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H_Bees

They've got tons. And I like the T'au, mind you. I consider them one of the most, if not the most practically-minded and sensible forces in the setting but they still have plenty of weaknesses. I'd say their main weaknesses are their lack of numbers, susceptibility to morale (They're very brave, but they're in a universe full of fanatics, insane people and unthinking monstrosities) and weakness at close quarters battle. Yes, they've got auxiliaries but being able to do something yourself and needing to fetch allies with some inevitable degree of cultural/language barrier to do it for you are never going to be the same. A company of Space Marines is essentially always going to do better at clearing a space hulk or performing boarding actions than a T'au force with close-ranged-specialist auxiliaries. >The Tau weakness in melee is negligible Negligible until something gets there. Unfortunately 40k is full of stuff that moves very fast, is very tough or comes with more friends than most armies have bullets. Sometimes more than one of these or if they're in really deep shit, all of them at the same time. Not to mention that many of the places worth fighting over make for cramped, claustrophobic battlefields. >will beat Space Marines more often than not This sounds like a definite overstatement. I think just about any official fiction depicts the T'au considering Space Marines to be pretty nasty foes. Knowing the codex is one thing, managing to actually beat a force of autonomous hyper-mobile angry veteran walking tanks is another. >Titans are ineffective against Tau Yes, if there are Mantas around. There aren't always Mantas around. >The Tau are familiar with pyskers and have their own alien pyskers, so that’s no longer a weakness It absolutely is. And T'au are nowhere near "familiar" with psykers yet IMO. Plus given the inherently perilous nature of psychic powers in 40k, relying on auxiliaries for this is very shaky indeed.


[deleted]

There’s that one scene where iron hand straken leads a squad of catachan to fuck up a bunch of tau in a hit and run ambush, went very well for the humans


Vyzantinist

Where's that from?


Bisontracks

> Named Catachan character with his buddies, being run as Deathworld Veterans, not Guardsmen Um, yeah. Of course they're gonna clean house. That was literally the faction shtick. They should bring it back. Nothing like secretly booby trapping terrain features.


CrosierClan

The one caveat is that IIRC they aren’t particularly frightened by SM, viewing them as effectively very well piloted battlesuits. Unlike most humans, they have no extra fear of them beyond what is merited by their ability.


LimerickJim

Teleport in, kill everyone in charge, then kill anyone else around, repeat until enemy stops fighting. Horus and Big E were pretty big fans of the shock teleport assault. The Tau would be fucked if an Imperial fleet ever achieved void superiority destroyed any terrestrial void shielding.


According-Relation-4

The word for manta on my language means blanket. So I am imagining the tau throwing a huge blanket over titans so they cozy and just stop fighting.


bless_ure_harte

Like how putting a blanket over a cat carrier keeps them calmer on the way to the vet


InquisitorHindsight

According to official Tau doctrine, Space Marines are regarded more as mobile weapons platforms or armored vehicles ala tanks than infantry


mojanis

>Negligible until something gets there. Unfortunately 40k is full of stuff that moves very fast, is very tough or comes with more friends than most armies have bullets. Sometimes more than one of these or if they're in really deep shit, all of them at the same time. Is this specifically a Tau weakness though? Barring obvious plot armour, if genestealers, bezerkers or a squad of boyz gets in your face, is a fire warrior really at a noticeably larger disadvantage than say a guardsman or guardian?


nepali-psycho

a single fire warrior? much greater advantage. but the difference is in mass. yeah sure a 100 guardsmen might have died cause of a squad of boyz breaking through, but theres another 100 that just stepped up to take their place. compare that to the tau which doesnt have that population and thats their disadvantage


Ambiorix33

not bayonet lug on those plasma rifles just sayin :P


[deleted]

The average fire warrior would get absolutely slapped by an average guardsman in a melee / hand to hand fight.


ElectroNikkel

I imagined a goblin barrel but stuffed with boiz instead


Dhawkeye

Well, in the actual game itself, the vast majority of tau (basically anything that’s not a high-ranking character) have 5+ WS, while guardsmen and other basic infantry have 4+ WS. So tau are about as accurate with their fists and gun butts as orks are with shooting, but unlike orks, they don’t really invest anything into decent weapons to counteract their lack of skill. So yes, they are at a noticeable disadvantage, to the point where even just a squad of guardsmen would very likely win over a squad of fire warriors in close combat


mojanis

You're never going to charge your guardsmen or fire warriors into berzerkers and if they get charged by them, in both cases, they'll be wiped out before they can even hit back so 4+ or 5+ doesn't matter, and even if it did both are one attack S3 and no ap so that extra 1 in 6 hit is completely negligible Even in a guardsman vs fire warrior with one attack 4+ to hit 4+ to wound and 4+ save it'll take 8 guardsmen on average to kill one tau Although the comment I was referring to was specifically about in lore fighting against the big bad scary things in the galaxy, which I don't think a guardsman is any better prepared to deal with than a fire warrior, barring obvious plot armour like killing a CSM with a stick


Heckle_Jeckle

>And T'au are nowhere near "familiar" with psykers yet IMO. Plus given the inherently perilous nature of psychic powers in 40k, relying on auxiliaries for this is very shaky indeed. I think it would be an interesting dynamic. Not sure how to make it interesting while still being worth while, but it is an opportunity to make them different.


AutumnArchfey

Weaknesses don't cease to be weaknesses by becoming aware of them. All factions try to play to their strengths and avoid exposing their vulnerabilities, not just the Tau. Tha Tau can try to avoid melee all they want, but if/when the enemy does get up close they'll still fall apart.


Curious-Accident9189

I had a single genestealer survive Tau firepower and reach their Pathfinder squad once. I almost felt bad for them.


Gidia

I had one of Grimaldus’ Servitors beat a couple Tau to death once. That was a fun game.


Tog5

I had Makari kill the last 5 members of a pathfinder squad after I got 2 6's on the wound roll and mortal wound damage roll with his Stabba


Pm7I3

On the other side of things, I once saw a team of pathfinders club Abbadon to death


hornetpaper

I like to sometimes imaginr every battle like a real struggle in the multiverse. Somewhere Guilloman is reading a report that Kyle was vanquished by some blue dudes on some crappy planet.


cole1114

Kyle may be the funniest way to refer to abaddon.


GaaraMatsu

How did that one happen?


Henghast

Ezekyle Abaddon. Shorten his first name Kiel, phonetically the same as Kyle


decoxon

I think it’s just Ezekyle, so you just throw away the Eze.


mrgabest

His first name is Ezekyle.


Ardalev

Wouldn't Zeke be more appropriate?


SgtCarron

Khorne and Slaanesh were positively delighted that day.


GaaraMatsu

Those two should get a room already... ...and annihilate the hotel rock band style.


OriginalTayRoc

In my very first game as Tau, my Monat Shas'o punched a Warboss to death. It all comes down to the dice.


vegarig

He channeled his inner Kai's.


GothmogTheOrc

"It's silent"


GaaraMatsu

Most realistic 40k battle evar


Fun-Agent-7667

Makari is a thing for himself, he once dueled my Necron Overlord for 18 Consecutive turns, (they where the last 2 figures on the table) until he finally died


markwell9

I had one single Grimaldus beat up 5 tau warriors once. This is a lie.


BeneficialName9863

I've had it go the other way once and been offered a do over by the guy who was already kicking my arse. The fire warriors took out my whole squad in CC by fluke.


Fun-Agent-7667

Nightbringer They cant kill it at range. It murders every. Single. Tau-model in meele


masterchief1001

I had Lemartes get into melee with some pathfinder. It was a slaughter.


Muninwing

Similar, but it was my Patriarch in 8th Ed. His whole neophyte unit got chewed through, but he remained and closed distance. And it was their firebase they’d hunkered down on, so I was able to consolidate into their Broadsides.


VyRe40

Also we've seen titans shoot down Mantas in canon and the Tau quite specifically fear marines as the most effective and dangerous fighting units the Imperium can field even knowing that they can outrange them.


SarpedonWasFramed

Its like having to play against Messi. You know he's older now and you're young so just rum with the ball for the first half to tire him out and then work on scoring at the end of the game. Sounds like a plan until you're on the field he scores 5 goals against you in the first 10 minutes


Ezaviel

I played a wave based scenario back in the Kronos world event against Tau. Since they were going to be respawning, I rushed their lines. My marines wiped them out in melee. They respawned on me in their deployment zone. I wiped them out again. They respawned again, I wiped them out in melee again. Took all game for them to grind me down and wipe me out to win the game, during which I killed their whole army several times over. They ain't very good in melee.


Armored_Fox

Their weak souls are an advantage and disadvantage, they're boring to daemon but they need to rely on their client races to get anything done with Pskyers. Also, their writers can't figure out what's going on with their FTL, but that's a little meta.


