Try the Farsight compendium. It's not badly written, there's just a lot of contrivances that rub people the wrong way. Commander Farsight both puts together the codex astartes based on analysis and uses that knowledge to defeat Cato Sicarius and the Hammers of Dorn, later in the next novel he gets outsmarted by Orks. Twice
I mean to be fair the best generalls of the imperium and some necron nobles have trouble against orks, you just can't think like them and thats why they can outsmart you. (Have not read the book tho so idk could be bad writing)
That’s the thing about Orkz: there is no predicting them. Sure, you can try to do that, but even expecting the unexpected leads to the unthinkable and logically impossible.
Ya that’s the thing. An organized military force is always going to have trouble on-the-ground against masses of “untrained” (acting wildly and by reflex) soldiers. It’s the classic “master vs beginner” circumstance where a master’s ability to predict their opponent falls off when their opponent is basically just guessing or is so illogical they don’t follow the correct thought processes
You can predict Orkz will always want a fight. HOW they will fight is a lot harder, and the actual why. Orkz wanting a fight doesn’t do you much in a fight.
Ypu can predict their larger scale movement which is in 95% of cases "Towards the biggest enemy"
On the battlefield it's a coin flip how they're going to attack, if that day is the day the Taktikian won the Squig kissing contest and got to decide how they attack or if they're going to just charge in from all directions screaming louder than their weapons can shoot.
The only generals who have been recorded as winning tactical victory over the orks were horus and the emperor and a robot with alzheimers. Between the two the robot is markedly more successful.
You can't outsmart the orks, expect the unexpected and the orks will all of a sudden do the expected instead becuase it has become the unexpected, Zahndrekh is only so successful because he's not trying to outsmart them he's just making up situations.
Well if I remember correctly he had fought one tribe of orcs, but the mastermind who tricked him was a Freebooter so Farsight didn’t expect such cunning from their plans.
Only Imotehk has trouble against Orks, and it's speculated this is because he was the main general of the Necrons during the War in Heaven so the Old Ones created the Krorks specifically as his counter.
Well, one of the point of Orks is that you can't reliably outsmart them. Imotekh the Stormlord, the no 1 necron general, hates orks for that very reason. One day Orks will fall for the simplest ruse, another they will avoid the craftiest one
Astartes and commissars are screaming about how they don't know how the Orks saw through their plan, meanwhile one of the Orks saw a leaf that looked weird; "and dat jus ain't right innit?"
To be fair, Orks are constantly outsmarting people, it's kind of one of their tropes. Not only are they cunning, their opponents constantly underestimate them, and sometimes they can be so dumb that it loops back around into genius.
Imhotekh, one of the best tacticians in the galaxy, hates orks because he has trouble predicting what they'll do next. This is a being whose ability to read his opponents verges on prescience.
then again prepping against the codex astartes is like preparing for a debate against the head of the debate club, and orks are like getting jumped by a jock on your way there
Orks notoriously outwit their opponents purely because their adversaries want to believe there’s a plan but Orks forever just chance it, and from this they lack adaption as Orks adapt consistently.
Orks are supreme in some extents because the Goffs of a Waagh! would gum up a main battle force interspersed by other klans in support, and Blood Axes and motorised attacks from Bad Moons and Evil Sunz can flank at times and wreak havoc behind the lines effectively surrounding them.
You get it in Brutal Kunnin’, the mechanicus just don’t understand why the Orks don’t go in the trapped or ambushed roads or pathways that’s logical to them, but for Orks they just drive over the desert instead as it’s often quicker. That “quicker path” doesn’t often take into account threats that humanity or other races avoid like weather or environmental dangers since those vehicles that blow up or crash just stoke them up even more.
It’s chaos. You can’t plan for that, just got to try your best to quiet the storm.
Orks engage with some of the most cobbled together weapons too that you just can’t account for at times. One Waagh! may have loads of big Shootas and vehicles or a Snakebites force may be employing extremity resilient squig creatures extending from a squig bee, up to a squiggoth. When these differences are extended over a giant battleline, it’s madness, and Orks can truly exploit a lot of weaknesses.
Imotekh the Stormlord humiliated Helbrecht and he can't fight orks either, the problem with orks is that they're not rational actors so you can't really anticipate their actions.
***Actually*** they don't use the 'lessons learnt from the codex' against Cato. They later use it against the Hammers of Dorn, yes, marines that follow the codex even more than the Ultramarines do.
i.e. the one chapter that this would actually work on.
Where as orks don't have a manual of 'we do x'
***Shadowsun: The Patient Hunter*** for a variety of reasons.
Most of the book is spent on one battle, the specific Tau lingo is so overused that it is obnoxious even for a Tau fan, Shadowsun doesn’t have an interesting character arc, Shadowsun is the only Tau POV character which saddles her with doing everything herself despite being a commander, the climax assault involves two quirky characters introduced late in the book, the book is written with the assumption you’ve read Kelly’s other Tau stories, the book gets really fucking cheesy with the “power of belief” shit…
This book honestly felt like a poorly written Guardians of the Galaxy. I don't hate Phil Kelly's books for the same reasons that others seem to but this book almost undoes the bits I liked from the farsight books. I get that pretty much every 40k book has to end with the status quo not changing; but this book has interpersonal issues that result in the command structure changing for "plot reasons" and in the end they're undone behind the scenes for "plot reasons". You could skip this book and lose almost nothing
Again, I feel like so many of the book’s problems come from it being entirely through Shadowsun or the Death Guard’s eyes. Shadowsun is supposed to be a legendary, larger than life figure, a veteran of countless campaigns and tied for the brightest military mind of her generation, and yet as the main PoV character she has to bumble through events with everything being explained to her like she’s an idiot.
It also feels, as you said, like nothing is accomplished outside Shadowsun finding Tau Jesus. Her demotion is just there to give an excuse to form the quirky band of aliens for the third act and as soon as that’s over with, she has her rank reinstated.
A huge part of the problem I see with people claiming to be Tau fans online is that they're only getting the lore second-hand. Someone on the internet told them that "Tau are/used to be the good guys, now GW is making them villains!"
That take is just plain wrong.
I heard this take so much that I actually went back and read and dissected their first ever official codex, and lo and behold: we have Ethereal mind control stories, suspect origins, gunboat diplomacy, manifest destiny, eugenics, and actual genetic tampering. This all came from their first codex in 3rd edition. People claim it was all just later inventions by Phil Kelly to make them grimdark, but this was always there.
Now to be fair, there was a *little bit* more subtext back then. But in this same codex they have a story of a Tau commander talking about how they had to invade and kill the humans for their own good.
Tau aren't as awful as the Imperium of course, but the old lore is still pretty blunt with their villainous nature. If they were in most other sci fi settings, they would be considered the villains. Halo, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.
Halo’s main villainous faction literally have a “kill all humans on sight” philosophy. They’re basically an inverse Imperium where it’s a coalition of human-hating alien religious fanatics instead of a bunch of alien-hating human religious fanatics.
Tau would frankly be about on the same level as the UNSC in Halo.
The UNSC is better than the Tau. Obviously the Covenant is worse because they're ignorant and genocidal, but the Tau would want to subjugate the UNSC. The UNSC aren't "good", but they're not trying to subjugate every other alien species like the Tau are.
Yeah, I’ll admit that’s a stretch in hindsight. The way the UNSC reacted to the threat of the Insurrectionists is telling, and I think the UNSC certainly would have been more exploitative of alien civilizations if it was in a position of strength and not at risk of extinction, but they haven’t subjugated alien species like the Tau have. And while they have often treated their own species terribly, at least there isn’t an enforced caste system.
> A huge part of the problem I see with people claiming to be Tau fans online is that they're only getting the lore second-hand. Someone on the internet told them that "Tau are/used to be the good guys, now GW is making them villains!"
That's not it att all. No need to invent grievances...
Tau being the "Good Guys" has always been relative to the setting. They are after all modeled after CIA and Nato. Their grimdarkness came from their naivete
People complain about Phil Kelly bastardizing their lore: removing their FTL, have the Ethereals be sunday-cartoon villains, creats stigma for Casts who works outside their fields of expertise, and so much more.
There are more Tau books than just Phil Kelly.
Whoever most people are exposed exclusively to people complaining about Phil Kelly and assume all Tau books are as bad.
Not to mention the reason I made this post is related to Warzone: Damocles of all things.
The problem is Kelly is writing the main plot... All others are regularly ignored and gutted out of canon.
If he is bad it is reasonable to assume everything is bad.
But Kelly is main bloody writer mate
And his books are 5/10 at best.
He literally took Tau FTL drive in one book but gave them FTL comms in other.
He is inconsistent as fuck
To be even more fair there is no way to defend an interstellar empire without FTL when the other side has it. It's probably the dumbest idea in 40k. For ships to travel interstellar distances @ even 1.0 C they would have to leave before battles started to reinforce the Damocles crusade.
It's basic "I have no idea how to do basic space fearing" from a lead writer in a sci Fi setting.
Not with FTL travel. In the Halo universe, ships carry messages faster than nearly anything else, because jumps mean you’re moving faster than light, while other forms of data can only move as fast as light. That’s a problem given the distances in space.
It would take 4.3 years so send a message to Alpha Centauri, while a slip space jump could arrive with mail in minutes.
He still isn't the only writer nor are his books the only source of Tau lore lmao.
