Warhammer 40k Dawn of War. Let's talk about the Tau.

Once again, here I am talking about fictional races in a video game that's based in a tabletop game about death and war and just like the last time I'm too lazy to post more than one of these in the same week.

Today's episode was going to be about the Chaos Space Marines, because they're the "rivals" of the normal Space Marines and because they finish the story of the Emperor and his sons i was talking about in the last episode.

And I say was because I had already started writing stuff about them but before I could take some pictures of their stronghold, my eternal enemy decided to visit those guys before I did and kill them. So yeah, no edgy space marines today, will have to start a new game and try to kill them instead.

Now, why start a new game you ask? Why not load a previous save? Because I am absolutely livid right now and must unleash my virtual anger upon my enemy.

So instead of talking about Chaos we'll talk about my mortal enemies: the blueberries space communists The Tau.

_{i hate them so much}

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DISCLAIMER: Warhammer 40k has some good amount of blood and violence, if you don't like these things I recommend you stop reading from here, this one also has some foul language so you've been warned.

Who are the Tau?

Before we go any further let me just be clear on something, I don't hate the Tau, I just don't like them very much...

_{The blueberries in question shooting things. Called blueberries because their skin is blue.}

Hoo boy, let me be honest with you, writing about Tau is a complicated thing because they’re a… “difficult” subject in the fandom. I had to rewrite this post a couple of times because it felt like I was bashing the Tau too much.

Let’s just say not all of the fanbase likes these guys, it probably has to do with how they were handled during their release (because they’re not one of the original races in 40k).

The Tau are a relatively young, hopeful race of blue-ish fish people with horse feet (yes that’s the best description I can give) whose main focus is that they like to spread the message of the “Greater Good” to all who are willing (and unwilling) and also that they’re one of the few races that hasn’t lost most of its technology.

The… disgust or animosity aimed at them comes from the fact that while the entire setting has races that completely fit the “grimdark” theme, the Tau are the least grim or dark of them all. It’s a known fact that life in the Tau Empire is better than in the Imperium of Man (the actual protagonists of the setting), simply because these guys won’t throw you in a suicide mission in the name of the Emperor (like the Imperial Guard do) and that their goal is to simply do things for the good of their society rather than the good of a single group of individuals (which makes people say they’re space communists).

Another reason for people to not like them is how, when they first appeared in the lore and had their initial fights, they simply stomped anything and anyone who decided to fight them, people then complained that it only happened because the commanding officers of the opposite faction suddenly forgot how to lead… and so on…

For some reason, fans of the Tau like to draw them as highly attractive females with large breasts, despite the fact they look like fish people, and that they lack breasts.

...

Let’s just… talk about what they actually do, okay? They’re the technologically advanced faction; they have mech suits, they have stealth suits, they have mech suits with railguns installed, basically, your normal sci-fi faction with actual technology.

_{This was supposed to be a picture of how cool their vehicles looked.}

How these guys play?

As for how they play, they’re like the space marines, in that every unit focuses specifically on doing something. Their main gimmick is that they can’t fight in melee range so they’re screwed if the enemy gets too close.

Have a look at their "Hero Unit" Shas'O Kais, who is apparently a reference to another Tau character in a different game.

_{He's like a magikarp in that he's useless at first but then evolves into a monstrous thing.}

As you can see, even their commander seems to lack the weaponry to fight in melee (at first).

To fight this, they have several units that can do the melee for them, at the cost of not being able to shoot stuff; the “Kroot” as they call them are a… sub-race that is part of the Tau Empire, they’re just as important as your normal squad of Tau and they perform the same duties than a Space Marine Assault Squad (get close to the enemy units so that they focus on you while your shooty guys take potshots at them).

_{On the left the greyish stick people are the Kroot, fighting the Orks.}

Their basic scouts are… the worst thing ever created in the history of mankind.

Okay, to be fair they’re decent scouts, really good ones. They’re the reason I dislike Tau. They get access to Infiltration as soon as the game starts which is a poorly implemented mechanic (in my opinion) that lets them be invisible to all enemy units (with the exception of those units that can detect infiltrated ones).

This means that a smart Tau player will try to rush you with their invisible guys and destroy your scouts (because not every race has a unit that can detect infiltrated guys as soon as the game starts) so depending on the race you’re playing you better focus on getting one as soon as possible. The good side is that without their invisibility they’re not much of a threat, they’re like wet toilet paper.

_{The scouts/stealth suits in question, they look like this only to their player.}

I say “infiltration” is not implemented well because it’s a little stupid. Now, it makes sense that some units can become invisible to others, either by camouflage or by using technology, this is okay. What doesn’t make sense is how any unit being attacked by an infiltrated one will just stay in place getting shot, doing nothing while its health goes down from 1 million points to zero.

It works this way because they (the developers) had to make the infiltration mechanic be of actual use to the Tau stealth teams because otherwise they don’t have much going on, but they could have done better than this, really. Of all the other races in the game only the Eldar and Chaos really get much use from this infiltration change, the space marine scouts are situational and must be handled carefully when infiltrated since they're extra-wet toilet paper, the Necrons only get temporary infiltration (understandable, because they're already overpowered) and don’t even get me started on the Imperial Guard who barely touch the infiltration mechanic.