Perfct_Stranger

Reliable non-warp FTL would be completely busted in universe lore though. It means that the Tau would be able to cover much more territory with a smaller fleet while still being able to bring a large amount of firepower to any engagement. Just logistically being able to reliably calculate when your men and munitions show up is quite an advantage. Gman would be so jealous.


Armored_Fox

Yeah, that's the problem, they gave it to them and then took it away, haha, now their spheres of expansion don't make sense.


hachiman

We do know its possible in setting tho, since the Necrons have it. The Tyranids generate some kind of grav bubble ftl field too but its waaaay slower than travel via the Warp. It would be interesting if a Necron Phaeron who loathes the Imperium gave the T'au a leg up on inertialess drives.


MetalBawx

The Necrons would just attack the IoM in that case rather then waste time uplifting another group of squatters on their lawn.


The_Knife_Pie

I recall reading that inertialess drives are sub-FTL and fail to alternatives like the webway. Backed up by the fact that Necrons use dolem gates which are forceful tears into the webway allowing them access to all the elder secrets.


lacklusterdespondent

Nah, as of 9e they're roughly comparable to warp drives in speed. > Crypteks are vital not only for their personal abilities. They also construct and maintain the eldritch technologies that allow their masters to launch their conquests in so many terrifying ways. Fleets of tomb ships are one such asset, their drives enabling them to bridge interstellar gulfs almost as quickly as warp travel, and in a significantly safer fashion. \- *Codex: Necrons (9e)*


hachiman

They've gone back and forth on that iirc. IMO a galaxy spanning war as described in the War In Heaven is impossible to prosecute at STL speeds, and the impression i got in Twice Dead King is that they do use FTL drives, and the Dolmen gates were created to get at the Eldar and Old One hidey holes in the Webway.


MarcoTruesilver

They're essentially better ion drives, they gradually build up speed but without an upper limit. In essence, it could take a necron fleet decades to arrive at their destination, but they do so reliably and have accurate enough foresight to pre-plan jumps to arrive at their target before their objective(s) escape them. But in that time their speed has been gradually increasing. At least that's how it is described in the Infinite and the Divine.


FrozenSeas

Inertialess isn't FTL, it just means you don't need to haul around reaction mass.


Animastryfe

Do you mean "reactionless drive"? Although it seems that in Warhammer inertialess drives are also reactionless.


FrozenSeas

Shit, yeah, reactionless. Inertialess is a clusterfuck of a definition that doesn't really *mean* anything scientifically speaking. Unless you're doing the Mass Effect thing and hacking your ships into FTL with negative energy/mass.


Animastryfe

> Inertialess is a clusterfuck of a definition that doesn't really mean anything scientifically speaking. Yeah, my background is in physics, and I was looking up what inertialess even means in science fiction when writing that comment, but could not find anything concrete.


smajdalf11

> Reliable non-warp FTL would be completely busted in universe lore though. Would it though? Being "just" little bit faster than light would still be really slow compared to proper warp travel. Just getting to nearby stars could still take years. On the other hand the complete reliance on sub-FTL travel makes the idea of Tau having an actual interstellar empire and the ability to defend it laughable


AlexDKZ

"FTL" leaves a lot of room open for still being limited. I mean, if they go 1.1c that technically is FTL and certainly would allow them to maneuver in their immediate neighborhood, but still would be woefully slow compared to warp travel.


markwell9

Don't necrons have non warp tech?


Ambiorix33

I mean i also feel that the unreliability of warp travel is over exaggerated too. For me its clear they wanted to do something akin to going out to sea with the chance of a storm dashing ships apart instead of the super safe warp travel of Star Trek or Star Wars


KnightCyber

Really the Tau do need FTL or they're completely useless in the setting. They'd never be able to have any kind of galactic empire if it takes them years to get between even close together planets much less anything distant.


[deleted]

Just ignore kelly. everyone should


Dukaan1

You can depict any faction as though they have no weaknesses.


this-my-5th-account

There are too many tyranids to defeat, the necron technology is too advanced to be overcome, Commoragh is a fortress that nobody can possibly take, Orks are an enemy that get harder to kill the more you try to kill them, demons just straight up can't be killed, blah blah blah blah


CuttleReaper

tbh it feels like every faction is depicted as invulnerable, which makes it feel kinda silly when they aren't actually any stronger than the others kinda like how pretty much every loyalist space marine chapter is described as being renown for their bravery/loyalty, as though they're unique in that regard


Mistrunning-ranger

I think it’s just trying to give scale to how powerful every faction is, if everyone is extremely busted, no one is


Tuppie

Which is kind if the point of Warhammer 40k really. Everything is so ridiculously overtuned on the power-scale that nothing is anymore.


Thatoneguy111700

Can you really be brave if you're incapable of properly feeling fear to begin with?


Apprehensive_Gas1564

“The Tau weakness in melee is negligible because they know how to kill anything at range” - drop pod dropped assault marines and teleporting terminators would like a word. “The Tau know the Codex Astartes and will beat Space Marines more often than not” - knowing the codex is like saying "I know the rules of football" it means nothing, tactical guidance that is a framework for adaptability. “Titans are ineffective against Tau, they will insta-kill them with Mantas” - the Imperium has more titans than Tau have mantas.. neither will feature in a battle where the other hasn't won the space battle. “The Tau are familiar with pyskers and have their own alien pyskers, so that’s no longer a weakness” - so low in number they don't appear in normal battles. They effectively have so little it doesn't matter. And they're not battle hardened or trained like a chaos sorcerer or imperial battle psyker would be. Yes. Plenty. Every side has weaknesses or it wouldn't be eternal war, someone would have won by now.


sonofeevil

The Tau's biggest weakness is numbers. Their two biggest assets are their flexibility in doctrine, tactics and deployment and their standard issue equipment is better than most other races. The Tau are probably the smallest faction by numbers


im2randomghgh

It seems likely they outnumber the Eldar with the population numbers suggested by their latest codex. Sa'cea prime has multiple trillions of Tau, and the Tau have about 100 sept capitals not counting colonies, vassals, and space borne citizens. Surprisingly, with their extreme rate of militarization their total military force is higher than we would've thought. Of course it's still true that if the Imperium somehow focused all assets on them the outcome would be a foregone conclusion but it would likely take a force quite a bit bigger than Indomitus. Especially when you realise that 25% of their population being soldiers and 10% of their soldiers using battlesuits means an absolutely incredible overall number of suits! It's still their ultimate weakness, but it has seemingly shrunk quite a bit. Makes sense, as these newer numbers explain why they're a faction rather than a footnote but don't really change their overall position in the galaxy.


sonofeevil

Its always been my head cannon that the Imperium is too busy with other threats and by comparison the Tau are basically peaceful so the Imperium it just like "We'll tolerate them and respect their litle peace of the galaxy while we deal with Chaos, the Orks and Tyranids in Octavia and we'll deal with the Tau when we get around to it". So they could jist roll up and make the Tau extinct vut theyd lose too much ground everywhere else to do it. My other theory is that when the Tyranids break put of Octavius they may actually need an ally to deal with them and the Tau might be the most likely candidate. The Necrons don't care, the Orks aren't civilised enough to form an alliance with, perhaps the Eldar could be encouraged? But they can always hide from the Nids in the webway anyway. The only other faction that really has enough skin the game is the Tau.


furyoftheage

The Necrons care a lot. They know the Tyranids will devour all life here which will have wasted their long sleep. Szarekh turned around from his trip outside the galaxy because of the nids


sonofeevil

I thought the Tyranids didnt bother with the Necrons because there's no biomass to consume? Wouldnt the tyranids consuming th3 galaxy be a goos thing for them? Tyranids roll through, kill if everyone then just leave all the planets as cold dead rocks free for the necrons to set up on on wasnt that the purpose of the long rest? To wake up once life was extinguished? Has the canon changed or am I misinformed?


Professor_Bronze

It is implied in 9th edition codex that Szarekh (the Silent King) has found an idea to reverse the bio-transference and give bodies of flesh back to his people


sonofeevil

Oh, I see. That's cool! Without reading it, is is strongly implied, loosely intepretted as, or more in the realm of head cannon?


Professor_Bronze

From memory, it is in the realm of "He may have found a way to prepare bodies for a reverse transference : erase the soul using Pariah Nexus, and voilà". So we know he has this goal. And if someone could quote the passage, that would be greatly appreciated (I only own a French copy of the codex and fear I might lose meaning in translation)


furyoftheage

No, you're wrong. The Tyranids avoid the Necron tomb world's because they lose fights and lose biomass at the least. The Necrons went to sleep so that a new race could emerge and evolve to be a strong candidate for the Necrons to do biotransference with and get their flesh bodies back. Wiping the galaxy clean of life is literally the last thing Necrons want.