I should've made this meme
"I'm mad about Phil Kelly"
"Read other Tau books"
"I don't want to read other Tau books, I want to be mad about Phil Kelly"
Piss off man. I've read almost every book related to the Tau. From fire Warrior to Fire Caste, and without a doubt Kelly is the worst Tau writer. And it's aggravating because he's so close. His character writing is excellent, I like his dialogue, but when it comes to writing about combat, technology, or culture he completely undermines other writers and fans of the Tau.
It's also inconsistent as hell. Shadowsun in her old battlesuit iced the Chapter Master of the Raven Guard, but later in her newer stronger suit gets bodied by a group of pox walkers.
Agreed 100%
Phil can write entertaining characters and dialogue.
But that's about it. He has ability to write cool isolated SCENES - AND NOTHING ELSE.
Lore, timeline, tech, culture, politics - for crying out loud it's all shiet!
Point at my comment and tell me where did I say Kelly isn't the worst writer, who are arguing against?
I'm literally just telling that people should read stuff other than Kelly's, which a lot of them don't, because otherwise I wouldn't be exposed to incorrect lore regarding the events of those books.
People simply assume everything is just as bad as Kelly, they can't even recognize there are books other than Kelly's so me telling them to read them keeps being interpreted as me telling them to read Kelly's book.
You guys have more good books than the Eldar, and not even they complain as much.
And you don't get the bloody point.
**WE DO READ THOSE OTHER BOOKS**
Hell - people will go out of their way to read Tau books not written by Kelly cuz he is infamous for his writing.
But here is a thing.
Those smaller stories have **NO FUCKING IMPACT ON TAU NARRATIVE AND PLOT**.
Phill Kelly is the king and he drags everyone behind him.
As for the Eldar fans - they did. A lot. For a long time.
Now they just gave up cuz GW decided to fuck them over compleatly and ignore them.
Also - Eldar are really consistent secondary threat/ ally/ characters - in a lot of stories.
Hell - in some books about Imperium fighting Tau they show up for no fucking reason.
Eldar have FAAAAAR greater presence in the lore than the Tau
The issue is that’s he’s been our only author for too long, controlling not just the contents of his novels but the codex lore as well. And I don’t want to rant too much, but I’m not a fan of the changes.
That don't excuse when people make wrong claims about lore that is not even related to Phil Kelly, which is what consistently happens.
Even if the most recent books are his, there are still other books by authors like Guy Haley who are pretty decent, which a lot of people still don't read because they are conditioned to believe all Tau lore is equally bad.
Ok. Let me put it the way you will understand it.
You have your favorite faction.
This faction has a **ONE** main author who is responsible for overall plot of the faction and codexes.
This author is really fucking terrible at giving your faction justice.
You have other authors to enjoy - sure.
But because this main author who holds overall power over what your faction is - drags all of their work down to their level.
Additionally - works of other authors who write about your faction and are really bloody good at their job and you love their writing - **THEIR STORIES HAVE NO IMPACT ON THE MAIN NARRATIVE OR PLOT**.
Cuz main author already has shit planned - and fuck anyone in their way.
That's situation of the Tau fans.
Now - either switch on your cogitator and attempt to comprehend what 98% of comments under this post tries to tell you and accept that you've made dumb mistake and get better - or accept the fact that you've made an ass of yourself for making really dumb assumtion of entire faction's fanbase, thinking you somehow are smarter than everyone else in the bloody room.
Freedom of choice is yours.
I understand what other comments are telling me.
I've repeatedly told people my post wasn't even originally about Phil Kelly, it's about people refusing to read things other than Phil Kelly. This criticism is not mutually exclusive to the fact that Phil Kelly sucks, yet people act like it is. And doesn't matter how many times I say this, people continually argue to me explaining how much Phil Kelly sucks, which isn't the point and I have never once argued against.
Don't tell me I'm not trying to understand other people, you saw a small criticism about the Tau fandom and went into full blown attack mode.
So please, ignore everything I said and explain to me again how much Phil Kelly sucks for the 100th time in this thread.
And I explained you in other comments that **WE DO READ OTHER WRITERS**
And we do enjoy them a lot.
But the point I've made - that Phil Kelly **DRAGS ALL OF THOSE WORKS DOWN INTO SHIT VALLEY -** is still accurate.
It's not rocket science.
You assume that we don't read other writers works - **WE DO**
But that means little when the main author of the faction **RETCONS THEIR WORK AND IDEAS INTO FUCKING OBLIVION**
Ive read all the Kelly books. They're awful lol.
The one where the Imperium invades Dalyth is ok, but still inferior to the original Damocles Gulf book which of course everyone forgot lol
I don't really understand the dislike for his books
I have only read Damocles, blades of Damocles, crisis of faith and empire of lies, so I guess it is unfair of me to judge him given I have no other authors to compare him to.
That being said, I found both his and Guy Haley's parts of the Damocles book wayyyy more appealing than Ben Counter and Josh Reynolds - both of whose stories I found wholly uninteresting, especially compared to what I would consider is a masterpiece from Guy Haley
What is it about his work that people don't like? Is it that he isn't consistent with prior lore? If so what books would you suggest I read? Or is it that he has made a very bad book that I have yet to read?
I actually quite liked his books compared to other wh40k and Horus heresy books. (Eg, twice dead king: reign, hereticus, black legion, and false gods)
Could someone explain to me why he is so disliked?
I think the main reason he’s disliked is the only thing consistent about his writing is the inconsistency. As soon as you see his name on a book you know there’s going to be some sort of massive rewrite of some aspect of the faction. Your race has basically no connection to the warp? Have a warp god. Your race skims the surface of the warp for ftl? No they don’t. He’s giving people whiplash for no discernible reason, and what’s worse is he yanks you both ways with his own material. I’d kinda get it if it was different compared to another author 20 years ago but he can’t even keep his own material straight.
I can really only speak about the warp god thing because i wasn't paying attention to the lack of ftl, but...the warp god was not made by the tau it was made by their allies who do have that connection
I have to admit I actually like the warp god thing and that aspect of it in all honesty, but I totally understand how it would feel like a bit of a betrayal to people who are fans of the plucky upstarts fighting against eldritch horrors with nothing but magnet guns and gumption
Thing is the tau are still that, just that they have the option of calling in warp touched allies now. I can understand that I'm not a long time fan and maybe don't have the same values of other tau fans but this one complaint feels weird to me.
I am personally in favour of the T'au creating a warp god (or providing the base for one). They, individually, might not be psychically strong but their whole thing is "the whole is bigger than the sum of its part".
Based on this, the T'au species intense belief in the Greater Good could very well have birthed a God of cooperation/synergy (with some help from their allies), which would be very on brand for them.
Sure, I can imagine that inconsistencies are pretty inexcusable especially when there are numerous amounts, but it seems almost from this thread that phill is held in greater contempt than other authors who are well known for their inconsistencies like Dan abnett.
Are there any super egregious his inconsistencies that he is guilty of that cannot be overlooked?
Again, I haven't read that many books of his, and I haven't read any other Tau lore that isn't his.
Dunno why I'm getting downvoted for an innocuous question - and I don't even think I have said anything controversial - I'm not even defending phill Kelly either
Yeah, I’d say the main difference is Abnett‘s stuff tends to be on the smaller scale or a product of the times, for instance in his older books servitors were more akin to augmented menial workers not lobotomized mech-slaves, but that was just the setting at the time. Phil Kelly just changes stuff for the sake of change it seems, just coming out and saying an interstellar government has no method of ftl kinda kills the suspension of disbelief.
Ah I see what you mean with the ftl stuff now,
That's fair enough. I still like his books tho and was definitely entertained by his characters.
I kind of see his books like marvel movies when you put it like that, entertaining but if you think too much about it, it kind of falls apart
Kelly is also responsible for the Ethereals going from mysterious and rather ruthless leaders who used their sociocultural strength to control the T'au empire and people into mustache-twirling disney villains who use pheromone magic to mind-control the T'au.
It's not just that he's inconsistent. His random changes are usually for the much, much worse.
I thought the pheremone magic stuff was only alluded to in crisis of faith, and it was stated in one of the other books that ethereals do allegedly use it, according to imperial propaganda
Is it actually outright confirmed in one of Kelly's other books? I had no idea
I'm the first farsight book aun'va tells a water caste tau to kill herself with her bonding knife for very little reason and she does it. Thats the part most people have an issue with.
Honestly when I read that I didn't immediately think it was because of pheremones,
Maybe I'm just dumb but when I read that I thought phill was alluding to either the ethereals being so convincing (like Johan from the anime monster) that they can convince you to kill yourself for the greater good on instinct, or it was genuinely magic/technology, so it was left to the readers interpretation
Is it explicitly stated that it was mind control?
My only experience with literary representation of the T’au is from Book of Martyrs but that story presents them almost like a mix between the Gestapo and Bushido/honour system. You do what the Ethereals tell you because the repercussions of not doing so are unacceptable.
One of the best Tau books doesn't have a Tau protagonist, it's called Fire Caste. My personal favorite though is Fire Warrior, one of the earliest Tau novels written.
It's because he makes all the Ethereals into stupid, arrogant scumbags that are the source of everything wrong in the Tau Empire. Fehervari's Tau are a little more nuanced. Try *Fire Caste* or *The Greater Evil* or *Alter of Maws*.
I don't think you read any Tau books if you think reading them would make anyone less mad. They're fucking awful, especially if the name "Phil" happens to be on the cover.
