[F00lish1]

I was wondering if anyone had seen or tried to make a Tau army that had been corrupted by the Chaos gods. It would involve adding some chaos rules, the good and the bad, as well as removing some of the Tau rules, and limiting units, such as no etherials, or one that had been turned. I read through the Chaos book awhile back and have been proxying it a bit and was thinking of converting a group of my Tau with some extra transfer sheets and some interesting conversions

[Watchdog]

Well, the problem is that the mind of a Tau has little to no connection with the Warp and as such it can hardly be corrupted.

The Kroot are a different story though. I can well imagine a Kroot Mercenary force corrupted by eating the flesh of the followers of Chaos.

[Boneguard]

As Watchdog state, It's a big Resounding NO!

As He mentionned Tau have almost no connection to the Warp -the reason why they have no psycker- and they don't even travel in the Warp they ricochet on it like a stone on water. These thing make it such that they are less likely to come into contact with daemon other then in Combat and thus less likely to spend enough time to be corrupted by them.

Furthermore, being a small Galactic Empire they are very close knit -thus less likely to have major variant- and they have this very strong social conditioning of Equality and them being First amongst Equal which is has strong if not stronger then most corruption.

Now this being said GW did had a Chaos Themed army on their website...kind of. The Tau were not corrupted -this is a very improtant point- but rather they were lead astray by Tzeentch. But Even then that would not last very long...and to do so you need an Ethereal.

But Overall to be quite Honest, Chaos Tau are too difficult to pull off in any semblance of logical way, that it is better to avoid them altogether.

[Hadhfang]

Another Chaos Tau thread. :P

Well, Chaos Tau can be done. In fact it can be done quite easily. Whether or not it can be done well however, is quite a different matter.

However, if you do wish to follow a chaos Tau theme, I suggest the following (Copy pasted from a thread a few months back)

Firstly, decide what you want to do "Chaos Tau" for rather than "Chaos Space Marines" "Traitor Guard/LaTD" "Dark Eldar" or "Chaos Daemons" What do you want to achieve from making Tau fall under the taint of Chaos (This is what Chaos would gain from this as well)-Then think about their character, i.e. how they now act under chaos.

From that, you need to decide how they follow chaos. Are they unwitting pawns following what they think is the greater good in a horrendously misguided act? Are they followers of the greater good that have perhaps started to question the absolute rule of the ethereal? Malcontents that secretly meet under cover to hide it from their masters knowing they would be excommunicated from the state if they were found? Have they thrown aside the Creed of the Greater Good that they are so indoctrinated in and their own renegade faction, akin to Farsight?

Then next part is the hardest. why do they follow Chaos? By that you need to proficiently and sufficiently justify with strong links and evidence that your HOW can work. Here you need to take an Empirical approach to it and actively try to find flaws in your argument. If you can easily rip it to pieces start again. If it is reasonable, but at best somewhat contrived or questionable then start again. It is of course impossible to get a 100% foolproof argument for it, and anything you come up with might come up against unanswered questions, but if you get something that would hold enough water to work, then go with it, and present it with an open mind ready to polish.

Remember of course just how set in the doctrine of Tau'Va the Tau are. They aren't going to throw it off very readily, and nor are a few family deaths going to make them want revenge. For them that is a part of the Tau'Va, everyone has a part to play, and if it involves their death so be it. It is indeed hard for a daemon to possess the Tau but it can be done-though then you need to explain why it would want to. Of course, with the Ethereal control over the Tau remaining a mystery there is nothing stopping a strong enough shapeshifting daemon masquerading as an ethereal, but again the question is why? Also, consider a shapeshifter might not be able to exert the control over the Tau that ethereals have, as we have no idea how they control them, but there is enough to suggest it is more than very good oratory skills and tradition. Equally you might wish to consider a daemonic plot that was foiled, and as a result the Tau in question exiled from the state, then perhaps a split between them, half bound for redemption, half turning from the society that shuns them and going their own way, thus being more susceptible to chaos. But then, what caused this in the first place? Chaos plays on greed and desire, the Tau's desire is to achieve the greater good-so you need to use that as a basis and work from there.

Like I said, it is possible, it is however going to be a daunting challenge. You will come up against opposition and dead ends, so you need to be determined to make it work.


Also, I would say don't even consider combining chaos rules with Tau. If you want chaos rules play Chaos marines or daemons. A Chaos army would work primarily on conversion and a theme running through the models, alongside a very strong background, that has been presented, tested and refined a lot.

[Cogsley]

I found that the adversaries rules in the witchhunter and daemonhunter codex were a good place to start for a tau/chaos army. The rules for a apostate cardinal and pontifex guards make for something like a human version of a ethereal and the traitors units with some tanks was a fun way to run human aux that had a bit of the chaos in them. I also used the mining teams from the imperial armor book to represent slave fodder units a few times as well.

My reason for chaos tau came straight from the demonhunter codex a rogue psyker had taken up with the tau. He defected onto a rustic fringe tau planet and started getting a following together.

[PNW]

Originally Posted by Cogsley

I found that the adversaries rules in the witchhunter and daemonhunter codex were a good place to start for a tau/chaos army. The rules for a apostate cardinal and pontifex guards make for something like a human version of a ethereal and the traitors units with some tanks was a fun way to run human aux that had a bit of the chaos in them. I also used the mining teams from the imperial armor book to represent slave fodder units a few times as well.

My reason for chaos tau came straight from the demonhunter codex a rogue psyker had taken up with the tau. He defected onto a rustic fringe tau planet and started getting a following together.

But why would the Tau follow a pitiful Gue'vesa refuge who encourages them to go against the thing they have been taught their entire lives?

[calmsword]

chaos is nefarious-

honestly that's the only 'chaos' tau i can imagine, that or the Tau serving as mercenaries just as many different xeno factions do for the warmasters.

Anyway- i honestly like the idea of tau being used by a pontifex- it happened with a genestealer cult it can happen with private chaos worshippers.

however- the idea of actual chaos tau is a 100% no for so many many reasons- the tau even from a conceptual vantage point were always meant to stand apart from all other 40k races.

[Cogsley]

The tau in my army doesn't follow the cardinal like the tau in a army with kroot doesn't follow the shaper. The cardinal is just seen as a leader that the humans rally behind and since this draws similarities to how fire warriors follow a ethereal and are emboldened by him the tau like it.