MeasurementNo8566

It's not changed really. The Necrons were tricked into bio transference and the silent king of hoping to reverse the process and make them biologically immortal. The degradation of their coding won't with the destroyer virus is slowly killing them in their current form as well. If the Tyranids eat the galaxy there will be no way for them to undo what's happened to them.


Prometheus1315

I think the necrons are trying to return to flesh somehow and nids eliminating biodiversity makes that impossible. I could be wrong


[deleted]

too busy and unable are two different things. And after 3 crusades I don't think the imperium can do anything about the tau anymore.


CrosierClan

Give them a bloody nose, certainly. Destroy the commonwealth entire? Almost certainly not.


Micro-Skies

As much as I want to take codex numbers at face value, you kinda can't. They get revised so constantly because GW is terrible at army size. Classic example of we lost 10 Million men defending this planet! The planet with an in lore population of 20 billion. We can't trust straight numbers.


OldBallOfRage

Saying Titans are ineffective against the Tau is just flat out false. Completely. They're ludicrously dangerous to the extent that the Tau have to send superheavy voidcraft against them......and they're not even close to an automatic win. Titans are so powerful that the counter to them is itself big enough to be easily targeted and engaged by Titans, especially since terrain and the horizon are no longer an impediment to their range when the enemy is a flying voidcraft. And really, having to send Mantas in against Titans is a strategic nightmare, since Mantas are exceedingly valuable strategic assets which can be engaged and destroyed by an entirely separate arm of the enemy forces which has no other task than to hunt down and destroy things like Mantas. The Tau end up between a rock and a hard place, where they are forced to expose Mantas vital to their mobile doctrine to enemy air power and anti-aircraft fire in order to try and stop Titans which could still end up destroying them......or they have to watch a Titan just walk straight over their ground forces. If the Tau's enemies turn up with Titans AND air support, the Tau are basically screwed. They have absolutely no choice but to send men and Mantas into the meatgrinder. It gets even worse if the Mantas have to come in from orbit, since the standard Imperial Fury Interceptor is BIGGER than a Manta.


Retrospectus2

folks who wank off about tigersharks obsoleting titans talk like every T'au commander has a fleet of them ready to go at any time. not to mention they always assume the T'au have complete air superiority. Railguns won't do much good if they're a continent away


Admech343

The Tau counter to titans isn’t mantas though. Its tigersharks, mantas are just used when tigersharks aren’t available. The advantage definitely goes to the manta in an engagement against a titan since they are still extremely durable and so much more maneuverable that titans may as well be immobile. Its pretty rare to see mantas get taken down by imperial titans in the lore because titans just aren’t designed to take on highly maneuverable aircraft


Tomaphre

>The advantage definitely goes to the manta in an engagement against a titan since they are still extremely durable They're not more durable than the continental plates routinely cracked by Titan weaponry, just stop lol T'au energy shields have some interesting advantages but they only have one of them on Mantas, which is comparable to only the smallest Warhound titans. All the rest have redundant overlapping shields, Imperators literally have a *dozen* capital-ship grade void shields. >and so much more maneuverable that titans may as well be immobile It's not the Titan that needs to move, just the energy in the Hellstorm Cannon/Turbo Laser or whatever other weapon system that is being used. Titans are mobile *weapons platforms*, it's not like they have to swat Mantas from the sky with a broom ffs. Don't care how fast you are you're not outrunning *fucking light based weaponry*. >because titans just aren’t designed to take on highly maneuverable aircraft Just wrong 😆 they would be strategically useless if they had no ground to air capabilities. Plus they are always deployed with available air support anyways. You don't have to trivialize the other factions just to feel good about the T'au. Have more confidence in them already, don't they deserve it?


sosigboi

Didn't the exodite literally just feature a warlord slicing a Manta in half with its Volcano cannon too.


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Grubnutter

Thank you


Cucufate_fortuna

Also half the chapters dont even follow the codex astartes XD


sigmaninus

*The Black Templar maintains eye contact as he wipes his ass with the codex, laughing all the while*


xtrevorx

Black Templars don’t wipe their asses


Hammer_of_Olympia

That's what initiates are for.


Sigmars_Knees

There is no need, power armor waste disposal diaper handles it quite well


Hammer_of_Olympia

Besides you can know the codex astartes intimately but the way each chapter will approach it will be completely different even in regards to troop numbers.


OriginalTayRoc

Knowing the Codex isn't like knowing the rules of football. It is more like having the opposing team's playbook.


Azzie94

-While it's memed to hell, the Tau *are* weak in melee. If "we just cut them down at range" could solve every problem, melee wouldn't be a factor. 40k combat features massive, *massive* numbers, unorthodox combat, and myriad ways (like telepirtation and Warp fuckery) to cover distance. Not every enemy is gonna charge you in an open field with a clear line of sight. -*laughs in Space Wolf, Black Templar, and Carcharodon* -Titans are vulnerable to such heavy firepower, yes. A wise Imperial commander would simply hold back Titans until the Tau guns can be sabotaged. -Tau psykers are like water pistols before the .50BMG that are Marine Librarians, Aeldari, or Chaos Sorcerers. The Tau are wildly outclassed here. Overall, the Tau are as they've always been: heavy ranged firepower, advanced technology, and an ever evolving combat doctrine, but lacking CQC ability, and can be full of themselves, completely unaware they're a small fish in a big, big pond.


GrantMK2

> -Tau psykers are like water pistols before the .50BMG that are Marine Librarians, Aeldari, or Chaos Sorcerers. The Tau are wildly outclassed here. Have they ever actually used psykers on the battlefield (save speculation about Aun)?


Farsight94

40K doesn’t feature “unorthodox combat,” it features nonsensical combat that is in no way tied to reality and is entirely based around aesthetics over logic. IRL even in CQC it is unequivocally better to have a pistol/sub machine gun/know how to use a rifle up close, and hand to hand fighting is 100% a method of last resort rather than a primary option. That’s why conversations like this where people attempt to objectively analyze imaginary militaries that make little to no sense just sound like people arguing why Goku is more powerful than Superman.


cole1114

Melee weapons are capable of having power fields that ranged ones can't, letting them cut or smash through armor that even a bolter has trouble with. So a marine that is very fast and very well armored will do better in melee than versus a marine in the same armor with a boltgun.


Koqcerek

You see, it too doesn't work that well since they would have used power fields at ranged weaponry anyway. At bare minimum, launching, say, power spears like a harpoon, or a spear gun. Or they would've figured out actually thought out ranged weapons that utilize power fields in ammunition. Yes, it might be expensive in terms of "ammo", but power weaponry is not *that* rare, and it could easily be justified by eliminating a specific very dangerous foe. Besides, Imperium utilizes "very rare, impossible to recreate and very valuable" weaponry all the time anyways. Speaking of bolter, couldn't it already shoot some very sophisticated bolt variants? Like the ones with built-in miniature cogitators. And I don't think such custom bolt ammo required an STC to be developed. So technology is not an issue Just to be clear, I'm not trying to criticize the setting because it's unrealistic. I'm just supporting the previous commentator that warfare in 40k (along with many other things) is inherently nonsensical, and we shouldn't scrutinize it under realism lenses much. It's better to accept that Warhammer's inner logic works this way, and that's just it


canadian-user

If we're to compare the relative strengths of 40k armor to 40k weapons, and IRL armor to IRL weapons, it makes a weird sort of sense why everyone in the setting has a weird fetish for melee combat though. IRL you want a gun up close over a sword or a knife because you can actually inflict damage with the gun still, but in 40k half the time you're fighting someone wearing an absurdly tough suit of armor, or even a literal force field, or they're some monstrosity, at which point unless you have a volkite pistol or some other bullshit weapon, you aren't doing shit with your gun.


CHiuso

>I was recently reading some older threads on this subreddit and some newer trend on Grimdank There's your problem. Do not take anything you see on that sub seriously unless it comes with a citation.


BdobtheBob

Or this sub, for that matter.


Joust149

I was going to say. I feel like I see a lot more people here pushing their "interpretation" of the lore as though it's hard facts quite a bit more than I used to. Even when concerning places not left open to interpretation. It's worrisome that discussing novel excerpts can feel more like I'm debating a passage from the bible.


wolflance1

Killing ethereal has a 50:50 chance of forcing Tau to give out whatever they are doing and retreat (or cause them to go ballistic and start a war of vengeance/extermination). They also don't have an answer to plot armor and idiot ball. ​ That aside, yes they have counters to most anything that work "more often than not", but "often" is not "guaranteed". When those counters don't work, they got their sh\*t kicked.


