T'au rank markings

[Kythnos]

Hey guys, is there an established way for the T'au to denote the rank on their warriors? I noticed a few times that a different helmet colour is used. Is this the only way?

 

Note, I only have the Kill Team book, so if this is explained in detail in the codex I have no way to look this up yet :D

[Commander Dawnstar]

Mhm. There's a few ways.

• Shas'ui among Fire Warriors, Pathfinders and such display their Sept colour on the left shoulder pad and sensor vane (the radio thing on their helmet.)
• Shas'nel (Fireblades) appear to differentiate themselves from Shas'ui by wearing cloaks in Sept colours.
• Stealth Shas'ui have their Sept colours on their sensor vane, while Stealth Shas'vre also have their Sept colours on the face plate of their helmet.
• As for the other Battlesuits ... this covers it, although it appears that only Shas'o display Sept colours on their left shoulder.

 

[Panzer]

Hey guys, is there an established way for the T'au to denote the rank on their warriors? I noticed a few times that a different helmet colour is used. Is this the only way?

 

Note, I only have the Kill Team book, so if this is explained in detail in the codex I have no way to look this up yet

 

Yeah there definitely is!

As you assumed it's in the Codex but I'll write it down for you as I've already done so plenty of times before on another forum for people. ;)

 

So the ranks for T'au are as followed:

Shas'la - regular Firewarriors and Pathfinder

Shas'ui - regular Battlesuit pilots and the leaders of Firewarrior and Pathfinder teams

Shas'vre - leaders of Battlesuit teams and the pilots of bigger Battlesuits

Shas'el - not really a unit in the Codex aside of Darkstrider

Shas'o - Commanders

 

Now for the helmets colouring. Note that the colour used is always the colour of the Sept they belong to (white for T'au, red for Vior'la, orange for Sa'cea and so on).

• Shas'la only have their team marking in the Sept colour on their helmet
• Shas'ui have their helmets sensor vane and also their team marking in the Sept colour. For Crisis Suits it's their right sensor vane as they have one on both sides.
  • Note that at least Firewarrior and Pathfinder Shas'uis also add the Sept colour to their shoulder guard but there is no such thing mentioned for Battlesuit pilots.
• Shas'vre have their whole helmet, sensor vane included, painted in the Sept colour. No team markings on the helmet.
• Shas'el have their helmet, but not any sensor vane, painted in the Sept colour. No team markings on the helmet.
• Shas'o have their whole helmet, sensor vane included painted in the Sept colour. Their team markings are painted in the same colour as their armour.
  • Note that this has changed with the 6th or 7th edition Codex. So fairly recently. Before it used to be that all Commanders were wearing red helmets. So don't be confused if you see some older T'au player painting them still that way. ^^

I hope this wasn't too confusing so far. I'll add some pictures from the codex at the end of the post as well just to make sure. ;)

Anyway, there are some special cases I don't want to leave unmentioned.

• Veteran warriors are sometimes granted the honour to invert their colour scheme. Means in place of the Sept colour they use their armour colour and in place of their armour colour they use the Sept colour. As T'au don't value personal battlefield honours very highly this is pretty much the greatest sign of acknowledgement a T'au warrior can expect (they don't give out promotions for great deeds). Best example for that would be Shadowsun who is wearing armour painted in the T'au Sept white instead of the beige of the rest of the army (if we go with the colour scheme GW uses)
• Some Septs have something like parade uniform. You might already have noticed that one of the most popular Septs don't quite fit with the descriptions above. I'm talking about Vior'la. That's because GW decided to promote them with their parade uniform as it's a far more striking and modern looking colour scheme which serves way better to sell new T'au models than the beige they used to print on the boxes before

 

I feel like at this point I also have to mention that unlike Space Marines the T'au are way more practical with their armour. They usually wear armour painted to fit in the environment they are currently engaging in while Space Marines use their whole armour as heraldry instead of just some small markings.

 

 

 

That's all I can think of for now. So I guess it's picture time.

 

Firewarrior/Pathfinder Shas'ui:

 

Battlesuits Shas'ui, Shas'vre, Shas'el and Shas'o:

 

Some examples of warriors with inverted colour schemes:

 

 

If you get yourself the Codex then you can find most of those informations on page 32-35.

[Kythnos]

Thanks guys, that helped a lot! My kill team will use a colour scheme that fits their deployment area, but I still wanted to adhere to the basics when it comes to denoting ranks :)