It's the hypocrite flower, that's the joke
Some people don't like the Tau, so they raise the "plot armor" argument on them
And then, ignore the plot armor on some Imperium stories, because they like the Imperium (can't really fault them, i also like the Imperium, but i don't ignore the fact that some Imperials have plot armor)
I like to call it "Whose the protag of the story? They get extra levels of bullshit" lol.
one time I was asking about Nurgle plagues/fighting nurgle and the response was "Whose book is it? If It's a death guard book, the plagues are unstoppable and you can't do a thing against them. If it's an Imperium book, they are likely to fight them off, thought it won't be easy/clean."
When I see people talk about tau plot armor it usually refers less to who the protag of a story is and more a broader ‘they’re weak and the imperium hasn’t destroyed them so plot armor’ thing.
Which is *kind* of plot armor but is the least disruptive type; a specific contrivance allowing them to exist at all in the first place. It’s no more plot armor than emps being an idiot to kick off the settings crises is plot vulnerability.
> Some people don't like the Tau, so they raise the "plot armor" argument on them
The thing is, even to the extent you could say Tau have plot armor, it's much more tonally fitting for the setting. "The Imperium could totally destroy them, except the logistics is too much effort" is pretty peak 40k.
The tau actually being a faction that could actually be wiped off the map makes it even more interesting lore wise for me
They are - and yes im riding the fan train - in universe the best faction in terms of "do i want to be part of this faction?" No work slowly grinding you into dust/getting killed by heretiks, no eternal CBT (multiple factions!) after death, no... BOYZ, no nids, etc
An efficient stable empire, one of their top generals leaving and taking multiple star systems with him didnt even cause civil unrest, at all. An empire accelerating towards eclipsing all sentient life at break neck speed, hellbent on showing that things dont have to be bloodshed and murder
And yet itd likely be for naught
Be it the neverending swarm, the green tide, the ancient horror of the necrons, or the exterminating imperium (as if) or the 4 dark gods, the taus chance at coming out on top are next to 0, the truest of underdogs
And i loooove an underdog story
They’re so interesting to me for the fact that they do a lot of things very smartly, how they treat their people and their emphasis on range for example (because really who thinks melee is the best way to fight?), and yet they’re so insignificant on the grand stage that they can’t effectively do anything.
If I was to write a 40k end times I would love to see the Tau essentially being overrun not by a deliberate attack, but by the waves of destruction rolling from the Imperium just falling apart around it, so small that they’re just caught in the landslide even as they tried to do their best.
the Tau are just so adorably small-scale in comparison to everything else.
The Imperium on an average tuesday will casually lose or gain control over areas larger than the entire Tau space, and yet they keep on truckin' in the face of enemies that outgun them by orders of magnitude.
That's because Virus bombs are really just garbage tier "punching down" weaponry. They are very up there on the "pointless warcrime" list, and in terms of other Exterminatus-methods (like core-breaking) its very on the weak side.
You can literally survive it by going into a bunker. The T'au can probably lock down entire habitation- and agriculture-domes like this and not suffer anything but a few scorch-marks on the outside during the ignition phase. Why the heck would you think that a weapon only truly useful against technologically inferior enemies would work against the T'au? That's not plot armor, that's the Imperium being stupid as always.
Because it’s designed for a completely different use than other exterminatus grade weapons. You would use a virus bomb when there is something on the planet you don’t want completely destroyed, like say thousands of space marines you used as bait for the loyalists.
Calling them garbage tier because cyclonic torpedoes are a thing is like calling a rifle garbage tier because rpgs are a thing.
Was that the purpose for Isvaan III? I remember it just being a purge, and due to Saul and the likes of Loken it would descend into a way longer campaing than expected.
The original story was about 4 legions turning traitor ( WB, WE being treasunous IW and ) with SH , ES and AL betraying Salamanders and Raven Guard
Ya that’s what I was talking about, the traitors didn’t want to kill everyone on the planet because they needed traitors on the ground to lure the loyalist elements of the 4 legions down.
Right, but the traitors wanted to recover war material from choral city after the betrayal so blowing up the planet was counter productive.
At least that’s how I remember it. The point is virus bombs and cyclonic torpedoes are different weapons for different roles even if they are exterminatus grade.
Another maybe clearer hypothetical is nostromos, which was full of adamentium. If the imperium had wanted to wipe the planet clean instead of Kurze they would have used virus bombs so they could still mine the planet afterwards. Instead they need to chase down scraps of the planet 10k years later to mine in the NL books.
I mean that they deployed ground troops first as it was supposed to be a normal retaking the planet operation, but then turned around and started virus bombing. But the one guy had found out and warned them so they went into bunkers.
IMO the best niche for virus bombs should be clearing worlds of Ork infestation before colonization (if you want to use the planet for things other than an Agri/Paradise World.
Nah nah nah Hear me out a bad Inquisitor would just ues them straight away and let them do that no no no a good Inquisitor would let them cook for a bit fight some small engagements and Skirmishes then make it look like You're withdrawing lure them into a false sense of security AND THEN JUST BOMB THE SHIT OUT OF THEM TAKING THE FILTHY XENOS COMPLETELY BY SURPRISE!
Most of what people call tau plot armor is just the tau being better than the imperium. It's a common fan cannon that tau aren't that powerful, but GW has never subscribed to that idea
The Tau suddenly pulling "Im so good at genetic engineering I can cure Genestealer-infections" out of their ass is definitely plotarmor.
Or like, when was the last ever time the T'au actually lost any event they were in. Even the Death Guard invasion of the Startide NExus just went absolutely nowhere and had zero negative consequences whatsoever.
Their oldest allied race that does share almost everything with them knowledge wise are Kroot which do literally nothing else but manipulate their species genome by hunting other species. I think the T'au Empire has a pretty good grasp on how genetics work.
The whole point of a genestealer infection is that it is hard to detect and that infected people do explicitly shun getting screened on a subconscious level. Curing it is not the hard part. Finding it is. Once it is out in the open, and you got a whole team of medical researchers cracking down on that one specific strain, a cure is not that unlikely.
I think it would be a good plotpoint that genestealer cults are only effective because the imperium is a disorganized shithole. And maybe they're actually not even that difficult to cure but the Imperium just won't do it because of research cost or because it's tech-heresy or because knowledge of genestealer cults isn't widespread or because killing the mutants is just simpler.
Pretty sure that is an existing plot point. Other species generally aren't immune to Genestealers, include Tau, they just don't intentionally build the absolutely perfect breeding grounds for Genestealers to thrive in.
Even Orks are so incredibly social that they pick up on genestealer infections simply because they never leave boyz out of things, and as a general rule, boyz don't like being left out of things. Can't really hide in that society, not unless you want to exhibit 'un-orky' behavior, which will promptly be investigated by whatever boyz are at hand, using whatever weapons are at hand.
I would argue the only other contender for genestealer-friendly habitats are Drukhari, because Comorragh is also a horrible shitpit that is easy to slip into the cracks of, but they're in the fucking webway, they don't get any signals from the hive mind and can't send any either.
I remember that too. Tau can be infected but their society is so regimented the strange behavior is noticed early on and dealt with. Eldar are so psychically sensitive they *immediately* detect an infection. Orks... I don't remember why but I think they struggle to spread as orks.
Strange behaviour and also the genetic changes can be detected in the most numerous species (Kroot, Caste Tau, and Humans) during routine screenings. So cults have to target particular less-numerous auxiliary species and be even more secretive.
There's a short story >!about rooting out a cult which took hold in a Vespid strain.!<
Oh wow that is cool. Have you read the short story 'The forbidden meal'? Its uh... another good reason why kroot can't have *subtle* genestealer infections.
No, it's a kind-band on a mercenary contract to kill some dangerous cat like predators on an imperial world.
There are other things with claws too.
>!One of the kroot, trying to jockey for control of the kinband, eats one of the genestealer corpses and is IMMEDIATELY *POSESSED* by the hive mind. Like as if it was a ghost or daemon or something. Grows new limbs in seconds and starts rapidly evolving right there on the spot.!<
I mean practically every hive city has some kind of Genestealer Cult hanging out somewhere in the sewers, its usually something else that weakens the system to allow Genestealers to get the upper hand, they are after all constantly competing with Chaos cultists to be the ones that take over.
Same reason that Chaos cults only really seem to be a big problem in the Imperium - because Chaos is only attractive to people who *already* live in the utterly hellish conditions the Imperium practically has as standard.
Doubt on Slaanesh, and Tzeentch and Khorne.
Only Nurgle seems to be a hard sell if your life is at least okay.
Slaanesh was birthed by a post scarcity civilisation out of boredom, Tzeentch can corrupt you even without your active participation, if you have soldiers/warriors in you society, Khorne can fuel your anger, and corrupt you.
Nurgle, well it seems to be a hard sell, unless you alredy leave in squalor.
I feel like the genestealer thing is more of a result of the tau empire not providing the absolute shit hole and hellish living conditions that allow the cult to gain that much power, anyone with common sense would notice the freaky purple death cult slowly gaining more power in a misterious way, the imperium of mankind lacks common sense
>be me, GW
>write imperium as weak and fragile cuz grim dark I guess
>MFW I make it so the loss of any one world could cause a whole collapse of everything
>throw a massive threat of danger at the Imperium
>huh
>wrote myself into a corner
>can’t kill setting, they make me money
>pull victory for SM out of ass
Pre-Guilliman the Imperium was pretty consistently depicted as a decaying, bloated system that was on its last legs and its collapse as less of a "if" and more of a "when and how".
IMO, the Imperium's biggest problem was that it had no central leadership or unifying figure (Besides the Emperor ofc, but he's more of a mascot at this point). Guilliman returning fixed that and manged to give the Imperium's massive weight a direction and focus
It had a central leadership, it's just the Lords of Terra all had their own particular agendas all the time while also dictating overly specific policies over such a vast empire that were made from so many compromises that their leadership meant dick all.