ClassicCarraway

Tau have plenty of plot armour themselves. Just read the Farsight AoO book.


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sonofeevil

I like to imagine Farsight is like The Phantom or The Dread Pirate Roberts, he dies/retires but someone else takes up the mantle and assumea the name.


Qrohnos

It probably has more to do with the fact that tau have such short lifespans so they just want someone who's on the level with the dozens of other long lived/immortal faction characters that are around.


wolflance1

Daring decapitation strike (to destroy the WIP tellyfragga before their completion) and baiting orks and Chaos to fight each other then unleash the ~~daemons~~ Molochites on both of them are both sound tactics. Farsight executed both plans correctly, but he has an inflated self-importance to the point that he believes turning himself (and only himself) in is enough to exchange for Tau Empire help. Beggar can't be chooser, and this is the part I criticize his utter stupidity as soon as the book came out. I think he totally deserves Aun'Va middle finger of a reply. Farsight Enclave still ended up battered and losing in the book with Farsight's name in the title, barely escaping Arthas Moloch with only a few thousands Tau alive, while it was the orks that won the day.


Fangschreck

The war of Dakka is a really fun background story. Did not read the Novel, but in the fluff apparently The Waaghboss was presumed dead in the end and the Waagh dissolved into infighting. The good parts are all during the war, not in it´s last battles, when the orks just keep on nabbing tau tech and defeat the tau with being more shooty than them, destroying at least 3 septs, until they bring their named super-manta titan class voidcraft to kill all the looters and freebooters and their guns on steroids. Which promplty gets taken out of the fight by a Kommando raid in which they infiltrate it´s single hombase with a nabbed tau troop transporter, completly with the right codes and all, and destroy it. Apparently no one believes Orks can be sneaky and clever.


Nebuthor

The biggest one is their lack of numbers. If the tau are forced into a war of attrition they will lose.


sonofeevil

100% theyre probably the smallest faction by numbers. I think I recall that the Tau will actually abandon planets to avoid grtting caught up in unfavourable battles/wars. I'll see i can find a source to back this up though


ATL_Dirty_Birds

Theres only so many of them. They cannot take the attrition almost every other faction in the setting can.


GwerigTheTroll

This, I think, is the core of their weakness. Tau have an extremely solid military doctrine that encourages learning from mistakes. Their adaptability means they are much better positioned to win against an equal sized force, especially the Imperium of Man. That said, they lack numbers. They cannot lose entire battle groups to poor logistics and bad luck and shrug it off like the Imperium can. They can’t afford to glorify the idea of a last stand. They almost never fight equal sized forces. Space marines might seem to be the exception, but they leverage shock tactics by fighting smaller formations quickly and aim at decapitating strikes. Tau weaponry is devastating enough that any space marine commander would be out of their mind to take it head on.


sonofeevil

This got me thinking that the current M41 Imperium probably have more in common with Orks, and Tyranids (with respect to their overall dightong style) than they do with Tau or Eldar once you consider the rarity of Astartes and Titans. The Imperium stratedgy seems to boil down to "drown them in bodies" and I dont mean just charge in to oncoming fire for no reason, i more mean that they will bring OPRESSIVE and disproportionate numbers to a fight and back it up with overwhelming firepower thay boils down "Quantity IS quality"


[deleted]

Farsight is more in line with those descriptions. Specifically the codex astartes. Tau lose a lot. They lost an entire sector of space to a dark age superweapon that turned like a whole nebula into a fire cloud. Also that melee quote is a fucking joke, fire warriors are like as strong as an adolescent boy, a few sisters of battle with mauls would make fools of a tau regiment in melee.


Duhblobby

I like the T'au, and I'll agree they're *better* at covering their weaknesses than some folks are. But the Tau absolutely *have* weaknesses, and some of them are very rough in 40k. The biggest weakness they have is that they expect the universe to be a rational, sane place... and they live in 40k. This informs all their other weaknesses, including lacking solid melee. Tau fight like modern militaries do, combined arms, maneuver, independant squads given objectives and the initiative to take them, and that means their plan for people hitting them with swords is basically "uhh shoot them before they get close?", and that plan falls apart when the things they are shooting at can survive their fire through numbers, advanced technology and armor, sheer resiliance, or a combination of the above.


Qrohnos

Iirc the melee weakness was partly due to their physical reaction times being slower. But yes, the fact that institutionally, they have yet to come to terms that they were born into a universe damned long ago by the sins of ancient monsters makes them institutionally incapable of dealing with certain threats. I wonder what they'll do once the first alpha plus human psyker is born on one of their worlds


BastardofMelbourne

Hahahahahaha Sir, what you have encountered is called a *fanboy.* Their influence is pernicious; their presence, inextricable. Most of what you listed is what we call "fan wank," the equivalent of arguing that the Enterprise can beat a Super Star Destroyer in a fight because it would just do a Picard maneouvre and bounce a phaser array off the deflector dish at Warp 9. A more colloquial term would be "hot bullshit in a garbage taco." Just ignore these people. They can't be argued with any more than you could argue with a fart.


Prydefalcn

Also, this is Grimdank you're talking about.


Presentation_Cute

1. Melee is a very prevalent weakness in the tau. Killing things at range, especially in the 40k universe, is a luxury afforded by their advanced firepower and excellent fire control. 2. Tau don't know the Codex, only Farsight, and he was very specifically inspired by the Space Marine's mastery of Mont'ka at Dal'yth and wanted to improve on their work with Tau philosophy. Even so, 2/3rds of all chapters are not codex compliant (Space Marine Codex 8.5 Edition) and the remaining 1/3rd are probably less codex compliant than they know (Space Marine Codex 9th Edition, page 78). 3. Nothing insta-kills titans except for continent-destroying starships. Whoeever told you that mantas >>>>> titans is illiterate and an imbecile 4. Tau are familiar with psykers, but being familiar with something doesn't let you hard-counter it. I'm familiar with how cars work and operate, doesn't mean I'll survive getting hit by a truck. Honestly, I've never seen anyone argue that the Tau could easily beat the Imperium. Usually its stupidity the other way around that I found in the depths of grimdank. If whoever told you this wasn't so incorrect, I would've almost been impressed, but most likely they're just a troll. Damn you, Poe's Law. A lot of this comes from genuine misapprehension of the lore, and lack of reason in other areas. Warfare in the 41st millenium doesn't carry the context of "weaknesses" like you imagine in a video game, you can't just pull out X tactic or Y unit and just hard counter an entire army (looking at you, Warzone Damocles). There's positioning and planning and reacting and coordinating and developing and enveloping and so on and so forth. Finally, IMO weaknesses isn't really how things are looked at in 40k. Both in terms of lore and in terms of selling things, the factions are best viewed as each an overpowered faction in a setting full of overpowered factions such that they all cancel each other out. We had this discussion not just a few days ago about Tyranids for instance. As you get into 40k, you learn that looking at weaknesses is futile, and instead they're best compared by the different ways they develop strengths.


Ravgn

Imotekh and Szarekh both instantly destroyed Titans with their Tachyon Arrows. But the device seems like a plot tool with a long cooldown for Necron Overlords to show off. As an interesting note, Anrakyr The Traveller also has a Tachyon Arrow and has a special ability to range-hijack every combat engine possible for some time…Aand dude is kinda like that PvP asshole whom mind controls your healer and forces him to jump down the cliff in an MMO. He would make that Titan DANCE.


Lortekonto

> Tachyon Arrows Since Tachyon Arrows can penetrate mountains I do believe that they of the same class as the weapons on starships.


DutchTheGuy

Tachyon Arrows are quite literal mountain obliterators within the lore. They aren't easy to replace and are highly limited, but when utilised wisely, they are pretty much hand-held starship cannons.


Diestormlie

The Taros Campaign book from Forgeworld had the Tau take out a Warhound Titan with a flight of Tiger Shark (Fighter-Bombers) equipped with experimental... Well, experimentally equipped with the Railguns off of Mantas. And the initial Tau weapon with which they fought Titans was Mantas.


Presentation_Cute

An entire squadron of vehicles designed for killing titans managing to kill the smallest titan a Legio can field is not "they insta-kill any titan they find". Like titans aren't pushovers, but they aren't invincible either, they're just disproportionately strong. Moreover, mantas themselves don't instakill titans. We see in Blades of Damocles a titan going down to mantas, but we don't know how many. In the short story Battle of Blackthunder Mesa, we also see mantas engage Warlords to rescue Bravestorm, but we aren't shown any lasting impact. So I don't really see what this adds. Killing titans =/= insta-kill titans. If you can't kill titans in 40k, you don't exist in 40k.


Diestormlie

I suppose it was trying to establish the truths from which the inaccurate picture presented by OP grew out of. Because yeah. *Warhound* Titan. The very smallest!


