sallymander40k
Sally's Forge
Greetings, mortals. I am Salamander, Sally or Mandy, whichever you prefer.
A non-binary essayist, amateur writer and tabletop game designer who has a lifelong
passion for all things science fiction, fantasy and gaming.
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A Genuine Unironic Wishlist Of Space Marine Units
Space Marines have a million goddamn units. But uh. What if they had a million and one?
We know that each Codex is going to coincide with the addition of a new unit to that codex's army roster, so here's some units I think might be cool in an already really overfull codex.
HEAVY WEAPONS LIEUTENANT:
One of the major issues with the Space Marine codex is that it has so many characters, however now with the character attachment system all characters have some measure of usefulness. However, I find it very odd that no characters can attach to Devastator Squads. So I'd want a Devastator Lieutenant specifically for that purpose.
LIBRARIUS DISCIPLES:
A Librarian equivalent to the Judiciar, these are Librarians in training who fight either with force axe and a stormshield or with a boltgun firing psycho-reactive rounds.
ASTARTES SKIRMISHERS:
A sort of trench clearing unit who use Astartes shotguns that RIP through infantry at incredibly close range before ducking out and allowing longer range units to clean up what's left.
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Why The Tau Were Never 'Too Good' For 40k
The Tau were added midway through Warhammer 40,000's 3rd edition, though according to some records the idea had been floating around since Laserburn. In the twenty years since their introduction to the 41st millennium, the Tau have remained one of the most consistently reviled and hated aspect of 40k lore, with all complaints around them boiling down to one core issue: they're too good for 40k.
By that, people mean that they are too morally good to fit within the grimdark narrative of the 41st millennium. This has always been the primary complaint levied at them, since they were first introduced in 2001. And GW has seemingly agreed with them, and spent the last 20 years trying to inject grimdarkness into the Tau Empire.
The first attempt to grimdarkify the Tau came very early on, with the Tau campaign in Dawn of War: Dark Crusade
It's explained how in the decade following Tau victory on Kronus the remaining human population was subjugated, oppressed, forced to give up their culture, and eventually simply sterilized and allowed to die off naturally to create a Tau and Kroot ethnostate on Kronus. It explains this over images of prisoners of war being fed to Krootox in prison camps and humans huddling together in slums.
This is obviously a departure from the image of the Tau as it was established in Codex: Tau (3rd Edition), as that codex makes explicit mention of the Tau trading and making alliances with frontier human colonies. This is also a departure from... common sense. Why exactly would the Tau accept Kroot, Vespid, Nicassar, Demiurg, Tarellians and many others into their ranks but then arbitrarily draw the line at humans?
This would become a pattern that I like to call "The Grimderp Tau Cycle." It's not exactly a stretch to say that the Tau are easily the most morally good society in the 41st millennium. Their tolerance toward other species alone makes them head and shoulders above almost any other species in the galaxy. So to remind people that there are no good guys in the 41st millennium and that this is a very serious and grimdark setting that you need to take seriously because there are no good guys or whatever, GW will occasionally have the Tau commit a completely out of character, random, and nonsensical atrocity. This was also seen at the end of In Harmony Restored, the short story that came out alongside 8th edition's Psychic Awakening: The Greater Good.
For context, In Harmony Restored is a short story about a group of Gue'vesa soldiers (human auxiliary troops fighting in the Tau military) performing a desperate defensive rearguard action to halt an Imperial advance long enough for Tau reinforcements to come and smash the delayed invasion force. The Gue'vesa are able to do this, though at great sacrifice to themselves, and then when the reinforcing army does arrive and makes quick work of the Imperial army they then continue on to butcher the Gue'vesa soldiers who performed this valiant holding action for... Seemingly no reason? Assuming the Tau forces thought they were more Astra Militarum soldiers, the Gue'vesa step out of cover pleading for mercy, only to be gunned down. With one of the Gue'vesa at the end noting that the language one of the Battlesuit pilots is using is very reminiscent of the way the Imperium talks about those they've labeled undesirables.
The message here is clear: these humans betrayed the Imperium in order to escape from the Imperium's genocidal regime... Only to end up in the equally merciless clutches of an equally ruthless oppressor. But, from a lore standpoint, that defeats the entire purpose of the Tau. It makes them wholly indistinct and, frankly, boring. But that doesn't even scratch the surface of how stupid this is, because it has clearly been stated in the past that the Tau do not hold bigotries toward client species on the basis of their faiths. And that makes sense.
Not only does this contradict previous lore, not only does it render the Tau a boring palette swapped version of the Imperium, it also just defies practical sense. If you're a race like the Tau, who expand primarily through ingratiating yourself with other races and convincing them to join your collective, you'd naturally want as few barriers between potential client races and joining as possible. No human colony is going to voluntarily join the Greater Good if the Tau's version of the Greater Good happens to require that the human population of that planet lose all sense of their heritage and culture through forced reeducation and the abandonment of their faith, and in the long term for that human population to slowly go extinct through gradual forced sterilization and confinement to ghettos and slums.