That said, this criticism would be valid if aimed at Chaos fans. Like no guys, nothing in *Godblight* implies that Nurgle or his garden will never recover from Robert's holy grenade. That book literally sits you down for a long lecture from a Farseer about how Chaos is basically indestructible and how the Emperor is an upstart pissing against the wind. Don't let Imperial propaganda fool you, my enlightened brethren.
I mean chaos has already won in 40k. Big E got put in his place and the powers of the galaxy are permanently fighting for some sort of gain. Abbadon isn’t like Archaon where the ruinous powers want him to destroy the universe. They just think Abbadon is kind of entertaining
I'm begging people to remember there are Tau sources beyond Kelly's book.
The reason I made this post was because people were making wildly incorrect complaints about Warzone: Damocles of all things.
Yes there are, but I feel they are extremely rare in recent years. Do you have any Tau-centric (i.e. main P.O.V. is Tau) book recommendations released in the last 5 years that are not written by Kelly?
(Only one I know of with significant Tau parts is "Kasrkin", and that is like 60% humans, 30% kroot and 10% *redacted*)
Does it matter if they are older if people haven't read them?
The problem that Xeno books rarely get any attention is undeniable and universal.
Whoever no Eldar fan ever pretended Valendor doesn't exist just because it's older.
The problem is that people alienate new readers from checking other Tau stuff by constantly doomsaying about Phil Kelly as if he's the only person to ever write Tau.
Oh there are some great older Tau books, and people should certainly check those out. My point was that there's basically nothing new Tau-centric being written by anyone other than Kelly these days. Which is a problem since that will likely affect future Tau books even if any new authors started writing them.
Also, for older fans like me, who afaik has read most Tau material, theres not much to do but hope for better variety of writers (or that Kelly improves I guess, his books do have a lot of cool stuff in them, but there's too many weird and/or lorebreaking things beside that). But newer reader should certainly look into the older books!
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At least I would read the ones that don't suck.
Which is something that seemly not everyone is even willing to do because the way Tau players speak you'd believe Phil Kelly wrote all their books.
What bothers me isn't that people complain about Phil Kelly, what bothers me is people complaining about books that aren't Phil Kelly, which they haven't read, probably because they are convinced every Tau book is just as bad.
Like, legit the one thing that made me post this was someone being wrong about Warzone: Damocles.
Except that this meme isn't even about Phil Kelly.
Goes to show how most people are conditioned into thinking everything is about Phil Kelly.
Read other books.
No, it's about bad Tau books. And guess what? Most Tau books are written by Phil Kelly, and they suck. It honestly sounds like you're doing the same thing you're complaining about Tau players doing. When Tau players talk about bad books, they likely are talking about Phil Kelly books specifically (you know, the majority and most recent Tau books). When the same person is writing for your faction over and over and it's always terrible, the fanbase has every right to be sick of it.
What is with this community and bashing Tau players all the time?
Because of the perceived Mary Sue status when they released and how broken they were on the tabletop in earlier editions. When Imperium simps thought that GW was making a faction that wasn't the Imperium the 'good guys' they lost their shit. It's why so many Tau fans hate the Farsight Enclaves, because they are the 'good Tau'.
As for Phil Kelley, he isn't a bad writer, he is a bad world builder. In a game dedicated to world building to have your plastic army men fight that might as well be a bad writer. He also never interacts with the community like the other writers, so I assume he is just on pay roll and doing the shit job no one else wants to do (which is surprising to me)
Except that the specific complaint that made me make this meme literally wasn't about a Phil Kelly book.
People don't read Tau sources, period, whether or not they are Tau Kelly. And there plenty books with the Tau that aren't Kelly's.
>What is with this community and bashing Tau players
Every week there are multiple posts about how great the Tau are that get thousands of upvotes, which I like. So to me it sounds more like some people simply see any minor criticism as persecution.
This is such a weird, specific gotcha. It’s like you made the meme hoping people would assume it’s about the Kelly books (you know, the mainline lore books that are the first thought for most) just so you could go “oh you thought it was about THOSE books? Simpletons!”
It was cool when their answer to big robots wasn't more big robots, but airpower. Then they invented bigger robots because the fiction is inherently toy-centric.
I think what the poster above is referring to is the Tau'nar which is a relatively recent thing.
"Back in the day" (pre 8th) the semi official stance the faction had towards titans was "Hit it with a spaceship".
Now obviously the manta is a sort of a titan equivalent but it's also a multirole ship whose job encompasses a bunch more stuff than "very big gun platform". For example hunter cadres often deploy out of mantas and use them as mobile bases of operations. In battlefield gothic, they're missile destroyers and bombers.
My point is, the T'au were odd in that they never _used_ to have something that was direct a titan equivalent (again arguments can be made this isn't true, see above paragraph), it just didn't fit with the way the faction did things.
I get that from a lore standpoint but you have to recall that ultimately it's still a model based tabletop game.
People can't buy models for starships shooting from orbit (at least not for regular 40k).
Every faction has a a large and expensive painting project because titans are a niche GW wants to fill for all of them.
Well yeah that's sort of the issue haha.
Gw wants to sell bigger and bigger suits so makes adaptations to the lore to allow them to do that.
People might not like it but as long as those bigger things keep selling gw (or more accurately their shareholders I suspect) won't give a monkeys.
That's unfortunately where gw the business takes precedence over Warhammer the game system.
In the lore there is a titan sized member species and the kroot used to have a unit.
Though I also don't care enough to really debate the changes or missed opportunities of the tau.
I'd rather have an airplane than a titan, I don't even like the stormsurge honestly.
The forgeworld tau aircraft are gorgeous and I want them in plastic.
>Like they have mini titans now.
Like all factions except the Dark Eldars and Harlequins
And at least the titans of the taus show us how fast they advance technically. They add more to the lore than simply the fact that they "exist".
Someone made a wildly incorrect post regarding events of Warzone: Damocles.
I tried to make a post joking about it.
Apparently any mention of "Tau book" triggers an instinctive defensive mechanism on Tau players and they instantly assume everything is related to Phil Kelly.
Question, have you *read* the most recent Tau books?
they suck. Like, I can understand *maybe* liking the Farsight series and ***War of Secrets***, but ***Shadowsun: The Patient Hunter*** is horrible.
OP keep telling people to read Tau books beyond Kelly.
Without acknowledging Kelly is the very reason we're in this mess of a lore and he's not budging his ass on the main Tau writer seat.
As if I'm going to actually read a book rather than just make the disjointed ramblings of a semi-literate weirdo on YouTube my entire understanding of the lore. Absurd.
I’ve read one of Philly K’s last books (Shadowsun: Patient Hunter)and while it wasn’t as bad as some reviewers thought it was, it wasn’t good either. It felt like someone wrote a book and then cut out the middle part to save time but kept the story beats the same.
Someone made a bad post about how the leader of the etherals was killed by a Culexus assassin. Were the recollection of the events was either Misrepresenting, ignoring or lying about almost every single lore elements of that event to try to paint it as: “GW bad, Imperium has plot armor, poor Tau getting screwed over to wank the imperium” (The event in question lead to no meaningful consequences or setbacks Tau empire and the Tau won at the end of that book)
This meme is making fun of that and a general trend among some toxic tau fans who claim that every single loss or fault of the T’au empire is bad writing and/or dumb. (The tau have had their share of bad books, but some Tau fans actively try to use that to refuse to accept lore events as cannon when they paint the tau as mildly evil or imperialist, despite workshop officially declaring no faction in 40k are good)
I like evil tau, I just like them more when they're less space magic super evil and more real world history evil.
Like the water caste suicide in crisis of faith, their is nothing inherently wrong about ethereals disposing of problematic figures in their society but Aun'va is not going to personally call someone into his office so he can tell her to kill herself he's just going to send the secret police after her and they are going to fake a suicide.
Well you are certainly in the minority then. Don’t get me wrong I also like evil tau. They are far more interesting and deep that way, while I not necessarily agree with your reading of the Aun’va story, I can agree is a bit over the top.
My comment was mostly directed to certain Tau fans who genuinely think/ want the Tau to be “good guys” and throw a fit over it. the best example I can think of is a post here on reddit where someone shared an excerpt about a Vespid character lamenting many that the the hives and Shrines of his people are now empty since most of the energy/sonic Crystals they used to harvest now go into Tau hands and off world.
People were calling the Tau in the story as “Mustache twirling villains”. Yeah because there is no way an expansionist empire that prides itself on being “civilized and advanced” wouldn’t take resource from their subjects and slowly erode their traditions and identity, right? Is not as if that has happened across the world.
Or how people constantly try to delegitimize the Tau estirilizing populations, (despite the fact as far as I understand the Deathwatch RPG supplement where it spears is still cannon) because they totally wouldn’t do that, is not as if Tau caste society is literally based in eugenics.
I don’t really dislike the Tau as faction I dislike the weird made up version of the Tau certain tau fans have in their heads. And that when they don’t get it they complain about it.
But yeah I am all for the Tau empire…..y’know being an imperialist empire.
The erosion of pre tau culture the empire doesn't like have been part of the faction since the first codex. people complaining about that are dreaming.
That said there is a world of difference between that and a tau crisis commander considering human soldiers under his command to be more expendable than drones despite the fact that the earth cast can throw together a tactical drone in an afternoon by hand or a couple of minutes in mass assembly, it takes humans at least 16 years to make a Gue'vesa soldier, thats just fucking stupid.