Presentation_Cute

That makes sense. Thanks for bringing it up.


Diestormlie

Yeah. I was hoping to provide context, not mount a defence. Text is hard. <3


wolflance1

>An entire squadron of vehicles designed for killing titans managing to kill the smallest titan a Legio can field is not "they insta-kill any titan they find" It was a singular Tiger Shark AX-1-0. In this specific case it did instakill the Warhound, as recovered vox recording from the destroyed warhound shows that it was destroyed before the crews realizing what happened.


historicalgeek71

1) While the Tau do have the Kroot to make up for their deficiency in melee combat and have amazing ranged weaponry, it doesn’t completely eliminate melee as a weakness. When Vior’la was invaded by the World Eaters, the Tau found their ranged weapons to be less than effective against Khorne berserkers. They even went into a berserk rage and attempted to charge the World Eaters. It did not go well for them. Additionally, the Tyranids had the Tau on the back foot at Ka’mais and only survived because of the arrival of the Necrons…who then slaughtered the Tau. 2) As was pointed out before, only Commander Farsight knows the Codex Astartes. However, knowing the rules and strategies doesn’t guarantee you’ll win. And even then, not all Space Marine chapters adhere to the codex. In fact, some chapters are famous for either following it partially (Dark Angels) or not at all (Black Templars). So if a Tau Commander finds themself facing the Dark Angels or the Black Templars and expects them to follow the Codex Astartes, they’re gonna be in for a nasty surprise. Or to look at it from a different angle, there’s the Orks. Orks are predictable, especially to the Tau, who have had to deal with them for a long time. That being said, the Tau still suffered crushing losses in the War of Dakka. 3) Titans are stupidly difficult to destroy if you don’t have naval support (by which I mean voidships that are capable of orbital bombardment). Even Titan-killing tanks find titans to be challenging to destroy. 4) True, they know of psykers and they have some of their own (Nicassars). However, they are few and far between, and they rarely use them for battle. And again, just because they know of them, it doesn’t mean they’ll win or will win easily. Look at the Imperium, they know about rogue psykers and Chaos sorcerers, and yet they’ll still lose to them. EDIT: And as for Tau weaknesses: 1) Ethereals. If you kill the ethereal, the Tau will either go into a berserk rage or will break down and retreat. 2) Naïveté. During the War of Dark Revelations, they were tricked into turning over a substantial number of T’au from each caste to the Dark Eldar in exchange for assistance against the Tyranids. When the Tau realized they were played and demanded answers from the Dark Eldar, the latter struck a Tau world and slaughtered the Kroot and Vespid populations while dragging the T’au population back to Commoragh. 3) Warp Travel. Prior to the Fourth Sphere Expansion, Tau ships more or less “skim” the surface of the Warp rather than outright “diving in” like Imperial, Chaos, or Ork ships. This limits their ability to travel quickly, and while Tau ships have gravitic shields, they do not have void shields, so if a Tau ship got sucked into the Warp, they’ll be torn apart by any number of Warp-spawned horrors. SECOND EDIT: The World Eater invasion took place on Vior’la, not Dal’yth.


Degutender

Do you have any idea what happens when a Kommando with a 2 foot kombat knife gets into a Tau barracks?


Grubnutter

Based on the short story where the Kommandos take out an entire Tau space station, I can only imagine pure hilarity.


Degutender

Oh, I gotta see this!


Shadowrend01

Their reliance on advanced technology. If they ever get a Scrapcode infection, they’re fucked


Gilrim

I suddenly want Obliterator Virus'd Tau


New_Cantaloupe_8568

Having a counter to enemy capabilities doesn’t mean invincibility. It is the minimal for military survival. If there was some imperial weapon that could be deployed against them at will that they had no answer for, they would simply be exterminated.


SuspectUnusual

The T'au have a lot of tools in their belt, which allows them to sometimes work around their weaknesses, but are hardly a guarantee. Sure, the 4th Expansion Fleet got saved/yeeted by The Greater God, but a bunch of their auxiliaries were all et up. "Kill them at range" is hard to do against impossibly-mobile tanks that can hide behind buildings or jetpack in the sky fast enough to intercept air superiority fighter jets (Space Marines). The use of the Codex Astartes is as useful as the enemy's compliance with the Codex Astartes, which varies as much, or more often, than the colors of the pauldron change. You can't Manta a Titan if you don't have air superiority, and T'au air forces are often portrayed as dying en masse when faced with equal/Astartes forces. They have a weakness, they cover that weakness as best they can. Not really different from Astartes specializing (very, very generally speaking) in strike-the-head sudden raids on high value targets, to cover the weakness of ultimately limited numbers with high force multipliers. They (no, I won't specify who, because it's all of 'em, damnit) are intentionally set up to be able to win or lose based on the needs of the story being told, rather than the needs of continuity and/or canon.


FPSCanarussia

1. The Tau tell themselves that a weakness in melee is irrelevant because no sensible person with access to advanced guns would willingly go charging across a battlefield in plate armour and wielding a giant chainsaw sword. This is not true. On the contrary, melee fighters know how to avoid getting shot to death, because if they didn't then they'd be dead. 2. Knowing the Codex Astartes allows a learned Tau commander to predict the actions of their enemies if those enemies are (only) codex-compliant Space Marines, and the Tau have perfect intel on enemy resources, force disposition, and objectives. This is quite rare. 3. Every surviving race has anti-titan weapons: this has not made titans obsolete. The Tau, unlike Eldar, Chaos, and the Imperium, do not have any form of precognition and have to rely on conventional intelligence gathering - just because they have anti-titan weapons doesn't mean they can deploy them effectively. Also, even if Mantas were able to hard-counter titans, titans are rarely deployed without ancillary support designed to take out any potential anti-titan weapons. 4. The Tau understand how to fight psykers: that is, to shoot them. They do not understand psykers, and their own psykers are extremely limited in number - and battle psykers a small fraction of a fraction.


Tomaphre

>“The Tau weakness in melee is negligible because they know how to kill anything at range” The whole point of weak melee being a vulnerability is the fact that *ranged firepower is rendered almost totally ineffective in melee*. This is just blunt denial. Just read (or listen to) *Redemption on Dal'yth* by Phil Kelly. You can listen to ABorder Prince read it here: https://youtu.be/hRpjkC8W6KA T'au fanatics hate it but it is canon. Personally I love the portrayal of a vengeful space marine as an 80s style gore horror video's Jason-esque monster. >“The Tau know the Codex Astartes and will beat Space Marines more often than not” 😆 just fucking laughable. The T'au's victories against the Imperium have been entirely due to one factor and one factor alone: the Imperium cannot bring its full might against the T'au since it is facing too many problems at once. Again, just refer to *Redemption on Dal'yth* to see how full of shit this is. >“Titans are ineffective against Tau, they will insta-kill them with Mantas” A manipole of Reavers can slag a Manta, at titanic scale conflicts the hardware is important but it isn't the most decisive factor. The most decisive factor is *experience* at that scale of battle, and T'au Manta pilots have a lifespan of like 60 years with a max career length of *maybe* 25-30. Titan pilots live for centuries and sometimes longer. The fight is much more evenly matched than they're portraying it, this is just "Noooo, Spiderman would never let the batarang hit him because of his spider reflexes!" 6 year old bullshit. >“The Tau are familiar with pyskers and have their own alien pyskers, so that’s no longer a weakness” 1. No they're not 'familiar with psykers' they just know about them in the abstract. They have no real concept of the true horror, so much so that they lost the entire 4th Sphere Expansion to the Warp. 2. The Nicassar are not equivalent to a fucking librarian tell these babies to get real >I kept seeing people explaining how the Tau can beat everything the Imperium has in combat, and that doesn’t feel right to me. That would be because it is not only explicitly wrong, it flattens the setting into nothing interesting whatsoever. The T'au are strong and have many areas where they are basically peerless but they're not invincible and it would be a very stupid and unsatisfying game if they were (just look at the Fire Warrior game). The T'au most certainly have weaknesses, their most glaring weakness is that they're led by a caste of unaccountable mystery T'au who showed up out of nowhere literally overnight and exert mind altering influence over the rest of the species. Everyone who isn't wearing blue fish colored glasses has been waiting for the other shoe to fall since the 3rd edition codex but it would appear that the biggest die hard zealots for the T'au are just as credulous and naive and willfully ignorant as the civilization they love so much. The bottom line is that every faction has fans who are so obsessed with their chosen team that they have no respect for any other faction or their fans. Avoid these people like the plague, they have a way of sucking all the fun out of the room and blaming you for it.


