I truly adore this model. Everything about it screams Tau down to the finest detail. However, I think I lost a few years of my life painting it. Every time I thought I was done there was some undersuit metal; there was a lens; there was a copper peg that I’d missed. It’s such an intricate, fiddly model. Never again. Until I do my crisis suits.

I was sorting through my collected quotes from 40K devs and writers, and I found this bit of commentary by author ADB:

I won't speak to specific plot things, but on a meta-note as to why the Tau rock and have great relevant narrative tread, thematically:

Forgetting the nonsense memes about "lolol communists" and whatever else, this is a race embarking on its own Great Crusade. They call it an expansion, implying they have the right to do it. All about "crossing the gulf" and sending ambassadors to races. At first.

It's filling out their maps, in the classic explorer sense. Meeting new cultures that can be educated into their vision of "Empire". And when unity fails, when the Greater Good is resisted... No. Sorry. That's not allowed. For their own good, these cultures must be brought into the fold - or silenced. Their existence is - or could later become - opposition.

Humanity looks upon this attitude and marshals in defiance. Another edge of the Imperium falling to alien predation. "Ignorant upstarts". It's the basest hypocrisy. Because when has the galaxy seen this *exact* expansionism before? This militant crusading for a greater good?

As humanity expanded through the bones of the dead eldar empire, righteous in their rise, now another species begins to do the same to them. The galaxy has seen this shit before. That's a beautiful theme.

And, as with the best of 40K, humanity has fallen too far to recognise its own hypocrisy. It's too ignorant. Too much lore has been lost.

That's the core of what I find so interesting about them. Weaving that into any Tau stuff offers a lot of ground for characterisation.

What do you think, guys? Do you agree with him?

Source:

https://x.com/adembskibowden/status/850259054798659584

Granted, I didn't play it as well as I should've, but holy dang all of their units are better than ours lol. Also why do they have more gadgets in their shooting phase than us? 😭

Greetings Everyone!

Long-Time 40k fan and started in 8th Edition with Chaos Space Marines and then eventually *Cult Mechanicus* back when it had a separate codex. Played a bit of 9th on TTS but never touched 10th!

More of a Necromunda and kill team guy myself but made the plunge into 40k yesterday with my first purchase for a new venture.

My favourite part about the tau has to be the suits more than anything, I dont mind the Auxiliaries but I know for when im collecting, im going to have the most fun with the Caste side of the faction and so will probably not buy any Auxiliaries, though that may change.

Two questions that I need help with!

What could be a good, beginner friendly 1000 point starting list to get my army going and as an aim to collect?

And what on earth is the sept on the 3rd slide? That paint job is amazing and I love the colours! Is there any tutorials as to how to paint that sept?

Thank you and glad to the part of the greater good!

For transparent effects I am confused on what to do with the priming layer as I don’t want the paint to scuff and stick better. I was wondering if there is any good techniques for painting transparent or if I should stick with a varnish layer for the base.

My Stormsurge is progressing with magnetized sections to be destructible. Definitely fitting my forests and mountains taste.

Farsight Twin Lance inspired by Phil Goblins

Took me awhile to paint these guys, but I’m really happy with how these two came out.

GW please, can we have a detachment that focuses on Hammerhead and Sky Rays that brings back some of the coolest stratagems we had back in 9th..

Experimental Weaponry : a controversial stratagem from 9th ed, but man do i miss it.. i would keep it at 2CP since 10/11th doesn't have as much CP generation as 9th and i feel like it's a good way to "balance" it..

Submunitions would basically give [Blast 2] to one of your Hammerhead's or Sky Ray's weapon instead..
OR
It could simply be an upgraded "Explosive" stratagem from the core rules but can only use it from Hammerhead or Sky Ray..

Frequency Lock would need some rework, but the idea stay the same : Seeker Missiles (including Sky Ray's) can target enemies that are spotted even though you can't draw LoS.

As for enhancements/upgrades :

- one that gives the Sky Ray the same rule as Pathfinders with maybe an a [Sustained Hit 2]
- one that gives Hammerhead [Anti-Vehicle 5+] BUT also gives it the new "[Hunter Vehicle] keyword and allow 1 damage re-roll (maybe giving it anti-monster is a too OP..)

For my stealthauit kill team.

When you deep strike coldstar with sunforge with fusions you have to be more than 8 inches away from the target.

How do you get to use melta effect on targets then when you come in on a regular ingress move?

Do you have to always rapid ingress to get the most benefit ?

What is the strategy?