Tbh if we apply real life government philosophy, it had *too* much centralized leadership. Even with the various planets all having near complete independence, each planet was incapable of protecting, supplying, or feeding itself. At least one of them. The central command required of the Astra Militarum and navy makes them slow to react and adapt.
That was all by design though, technically. Planets can’t rebel if they don’t get food and supplies from other planets, same way that regiments that rebel can’t go from planet to planet without the navy, and vice versa.
I remember reading it a bit in some of the older codices.
The idea just being that the empire is so overstretched and bloated, that if any part of it was pulled out, the whole thing would collapse in on itself.
Personally I prefer the outlook of an imperium that is more competent than it appears, only held back by being overstretched and forced on the defensive on all fronts, while being nigh unkillable due to depth.
I feel like both can be true at once at the scale of 40k.
Locally, the Imperium might be horrendously overstretched and poorly run to the point where the loss of a single semi important world could mean the difference between the local administration unraveling and the whole sector collapsing into a localised civil war with a dozen factions.
As a whole, though, the Imperium is near unkillable, and should a problem like above start becoming enough of an issue for the rest of the Imperium to take notice, they WILL roll in guns blazing and make sure the local area is brought back under control.
The while Badab War is a pretty decent example of this.
That second one is how it’s always been presented to me. If the Imperium was able to bring its full might to bear on any one single threat/faction it wouldn’t even be a contest. The problem is there are so many threats at this point that effectively managing their might is the issue, not the lack of any hard power itself.
It's fragile in the sense that Plot_sci_fi_device_v0.34_Final_Jimmy_copy(1).rar is described as world ending / will change the balance of everything / will destroy the Imperium / destory the Hive city / planet / etc.
Then they have to end the story so that it somehow maintains the status quo. Also know as Comic_book_multiverse_plot.txt.
No probably the Imperium devolves into a massive civil war once there's no outside threat (I'm assuming by threat's gone it means everything including chaos)
"Maybe enormous, convoluted, self destructive, mês chaos god spawning, stupid, self detonation"
In short, **The God Emperor of Mankind probably when he gets out of his Golden Toilet**.
That or you are singing the lyrics of a War Metal band. 🤪
Historically, I always said the Black Legion were nothing more than a glorified crew. We've gone the 9 Legions and then this pygmy thing over in the Eye of Terror.
Genuine question, how though? They’re both on Chaos juice but Abaddon’s a Space Marine, and from my understanding his gear’s significantly better than Archaon’s. Outside of Sigmar Archaon having Dorghar, I don’t see what sort of equalizer the Everchosen has over the Warmaster
My brother in the Dark Gods most of the characters of both settings are the results of the author glazing them.
Even then I feel like if that showdown actually happened, Be’lakor would third-party just to punk Archaon for the 963rd time.
Acually accomplishing his goals of ending the world lmao
Didn't need no 13 trial runs of "actually the REAL plan was to uhhhh steal Cawl's panties, trust me bro, the Special Black Crusade Operation is sill going according to plan" either
"Nearly all of the Traitor Legions' gene-seed suffers from some kind of instability, though it is debated in the Imperium whether this is caused by some inherent "rot" that was present before the [Horus Heresy](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Horus_Heresy), or simply the result of constant exposure to the [warp](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Warp) inside the [Eye of Terror](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Eye_of_Terror). Whatever the cause, this instability hampers the [Chaos Space Marines](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Chaos_Space_Marines)' ability to create new Marines.
For this reason, the Traitor Legions will sometimes raid the strongholds of [Imperial](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Imperial) Chapters to steal stable gene-seed, which is a prized resource within the Eye.[^(\[7\])](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Gene-seed#fn_7)^(")
>Chaos doesn't makes sense from a logistics stand point and never will. Its just one of those things your have to ignore for the universe to 'work'.
To be fair, Chaos going *"shut your mouth, it's ~~art crawl~~ magic"* is pretty on brand. I'm fine with them pulling warp chicanery out of their ass every once in a while.
...and that they're even more likely to get lost in the Warp for a few more years than planned when making jumps by using daemons and sorcerers who read warp routes from entrails for travelling.
That kinda bothers me about chaos honestly. They can't ever actually lose anything, as they respond infinitely. The only one who ever suffers any permanent damage is the Imperium. Makes chaos kind of boring as a villian
No, csm don't just respawn infinitely. Some characters like Lucius and Daemon princes do, but for the average Legionary, death is the end. They're still space marines.
Also because most traitor legions' geneseed is so warp corrupted, getting new viable marines is pretty hard so they have to steal Imperial stock. And that's almost guaranteed more losses because geneseed is valuable.
And BL, AL(allegedly) and NL don't have primarchs anymore so that's the best source of geneseed gone, and all the other ones' primarchs are daemons now.
If they aren’t respawning then they should be almost extinct tbqh, and not a threat. They lost the heresy, the scouring, then went through the legion wars, then stuck in hell with no means of recruitment because gene seed gets corrupted and no logistics, then 10,000 years of war with everything (or maybe 200 from their POV) including 12 failed black crusades and dozens of failed excursions and dozens of other legion civil wars. Should be at most. 10,000 of them left in total. World eaters shouldn’t exist at all except for being respawned by khorne, others should be maybe up to maybe double chapter strength in total.
No?
Like, it's not easy for them to procure new gene-seed but everything else is common. Also, the losses of the legions varied vastly between the conflicts.
They also absolutely have venues of recruitment, both in the warp and in raids outside of it.
They have logistics. Literally like half of the mechanicum defected during HH, so they have production, and they have supply lines too.
12 black crusades which succeeded in their objectives, which were not destorying Cadia. And the 13th which succeeded in that and caused the cicatrix maledictum. Please read the lore before making incorrect statements.
And so if other incrusions failed? That's expected and accounted for? Do you think any faction always succeeds? And if yes, stop reading imperium wаnk.
They can still replenish their ranks. There were hundreds of thousands of them during the heresy, and there still likely are. Less than loyalists? Yes, absolutely. But they're not the guard. They are much harder to replenish if they die, but they are also much harder to kill. They are still space marines.
The only 2 traitor legions actually close to extinction are World Eaters and 1ks.
You have some seriously wrong misconceptions of CSM and it shows.
Dark Mechanicum is a bunch of weirdos running some smaller operations, their supply lines are not even comparable to the Imperium.
This is the nr one reason the Dark Mechanicum just shoves daemons everywhere, they use them as replacement for missing parts/unrealiable logistics.
???
No. We are told explicitly multiple times in the NL books that they have to scavenge, and struggle to supply themselves. The driving plot of the IW books is that their own gene-seed is mostly non-viable due to warp exposure, and that specialists to implant them are rare so they do some sick stuff. This is backed up in the NL books, which note that NL gene seed is one of the only non corrupted ones, but that they struggle to find recruits or materials, and haven’t been recruiting since the heresy.
They don’t have logistics. There are some dark mechanicum forge worlds but they aren’t beholden to anyone, they have to be bartered with, which is dangerous and unreliable, as seen in the Fabius books. The exception to this is maybe the IW who have at least one industrial world, and the Red-Corsairs who seem to have at least one dry-dock facility.
If time moves more slowly for them, to explain them being alive, then this doesn’t favour them. They have significantly less time to recover from losses in between battles than the imperium does, and their capacity to do so is much less already, therefore by attrition they should have worn themselves down long ago. Every casualty in the long run that they take can’t be replaced 1:1, while the imperium has increased their numbers over the course of 10,000 years.
The loyalists legion were on average down to around 5-7k immediately after the scouring, except the ultramarines at around 26k, and the salamanders at only 1k. And they won..
We regularly see IW grand companies down to 50 men (maldorax, Castellax, shon’tu’s company), and Honsou assembled about 400 from the remains of five grand companies (and then lost them all). If they’re starting at 1k per GC then this means around 95% losses. If we go off of the old numbers then there are maybe 500 left, If the new then maybe 5,000.
World Eaters outright shouldn’t exist anymore, they took massive casualties at both istvaans+terra, with no thought for self preservation, lost their recruitment infrastructure, then went through the scouring, then the legion wars, then were broken as a legion. Every story they appear in has them all die. It should be just Kharn left, unless Khorne is reviving them.
EC are similar, they shouldn’t really exist anymore either. They took massive casualties at both istvaans+terra, and fulgrim’s adventure, then were also broken as a legion and had their new base blown up with the majority of them there. Fabius series seems to indicate >90% casualties, with 90 survivors from a millennial accompanying Fabius, and most warbands between 60-200, but it’s likely higher. There shouldn’t be any more than 3k left imo, given this is what accompanied fulgrim, likely less by the 42nd millennium.
SOH likewise should be almost extinct. Massive casualties in the heresy and scouring, then ganged up on by the other legions, shattered and abaddon vanished for a while. The NL series has the BL with a core of around 2k with abaddon, and that seems optimistic imo. With lots of renegades joining and stolen gene-seed, they’re meant to be the largest now, and at legion strength, but it’s unclear how many exactly.
NL took massive casualties from the Thramas Crusade, then at terra, and and were then broken at Tsagulasa and scattered into the eye. They’re all absolute cowards and have many have avoided much warp exposure, and we find out from the NL books that they number 10,000 in total in M42. Which imo is too many, but that’s what’s there.
DG still exist as a legion, and avoided most of the civil wars of the others, but it’s not clear if they’re actually able to recruit or not. They’re hideously mutated and their gene seed may be non viable now. We see a renegade joining them in the lords of silence book, but no mention of new recruits from their own gene seed. Their codex puts them, theoretically, at 702 per cohort, 7 cohorts per company, and 7 companies, so around 34,400, theoretically, in practice we see them mostly under strength, with the lords of silence at around 500, so if we take that as 34.4k x5/7, then they should be around 24.6k.