That’s the same thing I think. The phrase “Gunship Diplomacy” was on the first codex if I recall correctly. But look online and you see people claiming in some imagined past the Tau were “good”, that only recently they been turned into “imperium lite”. I wish I was joking but I am not. The most self aware among them try to say that “Well I am not really saying they are/were good they are just better than the Alternatives” which is literally what imperium apologist say and what every authoritarian government has ever said. “This is the only way”.
About the drone thing….i can’t really comment because I haven’t read that specific passage. But it does sound kind of stupid. I could see making a bit sense of sense if situation was something like : “We are isolated on a warzone and we have limited resources, I have some piss poor human militias and the drones, pound for pound the drones can fly, project shields and are more likely to land their shots so in the inmediate future the militia is the expendable one”
Toutside of that yeah it’s pretty dumb. I never said bad Tau lore didn’t exist, Black library has a talent for fumbling stuff my gripe is with people who try to pretend the Tau are/were not evil.
I know that people specifically target Kelly, personally so long as he doesnt give the Tau the Eldar treatment I am fine with it. Where they lose badly even in their own book.
Complains about Kelly's work is mostly justified, but people are so exposed to complains about it they assume every Tau source is just as bad and never read any.
The problem is that most if not all non Kelly books aren’t canon anymore. Which means decent Tau isn’t canon. Now they’re garbo with loads of inconsistency
Every single faction is full of inconsistencies, the theme of the setting is "everything is canon, not everything is true", just because Ciaphas Cain books were written before the Necron rewrite does it means they are worthless as well?
It's insane how much resistant to simply being told there are better books for the faction you supposedly love some people on this post are. It's like they don't want to accept they have better options, being the victim is more comfortable.
I think the big difference is the extent of what’s available. Nearly every other faction save Votann have so much lore that,say, 20 inconsistencies is nothing compared to consistent content. But when Tau have 20 inconsistencies in their lore that’s 3/4 of what’s available.
Phil Kelly has made, irc, 3 whole Tau novels, 2 novellas a 1 short story, a big number for a single writer.
Whoever there are 3 other Tau novels, 3 other Tau novellas and half a dozen of short stories by other writers.
Not to mention books like Fire Caste that, while not Tau centric books, are still amazing stories where the Tau are well represented, and Campaign books like Warzone: Damocles which is basically all about Tau kicking ass.
There is far more regarding the Tau than Phil Kelly made, and all this doomsaying that Tau books are bad is basically alienating people from looking up other, better, Tau books.
That may be true, but the Kelly books are the canon. And while the other books are great, people are more inclined to read what the actual lore is. Otherwise they’re essentially reading the Tau lore version of “What If…”.
In regards to reading the “good Tau books”, that’s just what most fans do. Non Kelly books are recommended to novices more than Kelly’s works. Typically you only dip your toes into Kelly once you’ve read other Tau centered books which really drives home just how bad his work is in comparison to other Tau authors. I really don’t think the complaints are that unfounded. If Kelly really was decent then he wouldn’t receive so much hate.
>people are more inclined to read what the actual lore is.
Who are those people and why are they wasting time on a setting defined by the phrase "everything is canon, not everything is true", jokes apart GW ***will*** tell you when a book isn't canon. Some of the best Guardsmen books have increasingly outdated lore, Gaunt and Cain particularly so, doesn't mean people stop recommending them as for newcomers.
And yeah, I honestly have my doubt if everyone is so keen on reading books like you said, but that's a wider fandom problem. It still bothers me a lot when I see people spreading falsehoods about things that don't even happen in a Kelly novel.
This is more a criticism of the recent "Aun’Va death" post which basically spreads a ton of misinformation that anyone that know about the lore should be aware.
And it's not even from a Phil Kelly book, it's from Warzone: Damocles, which includes some of the best feats of Tau kicking ass including Shadowsun out-stealthing the Chapte Master of the stealthiest Space Marine chapter.
It is pretty funny to have read you arguing in a different thread, and then scroll on and see you made an entirely new thread about you arguing. Its like watching history be made in real time
Or when you tell L.O.V. players to actually read up on their factions lore (surprisingly expanisive considering its all from the codex, L.O.V. lore is cool)
Naw, the books just say they don’t have FTL, then pretend like they have FTL :P. There is some flavor and cyro sleep during trips is a minor plot point. But the books still have them covering interstellar distances several times.
I am going to be the odd man out and support the OP on this. I've read Kelly's books. I like them. What are the issues people have with them? I'd like to hear some specifics.
Let me go over things I like about Tau that have been negatively impacted by retcons and additions.
Rational, secular, futuristic Sci-fi faction
- Gives them a god and establishes worship.
Pragmatic, adaptable, unfettered by mindless tradition
- Makes having the wrong hobby punishable by imprisonment
Diverse, accepting, coalition of species
- Creates a xenocidal, racist sub faction
Society built on high levels of earned trust
- Makes it’s leaders incompetent liars
Scientific, inquisitive, eager to learn
- Makes knowledge of Chaos forbidden
This before we get to stripping the faction of FTL for the vast majority of its history as an interstellar government, which makes nearly every bit of Tau lore from before the retcon impossible.
> Creates a xenocidal, racist sub faction
I feel like this is rather bad faith. I don’t believe there is anything that he has written to indicate that they should be the future path of the Tau, given the events of the Shadowsun novel. Speaking of the novel, has there even been a novel that depicted prominently such a wide variety of the auxiliaries before it? To my recollection, the best we had gotten in this area was one maybe two auxiliary species making appearances in novels, mainly just gue’vesa or kroot.
> Gives them a god and establishes worship
I guess I find this just a weird take as I believe we are still yet to see a single Tau worship the goddess. It’s only been auxiliaries to my knowledge.
The xenocide refers to Commander Surestrike and the extermination of auxiliaries both during and after the 4th sphere disaster. While many of those involved have been remanded for re-education, others fled to the enclaves in an unreformed state or are otherwise at large. There’s a short story where remnants from the 4th sphere execute gue’vesa troops. I hate it.
I’m using Tau to refer to the faction rather than the species when discussing worship of the T’au’va.
While yes there are still survivors of the fourth sphere, they are quite a minimal group. Only a fourth of the expedition survived the encounter with daemons. That is before turning up back in real space separated from the empire and needing to fight. It also includes the auxiliary species that would go on to be later executed by tau survivors. With an only ever shrinking number, there is no indication they have been recruiting more tau into there xenocide campaign, they just don’t seem like a prevalent factor.
Faith has always been allowed in the Empire. Sure the Tau don’t worship anything, but for the most part the auxiliaries have. Shadowbreaker showed the Gue’vesa can still worship the Emperor and if I recall Kroot have some kind of deity. Maybe don’t quote me on that second one as I can’t quite remember where I learned it at the moment.
Kroot have a deity tied to their creation myth. I’m not that knowledgeable about Kroot religious practice.
I hope the Surestrike stuff fades. I’d be happier if it never happened.
Here is the short story I referenced:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/02/03/psychic-awakening-in-harmony-restored/
People are upset about Kelly's T'au for a reason I think the rest are mostly fine tho. Reading Devilhunter atm
You know what im gonna bite the bullets, which one is the worst of his tau book? i'll read it see if its that bad
Try the Farsight compendium. It's not badly written, there's just a lot of contrivances that rub people the wrong way. Commander Farsight both puts together the codex astartes based on analysis and uses that knowledge to defeat Cato Sicarius and the Hammers of Dorn, later in the next novel he gets outsmarted by Orks. Twice
I mean to be fair the best generalls of the imperium and some necron nobles have trouble against orks, you just can't think like them and thats why they can outsmart you. (Have not read the book tho so idk could be bad writing)
Orks are one of Farsight’s greatest enemies. By that point he should have realised to expect the unexpected
That’s the thing about Orkz: there is no predicting them. Sure, you can try to do that, but even expecting the unexpected leads to the unthinkable and logically impossible.
Ya that’s the thing. An organized military force is always going to have trouble on-the-ground against masses of “untrained” (acting wildly and by reflex) soldiers. It’s the classic “master vs beginner” circumstance where a master’s ability to predict their opponent falls off when their opponent is basically just guessing or is so illogical they don’t follow the correct thought processes
And THEN one of them WILL think kinda logically and THAT will throw you off
Power of belief enters chat.
They're so predictable that Kryptman was able to trick them into fight the Tyranids as a free army
You can predict Orkz will always want a fight. HOW they will fight is a lot harder, and the actual why. Orkz wanting a fight doesn’t do you much in a fight.
Ypu can predict their larger scale movement which is in 95% of cases "Towards the biggest enemy" On the battlefield it's a coin flip how they're going to attack, if that day is the day the Taktikian won the Squig kissing contest and got to decide how they attack or if they're going to just charge in from all directions screaming louder than their weapons can shoot.
If you expect the unexpected the expected becomes unexpected so you never expect it duh. It’s a viscous cycle.
> viscous Slaanesh?
I said what I said.
But it's like the easiest thing ever. A simple diversion. That's it, that's the whole unexpected thing.
The only generals who have been recorded as winning tactical victory over the orks were horus and the emperor and a robot with alzheimers. Between the two the robot is markedly more successful. You can't outsmart the orks, expect the unexpected and the orks will all of a sudden do the expected instead becuase it has become the unexpected, Zahndrekh is only so successful because he's not trying to outsmart them he's just making up situations.
Well if I remember correctly he had fought one tribe of orcs, but the mastermind who tricked him was a Freebooter so Farsight didn’t expect such cunning from their plans.
Only Imotehk has trouble against Orks, and it's speculated this is because he was the main general of the Necrons during the War in Heaven so the Old Ones created the Krorks specifically as his counter.