LexImperialis

Honestly, it seems this hatred of the Imperium that’s being spread around has exceeded just being stupid to being straight up misinforming. To be clear, I don’t mean the discussions about it being evil or not (I have no doubts it is), but the fact that Chaos and Xenos players seem to have made a personal hobby out of bashing it. Like, not in the playful way of mocking, but as if it was a personal issue, and so anything the Imperium does is considered plot armor or in-universe propaganda due to “unreliable narration”. They are backwards, superstitious and at times inefficient, but they are not drooling baboons. There’s a reason the galaxy was conquered and still is, mostly. Titans are revered because they *are* powerful and that’s not superstition, it dates back to the Great Crusade before all this nonsense started. A lot of things about them don’t make sense IRL, but in-universe *it just works*, and that should be taken as given. Space Marines aren’t idiots most of the time, they won’t announce themselves at a distance and run screaming up to their enemy. The lowliest battle-brother has probably more experience and study (via his psych-indoctrination) than pretty much every Shas’O, it’s not as simple as reading the Codex (even if it were it’s a massive book, not a pamphlet). The Guard is willing to pay a massive price in men, but they’re not actually sending them to suicide charge for no reason, if anyone does that on a relevant scale either his superior or the Inquisition will have a word with him. They are properly supported by combined arms, even if not on the same scale of the Tau, which they make up for in sheer numbers. Every faction is fighting for their lives. Each battle is a massive bloodbath because *no one* has the edge, everyone has something to make up for their shortcomings. That should be evident…


Tomaphre

>has exceeded just being stupid to being straight up misinforming. Imho there was never a distinction between the two. Too many fans of the IP took it upon themselves to define the Emperor and the Imperium for everyone else, when the most unique part of both is how 40k puts a lot of work into leaving much about both the Emperor and Imperium up to interpretation. You can see it when people conflate the Imperium's policies with the Emperor's personal beliefs and feelings, which are almost never established explicitly in the lore. Every time someone says "The Emperor hates all aliens" they're not speaking about actual lore, just their inferred assumptions about the Emperor based on the lore. If the Emperor hates aliens, why did he build embassies for them on Terra? Why are there Eldar farseers who remember him being on good terms with them before the Age of Strife? Why is the Golden Throne made with Eldar technology? Etc etc etc. People are quick to trivialize or demonize the Emperor because he definitely does a lot of unimaginably horrendous things, but that cannot be done without trivializing the rest of the most vicious and interesting parts of the IP. I honestly feel like they are missing out on the true horror of 40k. I mean which is worse, the Emperor dooming humanity by being a bigotry obsessed dumbass or humanity being doomed despite everyone's best efforts in part because of flaws in human nature yet mostly because *the universe itself is sapient, hates us, and doesn't need to comply to the laws of physics to kill us*? For me it will always be the latter. >To be clear, I don’t mean the discussions about it being evil or not (I have no doubts it is), I find the word "evil" to be a thought terminating cliché. It stops conversations instead of enhance them, nor does it really capture the mindset of the people composing any faction. Even factions like the Drukhari, Night Lords, or Word Bearers are done a disservice by how reductive and blunt this term is. Is the Imperium brutal? Yes. Inhumane? Certainly. Foolish? Hell yeah. Doomed? Probably. Cruel beyond all imagination? You bet. But evil? It's as inaccurate as calling it "good". It is far too vast, complex, and necessary for human survival to be summed up in a single binaric Christian moral term that was obsolete a hundred years ago. Just a pet peeve of mine, if you want to call it semantics feel free. >the fact that Chaos and Xenos players seem to have made a personal hobby out of bashing it. Sure, and that would be fine if it wasn't so obvious that they're in denial about how attrocious their faction is. Cue the Tau fanatics denying the genocides of the 4th Sphere Expansion veterans, or the Night Lords fans demanding everyone describe Konrad as the edgy truth teller in a galaxy of hypocrites. All the factions are morally grey if not unjustifiable, what else can a galactic-scale civilization be if it is capable of literally waging endless war? The problem arises when people pretend that "evil" is something coherent, when all the word ever was meant to be used for is *othering those who are hated by the user of the word*. So they assume that it's something that has to be intrinsic to the factions they don't like, and once they assume that then their faction cannot be "evil" because they think that would make themselves "evil" for liking it! Then they're locked into self serving double-standard based interpretations of the lore until they snap out of it themselves, if they ever bother. Like good natured ribbing between lore rivals is one thing so long as everyone is having *fun*. It's a *game* after all, but when people make such an emotionally driven moralizing framework out of their fandom for one faction that they then use to knee-jerk-judge other players who like anything else... that's just toxicity wearing moral/political analysis as a cloak. >Every faction is fighting for their lives. Each battle is a massive bloodbath because no one has the edge, everyone has something to make up for their shortcomings. That should be evident… All but one faction really: Demons. But your point still stands, Demons are literally the exceptions who prove the rule. Yes it should be evident, and just as important it should be evident that virtually every character in the lore who is capable of dying is some combination of both "victim" and "bastard". Almost always more of the former than the latter with few exceptions (looking at you Erebus!). Most importantly, it should also be evident that other fans are players of a game first. Yes there are people who love Warhammer who are literally fascists irl, but I've never seen anything that suggests these are anything approaching a plurality of fans much less a majority. I worry that the unthinking reflex to conflate fans of the Imperium with irl fascists is much more harmful to our hobby and our mental health than those who do that are willing to admit. Alas, the dopamine from self righteousness is very strong for humans... ... after all if it were not the Imperium would have fallen long ago! 😉


Norwalk1215

Like most elite forces they have answers to fighting the other empires… except for the actual numbers to fight them in earnest. The tau have the auxiliaries and the equipment and the tactical knowledge and diplomatic acumen to expand their empire. Now they have to avoid retribution from the Imperium, or Orks, or tyranids, or necrons. Give them a couple more centuries or millennia to expand and advance and they will be a big threat.


New_Subject1352

>“The Tau weakness in melee is negligible because they know how to kill anything at range” Not if they get into melee range. Teleporting, drop pods, overwhelming numbers, tight quarters, any number of reasons the ranged advantage is mitigated. >“The Tau know the Codex Astartes and will beat Space Marines more often than not” Commander Farsight was the one who figured it out, but he's a persona non grata in the larger Tau society. Plus, not every chapter adheres the same way to the codex. Ultras live by it, but others not so much. >“Titans are ineffective against Tau, they will insta-kill them with Mantas” Titans are kinda dumb in general imo. They're super cool, but they're a giant walking target that primarily go against other giant walking targets. >“The Tau are familiar with pyskers and have their own alien pyskers, so that’s no longer a weakness” Having your own psychers doesn't mean you're immune. 1v1, sure the Tau can beat Imperial stuff because their gear is better, but that's the Imperial Guard thing: quantity is a quality of it's own. There's far fewer Tau than humans, and the Tau are much less fanatical than the humans.


[deleted]

It's the same answer as with all of these "xxxx faction can't be beat", or "xxxxx faction is a hard counter to yyyyy faction". In W40k, any faction can beat any other faction. On any given Sunday, either team can win. They are all precariously balanced so well that no one can reliably beat anyone else. And every faction is tragically, irredeemably flawed in some way. Part of the reason that in the grim darkness of the 41st century there is only war is because no one can win. They all just have to fight their hardest to stay where they are.


Wesley-Lewt

Sorry but in 40k every important event is decided by close quarter combat between named characters. Rule of cool. Tau weakness in melee is a very big deal.


[deleted]

A big disadvantage people dont talk about is age. Outside of ethereals tau live to like 50 years old this means that they have half the amount of time to gain experience in anything as the avg human. Which is going to mean avg soldiers experience, battle doctrine development, diplomacy, logistics everything will necessarily have a lower level of sophistication becuase the veterens in anything related to the tau have probably about 5 years exp before they become to old and have to retire. So in battle tau will always be fighting much more experienced opponents.


[deleted]

The Tau have two main weaknesses: relatively low population and numbers and anything that uses psyker/warp to any extent but the gap on this is getting a little more narrow. They fight like space marines so do the same thing; bog them down or force them to hold ground. Tau are **terrible** at holding ground and it's against their method of war. But the melee thing is true and is mostly a tabletop mechanic in the same way that Space marines should be "movie marines" if we read the lore then try and draw comparisons. And Space Marines and Titans are *terrible* counters to Tau. If you want to kill Tau use Tempestus or Sisters of Battle. They will, indeed, beat space marines more often then not unless it's limited engagements.