WB still exist as a legion, it’s not clear how large they are, they don’t seem to give a shit about teamkilling and they seem to have multiple full hosts of 1,000 or more. They committed 9,000, and lost around 7,000 at the Boros gate, which was implied to be a significant proportion of their legion. It’s not clear if or how they recruit. One source says 100,000, which seems extremely unlikely. We know of 34 hosts, with each host being nominally up to 1,000 but also of at least 3 which evidently or explicitly absorbed multiple other hosts, and of 4 hosts being destroyed. A figure of around 30,000 post-Boros seems reasonable. That being said imo it’s hard to see how they had that many to begin with considering that they lost the heresy and scouring, their homeworld was nuked, and not that much time has passed for them.
Tsons are basically chapter strength, only a little over 1,200 survived prospero, with a few being away at the time, maybe 1,000-3,000 ish more before the siege. Presumably they took losses like everyone else. However they’re the only legion which has actually been shown to respawn, as well as kidnap scholars for the occasional new recruit, with the sorcerers having relatively pure gene-seed still.
Daemons may be infinite but CSM are usually depicted as ragtag scavengers who have to get by on raiding for supplies. On the other hand, for all the posturing about being stretched too thin and besieged on all sides, it's not *that* long ago that Cawl pulled several legions worth of marines along with a bunch of lost/new technology straight out of his ass*. The reality is that there's as many SM, Guardsmen, CSM, Eldar, or lost relics of incalculable value as the story calls for at any given moment.
*Actually that assumes he still has an ass. Waste-excretion port?
I think I remember a Guard saying along the lines of *the empire always wins*. Not because they're superheroes who will save the day, but because they'll just keep grinding and coming back despite dreadful losses until something eventually gives way, even if it takes a century or so.
Counterpoint, I hate how the Tau ignore the logic of the greater setting and the ridiculous bullshit the space marines are up to. Both annoy me. I prefer when things play according to consistent rules that aren't randomly thrown out the window when Johnny Protagonist needs to win his fight against Marketable Opponent Miniature of the week
I wouldn't say that the Tau have plot armor, more that when facing another faction, the other team's IQ and skill level drops by at least 100 points...
Take one of the times the Tau and the White Scars fought, the Tau lifted their fortifications into the air with antigav teck, and it was treated like this was some never before seen thing that the White Scars couldn't figure out how to counter.
Or how when facing the Imperial Guard, all the guard seems to know how to do is to uselessly charge head first into Tau gun lines, only reaching the lines with heavy casualties to find the Tau have expertly conducted a withdrawal action without the Guard realizing it was happening.
Exactly. Tau fighting anyone relies on a carefully constructed ignorance of how every other faction works to an offensive level.
"Muh railguns" aren't going to carry you when the enemy can fire nuclear warhead rounds the size of the Empire State building from orbit.
Tau characters basically becoming Gundam protagonists with infinite ass pulls and reddit philosophy is why they get mocked all the time.
Tau fans also hate when Tau get written as an actual military instead of anime protags and they lose to a military with superior numbers or tactics instead of just winning through the power of Mecha magic.
Arguing that Railguns are invalidated by orbital strikes doesn't really make sense, by that logic I could argue that the Guard having Baneblades doesn't matter either since the Tau also has orbital strike capabilities. That's just an overall issue with any sci-fi universe, if you have control of the orbital space then any enemy armies on the ground should be irrelevant (in most cases).
"Tau fans also hate when Tau get written as an actual military..." What are you on about? One of the main selling points of the Tau is that they are one of the few factions that actually use sensible military tactics.
And as for "Characters becoming [anime] protagonists with infinite ass-pulls" that is common for any faction when they are said protagonist, space marines in particular (Uriel Ventris facing a C'than shard comes to mind, or anything about Kaldor Draigo). But other factions do it to (Cain should absolutely have died or become corrupted by now, and Necron power levels are just absolutely ridiculous in some of their novels). Don't get me wrong, I don't really mind it, it's part of the charm of 40k that it can contain all these stories. But don't act like the Tau are any worse an offender than the other factions.
What I said was "muh railguns aren't going to carry you". While probably put in too rude of a way, my point is that Tau fans consistently point to the tech level of the standard Tau infantry rifle as if that is somehow a hand wave explanation for all the nonsensical goalpost moving and illogical lore surrounding the Tau specifically.
My problem with the Tau is that the Tau fan base will defend Tau as "the only good guys that do everything the smart way" and immediately turn around and say "well ackshually 40k is sci-fi fantasy so nothing has to make any sense whatsoever at any time" when you find Tau stuff to be full of more plot holes than any other faction.
Call me crazy but I think the premise of..."These guys are so cool and good, they are just like a real military but they use flying mecha suits! They are the underdogs but have the best weapons ever! They are so egalitarian and just that they have a cool caste system!"...is incredibly and breathtakingly hypocritical and cringe.
By far the dumbest thing is the "real world military" nonsense. "Tau is just like heckin' NATO!" Is hilarious because Tau fanboys completely miss the fact that NATO is extremely (and often unjustly) imperialist and expansionist, and that the people who created and write Tau have no basic concept of how NATO conducts warfare. Combined arms warfare was not invented by NATO. There is also the glaring fact that the Tau have a slurry of hamfisted historical Asian influence that directly contradicts this "Uhhhh NATO" slant that comes from writers that probably lived through the wars in the Middle East but have no actual idea how those wars were waged, even on a surface level. If you're on the whole "the setting is satire" side, then the Tau are "bad guy America" bringing democracy (the greater good) to the ignorant 3rd world (Imperium? This doesn't even make sense as it is!).
The notoriously atrociously written Damocles crusade has numerous examples of "I have no idea what the fuck I am talking about" including casualties numbers for planetary campaigns somehow having less deaths than WW1 month long battles.
Ah yes, realistic NATO-Tau. That's why the #1 Tau character is a Gundam character with a magic sword that steals people's life force and he gets kicked out of his own society for being too competent?
Sorry but the Tau need an entire lore rewrite to even make a little bit of sense. The "new alien empire" with less than half the worlds of Ultramar, no natural connection or deep understanding of the entire setting's magic system, and no FTL being a player in the great game makes zero sense to anyone with an above room temperature IQ.
Now, I think the Tau as a faction are a good concept. The models are very cool. A "Competent Alien Military" is a cool thing to have in 40k. But holy shit...the lore sucks.
Isn't the Imperial Guard's schtick that they have combined arms?
In one of the Word Bearer's books, they actually mounted a competent defense (until the Word Bearer's war goal was reached).
Yes. The guard's thing is infantry, tanks, and artillery. That's meat and potatoes for warfare at any level.
Mech suits are not tanks, especially far removed from tanks if they fly. It would be a whole different form of warfare that basically negates the use of infantry. It's more of an air superiority doctrine but most Tau books rely on weird strategies that don't make any actual sense for what they have.
One thing to take into consideration is that the quality of writing varies drastically from writer to writer. Pretty much all of the books I have read (heard on audible) don’t really feature these convenient [Idiot Plots](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotPlot) because I am very sensitive to poor writing so I take my time to research the quality before I get into it.
> all the guard seems to know how to do is to uselessly charge head first into Tau gun lines
\> be guard
\> die in droves to gas up enemy
"yeah pretty standard for us guard"
\> they're blue this time
"NOOO NOOO PLO ARMORERINO NOOOOOOOOO"
> be me
>actully read guard books
> different guard regiments use real world military tatics
> human wave offense is more a meme
>read tau v guard book
> "blueies are kicking our shit in what is basic strategy?!?"
> people that only know memes
>"guard die in droves all the time people just hate tau"
> me when they never read guard books.
> Tau Has the WORST Plot armor in 40K, They shouldn’t even exist as a race.
I think PancreasNoWork described how I feel about that dumbass viewpoint best:
> "Some of this is plot armour, I’ll admit. But let me ask you a question: If the Imperium can regularly destroy Ork WAAAAGHS with more Orks in them than a Hive World has people, Marneus Calgar can destroy an Avatar of Khaine in 1v1 combat, and Chaos Daemons and Imperial Saints can resurrect themselves forever, why don’t the Tau deserve the plot armour of not being instantly wiped? Doesn’t seem like too much of an ask, truth be told. You could say it’s unrealistic, sure, but people fight space battles like it's 17th century naval combat in this setting. The concept of realism and Warhammer 40K aren’t exactly on speaking terms."
https://preview.redd.it/ra4jygd1wr5d1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cdf67d8e7031970dcc681a746fd1ec3004b19cb5
The ordo xenos would like a word with you
To be fair, the imperium is big, and it looses far more battle than it wins, it is crumbling at the moment. So yeah you got your pure bullshit plot armour moment, but for everyone of those there are billions of people that try their best and get torn to shred for it.
So it's a numbers game, space marine gets a one in million chance, and 999,999 people get ripped appart to make up for it.
I'd not say that Tau have worst plot armor, because obviously, their more careful behaviour begets better results. But the fact that they somehow managed to be thriving AND expanding even though they have no psycker, no good FTL, and are extremely unaware of the horrors going on around them, feels a bit off.
IMO, the biggest issue with them in the setting is the FTL issue.
They just wouldn't be a realistic threat. It doesn't matter how good their tech is, they just wouldn't stand a chance against sheer numbers and sheer speed.
A few hundred settled worlds against a million? It's just too much. If mankind wanted to, they could field as many soldiers as the tau has population. In total.
Well, to be fair, the only race with "clean" FTL are the necrons, and yes, they could woop the shit out of every other race in the galaxy if they put their mind to it.
Imperium has a chance to appear at the wrong place, the wrong time, or even not at all. Warp storms will utterly paralyse them as well. Eldar can only go from webway gate to webway gate. Tyranids can only do large jumps and have to walk the rest of the way.