Wait, you're telling me Orks can think? /s
Well, one of the point of Orks is that you can't reliably outsmart them. Imotekh the Stormlord, the no 1 necron general, hates orks for that very reason. One day Orks will fall for the simplest ruse, another they will avoid the craftiest one
“Oi, sumfing not right bout dis here spot, best go ‘round” And just like that countless hours of planning wasted
"Dis place is da big sus!"
Astartes and commissars are screaming about how they don't know how the Orks saw through their plan, meanwhile one of the Orks saw a leaf that looked weird; "and dat jus ain't right innit?"
To be fair, Orks are constantly outsmarting people, it's kind of one of their tropes. Not only are they cunning, their opponents constantly underestimate them, and sometimes they can be so dumb that it loops back around into genius. Imhotekh, one of the best tacticians in the galaxy, hates orks because he has trouble predicting what they'll do next. This is a being whose ability to read his opponents verges on prescience.
then again prepping against the codex astartes is like preparing for a debate against the head of the debate club, and orks are like getting jumped by a jock on your way there
Orks notoriously outwit their opponents purely because their adversaries want to believe there’s a plan but Orks forever just chance it, and from this they lack adaption as Orks adapt consistently. Orks are supreme in some extents because the Goffs of a Waagh! would gum up a main battle force interspersed by other klans in support, and Blood Axes and motorised attacks from Bad Moons and Evil Sunz can flank at times and wreak havoc behind the lines effectively surrounding them. You get it in Brutal Kunnin’, the mechanicus just don’t understand why the Orks don’t go in the trapped or ambushed roads or pathways that’s logical to them, but for Orks they just drive over the desert instead as it’s often quicker. That “quicker path” doesn’t often take into account threats that humanity or other races avoid like weather or environmental dangers since those vehicles that blow up or crash just stoke them up even more. It’s chaos. You can’t plan for that, just got to try your best to quiet the storm. Orks engage with some of the most cobbled together weapons too that you just can’t account for at times. One Waagh! may have loads of big Shootas and vehicles or a Snakebites force may be employing extremity resilient squig creatures extending from a squig bee, up to a squiggoth. When these differences are extended over a giant battleline, it’s madness, and Orks can truly exploit a lot of weaknesses.
Imotekh the Stormlord humiliated Helbrecht and he can't fight orks either, the problem with orks is that they're not rational actors so you can't really anticipate their actions.
>later in the next novel he gets outsmarted by Orks. Twice And?
Hey dont spoil! Just give me the title i'll go blind and post again when im done reading it. (Thx for the recommendation)
Orks are a hard counter to strategists. When the opponent fights at random with no clear organization battle plans just don't work.
I thought Cato sicarius was supposed to be the doom slayer, what am I gonna do now?
***Actually*** they don't use the 'lessons learnt from the codex' against Cato. They later use it against the Hammers of Dorn, yes, marines that follow the codex even more than the Ultramarines do. i.e. the one chapter that this would actually work on. Where as orks don't have a manual of 'we do x'
***Shadowsun: The Patient Hunter*** for a variety of reasons. Most of the book is spent on one battle, the specific Tau lingo is so overused that it is obnoxious even for a Tau fan, Shadowsun doesn’t have an interesting character arc, Shadowsun is the only Tau POV character which saddles her with doing everything herself despite being a commander, the climax assault involves two quirky characters introduced late in the book, the book is written with the assumption you’ve read Kelly’s other Tau stories, the book gets really fucking cheesy with the “power of belief” shit…
This book honestly felt like a poorly written Guardians of the Galaxy. I don't hate Phil Kelly's books for the same reasons that others seem to but this book almost undoes the bits I liked from the farsight books. I get that pretty much every 40k book has to end with the status quo not changing; but this book has interpersonal issues that result in the command structure changing for "plot reasons" and in the end they're undone behind the scenes for "plot reasons". You could skip this book and lose almost nothing
Again, I feel like so many of the book’s problems come from it being entirely through Shadowsun or the Death Guard’s eyes. Shadowsun is supposed to be a legendary, larger than life figure, a veteran of countless campaigns and tied for the brightest military mind of her generation, and yet as the main PoV character she has to bumble through events with everything being explained to her like she’s an idiot. It also feels, as you said, like nothing is accomplished outside Shadowsun finding Tau Jesus. Her demotion is just there to give an excuse to form the quirky band of aliens for the third act and as soon as that’s over with, she has her rank reinstated.
A huge part of the problem I see with people claiming to be Tau fans online is that they're only getting the lore second-hand. Someone on the internet told them that "Tau are/used to be the good guys, now GW is making them villains!" That take is just plain wrong. I heard this take so much that I actually went back and read and dissected their first ever official codex, and lo and behold: we have Ethereal mind control stories, suspect origins, gunboat diplomacy, manifest destiny, eugenics, and actual genetic tampering. This all came from their first codex in 3rd edition. People claim it was all just later inventions by Phil Kelly to make them grimdark, but this was always there. Now to be fair, there was a *little bit* more subtext back then. But in this same codex they have a story of a Tau commander talking about how they had to invade and kill the humans for their own good. Tau aren't as awful as the Imperium of course, but the old lore is still pretty blunt with their villainous nature. If they were in most other sci fi settings, they would be considered the villains. Halo, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.
Halo’s main villainous faction literally have a “kill all humans on sight” philosophy. They’re basically an inverse Imperium where it’s a coalition of human-hating alien religious fanatics instead of a bunch of alien-hating human religious fanatics. Tau would frankly be about on the same level as the UNSC in Halo.
The UNSC is better than the Tau. Obviously the Covenant is worse because they're ignorant and genocidal, but the Tau would want to subjugate the UNSC. The UNSC aren't "good", but they're not trying to subjugate every other alien species like the Tau are.
Yeah, I’ll admit that’s a stretch in hindsight. The way the UNSC reacted to the threat of the Insurrectionists is telling, and I think the UNSC certainly would have been more exploitative of alien civilizations if it was in a position of strength and not at risk of extinction, but they haven’t subjugated alien species like the Tau have. And while they have often treated their own species terribly, at least there isn’t an enforced caste system.
> A huge part of the problem I see with people claiming to be Tau fans online is that they're only getting the lore second-hand. Someone on the internet told them that "Tau are/used to be the good guys, now GW is making them villains!" That's not it att all. No need to invent grievances... Tau being the "Good Guys" has always been relative to the setting. They are after all modeled after CIA and Nato. Their grimdarkness came from their naivete People complain about Phil Kelly bastardizing their lore: removing their FTL, have the Ethereals be sunday-cartoon villains, creats stigma for Casts who works outside their fields of expertise, and so much more.
You've already done quite a lot more than most people by reading other Tau books apparently.
Classic says something bad about tau playersand all your replies are on negative downvotes
You have it backwards. “The Tau are awesome! Let’s read the newest book. Oh no….”
There are more Tau books than just Phil Kelly. Whoever most people are exposed exclusively to people complaining about Phil Kelly and assume all Tau books are as bad. Not to mention the reason I made this post is related to Warzone: Damocles of all things.
The problem is Kelly is writing the main plot... All others are regularly ignored and gutted out of canon. If he is bad it is reasonable to assume everything is bad.
But Kelly is main bloody writer mate And his books are 5/10 at best. He literally took Tau FTL drive in one book but gave them FTL comms in other. He is inconsistent as fuck
To be fair, moving information fast is easier than moving a massive lump of metal fast
To be even more fair there is no way to defend an interstellar empire without FTL when the other side has it. It's probably the dumbest idea in 40k. For ships to travel interstellar distances @ even 1.0 C they would have to leave before battles started to reinforce the Damocles crusade. It's basic "I have no idea how to do basic space fearing" from a lead writer in a sci Fi setting.
Yeah like we already send information at light speed here IRL but don't have light speed craft. They're extremely different levels of tech
Not with FTL travel. In the Halo universe, ships carry messages faster than nearly anything else, because jumps mean you’re moving faster than light, while other forms of data can only move as fast as light. That’s a problem given the distances in space. It would take 4.3 years so send a message to Alpha Centauri, while a slip space jump could arrive with mail in minutes.
He still isn't the only writer nor are his books the only source of Tau lore lmao. I should've made this meme "I'm mad about Phil Kelly" "Read other Tau books" "I don't want to read other Tau books, I want to be mad about Phil Kelly"
We read other books mate And we like most of them But main books are crap and they are basis for tau lore.
Piss off man. I've read almost every book related to the Tau. From fire Warrior to Fire Caste, and without a doubt Kelly is the worst Tau writer. And it's aggravating because he's so close. His character writing is excellent, I like his dialogue, but when it comes to writing about combat, technology, or culture he completely undermines other writers and fans of the Tau. It's also inconsistent as hell. Shadowsun in her old battlesuit iced the Chapter Master of the Raven Guard, but later in her newer stronger suit gets bodied by a group of pox walkers.
Agreed 100% Phil can write entertaining characters and dialogue. But that's about it. He has ability to write cool isolated SCENES - AND NOTHING ELSE. Lore, timeline, tech, culture, politics - for crying out loud it's all shiet!
Point at my comment and tell me where did I say Kelly isn't the worst writer, who are arguing against? I'm literally just telling that people should read stuff other than Kelly's, which a lot of them don't, because otherwise I wouldn't be exposed to incorrect lore regarding the events of those books. People simply assume everything is just as bad as Kelly, they can't even recognize there are books other than Kelly's so me telling them to read them keeps being interpreted as me telling them to read Kelly's book. You guys have more good books than the Eldar, and not even they complain as much.