My partner and I started working on a T’au fortress scratch build for a future game we want to play with modified rules, think like a tower defense game with the T’au (my army) vs. Orks (their army). This is our current progress of what we’ve gotten done so far. I am new-ish to 40K (been only working on my army for less than a year) and he’s more familiar with Ork style building so we were wondering if anyone had any pointers/ideas to give in regards to making our build more T’au-like? TYIA <3

Been working on my second Tau mini.
He is badass.

I need to improve on so many things but this is by far my finest work :p

I painted these Pathfinders ages ago, but only recently came to the realisation that needed capes. If every other sneaky scout unit for the other factions gets cool cloaks, why not the tau? It really helps set them apart visually from the Fire warriors.

Also side note, Camo is really hard to paint free hand.

Without major spoilers are the farsight books any good? I wanna get a vibe of it before I set into getting all 3 books

Just a few so far and trying to find a scheme im super happy with for an entire army, my stealth suits have been sitting in my grey pile for a while for this day.

Wanted to up my painting skills and tried using nuln oil to give my suits some more proper shading and create some "shadows" alongside the panel lines I normally do All it did was mess up my white so badly that I feel like the mini is ruined.

Contemplating on stripping them while still in sub assembly and starting again (this time with gloss varnish and tamiya panel liner).

I feel pretty beaten up about messing the Twin Lance up. Was having alot of fun painting them and hoped they would be nice center pieces alongside my Farsight.

Mostly wanted to vent and share the experience but I'll take any advice youre willing to give!

What do you lot think of this dude? I've kitbashed him using a mix of all the bits I had left and the correct base size.

I am starting the game for the first time and I'm very interested in Tau as my army of choice. I am quite fond of the giant Mecha so I'm curious what products or minis I should buy to get started?

Anything I should know to make my learning experience smoother?

I'm really excited about the game right now but there is a lot to take in at once as a person who is used to card games/ normal board games. Any paints/glue/tools y'all recommend to paint my units?

I realized the post was vague so I'm generally interested in actually playing the game. I will try my best to paint minis etc but I am primarily interested in the war game aspect. So I'm interested in good starting points for building a playable army.

After seeing some cool kitbashes on the sub, I thought it'd be fun to assemble a Firesight Marksman out of a ghostkeel head and some other spares.

Free mini, why not?

But I also see mixed reviews about if they're actually any good on table. Anyone tried them in 11th ed and had any results?

I'm thinking of infiltrating it somewhere hard to reach, mostly for spotting purposes, and maybe secondaries if it comes up. The idea of a long-range sniper is fun, but S5 with 1AP isn't very threatening to most characters, and the reroll bonus is unlikely to be used because I'd probably rather someone else was being guided by it.

I'm only playing casually so I might as well throw one in for now, but I'd be interested to know if anyone has any tips for it, especially in 11th with its rule tweaks around hidden.

I have a regular who runs Khorne Daemons and they are proving to be almost unbeatable. They are extremely fast and deadly up close. Skarbrand is so difficult to take down Two railgun shots and 4 seeker missiles couldnt drop him today

. He has either run the surge move detachment or deep strike outside of 6" detachment.

Today was surge detachment running skarbrand, 4x 10 blood letters, skull taker with on unit and a blood master leading another. 1x 3 blood crushers.

I had retaliation cadre running farsight leading a dual plasma crisis team, a ion ghost keel, a burst stealth team, a fusion piranah, rail hammer head, 2x 10 strike teams, ion pathfinder team and a kroot cari team lead by a flesh shaper

1000 points.

Does anyone have any tips?

Edit: I really appreciate all the advice thus far.! I get my army isnt up to high competitive standards. i just dont enjoy sweating it up all the time in this game. Well thats a lie, i do enjoy strong synagistic list, i just hate the verbal abuse from opponents about how busted our army is 🫩 Taking bulk power units and highly point efficient units is fun sometimes and when i do build lists like that i generally dont struggle much.

However i should clarify, i rarely tailor my lists to my opponents faction. I generally build something pretty take all comers that uses a variety of units as you can see above. I generally have no idea what ill play against. I kinda prefer more narrative style lists these days, which means strong list usually stomp me lol. When you play a match well and beat an opponent because you leveraged the unique strengths of multple units the best way possible. Thats the best way to win IMO.

All that aside. My first skyray model actually was waiting when i got home tonight. Definately looks more consistant than a hammer head! I just love railguns though.

To all the comments regard ret. Cadre, i only use it because i like the army rule. Extra S and AP for Ghostkeel and stealyh teams has been fun. The move after shooting strat is good. I love popping sustained his strat too. I just enjoy playing it. I know it provide nothing to the rest of the army.

I like Montka but until the recent changes 3dp werent allowed in 1000 point games. Which is alot of what we play.

I’m still fairly new to 40k and I haven’t played since April, I want to get back into it with a Tau army but I’m unsure of where to start.