Insightful answer to the question “Why does everyone hate the Tau so much” found on Quora
If everyone hated the Tau, they wouldn’t be in 40k anymore. They’d have gone the way of the Tomb Kings.
There is a select group of people who dislike the Tau because unlike every other faction in Warhammer 40k, they were written with a completely different flavor.
To put it most simply, the Imperium of Man, the Dark Eldar, the Orks, are all in the same tonal vein as say. Blackadder or The Boys. Everything is awful, and from this there is a sort of humor. It makes everything more fun, in an ironic sort of way.
While the Tau are tonally much more serious, which inherently means everything isn’t as awful. War is hell, like Saving Private Ryan, but it isn’t like The Boys where a parody of a real world thing is used to slaughter a bunch of nameless goons for funsies, like “The Captain” who is literally a terrorist super hero who blows himself up. Or in 40k, like the Leman Russ, which is literally just a WW1 tank that is used with WW1 tactics in a far future environment and somehow works as it slaughters dozens of enemies. It’s all over the top and weird and dark.
The Tau are about politics, and the cloak and dagger nature of them in real life. They’re about economics and culture shifts and memetics. They’re about normal soldiers fighting normal wars using vehicles which at least appear to be designed to appeal to gear heads like me, who love Gundam and Patlabor and Gasaraki for that reason. They’re *normal* in a world of extremes, because they appeal to an entirely different slice of the fan base. Where as the rest of 40k is Grimdark, or basically DC’s Lobo, the Tau are gritty and down to earth, like Batman. Where science and technology and intelligence and technique reigns over machismo and brute force.
Ask yourself, what appeal could images like this.
Have to someone who traditionally was drawn to stuff like this:
The Tau appeal to the technology side that 40k essentially ignores for the most part. Their aesthetic embraces technology, rather than cartoonifies it like the Necrons do. The Imperium does everything it can to make technology in to fantasy and apply that fantasy aesthetic to it, which definitely gives it a unique flavor. The Eldar are basically just… anime, especially 70’s anime. Where mechanical design was largely still being defined and wasn’t fully developed for another decade in Japan.
The Tau represent technology. Normal technology being used by normal people with no silly baggage in the form of Space Marines or Psykers or any other stupid nonsense. They’re *just* people. Soldiers. Engineers. Politicians. Laborers. Pilots. Merchants. Mechanics. Their lore revolves around their normalcy.
And this means they don’t fit in. At all.
And some people don’t like that. They want 40k to essentially only hold a very specific flavor. Which unfortunately makes it difficult to expand beyond where it’s currently sitting. And to them I say they can suck on my R’Varna’s massively over powered cannon. Because they are genuinely interesting for people who like grounded and gritty, and because of that they’re here to stay.
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