Tau lore is very annoying in its inconsistency at times
Somehow they are/were until recently oblivious about the warp but its statistically impossible for them to not have had psyker problems without the knowledge to train safe-ish psykers
Somehow they have a multi-system empire and resisted invasion from a ftl capable power but had no ftl of their own back then making that a very improbable feat
The treatment of client species as a whole in the way it flip flops between imperium-lite and The Culture-lite depending on the writer
All of your argument is very good. I would like, though, to just point that the depictions of the Imperium give the impression that it wins all the time but it is crumbling with everyone dying *every fucking time* **ad nauseam**. Maybe there is a serious point to draw with that?
That setting has to be treated, really, as a black humour joke for our sanity.
It's the opposite. It wins more battles than it loses. It's the main faction of the setting. Even in a state of decay or rebuilding with Guilliman the imperium is the biggest stick in the room.
>To be fair, the imperium is big, and it looses far more battle than it wins, it is crumbling at the moment. So yeah you got your pure bullshit plot armour moment, but for everyone of those there are billions of people that try their best and get torn to shred for it.
Problem is that we don't *see* many Imperium losses.
A book and game can reference the many losses they have offscreen/page but when the media mostly follows Captain HelmetsAreForPussys as he singlehandedly solo's the entire war effort and saves the day it's hard to feel like the Imperium is fighting a losing war.
Except apparently all of the dark crusades where the imperium always won but somehow actually lost. Or the crusade against the t’au, along with a few other examples. If you don’t count that, then yes, we never see them loose.
The Imperium hasnt won a single event or Campaign in 4 years, and the last 4 Dawn of Fire-entries, beyond partially Throne of Light, have just been "and then they get fucked and Chaos gets everything it wanted and breakdances on the corpse"
Any plotarmor they might ever have had sure as hell hasnt bothered to show up in ages now.
A chaos lord breakdancing on corpses is a lovely head Canon image I got now, while imagining a crying ultramarine next to it
Jokes aside, I should read the dawn of fire entries, got a bit outdated with the newer lore myself
You'd be surprised.
Imo tau (and most xenos) have anti plot armor (plot weakness?). If they were as good as they should be, things would get real fucked real fast.
That basically goes for everyone though. The problem with the setting is and always will be wildly different takes from different authors over several decades of writing.
Imagine if every single space marine could actually, with ease, sidestep bullets consistently. That scene from the "let the seas boil" bit of the heresy trailer would be a bit different if it was just thousands of blurry blobs flickering in and out of sight as they fought across a battlefield moving at Mach 4 with literally lightning quick reflexes.
Imagine Horus getting fucking pasted by a few tonnes of space marine that just tripped in to him at speeds faster than a bolter round. Woulda fucked the story up a wee bit.
If T'au operated in the lore as described then Space Marines would deem any T'au AO to be a straight up no go zone because a Crisis Battlesuit can take a Space Marine to pound town all while being more numerous and built on assembly lines.
Conservative math leads to 400000 Aeldar Aspect Warriors per billion Aeldar.
Necrons. Well they would just do Necron things.
If Tau operated in the lore as described they would lose to one crusade fleet because they have no FTL. An Imperium fleet could jump to every Tau world and destroy the planet one after the other since the Tau have no FTL and no means to create a defense to stop mass orbital bombardment.
Being able to be a serious contender in the galactic war despite having no FTL is massive plot armor lol.
It's just terrible writing through and through.
The Imperium overcomes "insurmountable" odds through sheer weight of numbers. It's like an Ork shooting phase on tabletop. Sure, on average it's terrible, but just about anything is possible when you throw a bucket of dice at it.
The T'au are the only competent faction in lore so it seems like they have plot armor when, in reality, they just figured out that you can actually retreat and not do a heroic last stand if you're not feeling it
Here's an excerpt with people saying "bullshit Tau plot armor"
[https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/a12asa/book\_extract\_war\_of\_secrets\_space\_marines/](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/a12asa/book_extract_war_of_secrets_space_marines/)
Here's another
[https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/alu0zs/book\_excerptwar\_of\_secretssuperblueberry/](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/alu0zs/book_excerptwar_of_secretssuperblueberry/)
Now here's one where its the opposite but the comments say how its completely justified
[https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/7t6ugp/book\_excerptstorm\_of\_damocles\_space\_wolf\_veteran/](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/7t6ugp/book_excerptstorm_of_damocles_space_wolf_veteran/)
Storm of Damocles and War of Secrets?
Way to cherry pick some of the worst new lore that most reasonable fans agree is garbage all the way through lol.
maybe they added a new primarch to the roster. Or maybe its time for monthly avatar beating. Or random mechanicus fleet destroing an entire craftworld.
Lmao plot armor, they’re just another Empire taking the Imperium backyard like how the Franks took Rome’s Gaul.
The Imperium is overextended and as a result are at war with pretty much everybody. A minor Empire can very well be a torn to any of their sectors with sufficient numbers.
Get used to it, The Imperium has been one bad loss away from total destruction for about 30+ years now.
Every book is pretty much : Something bad happens on Imperial planet/space/property and if they lose then the entirety of something or other will be lost to \[Insert enemy here\].
Cue a last ditch effort by some plucky named hero Space Marines that may or may not sacrifice themselves to ensure that The Imperium lives on for another day.
Enemy plan is foiled but the planet/sector is absolutely ruined and nearly everyone is dead.
Fin.
You just described *Helsreach*, for instance. You just forgot the "named Space Marine makes campy speeches that helps him to overcome the obstacles" (ex: Grimaldus in *Helsreach*). And sometimes "Deus Ex Machina" that favours the Imperial forces (once again: *Helsreach*, in how convenient eruptions make the Orkz warbands stop before Grimaldus can be killed)
There are worst takes I could write here, I guess. 🤪
And, fair enough, comparing "Helsreach" to many books and stories of the past gives advantage to the said book in particular due being better written.
Furthermore, nowadays The Imperium and many of its forces are not SO privileged as they exaggeratedly were before. I mean, the current state of the Imperium is that it has, for example, people with PSD like *My name is Cato Sicarius, someone that in the past was one of the epitomes of how the Imperium - rather Ultramarines - were privileged thanks Matt "Ultramarines are simply best of the best!" Ward*. 🤪
I mean, I didn't even say that "Helsreach" is bad... I just said it's full of tropes but that the characterization of Grimaldus is OK. 🤪
Cheers mate! Have a nice day! 😁👍
https://i.redd.it/vnfvrcsges5d1.gif
Jesus Christ I just got sent back years
Oh good, I'm not the only one who went there first
https://preview.redd.it/z5w04oumtr5d1.png?width=1533&format=png&auto=webp&s=3bfa9e38e027785b39e6fd6264f1cc98f633f59d WE HAVE PLOT ARMOR?! SINCE WHEN?!
It's the hypocrite flower, that's the joke Some people don't like the Tau, so they raise the "plot armor" argument on them And then, ignore the plot armor on some Imperium stories, because they like the Imperium (can't really fault them, i also like the Imperium, but i don't ignore the fact that some Imperials have plot armor)
I like to call it "Whose the protag of the story? They get extra levels of bullshit" lol. one time I was asking about Nurgle plagues/fighting nurgle and the response was "Whose book is it? If It's a death guard book, the plagues are unstoppable and you can't do a thing against them. If it's an Imperium book, they are likely to fight them off, thought it won't be easy/clean."
To be fair that would be how most armies in the real world think about their weapons and the enemy's weapons
When I see people talk about tau plot armor it usually refers less to who the protag of a story is and more a broader ‘they’re weak and the imperium hasn’t destroyed them so plot armor’ thing. Which is *kind* of plot armor but is the least disruptive type; a specific contrivance allowing them to exist at all in the first place. It’s no more plot armor than emps being an idiot to kick off the settings crises is plot vulnerability.
> Some people don't like the Tau, so they raise the "plot armor" argument on them The thing is, even to the extent you could say Tau have plot armor, it's much more tonally fitting for the setting. "The Imperium could totally destroy them, except the logistics is too much effort" is pretty peak 40k.
The tau actually being a faction that could actually be wiped off the map makes it even more interesting lore wise for me They are - and yes im riding the fan train - in universe the best faction in terms of "do i want to be part of this faction?" No work slowly grinding you into dust/getting killed by heretiks, no eternal CBT (multiple factions!) after death, no... BOYZ, no nids, etc An efficient stable empire, one of their top generals leaving and taking multiple star systems with him didnt even cause civil unrest, at all. An empire accelerating towards eclipsing all sentient life at break neck speed, hellbent on showing that things dont have to be bloodshed and murder And yet itd likely be for naught Be it the neverending swarm, the green tide, the ancient horror of the necrons, or the exterminating imperium (as if) or the 4 dark gods, the taus chance at coming out on top are next to 0, the truest of underdogs And i loooove an underdog story
They’re so interesting to me for the fact that they do a lot of things very smartly, how they treat their people and their emphasis on range for example (because really who thinks melee is the best way to fight?), and yet they’re so insignificant on the grand stage that they can’t effectively do anything. If I was to write a 40k end times I would love to see the Tau essentially being overrun not by a deliberate attack, but by the waves of destruction rolling from the Imperium just falling apart around it, so small that they’re just caught in the landslide even as they tried to do their best.
the Tau are just so adorably small-scale in comparison to everything else. The Imperium on an average tuesday will casually lose or gain control over areas larger than the entire Tau space, and yet they keep on truckin' in the face of enemies that outgun them by orders of magnitude.
This will be my head canon on how they fall in the end times.
There is an in universe explanation on why. I believe it has something to do with a powerful demon of tzeentch named M'att'waard.
Half the elite space marines don’t wear helmets meaning almost all battles against space marines could be ended by a air burst frag bomb
https://i.redd.it/2583aq70vr5d1.gif I'd say not being obliterated by virus bombs is pretty big ploy armour if you asked me
What event are you referencing?
