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For The Greater Good

Sep 19th, 2022

The first wave of Tau from the Kor’Shan Sept are landing on Volarius shortly, aiming to claim the entire planet for The Greater Good.

That's right: the Tau will be joining the greenskins of Da Ironbullz as the second faction in The Battle of Tsaragrad!

I am still in the early stages of planning this new Tau army, but I thought I would kick things off with a post outlining some core concepts behind what I hope to achieve with my Tau. I chose Tau as the second faction for this 40k project because they represent a nearly perfect foil to my Orks:

• Modeling: My Ork collection features many conversions and kitbashes, owing largely to the sandbox nature of the Ork range and the ability to pilfer suitably ragged bitz from other non-Greenskin models. In contrast, the Tau have a very distinct aesthetic, making their model range less amenable to kitbashing. Instead of bold conversions, I hope to express creativity in my Tau through subtle, intentional posing of models to impart a narrative or theme to each unit. In practice this means I will be staying (mostly) within the GW Tau range but will be opting for some more involved and complex interactions between models and their bases, or repositioning the stock GW components to make the models more dynamic.
• Painting: I am quite happy with how Da Ironbullz are turning out as a final painted product, but the nature of Ork models necessitates painting dull, neutral tones and dirty metals. While Da Ironbullz have given me a great opportunity to improve my skills at weathering and battle damage, I am hoping to achieve a much cleaner, refined appearance on my Tau by using a limited palette with few (if any) true metals or drab colors. I am going to use my Tau collection as an opportunity to practice clean blending, glazing, crisp armor lining, and object-source lighting effects. I will still be (sparingly) applying some battle damage and weathering to my Tau to make them fit in with the rest of the "grimdark" feel of the Tsaragrad setting, but will be keeping them overall much cleaner and less damaged than my Orks.
• Basing: I intend to conserve many of the same basing techniques from Da Ironbullz for the Kor'shan Expedition Force; after all, these two armies are supposedly fighting over the same city! Just like my Orks, each unit will be based around a central theme or micro-environment as if every model in that unit is occupying the same location within Tsaragrad (like a ruined building, or city street, or urban canal). However, unlike my Orks, I am aiming to be more careful and purposeful with the relationship of bases between models in each Tau unit: I hope to turn each unit into a sort of "mini diorama," where all of the models in a single unit can be arranged in such a way that their bases appear to connect to one another in the layout of major landmarks like streets, broken walls, concrete, and other details. I'll demonstrate this idea in a future post featuring my first 10 Fire Warriors, but my hope is that this approach might help to distinguish each unit in my collection (which will be more important for Tau than Orks given that most Tau models look quite similar!). Finally, I'm leaning towards modeling more defensible positions (i.e., ruined buildings) directly onto the bases of my Tau units, befitting their ranged approach to warfare, whereas my Orks drew their bases from a variety of generic ruined urban textures and settings.
• Gaming: It's hard to imagine two factions that operate more differently on the tabletop than Tau and Orks. This was a big selling point in favor of the Tau when deciding which faction I should add next to the Tsaragrad narrative. In that vein, I expect I will lean into the aspects of the Tau that make them the most different from Orks; namely, their ability to play cagey, evasive, defensive games and focus on dealing crippling damage at range. I don't expect I will be drawn towards the hyper-aggressive Tau lists (especially those using Farsight Enclaves) that build for first-turn knockout punches with deep striking Crisis teams, flyers, and Commanders. I will have plenty of opportunities to run hyper-aggressive lists with my Orks! Instead, I anticipate building my Tau towards lists relying on a strong backbone of long-ranged firepower supported by some tactical mobility and flexibility, and am especially drawn to the rules for the Bork'an Sept as a basis for a more defensive, battlesuit-heavy list.
• Collecting: It's impossible to say exactly how my Tau collection will grow over time, but my insticts tell me it will never come close to the enormity that is my ~8,500 points of Orks I've purchased, built, or painted for Da Ironbullz to date. I am hoping to collect enough Tau to run a few different styles of ~2,000 point lists, but I suspect I will always remain an Ork player and collector first and foremost, and will likely view my Tau as a secondary side project or a change-of-pace army for when I get tired of losing games with my Orks! In terms of which units I anticipate adding: I have always loved the range of Tau battlesuits, and in particular the Crisis, Broadside, Ghostkeel, and Riptide suits. I do also like plain Fire Warriors quite a bit, so overall I expect to build towards a more "classic" Fire Caste strike force full of clean Tau armor, with perhaps not as much in the way of auxillaries, aircraft, or super heavies.

I'll wrap up this post by sharing some new background material I've drafted for the Kor'shan Sept, which covers their relationship to the greater Tau Empire, how they arrived on Volarius, and what they hope to accomplish on the planet:

The T'au Expedition to Volarius

At the frontier of the T'au Empire's Fifth Sphere sits Kor'shan, a nascent T'au Sept comprising a small cluster of planets to the galactic south-west of the Startide Nexus. Being among the most far-flung of all T'au from their native homeworld, the T'au of the Kor'shan Sept are known as pioneers with a penchant for bravery--or, in the eyes of many in the Etheral Caste--recklessness.

The Kor'shan Sept was founded thousands of light-years outside the heart of the T'au Empire. Few of the Kor'shan have ever travelled through the Startide Nexus back to visit the Empire; thus, most of the Kor'shan haven't borne witness to the glory and customs of the T'au Empire proper. As a consequence, these T'au are somewhat nomadic and estranged from the main arteries of T'au society. This is not to say that the Kor'shan culture is any less regimented than other T'au Septs or that it fails to adhere to the dogmatic belief in Tau'va, or The Greater Good. Indeed, all Kor'shan believe that their role in the T'au Empire is to serve as explorers and frontiersmen, capable of prospecting new planets to expand the limits of T'au colonization.

