As of the second Damocles Crusade the Imperium has designated the Water caste as a primary threat above any other Tau caste, as their subterfuge, diplomacy and propaganda has cost the Imperium more worlds and manpower than the Fire and Air caste's military prowess combined, and they even managed to totally outplay the Inquisition on its own field, which royally pissed them off. The most obvious example of this is that they always, under whatever circumstance, field infantry in simple combat armour rather than some sort of battlesuit - its only advantage is having less bulk, as the Tau have a reason not to build larger transports to cope with the shitloads of battlesuits they could deploy instead. Even the last reason alone is enough to avoid close combat, seeing as Some people think Tau military doctrine has been hit hard with the same For fluff reasons which have never been explained (the crunch reason is obvious), they have the same motif as every other army of equipment often being more valuable than the person wielding it, leading to most personnel being fielded with "inferior" equipment. Humans must be in physical contact with an Ethereal or perhaps subjected to heavy doses of the pheromone in other ways to be sufficiently affected but aliens are affected merely by being in the vicinity of an Ethereal. The Tau's naiveté might seem at odds with the GRIMDARK-ness of the setting (and to a degree, a lot of it is), but the thing is, Games Workshop specifically plays this straight FOR the grimdark and knows that the seeming futility of the Tau's optimism only further accentuates the general hellishness of the rest of the galaxy - and dear god do they play this up for maximum effect. The Tau that survived, however, were acting weird. The Tau likely practice economy of force, which has consequences both on and off the battlefield. 1 Sol/Sun; 2 Mercury; 3 Venus; 4 Earth/Holy Terra; 5 Luna/Moon; 6 Mars/Sacred Mars; 7 Jupiter; 8 Saturn; 9 Uranus; 10 Neptune; 11 Pluto; Sol/Sun .

Au'taal has a big fucking pile of guns, because defending old people is important and shit, and the fruits harvested from here tend to be used to trade with other races. Like Imperial Japan they're a young power situated in the east, relatively far from most of their possible rivals' centres of power. the 1D4chan tau tactics page says longstrikes exemplar ability works on him after an FAQ but i cannot figure out how they worked that one out. From 1d4chan. T'au from here contrast with Bork'an, mostly by being the guys who go One of the more derp stories for the T'au involve Vior'la and some World Eaters.

Their superiors pick their breeding partners (the Tau get NO input into this) and the couple basically spends a few days off from work screwing around before going their separate ways to never see each other again. Putting it simply, there's an ongoing joke that the Tau are some of the most successful trolling performed in the history of mankind just by The combination of the above fluff, however, paired with their highly advanced technology, generally "Asian" feel (their Fire Caste's combat doctrine is often reminiscent of Sun Tzu's "And again in a case of much cultural confusion, the Tau are often considered Even then, the Tau has more in common with the Imperium than the noblebright space hippie Feds; they adhere to a highly strict doctrine of eugenics, as To double the weebiness but to greatly decrease the communism connection, the Tau are remarkably similar to war-time era Imperial Japan.