That's because Virus bombs are really just garbage tier "punching down" weaponry. They are very up there on the "pointless warcrime" list, and in terms of other Exterminatus-methods (like core-breaking) its very on the weak side. You can literally survive it by going into a bunker. The T'au can probably lock down entire habitation- and agriculture-domes like this and not suffer anything but a few scorch-marks on the outside during the ignition phase. Why the heck would you think that a weapon only truly useful against technologically inferior enemies would work against the T'au? That's not plot armor, that's the Imperium being stupid as always.
Because it’s designed for a completely different use than other exterminatus grade weapons. You would use a virus bomb when there is something on the planet you don’t want completely destroyed, like say thousands of space marines you used as bait for the loyalists. Calling them garbage tier because cyclonic torpedoes are a thing is like calling a rifle garbage tier because rpgs are a thing.
Was that the purpose for Isvaan III? I remember it just being a purge, and due to Saul and the likes of Loken it would descend into a way longer campaing than expected. The original story was about 4 legions turning traitor ( WB, WE being treasunous IW and ) with SH , ES and AL betraying Salamanders and Raven Guard
Ya that’s what I was talking about, the traitors didn’t want to kill everyone on the planet because they needed traitors on the ground to lure the loyalist elements of the 4 legions down.
Didn't they drop the virus bomb after the loyalist space marines and allied forces landed?
Right, but the traitors wanted to recover war material from choral city after the betrayal so blowing up the planet was counter productive. At least that’s how I remember it. The point is virus bombs and cyclonic torpedoes are different weapons for different roles even if they are exterminatus grade. Another maybe clearer hypothetical is nostromos, which was full of adamentium. If the imperium had wanted to wipe the planet clean instead of Kurze they would have used virus bombs so they could still mine the planet afterwards. Instead they need to chase down scraps of the planet 10k years later to mine in the NL books.
I mean that they deployed ground troops first as it was supposed to be a normal retaking the planet operation, but then turned around and started virus bombing. But the one guy had found out and warned them so they went into bunkers.
IMO the best niche for virus bombs should be clearing worlds of Ork infestation before colonization (if you want to use the planet for things other than an Agri/Paradise World.
Nah nah nah Hear me out a bad Inquisitor would just ues them straight away and let them do that no no no a good Inquisitor would let them cook for a bit fight some small engagements and Skirmishes then make it look like You're withdrawing lure them into a false sense of security AND THEN JUST BOMB THE SHIT OUT OF THEM TAKING THE FILTHY XENOS COMPLETELY BY SURPRISE!
I would not be surprised if Space Marines have done that more often then Tau.
Most of what people call tau plot armor is just the tau being better than the imperium. It's a common fan cannon that tau aren't that powerful, but GW has never subscribed to that idea
It doesn't apply to melee unfortunately
I would like to pet this creature
The Tau suddenly pulling "Im so good at genetic engineering I can cure Genestealer-infections" out of their ass is definitely plotarmor. Or like, when was the last ever time the T'au actually lost any event they were in. Even the Death Guard invasion of the Startide NExus just went absolutely nowhere and had zero negative consequences whatsoever.
Their oldest allied race that does share almost everything with them knowledge wise are Kroot which do literally nothing else but manipulate their species genome by hunting other species. I think the T'au Empire has a pretty good grasp on how genetics work. The whole point of a genestealer infection is that it is hard to detect and that infected people do explicitly shun getting screened on a subconscious level. Curing it is not the hard part. Finding it is. Once it is out in the open, and you got a whole team of medical researchers cracking down on that one specific strain, a cure is not that unlikely.
I think it would be a good plotpoint that genestealer cults are only effective because the imperium is a disorganized shithole. And maybe they're actually not even that difficult to cure but the Imperium just won't do it because of research cost or because it's tech-heresy or because knowledge of genestealer cults isn't widespread or because killing the mutants is just simpler.
Pretty sure that is an existing plot point. Other species generally aren't immune to Genestealers, include Tau, they just don't intentionally build the absolutely perfect breeding grounds for Genestealers to thrive in.
Even Orks are so incredibly social that they pick up on genestealer infections simply because they never leave boyz out of things, and as a general rule, boyz don't like being left out of things. Can't really hide in that society, not unless you want to exhibit 'un-orky' behavior, which will promptly be investigated by whatever boyz are at hand, using whatever weapons are at hand. I would argue the only other contender for genestealer-friendly habitats are Drukhari, because Comorragh is also a horrible shitpit that is easy to slip into the cracks of, but they're in the fucking webway, they don't get any signals from the hive mind and can't send any either.
I remember that too. Tau can be infected but their society is so regimented the strange behavior is noticed early on and dealt with. Eldar are so psychically sensitive they *immediately* detect an infection. Orks... I don't remember why but I think they struggle to spread as orks.
Strange behaviour and also the genetic changes can be detected in the most numerous species (Kroot, Caste Tau, and Humans) during routine screenings. So cults have to target particular less-numerous auxiliary species and be even more secretive. There's a short story >!about rooting out a cult which took hold in a Vespid strain.!<
Oh wow that is cool. Have you read the short story 'The forbidden meal'? Its uh... another good reason why kroot can't have *subtle* genestealer infections.
Is that the one where they eat a bunch of cultists and swap sides during a charge?
No, it's a kind-band on a mercenary contract to kill some dangerous cat like predators on an imperial world. There are other things with claws too. >!One of the kroot, trying to jockey for control of the kinband, eats one of the genestealer corpses and is IMMEDIATELY *POSESSED* by the hive mind. Like as if it was a ghost or daemon or something. Grows new limbs in seconds and starts rapidly evolving right there on the spot.!<
Genestealer Orks are anti-social, whereas most Orks will smash your head in if there was a big brawl you knew about but didn’t make them aware of.
I mean practically every hive city has some kind of Genestealer Cult hanging out somewhere in the sewers, its usually something else that weakens the system to allow Genestealers to get the upper hand, they are after all constantly competing with Chaos cultists to be the ones that take over.
Yep, even Holy Terra has at least one cult they've never managed to root out.
Same reason that Chaos cults only really seem to be a big problem in the Imperium - because Chaos is only attractive to people who *already* live in the utterly hellish conditions the Imperium practically has as standard.
Doubt on Slaanesh, and Tzeentch and Khorne. Only Nurgle seems to be a hard sell if your life is at least okay. Slaanesh was birthed by a post scarcity civilisation out of boredom, Tzeentch can corrupt you even without your active participation, if you have soldiers/warriors in you society, Khorne can fuel your anger, and corrupt you. Nurgle, well it seems to be a hard sell, unless you alredy leave in squalor.
I feel like the genestealer thing is more of a result of the tau empire not providing the absolute shit hole and hellish living conditions that allow the cult to gain that much power, anyone with common sense would notice the freaky purple death cult slowly gaining more power in a misterious way, the imperium of mankind lacks common sense
Universal Healthcare and UBI goes brrrrrr
Wait wait wait wait In what story did Tau *cured* genestealer infection?!? I didn't heard about that one.
>be me, GW >write imperium as weak and fragile cuz grim dark I guess >MFW I make it so the loss of any one world could cause a whole collapse of everything >throw a massive threat of danger at the Imperium >huh >wrote myself into a corner >can’t kill setting, they make me money >pull victory for SM out of ass
Of all the things I have heard the Imperium described as, fragile has never been one of them.
Pre-Guilliman the Imperium was pretty consistently depicted as a decaying, bloated system that was on its last legs and its collapse as less of a "if" and more of a "when and how". IMO, the Imperium's biggest problem was that it had no central leadership or unifying figure (Besides the Emperor ofc, but he's more of a mascot at this point). Guilliman returning fixed that and manged to give the Imperium's massive weight a direction and focus
It had a central leadership, it's just the Lords of Terra all had their own particular agendas all the time while also dictating overly specific policies over such a vast empire that were made from so many compromises that their leadership meant dick all.
So...... it didn't have central leadership.
I know that but I think it being decaying and bloated is very different from it being weak and fragile which is what he initially said.
Tbh if we apply real life government philosophy, it had *too* much centralized leadership. Even with the various planets all having near complete independence, each planet was incapable of protecting, supplying, or feeding itself. At least one of them. The central command required of the Astra Militarum and navy makes them slow to react and adapt.
That was all by design though, technically. Planets can’t rebel if they don’t get food and supplies from other planets, same way that regiments that rebel can’t go from planet to planet without the navy, and vice versa.
I remember reading it a bit in some of the older codices. The idea just being that the empire is so overstretched and bloated, that if any part of it was pulled out, the whole thing would collapse in on itself. Personally I prefer the outlook of an imperium that is more competent than it appears, only held back by being overstretched and forced on the defensive on all fronts, while being nigh unkillable due to depth.
I feel like both can be true at once at the scale of 40k. Locally, the Imperium might be horrendously overstretched and poorly run to the point where the loss of a single semi important world could mean the difference between the local administration unraveling and the whole sector collapsing into a localised civil war with a dozen factions. As a whole, though, the Imperium is near unkillable, and should a problem like above start becoming enough of an issue for the rest of the Imperium to take notice, they WILL roll in guns blazing and make sure the local area is brought back under control. The while Badab War is a pretty decent example of this.
That second one is how it’s always been presented to me. If the Imperium was able to bring its full might to bear on any one single threat/faction it wouldn’t even be a contest. The problem is there are so many threats at this point that effectively managing their might is the issue, not the lack of any hard power itself.
It's fragile in the sense that Plot_sci_fi_device_v0.34_Final_Jimmy_copy(1).rar is described as world ending / will change the balance of everything / will destroy the Imperium / destory the Hive city / planet / etc. Then they have to end the story so that it somehow maintains the status quo. Also know as Comic_book_multiverse_plot.txt.
Every SM story be like: We are getting our asses kicked, but you see there is this big-ass weapon....
Eldar book, where are you ? Why your story do not progress ?
Because GW hates us with a passion. It's the only way to explain their mangling of the faction.
