The six major factions in the Warhammer 40k galaxy are given Infinity Gems...

[The Chou Lives]

I still say the Nids are the biggest force aside a true uniticied chaos.


The Nids already ate a damn galaxy worth of bio mass and all the forces so far? Scouts

[Hiromi]

Not depending on the warp is *not* a good thing. Basically, the Tau have established themselves as having better baseline tech than the Imperium and on a straight numerical basis punch above their weight. So why don't they simply steamroll through Imperium worlds and take the resources for themselves? Because they lack warp-based transport, that's why! Tau FTL is significantly slower than warp FTL, if much more reliable. However, that drastically limits their rate of expansion and battle capabilities - every faction simply has better logistics than they do.

The only faction that reliably and quickly travels without warp shenanigans in 40k are the Necrons.

they also don't have any of the Psyker/flat out magic stuff, so there's a hefty gap in long range communication and lobbing mind lightning at people. Also the Ethereal cast is a HUUUUGE Achilles heel for them, since if a Vindicare takes one's head off or something they all just go into mental blue screen of death mode

I've never been a big WH40K guy, I fell off the franchise when I was still a teenager but this description of the Tau as major players definitely made me confused.

I figured it must be an update to the lore or something.

They get a decent amount of press from Games Workshop and whatnot but any look at the lore as a whole shows they're confined to a veeeery small little corner of the galaxy and have the occasional border skirmish with Imperium worlds or the random lost Tyranid or Ork, but it's also abundantly clear that if the Imperium didn't have a hundred things going on FAR more important to deal with they could crush them like a bug, the Damocles Crusade was relatively tiny for a crusade and it was making pretty good progress penetrating into core Tau worlds before it got called away to deal with Hive Fleet Behemoth.