Maybe it sounds like I’m nitpicking, but I had to learn to play the game while fighting against the Tau and having squads of space marines who got obliterated simply because no one realized they were getting shot left a bad taste in my mouth.

Other things the Tau have are their mechs and vehicles which, like the normal Tau infantry, use their range to their advantage. This is good, so long as the enemy is focusing on anything but the mech suits with the railguns means that they’ll get shot by said railguns a lot and probably lose a lot of men. Their absurd range gives them a lot of coverage other races simply don’t have and using the Kroot alongside the sniper units correctly will probably allow you to pulverize any threat before it even realizes there’s someone shooting them.

_{Some of the mechs in question, alongside the basic Tau infantry.}

Their other gimmick is their research tree. If you’ve ever played an RTS game you know that all civilizations (or races In this case) have a development tree which allows them access to better units and/or buildings, in the case of Tau they get two mutually exclusive buildings (they can only build one of those and get those upgrades per game) which gives them different “end-game” units.

_{Some of the destruction unleashed by them mechas. This is their Tech tree.}

One of the buildings focuses on developing tech and the other focuses on strengthening the Kroot units and other derivatives of them, like the Kroot doggos who, depending on whether or not you’re the person being chased by them, are either the goodest boys or the baddest ones.

They also get a fucking dinosaur that looks like a weird T-Rex which can take a lot, and boy I mean a LOT, of damage.

_{I call him Pedro. You will absolutely love him when he's on your side and hate him when he's not.}

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Let's talk about their Stronghold.

This one is pretty straightforward, your guys just have to go through the entire Tau headquarters and kill this guy:

_{He's known as an Ethereal, they're the brainwashing benevolent leaders of the Tau.}

It is also a chore. A very annoying, and dull chore... As soon as you start your humble base is assaulted by a trillion Tau soldiers alongside a quadrillion vehicles and mech suits ready to destroy your guys. Depending on the difficulty you play this will either be a decent fight or a clusterfuck of incredible proportions, which will leave your units terribly scarred, the ones that survive anyway.

For the remainder of this level, your base will be assaulted by wave after wave of Tau, they're less dangerous than the initial wave of doom they sent your way, but they're still annoying because most times you'll be out there actually playing the level and fighting against more hordes of Tau, so you'll have to keep an eye on both the battlefield and your base.

You can make another base... but then they attack that one instead...

_{Our humble Necron base, after a million waves of Tau tried to destroy it.}

Most of your time will be spent on choosing who to send into battle and who to keep in the base to make sure it doesn't blow up while you're in the other side of the world, you could leave your turrets alone but the Tau have better range than them so that's not a good idea.

I say it feels like a chore because of the incredulous amount of Tau you have to fight against, the ones already in the map that is, add to that number the constant new troops of Tau being produced and sent your way, add to this the fact that most of those units have the before mentioned range and, well, 'nuff said.

It's not that they're invincible, it's just annoying. Oh and they have their stealth suit guys positioned as snipers in almost every corner of the map, so keep using guys to detect invisible units and you should be fine.

On the plus side I did get to use the Necron Monolith more than in previous strongholds, that's nice. It also let me get some good screenshots.

_{All of this is caused by one little building of death and destruction.}

The monolith allowed me to deal with most of the enemy units easily and it also allowed me to reach the end of the map in record time, previously it took me like 2 hours to finish, now it took me 1 hour and 59 minutes. But still, to get the monolith working you need to capture a "relic" which is at the middle of the map, so it took me a while before I could use it.

As for the map's theme... It's pretty solid I guess, your general goal in this map is to destroy the Tau bases with the buildings that produce the most dangerous units which does actually fit with the theme of the Tau: Unity is Strength.

The Tau have all of these different races working together to ensure that they can succeed on their goal, and without those bases the production of units is terribly slowed and it also leaves them weaker, in other words you're getting rid of the bases that produce most units until you eventually leave them with only their main base of operations, where they arguably have a strong defense, but what is a single base compared to all of the units they once possessed literally everywhere else in the map?

The Ethereal and the commander also talk (like any other commanders do in their strongholds) and you can hear the Ethereal try to motivate his troops despite their losses, heck during the final assault you can then hear the commander state that under no circumstances must your guys reach the Ethereal, and in order to get to him you have to fight tooth and nail against the incredulous amount of units they put in their base (Because the Ethereal is bravely hiding in a corner). Unlike other strongholds, this one is not completed when you destroy the enemy's Headquarters.

So yeah, it's kind of boring to play through it (if you take things the slow and safe route) but it eventually gets better as you reach the final portions of the map. I will say however, that I do not wish to play this one again any time soon.

And just like the last two times I rambled on about 40k i'll put some pictures here of the final assault.
As always, thank you for reading and I hope you have a great day. See you next time!

_{The Necron Lord and his boys get ready to walk some stairs.}

_{The Necron Lord and his boys proceed to destroy things while moving through the stairs.}

_{The Monolith is the real MVP of the team today.}

_{This is how he dies in the cutscene, but originally he was blown up by the Monolith.}

_{The results of the battle. The Necrons are kinda genocidal, again.}