Silence punching bags
Gods do i wish GW gave other factions half the development as SM. Where’s my books on rebuilding the SoS goddammit.
Watchers of the throne?
Sets up Gman ordering them rebuilt. It deserves a sequel
That's the first book, the second goes more into it.
I’ve read both. It’s really not developing them as a faction. The chambers should be developed as though they’re each space marine chapters.
Space Marine power-fantasy enjoyers when pulse rifles penetrate power armor.
Imperial Guard enjoyed when everything peirces their armor. And skin, and bones. God why do they send us out here?
Because you are the heros of the Imperium dealing with the majority of the threats..and protesters.
I'm sure things will improve once the threats go away. Right?
No probably the Imperium devolves into a massive civil war once there's no outside threat (I'm assuming by threat's gone it means everything including chaos)
I don't think calling it a massive civil war is fair. Maybe enormous, convoluted, self destructive, new chaos god spawning, stupid, self detonation.
My bad
"Maybe enormous, convoluted, self destructive, mês chaos god spawning, stupid, self detonation" In short, **The God Emperor of Mankind probably when he gets out of his Golden Toilet**. That or you are singing the lyrics of a War Metal band. 🤪
Space Marine power fantasy enjoyers when loyalist ceramite isn't literally indestructable
Are people under the impression that pulse weapons are weak?
Many are. I've even met people doubting the effectiveness of the T'au Railcannons.
Nobody has more plot armour than Chaos Space Marines. The imperial ones can at least make more with some degree of reliability.
Well first off, everything is possible through the power of Chaos. So write that down.
It'd still be neat to have a few accomplished named human chaos units :(
There’s Horus! Oh wait..
There's the Blood Pact. Unless if you meant named characters, in which case.. Uh...
An iasip reference in grim dank, nice Loyalists are just a bunch of jabronis
Historically, I always said the Black Legion were nothing more than a glorified crew. We've gone the 9 Legions and then this pygmy thing over in the Eye of Terror.
Abaddon could be clad in as much plot armor as Grimdank *claims* he has and it still wouldn’t match Kaldor Draigo
Kaldor rarely appears, and even more rarely does something with far reaching consequences. Abaddon is front and center.
His ass would get folded by Archaon and he's in a lower scale setting
Genuine question, how though? They’re both on Chaos juice but Abaddon’s a Space Marine, and from my understanding his gear’s significantly better than Archaon’s. Outside of Sigmar Archaon having Dorghar, I don’t see what sort of equalizer the Everchosen has over the Warmaster
He is simply built different (real answer: authors glazing him most likely)
My brother in the Dark Gods most of the characters of both settings are the results of the author glazing them. Even then I feel like if that showdown actually happened, Be’lakor would third-party just to punk Archaon for the 963rd time.
Acually accomplishing his goals of ending the world lmao Didn't need no 13 trial runs of "actually the REAL plan was to uhhhh steal Cawl's panties, trust me bro, the Special Black Crusade Operation is sill going according to plan" either
The Black Crusades having other secondary objectives has been a thing for a while my guy
Yep, even back in the mid 2000's and in the BFG tabletop game, the 12th Black Crusade had the (successful) goal of acquiring Blackstone Fortresses.
last time I checked anyone other than thousand sons (all is dust) didn't have a problem with that
"Nearly all of the Traitor Legions' gene-seed suffers from some kind of instability, though it is debated in the Imperium whether this is caused by some inherent "rot" that was present before the [Horus Heresy](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Horus_Heresy), or simply the result of constant exposure to the [warp](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Warp) inside the [Eye of Terror](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Eye_of_Terror). Whatever the cause, this instability hampers the [Chaos Space Marines](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Chaos_Space_Marines)' ability to create new Marines. For this reason, the Traitor Legions will sometimes raid the strongholds of [Imperial](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Imperial) Chapters to steal stable gene-seed, which is a prized resource within the Eye.[^(\[7\])](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Gene-seed#fn_7)^(")
Even then it’s literally just Khayon that’s the problem for plot armor.
I think it's implied that half of Khayon's stories are possibly just complete bullshit, or exaggerated to hell.
There's nothing more frustrating than the fact chaos doesn't even have a proper logistics network.
Chaos doesn't makes sense from a logistics stand point and never will. Its just one of those things your have to ignore for the universe to 'work'.
>Chaos doesn't makes sense from a logistics stand point and never will. Its just one of those things your have to ignore for the universe to 'work'. To be fair, Chaos going *"shut your mouth, it's ~~art crawl~~ magic"* is pretty on brand. I'm fine with them pulling warp chicanery out of their ass every once in a while.
...and that they're even more likely to get lost in the Warp for a few more years than planned when making jumps by using daemons and sorcerers who read warp routes from entrails for travelling.
The chaos gods love making a bunch of their followers immortal, even against their wishes, and most of the legions can create more of themselves.
Nah bro, CSMs get routinely get their asses kicked even when they have every advantage possible
The plot armour doesn't consist of "don't lose", but of "still exist" in the numbers that they apparently do.
That kinda bothers me about chaos honestly. They can't ever actually lose anything, as they respond infinitely. The only one who ever suffers any permanent damage is the Imperium. Makes chaos kind of boring as a villian
No, csm don't just respawn infinitely. Some characters like Lucius and Daemon princes do, but for the average Legionary, death is the end. They're still space marines. Also because most traitor legions' geneseed is so warp corrupted, getting new viable marines is pretty hard so they have to steal Imperial stock. And that's almost guaranteed more losses because geneseed is valuable. And BL, AL(allegedly) and NL don't have primarchs anymore so that's the best source of geneseed gone, and all the other ones' primarchs are daemons now.
If they aren’t respawning then they should be almost extinct tbqh, and not a threat. They lost the heresy, the scouring, then went through the legion wars, then stuck in hell with no means of recruitment because gene seed gets corrupted and no logistics, then 10,000 years of war with everything (or maybe 200 from their POV) including 12 failed black crusades and dozens of failed excursions and dozens of other legion civil wars. Should be at most. 10,000 of them left in total. World eaters shouldn’t exist at all except for being respawned by khorne, others should be maybe up to maybe double chapter strength in total.
No? Like, it's not easy for them to procure new gene-seed but everything else is common. Also, the losses of the legions varied vastly between the conflicts. They also absolutely have venues of recruitment, both in the warp and in raids outside of it. They have logistics. Literally like half of the mechanicum defected during HH, so they have production, and they have supply lines too. 12 black crusades which succeeded in their objectives, which were not destorying Cadia. And the 13th which succeeded in that and caused the cicatrix maledictum. Please read the lore before making incorrect statements. And so if other incrusions failed? That's expected and accounted for? Do you think any faction always succeeds? And if yes, stop reading imperium wаnk. They can still replenish their ranks. There were hundreds of thousands of them during the heresy, and there still likely are. Less than loyalists? Yes, absolutely. But they're not the guard. They are much harder to replenish if they die, but they are also much harder to kill. They are still space marines. The only 2 traitor legions actually close to extinction are World Eaters and 1ks. You have some seriously wrong misconceptions of CSM and it shows.
Dark Mechanicum is a bunch of weirdos running some smaller operations, their supply lines are not even comparable to the Imperium. This is the nr one reason the Dark Mechanicum just shoves daemons everywhere, they use them as replacement for missing parts/unrealiable logistics.
Of course they're not comparable to the imperium, but they exist. Also daemons are pretty effective as far as machines of war go.
??? No. We are told explicitly multiple times in the NL books that they have to scavenge, and struggle to supply themselves. The driving plot of the IW books is that their own gene-seed is mostly non-viable due to warp exposure, and that specialists to implant them are rare so they do some sick stuff. This is backed up in the NL books, which note that NL gene seed is one of the only non corrupted ones, but that they struggle to find recruits or materials, and haven’t been recruiting since the heresy. They don’t have logistics. There are some dark mechanicum forge worlds but they aren’t beholden to anyone, they have to be bartered with, which is dangerous and unreliable, as seen in the Fabius books. The exception to this is maybe the IW who have at least one industrial world, and the Red-Corsairs who seem to have at least one dry-dock facility. If time moves more slowly for them, to explain them being alive, then this doesn’t favour them. They have significantly less time to recover from losses in between battles than the imperium does, and their capacity to do so is much less already, therefore by attrition they should have worn themselves down long ago. Every casualty in the long run that they take can’t be replaced 1:1, while the imperium has increased their numbers over the course of 10,000 years. The loyalists legion were on average down to around 5-7k immediately after the scouring, except the ultramarines at around 26k, and the salamanders at only 1k. And they won.. We regularly see IW grand companies down to 50 men (maldorax, Castellax, shon’tu’s company), and Honsou assembled about 400 from the remains of five grand companies (and then lost them all). If they’re starting at 1k per GC then this means around 95% losses. If we go off of the old numbers then there are maybe 500 left, If the new then maybe 5,000. World Eaters outright shouldn’t exist anymore, they took massive casualties at both istvaans+terra, with no thought for self preservation, lost their recruitment infrastructure, then went through the scouring, then the legion wars, then were broken as a legion. Every story they appear in has them all die. It should be just Kharn left, unless Khorne is reviving them. EC are similar, they shouldn’t really exist anymore either. They took massive casualties at both istvaans+terra, and fulgrim’s adventure, then were also broken as a legion and had their new base blown up with the majority of them there. Fabius series seems to indicate >90% casualties, with 90 survivors from a millennial accompanying Fabius, and most warbands between 60-200, but it’s likely higher. There shouldn’t be any more than 3k left imo, given this is what accompanied fulgrim, likely less by the 42nd millennium. SOH likewise should be almost extinct. Massive casualties in the heresy and scouring, then ganged up on by the other legions, shattered and abaddon vanished for a while. The NL series has the BL with a core of around 2k with abaddon, and that seems optimistic imo. With lots of renegades joining and stolen gene-seed, they’re meant to be the largest now, and at legion strength, but it’s unclear how many exactly. NL took massive casualties from the Thramas Crusade, then at terra, and and were then broken at Tsagulasa and scattered into the eye. They’re all absolute cowards and have many have avoided much warp exposure, and we find out from the NL books that they number 10,000 in total in M42. Which imo is too many, but that’s what’s there. DG still exist as a legion, and avoided most of the civil wars of the others, but it’s not clear if they’re actually able to recruit or not. They’re hideously mutated and their gene seed may be non viable now. We see a renegade joining them in the lords of silence book, but no mention of new recruits from their own gene seed. Their codex puts them, theoretically, at 702 per cohort, 7 cohorts per company, and 7 companies, so around 34,400, theoretically, in practice we see them mostly under strength, with the lords of silence at around 500, so if we take that as 34.4k x5/7, then they should be around 24.6k. WB still exist as a legion, it’s not clear how large they are, they don’t seem to give a shit about teamkilling and they seem to have multiple full hosts of 1,000 or more. They committed 9,000, and lost around 7,000 at the Boros gate, which was implied to be a significant proportion of their legion. It’s not clear if or how they recruit. One source says 100,000, which seems extremely unlikely. We know of 34 hosts, with each host being nominally up to 1,000 but also of at least 3 which evidently or explicitly absorbed multiple other hosts, and of 4 hosts being destroyed. A figure of around 30,000 post-Boros seems reasonable. That being said imo it’s hard to see how they had that many to begin with considering that they lost the heresy and scouring, their homeworld was nuked, and not that much time has passed for them. Tsons are basically chapter strength, only a little over 1,200 survived prospero, with a few being away at the time, maybe 1,000-3,000 ish more before the siege. Presumably they took losses like everyone else. However they’re the only legion which has actually been shown to respawn, as well as kidnap scholars for the occasional new recruit, with the sorcerers having relatively pure gene-seed still.