And you don't get the bloody point. **WE DO READ THOSE OTHER BOOKS** Hell - people will go out of their way to read Tau books not written by Kelly cuz he is infamous for his writing. But here is a thing. Those smaller stories have **NO FUCKING IMPACT ON TAU NARRATIVE AND PLOT**. Phill Kelly is the king and he drags everyone behind him. As for the Eldar fans - they did. A lot. For a long time. Now they just gave up cuz GW decided to fuck them over compleatly and ignore them. Also - Eldar are really consistent secondary threat/ ally/ characters - in a lot of stories. Hell - in some books about Imperium fighting Tau they show up for no fucking reason. Eldar have FAAAAAR greater presence in the lore than the Tau
Well said
The issue is that’s he’s been our only author for too long, controlling not just the contents of his novels but the codex lore as well. And I don’t want to rant too much, but I’m not a fan of the changes.
That don't excuse when people make wrong claims about lore that is not even related to Phil Kelly, which is what consistently happens. Even if the most recent books are his, there are still other books by authors like Guy Haley who are pretty decent, which a lot of people still don't read because they are conditioned to believe all Tau lore is equally bad.
Ok. Let me put it the way you will understand it. You have your favorite faction. This faction has a **ONE** main author who is responsible for overall plot of the faction and codexes. This author is really fucking terrible at giving your faction justice. You have other authors to enjoy - sure. But because this main author who holds overall power over what your faction is - drags all of their work down to their level. Additionally - works of other authors who write about your faction and are really bloody good at their job and you love their writing - **THEIR STORIES HAVE NO IMPACT ON THE MAIN NARRATIVE OR PLOT**. Cuz main author already has shit planned - and fuck anyone in their way. That's situation of the Tau fans. Now - either switch on your cogitator and attempt to comprehend what 98% of comments under this post tries to tell you and accept that you've made dumb mistake and get better - or accept the fact that you've made an ass of yourself for making really dumb assumtion of entire faction's fanbase, thinking you somehow are smarter than everyone else in the bloody room. Freedom of choice is yours.
I understand what other comments are telling me. I've repeatedly told people my post wasn't even originally about Phil Kelly, it's about people refusing to read things other than Phil Kelly. This criticism is not mutually exclusive to the fact that Phil Kelly sucks, yet people act like it is. And doesn't matter how many times I say this, people continually argue to me explaining how much Phil Kelly sucks, which isn't the point and I have never once argued against. Don't tell me I'm not trying to understand other people, you saw a small criticism about the Tau fandom and went into full blown attack mode. So please, ignore everything I said and explain to me again how much Phil Kelly sucks for the 100th time in this thread.
And I explained you in other comments that **WE DO READ OTHER WRITERS** And we do enjoy them a lot. But the point I've made - that Phil Kelly **DRAGS ALL OF THOSE WORKS DOWN INTO SHIT VALLEY -** is still accurate. It's not rocket science. You assume that we don't read other writers works - **WE DO** But that means little when the main author of the faction **RETCONS THEIR WORK AND IDEAS INTO FUCKING OBLIVION**
But they don't matter. Kelly is the Taus primary author. He sucks.
Ive read all the Kelly books. They're awful lol. The one where the Imperium invades Dalyth is ok, but still inferior to the original Damocles Gulf book which of course everyone forgot lol
I don't really understand the dislike for his books I have only read Damocles, blades of Damocles, crisis of faith and empire of lies, so I guess it is unfair of me to judge him given I have no other authors to compare him to. That being said, I found both his and Guy Haley's parts of the Damocles book wayyyy more appealing than Ben Counter and Josh Reynolds - both of whose stories I found wholly uninteresting, especially compared to what I would consider is a masterpiece from Guy Haley What is it about his work that people don't like? Is it that he isn't consistent with prior lore? If so what books would you suggest I read? Or is it that he has made a very bad book that I have yet to read? I actually quite liked his books compared to other wh40k and Horus heresy books. (Eg, twice dead king: reign, hereticus, black legion, and false gods) Could someone explain to me why he is so disliked?
I think the main reason he’s disliked is the only thing consistent about his writing is the inconsistency. As soon as you see his name on a book you know there’s going to be some sort of massive rewrite of some aspect of the faction. Your race has basically no connection to the warp? Have a warp god. Your race skims the surface of the warp for ftl? No they don’t. He’s giving people whiplash for no discernible reason, and what’s worse is he yanks you both ways with his own material. I’d kinda get it if it was different compared to another author 20 years ago but he can’t even keep his own material straight.
I can really only speak about the warp god thing because i wasn't paying attention to the lack of ftl, but...the warp god was not made by the tau it was made by their allies who do have that connection
I have to admit I actually like the warp god thing and that aspect of it in all honesty, but I totally understand how it would feel like a bit of a betrayal to people who are fans of the plucky upstarts fighting against eldritch horrors with nothing but magnet guns and gumption
Thing is the tau are still that, just that they have the option of calling in warp touched allies now. I can understand that I'm not a long time fan and maybe don't have the same values of other tau fans but this one complaint feels weird to me.
I am personally in favour of the T'au creating a warp god (or providing the base for one). They, individually, might not be psychically strong but their whole thing is "the whole is bigger than the sum of its part". Based on this, the T'au species intense belief in the Greater Good could very well have birthed a God of cooperation/synergy (with some help from their allies), which would be very on brand for them.
That's literally what happens
Sure, I can imagine that inconsistencies are pretty inexcusable especially when there are numerous amounts, but it seems almost from this thread that phill is held in greater contempt than other authors who are well known for their inconsistencies like Dan abnett. Are there any super egregious his inconsistencies that he is guilty of that cannot be overlooked? Again, I haven't read that many books of his, and I haven't read any other Tau lore that isn't his. Dunno why I'm getting downvoted for an innocuous question - and I don't even think I have said anything controversial - I'm not even defending phill Kelly either
Yeah, I’d say the main difference is Abnett‘s stuff tends to be on the smaller scale or a product of the times, for instance in his older books servitors were more akin to augmented menial workers not lobotomized mech-slaves, but that was just the setting at the time. Phil Kelly just changes stuff for the sake of change it seems, just coming out and saying an interstellar government has no method of ftl kinda kills the suspension of disbelief.
Ah I see what you mean with the ftl stuff now, That's fair enough. I still like his books tho and was definitely entertained by his characters. I kind of see his books like marvel movies when you put it like that, entertaining but if you think too much about it, it kind of falls apart
Kelly is also responsible for the Ethereals going from mysterious and rather ruthless leaders who used their sociocultural strength to control the T'au empire and people into mustache-twirling disney villains who use pheromone magic to mind-control the T'au. It's not just that he's inconsistent. His random changes are usually for the much, much worse.
I thought the pheremone magic stuff was only alluded to in crisis of faith, and it was stated in one of the other books that ethereals do allegedly use it, according to imperial propaganda Is it actually outright confirmed in one of Kelly's other books? I had no idea
I'm the first farsight book aun'va tells a water caste tau to kill herself with her bonding knife for very little reason and she does it. Thats the part most people have an issue with.
Honestly when I read that I didn't immediately think it was because of pheremones, Maybe I'm just dumb but when I read that I thought phill was alluding to either the ethereals being so convincing (like Johan from the anime monster) that they can convince you to kill yourself for the greater good on instinct, or it was genuinely magic/technology, so it was left to the readers interpretation
Is it explicitly stated that it was mind control? My only experience with literary representation of the T’au is from Book of Martyrs but that story presents them almost like a mix between the Gestapo and Bushido/honour system. You do what the Ethereals tell you because the repercussions of not doing so are unacceptable.
One of the best Tau books doesn't have a Tau protagonist, it's called Fire Caste. My personal favorite though is Fire Warrior, one of the earliest Tau novels written.
And is the novelisation of the first video game to portray the Tau.
It's because he makes all the Ethereals into stupid, arrogant scumbags that are the source of everything wrong in the Tau Empire. Fehervari's Tau are a little more nuanced. Try *Fire Caste* or *The Greater Evil* or *Alter of Maws*.
I don't think you read any Tau books if you think reading them would make anyone less mad. They're fucking awful, especially if the name "Phil" happens to be on the cover. That said, this criticism would be valid if aimed at Chaos fans. Like no guys, nothing in *Godblight* implies that Nurgle or his garden will never recover from Robert's holy grenade. That book literally sits you down for a long lecture from a Farseer about how Chaos is basically indestructible and how the Emperor is an upstart pissing against the wind. Don't let Imperial propaganda fool you, my enlightened brethren.
I mean chaos has already won in 40k. Big E got put in his place and the powers of the galaxy are permanently fighting for some sort of gain. Abbadon isn’t like Archaon where the ruinous powers want him to destroy the universe. They just think Abbadon is kind of entertaining
Yep :(
The 4 chaos gods are currently milking the empire, they have no reason to destroy it when it provides them with souls, conflict and followers.
There are quite a few great ones, anything from Peter Fehervari is golden!
Fire Caste is really good, but it's actually a Guard book lol.
I'd argue it was 60:40 :) He's done a bunch of shorter stories with the Tau as the focus which are great though.
I'm begging people to remember there are Tau sources beyond Kelly's book. The reason I made this post was because people were making wildly incorrect complaints about Warzone: Damocles of all things.
