AuthorNateHA-Flybywire The Genesis of the Tau The T’au are the first completely new army in WH40K to come out after BFG was already an established game, and Andy C. was tasked with bringing them to life in BFG while they were coming to life in WH40K. This all unfolded just as BFG Necrons were finally gelling as a cohesive ruleset and fleet list, after three “official” tries in BFG magazine. Because both Necrons and Tyranids before then had some teething issues based mostly on how different their rulesets were from the core rules, Andy wanted to return to what worked as we built the T’au. His idea was to return to the core rules (specifically Imperial) with no gimmicks for movement, turning, weapons, etc. The big difference would be in Fleet makeup, where a player could have essentially as many battleships as they wanted, and it would be the number of cruisers that would end up being the limitation fleets were built around. He sent me a prototype set of profiles and fleet list that included all the ships that eventually ended up in Armadas, even though at the time none of the models existed yet, not even as drawings. My son and I thought it would be fun (and arch-heresy!) to use my Space Marine fleet as stand-ins for the T’au, since I’ve only had all four of my battle barges on the table one other time before then. We used my Imperial fleet as stand-ins when it was time to test them against SM’s. We submitted our battle reports and recommended tweaks back to Andy, and for awhile that was that. Fun fact: the prototype T’au rules had Orcas armed with 2x30cm lances. Awesome against SM’s, garbage against Eldar. When the models first hit the street, there was some fuss about how they lacked the aesthetic the WH40K T’au models had. This was intentional because the Kor’vattra were supposed to be repurposed merchant vessels not as good as dedicated warships, but the friction persisted. I don’t know if that’s what drove the conversation for Warwick K’s team at Forgeworld to develop the Kor’or’vesh, but the first set of proposed rules for those were so overpowered and out of character for what the T’au were supposed to be, we said they basically needed a complete rewrite. That caused a bit of friction that I and the other HA’s weren’t party to, some of it having to do with how Forgeworld didn’t want the Kor’or’vesh rules published anywhere besides Imperial Armour 10. In any case, Forgeworld decided to keep their rules with only minor tweaks from the most insane ideas they had, and Matt Keefe greenlighted us to keep our rules for the Compendium. I don’t know what the fallout was over that, but Forgeworld never made any more new BFG models after that. The Kroot Warsphere was a complete surprise to everyone, including the HA’s. It’s a complete shame the model didn’t see much daylight before the entire game was unplugged. It’s a BEAST, probably a good six or more ounces of pewter goes into the thing. I was sent a pre-production model to build, paint and playtest with the condition that I returned it when complete. I returned it to Jervis J. during a GW Gamesday in Baltimore I was invited to, and I eventually received two more pre-production kits, but I have no idea what happened to the model I gave him. It wasn’t the one photographed for BFG Magazine because fun fact, the pre-prods came with boarding spines that went all over the model where the holes are in the photo. These spines were actually very difficult to attach properly (I ended up pinning all of them on my model) so I don’t know if they ever made it to the production kits. When Ray Bell and I visited GW Headquarters in Nottingham, we had the privilege of meeting Tim Adcock, the model’s designer (incidentally the designer of all the Corsair Eldar models in BFG as well). He joked it’s the only model he ever made that can double as a mace head and be used as a deadly weapon! What’s really interesting about the model is it’s layered like an onion, and the inner layers that nobody will ever see are as detailed as the outer layer. That’s what inspired the “bigger Warspheres” rule in the Compendium, because building it without the outer layer was already bigger than an Ork Kroozer and made for a fine model for the profile GW created for it. With the outer layer also assembled, it was easily one of the biggest models GW ever made for BFG. I have one assembled and one still in kit so I’ll post photos once the house remodel is done and I pull my stuff out of storage. Not so fun fact, one of the senior GW leadership was really unhappy the Warsphere became a thing because the Kroot were always supposed to be the T’au’s uneducated, contract battlefield fodder, not a cultured and intelligent race in its own right. Warspheres implied the Kroot were capable of independent spacefaring and warp travel, making them far more sophisticated than the lore originally intended. All the lore that came afterward that allowed them to travel beyond Pech and independently contract their services to other races around the galaxy came from the Warsphere model. So that’s the story. For all you other old timers out there that remember details I forgot or have things to add (or corrections!), feel free to pile it on. I don’t pretend to be the only purveyor of knowledge on any subject, and more information is better for everyone. Game on and enjoy! Stay tuned for next week : what the heck happened to the Endeavor CLs?!? Photos from Turbidious fleets
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AuthorA place were your army/fleet background and pictures can be published. Would ideally like to help contribute to the sectors narrative but its not necessary Archives
February 2022
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