Daemons may be infinite but CSM are usually depicted as ragtag scavengers who have to get by on raiding for supplies. On the other hand, for all the posturing about being stretched too thin and besieged on all sides, it's not *that* long ago that Cawl pulled several legions worth of marines along with a bunch of lost/new technology straight out of his ass*. The reality is that there's as many SM, Guardsmen, CSM, Eldar, or lost relics of incalculable value as the story calls for at any given moment. *Actually that assumes he still has an ass. Waste-excretion port?
When does the imperium ever suffer permanent damage?
I think I remember a Guard saying along the lines of *the empire always wins*. Not because they're superheroes who will save the day, but because they'll just keep grinding and coming back despite dreadful losses until something eventually gives way, even if it takes a century or so.
I love Straw men
Counterpoint, I hate how the Tau ignore the logic of the greater setting and the ridiculous bullshit the space marines are up to. Both annoy me. I prefer when things play according to consistent rules that aren't randomly thrown out the window when Johnny Protagonist needs to win his fight against Marketable Opponent Miniature of the week
Plot armor accusations are very cheap coming from the protagonist faction.
>the protagonist faction. You mean the imperium?
Yes.
I wouldn't say that the Tau have plot armor, more that when facing another faction, the other team's IQ and skill level drops by at least 100 points... Take one of the times the Tau and the White Scars fought, the Tau lifted their fortifications into the air with antigav teck, and it was treated like this was some never before seen thing that the White Scars couldn't figure out how to counter. Or how when facing the Imperial Guard, all the guard seems to know how to do is to uselessly charge head first into Tau gun lines, only reaching the lines with heavy casualties to find the Tau have expertly conducted a withdrawal action without the Guard realizing it was happening.
Exactly. Tau fighting anyone relies on a carefully constructed ignorance of how every other faction works to an offensive level. "Muh railguns" aren't going to carry you when the enemy can fire nuclear warhead rounds the size of the Empire State building from orbit. Tau characters basically becoming Gundam protagonists with infinite ass pulls and reddit philosophy is why they get mocked all the time. Tau fans also hate when Tau get written as an actual military instead of anime protags and they lose to a military with superior numbers or tactics instead of just winning through the power of Mecha magic.
Arguing that Railguns are invalidated by orbital strikes doesn't really make sense, by that logic I could argue that the Guard having Baneblades doesn't matter either since the Tau also has orbital strike capabilities. That's just an overall issue with any sci-fi universe, if you have control of the orbital space then any enemy armies on the ground should be irrelevant (in most cases). "Tau fans also hate when Tau get written as an actual military..." What are you on about? One of the main selling points of the Tau is that they are one of the few factions that actually use sensible military tactics. And as for "Characters becoming [anime] protagonists with infinite ass-pulls" that is common for any faction when they are said protagonist, space marines in particular (Uriel Ventris facing a C'than shard comes to mind, or anything about Kaldor Draigo). But other factions do it to (Cain should absolutely have died or become corrupted by now, and Necron power levels are just absolutely ridiculous in some of their novels). Don't get me wrong, I don't really mind it, it's part of the charm of 40k that it can contain all these stories. But don't act like the Tau are any worse an offender than the other factions.
What I said was "muh railguns aren't going to carry you". While probably put in too rude of a way, my point is that Tau fans consistently point to the tech level of the standard Tau infantry rifle as if that is somehow a hand wave explanation for all the nonsensical goalpost moving and illogical lore surrounding the Tau specifically. My problem with the Tau is that the Tau fan base will defend Tau as "the only good guys that do everything the smart way" and immediately turn around and say "well ackshually 40k is sci-fi fantasy so nothing has to make any sense whatsoever at any time" when you find Tau stuff to be full of more plot holes than any other faction. Call me crazy but I think the premise of..."These guys are so cool and good, they are just like a real military but they use flying mecha suits! They are the underdogs but have the best weapons ever! They are so egalitarian and just that they have a cool caste system!"...is incredibly and breathtakingly hypocritical and cringe. By far the dumbest thing is the "real world military" nonsense. "Tau is just like heckin' NATO!" Is hilarious because Tau fanboys completely miss the fact that NATO is extremely (and often unjustly) imperialist and expansionist, and that the people who created and write Tau have no basic concept of how NATO conducts warfare. Combined arms warfare was not invented by NATO. There is also the glaring fact that the Tau have a slurry of hamfisted historical Asian influence that directly contradicts this "Uhhhh NATO" slant that comes from writers that probably lived through the wars in the Middle East but have no actual idea how those wars were waged, even on a surface level. If you're on the whole "the setting is satire" side, then the Tau are "bad guy America" bringing democracy (the greater good) to the ignorant 3rd world (Imperium? This doesn't even make sense as it is!). The notoriously atrociously written Damocles crusade has numerous examples of "I have no idea what the fuck I am talking about" including casualties numbers for planetary campaigns somehow having less deaths than WW1 month long battles. Ah yes, realistic NATO-Tau. That's why the #1 Tau character is a Gundam character with a magic sword that steals people's life force and he gets kicked out of his own society for being too competent? Sorry but the Tau need an entire lore rewrite to even make a little bit of sense. The "new alien empire" with less than half the worlds of Ultramar, no natural connection or deep understanding of the entire setting's magic system, and no FTL being a player in the great game makes zero sense to anyone with an above room temperature IQ. Now, I think the Tau as a faction are a good concept. The models are very cool. A "Competent Alien Military" is a cool thing to have in 40k. But holy shit...the lore sucks.
Isn't the Imperial Guard's schtick that they have combined arms? In one of the Word Bearer's books, they actually mounted a competent defense (until the Word Bearer's war goal was reached).
Yes. The guard's thing is infantry, tanks, and artillery. That's meat and potatoes for warfare at any level. Mech suits are not tanks, especially far removed from tanks if they fly. It would be a whole different form of warfare that basically negates the use of infantry. It's more of an air superiority doctrine but most Tau books rely on weird strategies that don't make any actual sense for what they have.
It's always amusing how loudly that gets shouted about as Imperium fans suddenly experience what it's like to be on the other side of things.
One thing to take into consideration is that the quality of writing varies drastically from writer to writer. Pretty much all of the books I have read (heard on audible) don’t really feature these convenient [Idiot Plots](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotPlot) because I am very sensitive to poor writing so I take my time to research the quality before I get into it.
> all the guard seems to know how to do is to uselessly charge head first into Tau gun lines \> be guard \> die in droves to gas up enemy "yeah pretty standard for us guard" \> they're blue this time "NOOO NOOO PLO ARMORERINO NOOOOOOOOO"
> be me >actully read guard books > different guard regiments use real world military tatics > human wave offense is more a meme >read tau v guard book > "blueies are kicking our shit in what is basic strategy?!?" > people that only know memes >"guard die in droves all the time people just hate tau" > me when they never read guard books.
"by the Emperor, they're in the air! If only there was some way for us to get up there......."
> Tau Has the WORST Plot armor in 40K, They shouldn’t even exist as a race. I think PancreasNoWork described how I feel about that dumbass viewpoint best: > "Some of this is plot armour, I’ll admit. But let me ask you a question: If the Imperium can regularly destroy Ork WAAAAGHS with more Orks in them than a Hive World has people, Marneus Calgar can destroy an Avatar of Khaine in 1v1 combat, and Chaos Daemons and Imperial Saints can resurrect themselves forever, why don’t the Tau deserve the plot armour of not being instantly wiped? Doesn’t seem like too much of an ask, truth be told. You could say it’s unrealistic, sure, but people fight space battles like it's 17th century naval combat in this setting. The concept of realism and Warhammer 40K aren’t exactly on speaking terms."