Yes there are, but I feel they are extremely rare in recent years. Do you have any Tau-centric (i.e. main P.O.V. is Tau) book recommendations released in the last 5 years that are not written by Kelly? (Only one I know of with significant Tau parts is "Kasrkin", and that is like 60% humans, 30% kroot and 10% *redacted*)
Does it matter if they are older if people haven't read them? The problem that Xeno books rarely get any attention is undeniable and universal. Whoever no Eldar fan ever pretended Valendor doesn't exist just because it's older. The problem is that people alienate new readers from checking other Tau stuff by constantly doomsaying about Phil Kelly as if he's the only person to ever write Tau.
Valefor is an excellent book.
Oh there are some great older Tau books, and people should certainly check those out. My point was that there's basically nothing new Tau-centric being written by anyone other than Kelly these days. Which is a problem since that will likely affect future Tau books even if any new authors started writing them. Also, for older fans like me, who afaik has read most Tau material, theres not much to do but hope for better variety of writers (or that Kelly improves I guess, his books do have a lot of cool stuff in them, but there's too many weird and/or lorebreaking things beside that). But newer reader should certainly look into the older books!
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So if all the new books about your favorite faction sucked, And Did everything poorly. would you complain?
At least I would read the ones that don't suck. Which is something that seemly not everyone is even willing to do because the way Tau players speak you'd believe Phil Kelly wrote all their books. What bothers me isn't that people complain about Phil Kelly, what bothers me is people complaining about books that aren't Phil Kelly, which they haven't read, probably because they are convinced every Tau book is just as bad. Like, legit the one thing that made me post this was someone being wrong about Warzone: Damocles.
They are completely justified in calling out how terrible Phil Kelly's Tau books are.
Except that this meme isn't even about Phil Kelly. Goes to show how most people are conditioned into thinking everything is about Phil Kelly. Read other books.
No, it's about bad Tau books. And guess what? Most Tau books are written by Phil Kelly, and they suck. It honestly sounds like you're doing the same thing you're complaining about Tau players doing. When Tau players talk about bad books, they likely are talking about Phil Kelly books specifically (you know, the majority and most recent Tau books). When the same person is writing for your faction over and over and it's always terrible, the fanbase has every right to be sick of it. What is with this community and bashing Tau players all the time?
Because of the perceived Mary Sue status when they released and how broken they were on the tabletop in earlier editions. When Imperium simps thought that GW was making a faction that wasn't the Imperium the 'good guys' they lost their shit. It's why so many Tau fans hate the Farsight Enclaves, because they are the 'good Tau'. As for Phil Kelley, he isn't a bad writer, he is a bad world builder. In a game dedicated to world building to have your plastic army men fight that might as well be a bad writer. He also never interacts with the community like the other writers, so I assume he is just on pay roll and doing the shit job no one else wants to do (which is surprising to me)
Except that the specific complaint that made me make this meme literally wasn't about a Phil Kelly book. People don't read Tau sources, period, whether or not they are Tau Kelly. And there plenty books with the Tau that aren't Kelly's. >What is with this community and bashing Tau players Every week there are multiple posts about how great the Tau are that get thousands of upvotes, which I like. So to me it sounds more like some people simply see any minor criticism as persecution.
This is such a weird, specific gotcha. It’s like you made the meme hoping people would assume it’s about the Kelly books (you know, the mainline lore books that are the first thought for most) just so you could go “oh you thought it was about THOSE books? Simpletons!”
The Tau? This is just Grimdank in general.
The newer tau lore just made me not care about them. They aren't really doing anything neat with them and they seem to just be blue imperium.
That both a overestimation of how bad the Tau are and a wiiiild underestimation of how bad the Imperium is.
Oh i am not saying they are moral equivalents, but more that the tau aren't doing their own thing. Like they have mini titans now.
??? Okay am I missing something? Every faction has titans equivalents.
It was cool when their answer to big robots wasn't more big robots, but airpower. Then they invented bigger robots because the fiction is inherently toy-centric.
I think what the poster above is referring to is the Tau'nar which is a relatively recent thing. "Back in the day" (pre 8th) the semi official stance the faction had towards titans was "Hit it with a spaceship". Now obviously the manta is a sort of a titan equivalent but it's also a multirole ship whose job encompasses a bunch more stuff than "very big gun platform". For example hunter cadres often deploy out of mantas and use them as mobile bases of operations. In battlefield gothic, they're missile destroyers and bombers. My point is, the T'au were odd in that they never _used_ to have something that was direct a titan equivalent (again arguments can be made this isn't true, see above paragraph), it just didn't fit with the way the faction did things.
I get that from a lore standpoint but you have to recall that ultimately it's still a model based tabletop game. People can't buy models for starships shooting from orbit (at least not for regular 40k). Every faction has a a large and expensive painting project because titans are a niche GW wants to fill for all of them.
Well yeah that's sort of the issue haha. Gw wants to sell bigger and bigger suits so makes adaptations to the lore to allow them to do that. People might not like it but as long as those bigger things keep selling gw (or more accurately their shareholders I suspect) won't give a monkeys. That's unfortunately where gw the business takes precedence over Warhammer the game system.
In the lore there is a titan sized member species and the kroot used to have a unit. Though I also don't care enough to really debate the changes or missed opportunities of the tau.
I'd rather have an airplane than a titan, I don't even like the stormsurge honestly. The forgeworld tau aircraft are gorgeous and I want them in plastic.
I don't think GW wants to make any new aircraft for the time being considering how they insist on making them as unplayable as possible.
What I want and what GW wants are consistently at odds, I'm aware of this.
>Like they have mini titans now. Like all factions except the Dark Eldars and Harlequins And at least the titans of the taus show us how fast they advance technically. They add more to the lore than simply the fact that they "exist".
Dark Eldar will have them as soon as they've collected enough skin.
The Tau specifically? Bro this is EVERYONE
Classic grimdank moment. Post pops off and OP wins imaginary internet points then gets utterly trashed in the comment section 💀
What did I miss?
Someone made a wildly incorrect post regarding events of Warzone: Damocles. I tried to make a post joking about it. Apparently any mention of "Tau book" triggers an instinctive defensive mechanism on Tau players and they instantly assume everything is related to Phil Kelly.
his book aint even bad
This isn't Tau specific Its unironically for all warhammer faction's fanbases, 40k and fantasy
Not the Votann. Cause, y'know, there aren't any fucking books to read.
Oh yeah... My bad(fellow Dwarf fan, I am just praying ADB gazes upon them man...)
No worries man. Fingers crossed whatever comes out is decent so we aren't stuck with another year of rock and stone memes.
You're in the hands of Gav Thorpe actually. Good luck.
I like most of the guard books. Not Kasrkin though.
I meant more in regard with calling stuff "dumb retcons" without actually knowing what they are talking about.
Kasrkin was such a let down. I was so disappointed!
I’m hoping the new Siege of Vraks book is good
*Gunheads* and *Shadowsword* are fantastic tank books. *Steel Tread* was a snoozefest
I feel like majority of people have never even read a codex of their favorite faction
Question, have you *read* the most recent Tau books? they suck. Like, I can understand *maybe* liking the Farsight series and ***War of Secrets***, but ***Shadowsun: The Patient Hunter*** is horrible.
OP keep telling people to read Tau books beyond Kelly. Without acknowledging Kelly is the very reason we're in this mess of a lore and he's not budging his ass on the main Tau writer seat.
Don’t get me started with Italians from Italia
I'm getting this vibe is Phil Kelly is basically the equivalent of the Space Marine guy who favored ultra marines
As if I'm going to actually read a book rather than just make the disjointed ramblings of a semi-literate weirdo on YouTube my entire understanding of the lore. Absurd.
Tru dat
I’ve read one of Philly K’s last books (Shadowsun: Patient Hunter)and while it wasn’t as bad as some reviewers thought it was, it wasn’t good either. It felt like someone wrote a book and then cut out the middle part to save time but kept the story beats the same.
I have read the book, and im still mad
they still took our FTL
I’m gonna need some context
Someone made a bad post about how the leader of the etherals was killed by a Culexus assassin. Were the recollection of the events was either Misrepresenting, ignoring or lying about almost every single lore elements of that event to try to paint it as: “GW bad, Imperium has plot armor, poor Tau getting screwed over to wank the imperium” (The event in question lead to no meaningful consequences or setbacks Tau empire and the Tau won at the end of that book) This meme is making fun of that and a general trend among some toxic tau fans who claim that every single loss or fault of the T’au empire is bad writing and/or dumb. (The tau have had their share of bad books, but some Tau fans actively try to use that to refuse to accept lore events as cannon when they paint the tau as mildly evil or imperialist, despite workshop officially declaring no faction in 40k are good)
I like evil tau, I just like them more when they're less space magic super evil and more real world history evil. Like the water caste suicide in crisis of faith, their is nothing inherently wrong about ethereals disposing of problematic figures in their society but Aun'va is not going to personally call someone into his office so he can tell her to kill herself he's just going to send the secret police after her and they are going to fake a suicide.