It's deeply stupid, lazy writing on the part of GW to repair the image of the Tau in the eyes of a fandom who accused the faction of being "too good." Except, uhm, here's the thing: the Tau were never too good to begin with. Lets rewind back to 3rd Edition's Tau Codex, our first introduction to the Tau in the 40k universe. From the very beginning it was very clear that the Utopian idealism of the Tau Empire held beneath the surface a significantly more sinister and malevolent nature, and it all roots from the mysterious and enigmatic fifth caste of Tau Society: the Ethereals.
In 3rd Edition, the Ethereals are spoken of more like mythological beings than the slightly mundane way they exist in modern 40k. All we know about them out of this book is that they are the autocratic leaders of the Tau Empire who inspire radical devotion among the Tau, though are rarely seen or heard from. They reorganized Tau society with pursuit of the Greater Good in mind first. But the specifics of what that means matters a lot. Tau are born into a caste that roughly determines, from birth, what role in society that person will fulfill. Those born into a caste are not allowed to have children with members of other castes, are not allowed to take up any job or position that contradicts the societal purpose of their caste, and generally lack self-determination in regards to things like career choice.
so, bam, the setup for Tau as a flawed and morally ambiguous faction are already present. They're a faction who fight for a better future, for a galaxy where all can exist in harmony with one another, so long as that harmony is kosher by the standards of the Ethereal caste. In that sense they're somewhat similar to the Dominion from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. A multispecies interstellar collective who seek to create a galaxy harmoniously unified... in service to the Founders. Just taken from this vision of the Tau Empire, they're already an autocratic dictatorship who fight in the name of an ideology that declares itself to be for the greater good of all who ascribe to it while also relying on the assumption that the tyrannical power of the Ethereals must inherently be for the Greater Good. I reject the idea that the Tau were ever "too good" for 40k. Rather that they were written with a realistic level of nuance, with an understanding that dictatorships are built upon cognitive dissonance, not on perfectly consistent virtues.
TL;DR
THEY'RE NOT FUCKING COMMUNISTS, THEY LITERALLY HAVE A CASTE SYSTEM, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!
#warhammer40k#warhammer#warhammer 40k#t'au empire#t'au#fire warrior#in this essay i will#wargaming#warhammer lore
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And this is my TTS Astra Militarum army. More infantry focused, but still has a lot of tanks!
HQs:
Ursula Creed
Cadian Castellan w/ Boltgun
Cadian Castellan w/ Boltgun
Cadian Command Squad
Tank Commander
Battleline:
10-man Cadian Shocktroop squad w/ flamer and grenade launcher
10-man Cadian Shocktroop squad w/ flamer and grenade launcher
10-man Cadian Shocktroop squad w/ flamer and grenade launcher
10-man Cadian Shocktroop squad w/ melta and plasma gun
10-man Cadian Shocktroop squad w/ melta and plasma gun
10-man Cadian Shocktroop squad w/ melta and plasma gun
Non-Battleline:
3-man Heavy Weapons Team w/ Heavy Bolters
10-man Kasrkin squad w/ x2 Meltagun x2 Plasma Gun
10-man Kasrkin squad w/ x2 Meltagun x2 Plasma Gun
10-man Kasrkin squad w/ x2 Meltagun x2 Plasma Gun
2-man Scout Sentinel Squad
Rogal Dorn Battle Tank
3 Manticores
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This here's my 10th edition 2k-ish points Space Marine army. Still in need of stripping some of the secondhand models, but WE! ARE! GETTING THERE!
The list is as such:
Bladeguard Captain
>Lieutenant
>>5-Man Assault Intercessor Squad
Primaris Chaplain
>Bladeguard Ancient
>>5-Man Bladeguard Squad
Judiciar
>3-Man Bladeguard Squad
Chaplain
>10-man Assault Marine Squad
Terminator Captain
>5-Man Terminator Squad
Librarian
>Lieutenant
>>5-Man Sternguard Veteran Squad
5-man Intercessor Squad
5-man Intercessor Squad
5-man Devastator Squad
5-man Devastator Squad
Dreadnought
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the tiniest marine in all the land
HELP HIM HE IS SMOLL AND DISTRESSED!
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Why is Chaos So Laughably Unthreatening?
I love Chaos as much as the next queer 40k fan, but holy gods it’s kinda hard to take them seriously as a threat given they basically always lose. Even the greatest victory Chaos has seen since the Horus Heresy, the fall of Cadia, was still essentially Chaos losing. The 13th Black Crusade invaded Cadia and got their shit pushed in so hard that Abaddon threw a temper tantrum and just destroyed the whole planet to save face. So even when they’re winning, they’re actually losing. What the hell.
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About Me
Greetings all you Primarchs and Primaris, my name's Salamander. I make videos on YouTube and can be found on Twitter @sallymander40k because of the recent insecurity on the other platform, I'm making a tumblr blog as well just in case so I can still stay in touch with all you lovely people in case something happens!
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