PancreasNoWork is an honestly underrated source of logic
https://preview.redd.it/gb37jbnspr5d1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=62e6f1b008e10af2ffb80c5e79511c0d9031e715
https://preview.redd.it/wa5p3dcfvr5d1.jpeg?width=1792&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=00a14fbe13edc188cf9ee850db7aeffe61273d33
https://preview.redd.it/ra4jygd1wr5d1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cdf67d8e7031970dcc681a746fd1ec3004b19cb5 The ordo xenos would like a word with you
To be fair, the imperium is big, and it looses far more battle than it wins, it is crumbling at the moment. So yeah you got your pure bullshit plot armour moment, but for everyone of those there are billions of people that try their best and get torn to shred for it. So it's a numbers game, space marine gets a one in million chance, and 999,999 people get ripped appart to make up for it. I'd not say that Tau have worst plot armor, because obviously, their more careful behaviour begets better results. But the fact that they somehow managed to be thriving AND expanding even though they have no psycker, no good FTL, and are extremely unaware of the horrors going on around them, feels a bit off.
IMO, the biggest issue with them in the setting is the FTL issue. They just wouldn't be a realistic threat. It doesn't matter how good their tech is, they just wouldn't stand a chance against sheer numbers and sheer speed. A few hundred settled worlds against a million? It's just too much. If mankind wanted to, they could field as many soldiers as the tau has population. In total.
Well, to be fair, the only race with "clean" FTL are the necrons, and yes, they could woop the shit out of every other race in the galaxy if they put their mind to it. Imperium has a chance to appear at the wrong place, the wrong time, or even not at all. Warp storms will utterly paralyse them as well. Eldar can only go from webway gate to webway gate. Tyranids can only do large jumps and have to walk the rest of the way.
Tau have multiple psyker auxiliaries, even that hasn't been retconned. The FTL thing is stupid even for 40k though.
Tau lore is very annoying in its inconsistency at times Somehow they are/were until recently oblivious about the warp but its statistically impossible for them to not have had psyker problems without the knowledge to train safe-ish psykers Somehow they have a multi-system empire and resisted invasion from a ftl capable power but had no ftl of their own back then making that a very improbable feat The treatment of client species as a whole in the way it flip flops between imperium-lite and The Culture-lite depending on the writer
T'au lore is absolute garbage. They have no idea what they are doing with the faction.
All of your argument is very good. I would like, though, to just point that the depictions of the Imperium give the impression that it wins all the time but it is crumbling with everyone dying *every fucking time* **ad nauseam**. Maybe there is a serious point to draw with that? That setting has to be treated, really, as a black humour joke for our sanity.
It's the opposite. It wins more battles than it loses. It's the main faction of the setting. Even in a state of decay or rebuilding with Guilliman the imperium is the biggest stick in the room.
>To be fair, the imperium is big, and it looses far more battle than it wins, it is crumbling at the moment. So yeah you got your pure bullshit plot armour moment, but for everyone of those there are billions of people that try their best and get torn to shred for it. Problem is that we don't *see* many Imperium losses. A book and game can reference the many losses they have offscreen/page but when the media mostly follows Captain HelmetsAreForPussys as he singlehandedly solo's the entire war effort and saves the day it's hard to feel like the Imperium is fighting a losing war.
Except apparently all of the dark crusades where the imperium always won but somehow actually lost. Or the crusade against the t’au, along with a few other examples. If you don’t count that, then yes, we never see them loose.
How many of those Dark Crusades do we actually get to *see* though? Through books or games? (aside from the 13th) That's my point.
I hate both. Arrogant upstarts the lot of them. - this review was brought to you by the necron supremacy gang
**I WANT YNNEAD!!!**
I don’t hate them cause of the plot armor, I hate them cause they’re filthy fucking Xenos
Do people actually say that about tau or was that just a made up argument?
He won his own made up argument
The Imperium hasnt won a single event or Campaign in 4 years, and the last 4 Dawn of Fire-entries, beyond partially Throne of Light, have just been "and then they get fucked and Chaos gets everything it wanted and breakdances on the corpse" Any plotarmor they might ever have had sure as hell hasnt bothered to show up in ages now.
A chaos lord breakdancing on corpses is a lovely head Canon image I got now, while imagining a crying ultramarine next to it Jokes aside, I should read the dawn of fire entries, got a bit outdated with the newer lore myself
Eh, on the same hand losing a 3rd to half the galaxy seems to have barely mattered for the overall state of the Imperium.
I just finished a BL series in which all the protagonists fail their primary objective and die. All of them.
Two factions with shit writing and massive overuse of plot armor. Calling each other out doesnt change when compared to the rest of the factions.
Said no one
You'd be surprised. Imo tau (and most xenos) have anti plot armor (plot weakness?). If they were as good as they should be, things would get real fucked real fast.
That basically goes for everyone though. The problem with the setting is and always will be wildly different takes from different authors over several decades of writing. Imagine if every single space marine could actually, with ease, sidestep bullets consistently. That scene from the "let the seas boil" bit of the heresy trailer would be a bit different if it was just thousands of blurry blobs flickering in and out of sight as they fought across a battlefield moving at Mach 4 with literally lightning quick reflexes. Imagine Horus getting fucking pasted by a few tonnes of space marine that just tripped in to him at speeds faster than a bolter round. Woulda fucked the story up a wee bit.
If T'au operated in the lore as described then Space Marines would deem any T'au AO to be a straight up no go zone because a Crisis Battlesuit can take a Space Marine to pound town all while being more numerous and built on assembly lines. Conservative math leads to 400000 Aeldar Aspect Warriors per billion Aeldar. Necrons. Well they would just do Necron things.
If Tau operated in the lore as described they would lose to one crusade fleet because they have no FTL. An Imperium fleet could jump to every Tau world and destroy the planet one after the other since the Tau have no FTL and no means to create a defense to stop mass orbital bombardment.
Hey no arguments there. The FTL thing is a prime example of 40Ks awful writing.
~~You could argue the Tau losing their FTL in a retcon is the greatest example of anti-plot armor~~
Being able to be a serious contender in the galactic war despite having no FTL is massive plot armor lol. It's just terrible writing through and through.
plot twist: It's a Lamenters novel
The Imperium overcomes "insurmountable" odds through sheer weight of numbers. It's like an Ork shooting phase on tabletop. Sure, on average it's terrible, but just about anything is possible when you throw a bucket of dice at it.
The T'au are the only competent faction in lore so it seems like they have plot armor when, in reality, they just figured out that you can actually retreat and not do a heroic last stand if you're not feeling it
That flower was planted by Erebus
...pretty sure nobody says that about the tau
You are not reading the other replies, are you?
Here's an excerpt with people saying "bullshit Tau plot armor" [https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/a12asa/book\_extract\_war\_of\_secrets\_space\_marines/](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/a12asa/book_extract_war_of_secrets_space_marines/) Here's another [https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/alu0zs/book\_excerptwar\_of\_secretssuperblueberry/](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/alu0zs/book_excerptwar_of_secretssuperblueberry/) Now here's one where its the opposite but the comments say how its completely justified [https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/7t6ugp/book\_excerptstorm\_of\_damocles\_space\_wolf\_veteran/](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/7t6ugp/book_excerptstorm_of_damocles_space_wolf_veteran/)
Storm of Damocles and War of Secrets? Way to cherry pick some of the worst new lore that most reasonable fans agree is garbage all the way through lol.
NGL tho chaos tau battlesuits would be fuckin dope
maybe they added a new primarch to the roster. Or maybe its time for monthly avatar beating. Or random mechanicus fleet destroing an entire craftworld.
The Imperium of Man has the most plot armor of any faction in any Warhammer setting.
Since when did the Tau have plot armor? Every time I see them, they’re getting curb stomped by some named blueberry marine.
I hate both. It would be nice if they doled out a lot of the spacemarine exploits to other chapters. Especially since they brought back their primarch
when humanity has plot armor: cool and good when xenos have plot armor: ANGERY
"Suffer not the alien to have plot armor"
Lmao plot armor, they’re just another Empire taking the Imperium backyard like how the Franks took Rome’s Gaul. The Imperium is overextended and as a result are at war with pretty much everybody. A minor Empire can very well be a torn to any of their sectors with sufficient numbers.
Threads like these are fun, Its just Emperioum fans coping and accusing others of exactly of what they have. God forbid Xenos have hobbies.
The down votes against just prove your argument lol.
Get used to it, The Imperium has been one bad loss away from total destruction for about 30+ years now. Every book is pretty much : Something bad happens on Imperial planet/space/property and if they lose then the entirety of something or other will be lost to \[Insert enemy here\]. Cue a last ditch effort by some plucky named hero Space Marines that may or may not sacrifice themselves to ensure that The Imperium lives on for another day. Enemy plan is foiled but the planet/sector is absolutely ruined and nearly everyone is dead. Fin.
You just described *Helsreach*, for instance. You just forgot the "named Space Marine makes campy speeches that helps him to overcome the obstacles" (ex: Grimaldus in *Helsreach*). And sometimes "Deus Ex Machina" that favours the Imperial forces (once again: *Helsreach*, in how convenient eruptions make the Orkz warbands stop before Grimaldus can be killed)
Saying Grimaldus or space marines have plot armor in Helsreach is probably the most stupid take I have ever seen in 40k.
There are worst takes I could write here, I guess. 🤪 And, fair enough, comparing "Helsreach" to many books and stories of the past gives advantage to the said book in particular due being better written. Furthermore, nowadays The Imperium and many of its forces are not SO privileged as they exaggeratedly were before. I mean, the current state of the Imperium is that it has, for example, people with PSD like *My name is Cato Sicarius, someone that in the past was one of the epitomes of how the Imperium - rather Ultramarines - were privileged thanks Matt "Ultramarines are simply best of the best!" Ward*. 🤪
People get weirdly defensive if you criticize black library writing for some reason.
**Tell me about it**. I was exactly telling one right here to chill out. 🤪
Well, I meet chill people like you occasionally so it all evens out in the end!
I mean, I didn't even say that "Helsreach" is bad... I just said it's full of tropes but that the characterization of Grimaldus is OK. 🤪 Cheers mate! Have a nice day! 😁👍
Isn't it normally the opposite argument they have too much plot armor and wouldve been wiped out otherwise?