This core tennant of the Kor'shan may be enough to explain how they first arrived on Volarius, many light-years away from the T'au's Fifth Sphere. As a rule, T'au are not ambitious interstellar travelers, instead usually seeking to cautiously expand their Empire one neighboring world at a time. So too has the Fifth Sphere of the T'au Empire slowly expanded in a tight radius around the Startide Nexus. However, the ruling council of the Kor'shan hold a different philosophy: that the T'au will be best served by expanding their knowledge of the galaxy and in so doing provide the Empire with a stronger foothold when determining how best to continue growing the Fifth Sphere.

It was for this reason that the Supreme Commander of the Kor'shan Sept, Shas'o Gal'eth, commonly known as Commander Dawnbringer, was ordered by the Kor'shan Ethereal Council to assemble five small coalitions of Kor'shan T'au drawn from each caste and strike out from the farthest edges of the Fifth Sphere expansion to chart the neighboring galaxy. Dawnbringer himself joined the third of these expedition forces, which was tasked with exploring the systems west of the Sept's eponymous home world. Aboard a small fleet of state-of-the-art Il'Fannor-class cruisers equipped with ZFR Horizon Accelerator Engines, Shas'o Gal'eth and his hand-picked cadre of his most resourceful, hardy Fire Caste warriors bravely charted a course into the unknown and left behind the safety of the entrenched Startide Nexus Septs.

At first, Dawnbringer's expedition was uneventful. In fact, it would be fair to characterize it as largely unsuccessful, having failed to discover many--if any--noteworthy systems on their course. They passed countless small planetary systems, but the advanced orbital reconaissance modules developed by the Kor'shan Earth Case detected little reason to make planetfall on any of these systems. Staying true to the Kor'shan philosophy of fearless exploration, Commander Dawnbringer and his coalition pressed ever onwards, steadily drifting farther from their origin on Kor'shan until the fleet had ventured so far that it stretched the limits of even the sophisticated T'au interstellar communication relays, compromising the coalition's ability to communicate with the T'au of the Fifth Sphere worlds. The pragmatic, cautious instincts drilled into every new Shas'la at the Fire Caste academies began to lurk on the peripheries of Shas'o Gal'eth's conscience and he began to doubt the value of venturing any further compared to the grave risk of being cut off entirely from the T'au Empire.

It was at the very moment that Commander Dawnbringer had finally resolved to halt the expedition and return to Kor'shan empty-handed when the fleet's Air Caste pilots spotted an anomalous reading on their crusier's scanners. They had detected a small planet--perhaps it wasn't even a planet but a large moon--on the fringes of a nearby system that was remarkably dense and exhibited an intense local gravity. The explanations for this reading weren't immediately obvious, but the geo-engineers of the Earth Caste aboard the expedition proposed that it could be caused by a remarkably large cache of heavy metals, such as admantium, which were critical raw materials when manufacturing the T'au's signature elegant-yet-durable buildings, armor, and battlesuits.

Shas'o Gal'eth knew well that securing the immense deposit of resources implied by their scanner readings might be the perfect solution to shoring up the Fifth Sphere's tenuous defenses around the Startide Nexus. If this planet did indeed carry an exceptional trove of rare metals, claiming the planet for the T'au might catalyze the local production of more battlesuits, strike cruisers, and orbital defense systems on Fifth Sphere worlds, thus avoiding the lengthy shipping process from the T'au Empire through the Startide Nexus. Yet his judgement was clouded by doubts: surely we are not the first race to discover this mineral treasure, Dawnbringer thought to himself, and what could we do if we find this planet heavily fortified against us? Will we be swift enough to turn back before being spotted and assailed? Or are we walking at great risk into a trap that may lead to our demise?

What the Shas'o didn't realize was that his pilots had detected the planet Volarius, a small Imperial admantium mining outpost on the outer reaches of the Armageddon sector. The Imperium had colonized the world several millenia ago precisely for its admantium deposits, which aided in the production of the Titan legion that safeguarded Armageddon Prime. Successive decades of catalysmic conflict had decimated the Imperial forces in the Armageddon sector, and Waaagh Ghazghkull's most recent invasion had caused nearly all Imperial forces to abandon Volarius in order to reinforce Armageddon itself, leaving Volarius virtually unguarded aside from a small planetary defense regiment.

Commander Dawnbringer thought back to his years of tutelage at the Kor'shan Fire Caste Academy. What would his mentors advise if faced with such a choice? Should he risk the survival of every loyal member of his Expedition Force for the possibility of securing invaluable resources for the Empire? Or should he remain cautious, instead making the years-long journey back to the Kor'shan Etheral Council for further guidance and reinforcements?

Gal'eth stood deep in thought on the bridge of the fleet's flagship Il'Fanor cruiser, surrounded by his closest advisors. One minute passed. Then another. Nearly ten minutes passed in contemplative silence before the Commander spoke.

"Kor'el Aru," he spoke at last, addressing the Air Caste Commander of the third Expedition Force, "we are the Kor'shan. It is our duty and honor to venture beyond the horizons seen by any T'au before us, even if we must pass into peril. We will not turn back. Set our course towards this planet... and ensure there is a place for me and my brothers on the first Manta dropped into orbit. The Fire Warriors of the Kor'shan Sept will claim this world for The Greater Good!"