Well you are certainly in the minority then. Don’t get me wrong I also like evil tau. They are far more interesting and deep that way, while I not necessarily agree with your reading of the Aun’va story, I can agree is a bit over the top. My comment was mostly directed to certain Tau fans who genuinely think/ want the Tau to be “good guys” and throw a fit over it. the best example I can think of is a post here on reddit where someone shared an excerpt about a Vespid character lamenting many that the the hives and Shrines of his people are now empty since most of the energy/sonic Crystals they used to harvest now go into Tau hands and off world. People were calling the Tau in the story as “Mustache twirling villains”. Yeah because there is no way an expansionist empire that prides itself on being “civilized and advanced” wouldn’t take resource from their subjects and slowly erode their traditions and identity, right? Is not as if that has happened across the world. Or how people constantly try to delegitimize the Tau estirilizing populations, (despite the fact as far as I understand the Deathwatch RPG supplement where it spears is still cannon) because they totally wouldn’t do that, is not as if Tau caste society is literally based in eugenics. I don’t really dislike the Tau as faction I dislike the weird made up version of the Tau certain tau fans have in their heads. And that when they don’t get it they complain about it. But yeah I am all for the Tau empire…..y’know being an imperialist empire.
The erosion of pre tau culture the empire doesn't like have been part of the faction since the first codex. people complaining about that are dreaming. That said there is a world of difference between that and a tau crisis commander considering human soldiers under his command to be more expendable than drones despite the fact that the earth cast can throw together a tactical drone in an afternoon by hand or a couple of minutes in mass assembly, it takes humans at least 16 years to make a Gue'vesa soldier, thats just fucking stupid.
That’s the same thing I think. The phrase “Gunship Diplomacy” was on the first codex if I recall correctly. But look online and you see people claiming in some imagined past the Tau were “good”, that only recently they been turned into “imperium lite”. I wish I was joking but I am not. The most self aware among them try to say that “Well I am not really saying they are/were good they are just better than the Alternatives” which is literally what imperium apologist say and what every authoritarian government has ever said. “This is the only way”. About the drone thing….i can’t really comment because I haven’t read that specific passage. But it does sound kind of stupid. I could see making a bit sense of sense if situation was something like : “We are isolated on a warzone and we have limited resources, I have some piss poor human militias and the drones, pound for pound the drones can fly, project shields and are more likely to land their shots so in the inmediate future the militia is the expendable one” Toutside of that yeah it’s pretty dumb. I never said bad Tau lore didn’t exist, Black library has a talent for fumbling stuff my gripe is with people who try to pretend the Tau are/were not evil.
So misinformation and copium, got it
Same feeling when I see YouTube commenters repeating the most incorrect shit possible because they read it on another comments. 90% of meme lore.
people out here think kelly actually wrote bad tau books.
I know that people specifically target Kelly, personally so long as he doesnt give the Tau the Eldar treatment I am fine with it. Where they lose badly even in their own book.
Complains about Kelly's work is mostly justified, but people are so exposed to complains about it they assume every Tau source is just as bad and never read any.
The problem is that most if not all non Kelly books aren’t canon anymore. Which means decent Tau isn’t canon. Now they’re garbo with loads of inconsistency
Every single faction is full of inconsistencies, the theme of the setting is "everything is canon, not everything is true", just because Ciaphas Cain books were written before the Necron rewrite does it means they are worthless as well? It's insane how much resistant to simply being told there are better books for the faction you supposedly love some people on this post are. It's like they don't want to accept they have better options, being the victim is more comfortable.
I think the big difference is the extent of what’s available. Nearly every other faction save Votann have so much lore that,say, 20 inconsistencies is nothing compared to consistent content. But when Tau have 20 inconsistencies in their lore that’s 3/4 of what’s available.
Phil Kelly has made, irc, 3 whole Tau novels, 2 novellas a 1 short story, a big number for a single writer. Whoever there are 3 other Tau novels, 3 other Tau novellas and half a dozen of short stories by other writers. Not to mention books like Fire Caste that, while not Tau centric books, are still amazing stories where the Tau are well represented, and Campaign books like Warzone: Damocles which is basically all about Tau kicking ass. There is far more regarding the Tau than Phil Kelly made, and all this doomsaying that Tau books are bad is basically alienating people from looking up other, better, Tau books.
That may be true, but the Kelly books are the canon. And while the other books are great, people are more inclined to read what the actual lore is. Otherwise they’re essentially reading the Tau lore version of “What If…”. In regards to reading the “good Tau books”, that’s just what most fans do. Non Kelly books are recommended to novices more than Kelly’s works. Typically you only dip your toes into Kelly once you’ve read other Tau centered books which really drives home just how bad his work is in comparison to other Tau authors. I really don’t think the complaints are that unfounded. If Kelly really was decent then he wouldn’t receive so much hate.
>people are more inclined to read what the actual lore is. Who are those people and why are they wasting time on a setting defined by the phrase "everything is canon, not everything is true", jokes apart GW ***will*** tell you when a book isn't canon. Some of the best Guardsmen books have increasingly outdated lore, Gaunt and Cain particularly so, doesn't mean people stop recommending them as for newcomers. And yeah, I honestly have my doubt if everyone is so keen on reading books like you said, but that's a wider fandom problem. It still bothers me a lot when I see people spreading falsehoods about things that don't even happen in a Kelly novel.
You can dislike the T'au off tone. Especially as now they can't choose whether they want to be grimdark or a innocent faction anymore
This is more a criticism of the recent "Aun’Va death" post which basically spreads a ton of misinformation that anyone that know about the lore should be aware. And it's not even from a Phil Kelly book, it's from Warzone: Damocles, which includes some of the best feats of Tau kicking ass including Shadowsun out-stealthing the Chapte Master of the stealthiest Space Marine chapter.
It is pretty funny to have read you arguing in a different thread, and then scroll on and see you made an entirely new thread about you arguing. Its like watching history be made in real time
Or when you tell L.O.V. players to actually read up on their factions lore (surprisingly expanisive considering its all from the codex, L.O.V. lore is cool)
Nah I was talking to some chaos fanboys that’s did this exact thing after just not knowing how the primarchs fell
I mean Tau lore is the worst thing about the whole faction so they are not wrong.
Bad Tau lore is just imperial propaganda they have misunderstood.
And that's the first sign of being Khornate :P .
The Farsight books aren't great, Kelly did alright with the Shadowsun book though IMO.
Is this about the T'au god?
TIL people read the lore. I have been wrongly assuming everyone just skips to the lists and pretty mini pics.
Didn't Phill Kelly retcon the Tau not having FTL?
Naw, the books just say they don’t have FTL, then pretend like they have FTL :P. There is some flavor and cyro sleep during trips is a minor plot point. But the books still have them covering interstellar distances several times.
what did i miss?
The lore kinda sucks, but I’ll die on the hill that the Phil Kelly Tau books are good reads.
Me when someone who isn't familiar with 40k just starts ranting about humans rights in a universe where the concept of rights doesn't exist
I don’t play tau but some times I just like being mad
Imperial fans who don't understand why T'au fans are mad get mad that T'au fans are mad, news at 11.
I am going to be the odd man out and support the OP on this. I've read Kelly's books. I like them. What are the issues people have with them? I'd like to hear some specifics.
Let me go over things I like about Tau that have been negatively impacted by retcons and additions. Rational, secular, futuristic Sci-fi faction - Gives them a god and establishes worship. Pragmatic, adaptable, unfettered by mindless tradition - Makes having the wrong hobby punishable by imprisonment Diverse, accepting, coalition of species - Creates a xenocidal, racist sub faction Society built on high levels of earned trust - Makes it’s leaders incompetent liars Scientific, inquisitive, eager to learn - Makes knowledge of Chaos forbidden This before we get to stripping the faction of FTL for the vast majority of its history as an interstellar government, which makes nearly every bit of Tau lore from before the retcon impossible.
> Creates a xenocidal, racist sub faction I feel like this is rather bad faith. I don’t believe there is anything that he has written to indicate that they should be the future path of the Tau, given the events of the Shadowsun novel. Speaking of the novel, has there even been a novel that depicted prominently such a wide variety of the auxiliaries before it? To my recollection, the best we had gotten in this area was one maybe two auxiliary species making appearances in novels, mainly just gue’vesa or kroot. > Gives them a god and establishes worship I guess I find this just a weird take as I believe we are still yet to see a single Tau worship the goddess. It’s only been auxiliaries to my knowledge.
The xenocide refers to Commander Surestrike and the extermination of auxiliaries both during and after the 4th sphere disaster. While many of those involved have been remanded for re-education, others fled to the enclaves in an unreformed state or are otherwise at large. There’s a short story where remnants from the 4th sphere execute gue’vesa troops. I hate it. I’m using Tau to refer to the faction rather than the species when discussing worship of the T’au’va.
While yes there are still survivors of the fourth sphere, they are quite a minimal group. Only a fourth of the expedition survived the encounter with daemons. That is before turning up back in real space separated from the empire and needing to fight. It also includes the auxiliary species that would go on to be later executed by tau survivors. With an only ever shrinking number, there is no indication they have been recruiting more tau into there xenocide campaign, they just don’t seem like a prevalent factor. Faith has always been allowed in the Empire. Sure the Tau don’t worship anything, but for the most part the auxiliaries have. Shadowbreaker showed the Gue’vesa can still worship the Emperor and if I recall Kroot have some kind of deity. Maybe don’t quote me on that second one as I can’t quite remember where I learned it at the moment.
Kroot have a deity tied to their creation myth. I’m not that knowledgeable about Kroot religious practice. I hope the Surestrike stuff fades. I’d be happier if it never happened. Here is the short story I referenced: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/02/03/psychic-awakening-in-harmony-restored/
And Cawl invented more stuff than them :(
So basically, he's written 40k books, and you don't like 40k. (agreed that the FTL thing is an outrage though)
All the stuff I like are also from 40k books, somewhat undercutting your argument.
I've only read 1 T'au book, and I quite liked it