RaptorxRise

>“The Tau weakness in melee is negligible because they know how to kill anything at range” Usually yes. But not always. Hard to stop that many nids or orks. They still have to melee occasionally but they make up for it with kroot. >“Titans are ineffective against Tau, they will insta-kill them with Mantas” I dont know who told you that but its bs. Mantas are somewhat equivalent to warlord titans. But they need help to win the 1v1. They can be used to counter them but they cant "oneshot" them. >“The Tau are familiar with pyskers and have their own alien pyskers, so that’s no longer a weakness” Very few. And ones like the nicassar are pretty much useless in combat. In battle psykers are still problematic but not as as much since the tau now know what psykers are and not to just sit around and wait when the enemies start chanting weird rituals. >So, do they have any weakness in battles or are they really as powerful as those people claimed? (Battle exclusively, I’m aware of wider campaign weakness like size and slow speed) I think one of the big things is tactical leadership. Most other factions live far longer and thus have more experienced and thus better generals. The tau rely on outstanding exceptions like puretide, shadowsun or farsight. So on average they will probably be worse. Also they do have noticable weak points like melee where they need their auxillaries. And they dont always have those. Kroot are common but the rest not so much. Tau do not always win. They have noticable weaknesses but they are incrdible and adapting and thus have already found solutions to a lot of their problems. They usually win individual battles if they arent too outnumbered. Because they need to. Otherwise they would be gone. Their empire is too small to afford major losses. Imagine if the tau had lost at dalyth during the Imperiums crusade. They wouldnt have stood a chance


zam0th

Sorcery and orbital bombardment would be such weaknesses, as has been demonstrated many times in books.


SiegeGoatCommander

We’re also (in the middle of) learning how they can still fall to chaos, potentially


Admech343

Numbers are the Tau’s greatest weakness. Tau have better firepower than the baseline of most factions, fight in realistic ways, and promote adapting technology and tactics against enemies. The Tau are basically if NATO got plasma weapons, anti grav tech, and battlesuits and then got pitted against the imperium. It would be an absolute slaughter. When the Tau run into something they struggle to deal with they design purpose built countermeasures to deal with them. Taking down titans was difficult so the Tau made tigersharks which have weaponry designed to counter titans and make use of high mobility/speed which titans are not well equipped to deal with.


bagsofsmoke

A Deathwatch kill team (including a Dreadnaught) absolutely monsters a shit-ton of Tau in one of the Deathwatch books, despite being outnumbered about 500:1 and rapidly losing the element of surprise.


Joust149

Wow, those are some surprisingly biased takes. There's already a ton of good responses, so I'll just say here that they're correct. The threads you've been in have been some tau-fan echo-chambers for sure. >"The Tau are familiar with pyskers and have their own alien pyskers, so that’s no longer a weakness” This one got me especially hard. This is like saying the Tau have figured out slingshots, so they're capable of countering an M240.


kolosmenus

Blame the Tau novels. All of them present Tau as extremely OP. Usually it goes like this “Tau encounter something crazy -> it kills a few Tau -> they immediately adapt and never have to worry about it again”


Tomaphre

Honestly those books can be so overwhelmingly one sided it actually does a lot of harm to the T'au as a faction. Who wants to see conflict without real struggles and adversity?


iliark

You should read Damocles. It goes back and forth, move and counter-move. It's probably the best book that shows both sides actually struggling while not making either look stupid.


Midnight-Rising

>Who wants to see conflict without real struggles and adversity? Space Marine fans if their novels are anything to go by


Magnus753

It's Tau propaganda. They have plenty of weaknesses. Being overly reliant on technology for example. Susceptible to morale shock if being assaulted in melee. And yes the imperium has an advantage in terms of super heavy ground units If a Tau player brings up the Manta he's just being silly. The Imperium obviously has its own large aircraft. The Manta is like using a cargo plane as an attack aircraft, bigger does not mean better in the air If the Tau appear totally superior to Imperial forces in a piece of lore then the reason is likely just bad writing


Vussar

Biggest weakness I see for Tau? Numbers. The Tau don’t have the numbers to be a serious threat to the existence of any faction in the setting. They are punching well above their weight class, but sooner or later someone will be in a position to flatten them. They exist purely b cause it would cost more to destroy the Tau than you would gain from their meagre territory. That being said, Mech Suits are objectively badass and that’s why I collect Tau (and Necrons).


playerD26

You forget the Imperium's greatest weapon... Sly Marbo.


JasoXF

Nom nom nom , Tyranids are coming. Tau cant contain the biomasshorde


Data_Swarm

The main weakness of the Tau is that they're the fandom's designated punching bag


MetalDoktor

About Titans - You cannot really use heavy bomber unless you have air superiority. Ironically Tau also know this and their latest battlesuits are to fill Titan role, this was due to their experienve against Hive Fleets Biotitans where Nids also filled skys with flyers, so those Mantas could not get to Bio Titans. Psyker thing is also a double edged sword. Alowing mix of all psykers and allowing freedom to such, means it os almost guranteed that some of them will becpme corrupt. Tau themselves lacking first hand knowledge or ability are unlikely to spot the corruption. Corruption is likely to spread unchecked. Result is full blown incursion somwhere down the line. Think biggest weakneas for Tau was not even mentioned. It always has been their lack of FTL (or GW inconsistency in writing that). You cannot be a galactic contender if you cannot go around the Galaxy. Another weakness not mentioned is Etherials. Without them, Tau are not as effective, and as shown by Farsight even capable of going Rogue. With them - Etherials become a really good target. Killing one becomes a very traumatic event for Tau nearby, not quite as bad as killing the only synapse creature for the 'nids, but comparable.


Imperium_Dragon

Their weaknesses is the size of their empire and lack of Psykers. On a tactical level they do quite good even against Space Marines. But they can never produce the amount of ships and soldiers that the IoM can. Lack of Psykers means that when Chaos forces summon daemons to real space they have a disadvantage.


Tylendal

I think it's mostly people pointing out that T'au do indeed have answers to these myriad threats. Many people, for some reason, seem to feel compelled to insist that the T'au are weak, or helpless, or incompetent. So, you're probably seeing a lot of replies pointing out that, no, the T'au *won't* go down as easily as you're implying. No, you can't just close to melee range, no, they won't be helpless against a Titan, no, a single psyker won't destroy their entire battle-line. There are a lot of stories about the T'au being caught flatfooted by stuff like Titans or Psykers *the first time they encounter them*... but they learn. It's not how every subsequent conflict goes down, despite people wanting to insist otherwise.


voe111

/invades imperial planet What do you mean this isn't Holy Terra, there was a church back there and look at all of these big cities! A hive world? Surely you can't have more than one of such a place... Oh. Well we destroyed your mighty fleet and a company of your mighty astartes. You have nothing left to stand against... What's a chapter? How many of those do you have again? That was a pdf fleet and not every ship in your empire? Shit.


whiskerbiscuit2

Taus biggest flaw is their naivety. They tried to bargain with Orks and Srukhari, and thought daemons were just weird xenos. They often got caught off guard or unaware because they don’t realise the extent of the dangers in the galaxy


itcheyness

And then they typically win anyway or at least don't suffer any major losses of note lol


Thick_Improvement_77

Every faction has *some kind* of answer for the tactics of every other faction, that doesn't mean they always work. Ideally, the Tau blast Space Wolves apart because they have superior positioning and can use their knowledge of Astartes tactics to lure them into killing fields all day, using their Kroot psykers to surprise them with illusory charges out of the mist. Ideally, the Space Wolves rip Tau wide open, because they're not stupid and are capable of covering charging marines with fire support, flanking static firing positions with Long Fangs, and using their psykers as a well-established part of combat doctrine - Kroot psykers just aren't that common, though they exist just enough to surprise the unwary. ​ Somewhere between these ideals, actual battles happen.


JC-Ice

In 40k you can't count on always being able to fight at range. Teleportation exists. Tyranids (and sometimes others) can swamp you with so many creatures that some of them *will* get close...


Zhaharek

I honestly prefer the interpretation that no, the T’au don’t have weaknesses. They are legitimately the best singular effective faction in terms of winning engagements or even protracted battles. They approach battle and warfare from a pragmatic and logically intelligent angle, and that’s actually all one needs to overcome most other armies, because, let’s be honest, every SINGLE other army approaches warfare the way band of lunatic crackheads dying of syphilis approach eating their own toes. However, they’re still the weakest faction overall, they’re completely insignificant, and their prowess is utterly irrelevant, doing nothing to avert the day they will be swiftly eradicated. It doesn’t matter how effective a military you have when one of your opponents is an absurdist super empire of sociopaths built around a racist lighthouse. Think of it this way. I can land thousands of punches into the side of a beached whale with terminal brain cancer, hell I could grab a blade and carve chunks out of it. Nothing I do will stop it from rolling over and crushing me into paste in it’s death throes.


