain the upper hand before the imperium lit the Damocles gulf on fire and exterminatused the planet, they were lucky they didn't use cyclonic torpedos to reduce the planet to rubble.