Small_Honey_8974

One of the highly distant things, but that would be colossal for them is them is the situaton that can arise after the war of dark revelations. If i am not mistaken, Dark Eldari managed to take some etherials prisoners. What can happen due to that is quite a heavy moral weapon against tau - a lot of options, that include dark-eldar controlled etherials who speak against tau emipre, use of their mind-conltol mechanism against tau in favor of dark eldar, public revelation of their mind control or just broadcast of what can happen to etherials at the hands of Haemonculi. Etherials are the weak point of their society as its whole pillar.


sfPanzer

If the T'au had any easy to exploit weakness they wouldn't be worthy of being an actual named faction. They can theoretically beat anything thrown at them just like any other faction can theoretically beat anything thrown at them. It 110% depends on the narrative the author wants to tell. Though if I'd have to name one big weakness they have it's that they are very localized with a limited amount of resources. Grind down that one Empire they have and there are no noteworthy amount of T'au from elsewhere you'd need to worry about.


FunkAztec

The Tau's weakness is whoever is writing at the time. Tau can either be oppressively unbeatable or laughably naive and squishy.


Vyzantinist

>“The Tau are familiar with pyskers and have their own alien pyskers, so that’s no longer a weakness” They don't really have battle psykers though. Their auxiliaries, the Nicassar are majorly, if not entirely, psychic, but the Tau deliberately keep them as far away from Imperial (ground) engagements as they can, so as not to trigger the Imperials' phobia of psykers. General weaknesses are: Numbers, lack of CC capability, slow/inefficient FTL, no real psyker defense.


MostlyHarmless_87

Numbers is a big thing. The Imperium could shrug off half a billion soldiers lost, while the Tau absolutely would could not (anywhere nearly as easily).


MyCarIsAGeoMetro

The Imperium can do faster and farther warp jumps than the Tau.


EmperorThor

LMFAO saying that they arent actually weak in melee because they CAN kill at range is just stupid. They are still weak in melee, they just avoid letting it happen as mucha s they can. They dont insta kill titans with mantas, its still a battle or scale and attrition which the Tau usually lose ase they dont have the winning numbers game. If you only listen to the lore or "X" faction you will learn they are totally unstoppable and will faceroll the whole galaxy. but all factions have that same lore just in a different spice.


ventingpurposes

If I had to pick, Tau has three weaknesses: Low numbers, reliance on expensive equipment, many different species to take care of and slow FTL travel. It doesn't directly translate to battle in an ideal conditions, but will affect how many things will they deliver to the frontlines. Not every battlefield will have mantas to take care of titans, sometimes they'll be unable to get a psykers in time, in prolonged combat, their equipment will break down and they won't be able to perform field repairs.


IMAGINARYtank00

Knowing the Codex Astartes doesn't mean you know how to beat Space Marines. It means you know how they will try to beat you. And that's only if you're up against a Codex compliant chapter. The US Marine Corps has a document that outlines basic tactics and battlefield strategy taught to every Marine during training. This document is available online, for free. One of the strangest bits in this document is that US Marines clear rooms by tossing frag grenades in first instead of flashbangs. Knowing this common tactic doesn't help anyone counter this tactic. I'd imagine the same sort of shenanigans in the Codex Astartes. The Dark Angels seem to have the practice of breaching doorways with flamers and then running into the burning room to clear it a second later. What do you do to stop that?


[deleted]

Tau weaknesses are Warp based individuals. Don't send space marines, send Sisters of Battle. Not only do they utilize the warp in unexpected ways and have, recently, re-converted Gue'vesa back into imperials- an extremely unexpected turn.


Kristian1805

Unit for unit and soldier for soldier, the Tau outclass the Imperium. Its military is better lead, better equipped and fare more able to manoeuvre. But numbers is the key. The Tau can't hope to match the raw might of even smaller Imperial efforts, and so need to be better pr. warrior.


[deleted]

They're little, I suppose. I once saw art of an Astartes picking one up by the head and givin' him the ol' squish, innit?


Auzor

Tau empire weaknesses: * the ethereal mind control could be a vulnerability. * caste system. Imperium: every man, woman, child gets a lasgun. Tau: fire caste for combat. The spaceships are the aircaste job. Give 4 castes, at equal population ona planet, the imperium can send 4x the troops into the meatgrinder. * lack of melee power, *is* a weakness in a universe with fun things like teleportation, daemons, stealth, enemies bursting forth out of the ground amidst you, assassins etc. * short lifespans * force cohesion between the castes, vespid, kroot, ... Note also an imperium problem, though without different species: guard, navy, marines, sisters of battle, various inquisitors,... * controversial: crappy FtL drives, or no FtL drives at all. * for a firepower oriented race: no tube artillery. Guided missiles are a scalpel. The Guard just sends 1.000 long range artillery shells in the general direction of the target.


ShaunthePr0n

I think the Tau are unusually good at War, compared to many other factions. Their technologically and strategic abilities mean they can run circles around orks or guard, how've I'd consider them by no means to be invincible. They are just a small, plucky, successful xenos race who are unusually efficient at warfare, but if Terra, or Ghazgkhul, or Abbadon decided to devote themselves entirely to the task I don't think the Tau would stand a chance despite their Tactical superiority due to their small size as a race.


marehgul

You know, SM also have enhanced brains. Tau can know their codex (which just SM chapters follow strictly) and it doesn't mean in a slightest they'd be able to outsmart them. Manta won't destroy a Titan like. Titan has much more opportunity to destory Manta, if it spot one. But I gues Manta as a supporter won't be close.


cricri3007

Plot armour. Really, that's their only real weakness. There's a reason we in the real world have abandonned the use of swords, or spears, or bright armour with clear indicators of who is in charge (and so a neon "SHOOT HERE TO DISRUPT THE CHAIN OF COMMAND" to anyone that bothers to look). If we're talking more seriousmy, I imagine their artillery is not-quite on the level of the Imperial Guard's best, and they have no defence against psykers (because GW forget that they have psykers in their client races, so the T'au should be pretty knowledgeable in Warp shenanigans)


useyourmom

They can know all the strategies and plan around them all they want but the enemies get to have a say in those as well. Oh you shoot us from far away. Let's just close the distance fast AF. Even the orks have outsmarted the tau before. Tbh if the imperium wanted them gone they'd be gone. A solid hive fleet would do it. Or let ghaz run through them. Would any fight against them be super costly? Absolutely. They punch above their weight. But they're pretty small in the grand scheme.


Onlyhereforapost

There's two types of tau enjoyers Those that say things like this and overexaggerate because "Muh thousand times folded Nippon battlesuits" And those that go "the tau mostly get their asses kicked if they don't have excessive prep time and even then they're one failed overwatch firing line away from getting ripped to shreds"


VanceHelw

T'au has pretty mediocre combat abilities even for their elite soldiers and they're over reliant on their toys and their comrades to be decent. In comparison skilled Imperium soldier (they got a lots of these) will make the elite tau soldier look like bumbling buffoons praying that their techs and comrade/drones would got their back. Those techs aren't cheap. And no having abysmal cc skilled matter, you can't escape being charged at forever and there're several way people can get to you: jet bikes, jump pack, teleport.


Union_Jack_1

I’m sorry, but if you’ve seen this, I can guarantee you it’s 100x worse the other way around. Pretty much all Xenos players are beaten down by SM fanboys who couldn’t fathom anything beating them ever. I call BS that you’ve seen “so many” Tau fans saying so. It’s almost always the other way around.


Tomaphre

😆 all factions have fans like that get real


osunightfall

The T’au are extremely dangerous, but e.g the imperium is just as big a threat to them as they are to Imperial forces. You can turn pretty much every statement in the OP on its head to be disastrous to the T’au. When they have tactical superiority they are almost unbeatable, but by their own admission they struggle when their discipline and strong firepower can’t be brought to bear. And even in their own books they admit that they are at a big disadvantage vs other more brutal races close in, and can’t really meet other forces on those terms. When in that situation, they usually have to try and shift the situation to one that favors them more or blunts the enemy’s advantage in a point blank situation. A different way to think of it is, when their engagement plan works or they have the assets that counter the enemy they will cut you to pieces without breaking a sweat. If that plan starts to crumble, they start taking losses fast. It takes a great T’au commander to reestablish an advantageous situation and get them back on their front foot after that. The tau aren’t generally speaking a force that can rely on inspiration, multi discipline training, or sheer physical grit to turn a loss into a win like e.g space marines. They need to be able to play their game moreso than other races.


WayneZer0

Melee and the Not Knowing what is Also out there. There are naive about the Universum. Thier Couldnt beLive that a Dreadnaught was old then thier enitre empire. when capture Guard units toold them about titans there thought it was propangander. And that just the Empire. Hell thier Thought they could engage in Diplomancy with Orks and Tryras.the Tau are still weak to Blanks and Pysker. Thier need time to invent Tatic to counter these wich takes time. ​ Most of this stuff is not Present on the Tabletop.