Warhammer 40,000: Gladius – T’au
Proxy Studios / Slitherine Ltd.

Warhammer 40,000: Gladius – Relics of War caught everyone off guard when it came out back in 2018. It was viewed by many to be the first real 4 X strategy game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, although it lacked any sort of diplomacy features.

Since then, we’ve seen the release of the voracious H.R. Geiger-inspired swarm race, the Tyranids, as well as the cunning and calculating Chaos Space Marines. Much to my surprise, the developers have recently released a T’au DLC. I’d of thought that they’d release the Eldar and Dark Eldar before the T’au, but apparently, the T’au were a much-requested race, as far as the Gladius community is concerned.

So, we have Warhammer 40,000: Gladius – T’au, a new DLC that introduces the titular faction. Having been introduced to Warhammer 40,000 through the Dawn of War series back in the day, I wasn’t initially a fan of the T’au. Since everything within the grimdark universe of Warhammer 40,000 was so, well….dark and dreary, to me, a brightly colored anime-inspired faction just didn’t fit in. However, since that time, I’ve generally warmed up to them.

Lore-wise, the T’au are probably the smallest of all of the major powers. However, even though they are a young race (or actually, an amalgamation of different races), they have some seriously powerful high technology at their disposal. So, how did they end up on Gladius, you may be asking?

Backstory-wise, the T’au faction within the game was originally the Fourth Sphere Expansion, which was a colonial expedition launched from one of their inner worlds. They ended up traveling through a Chaos Warp portal and accidentally ended up in orbit around the highly inhospitable planet of Gladius.

My first game of playing with the T’au was pretty cool, but not initially. I’d just touched down with a couple of Fire Warrior units and a city-spawning unit when I was attacked (as usual) by multiple bands of indigenous creatures. That caused me to plop down my first city as soon as I could since Fire Warriors by themselves are pretty weak units.

Eventually, my city began to grow and I started producing my first vehicles. These, in turn, were capable of spawning combat drones for free. In very little time, I started to grasp the usefulness of these drones. For instance, drone units can act as roaming shield walls against both AI, as well as other factions. Simply pop out a few drones, have them attack and absorb incoming assaults, and then let the rest of your army deal with what’s left of the enemy.

Overall, the T’au reminds me of the Eldar as far as their army is concerned. In fact, they both might be vying for the title of Warhammer 40,000’s Glass Cannon Award. Just like the Eldar, most of their units are spindly and weak, defensively speaking. However, they tend to field some pretty awesome firepower to offset this glaring weakness and it’s usually of the long-range variety in order to keep enemies at bay.

Overall, I’m thoroughly enjoying Warhammer 40,000: Gladius’ T’au DLC and I believe you will too if you’re already a fan of the game. The T’au is a challenging race to come to grips with, but once you do, there’s a ton of fun to be had with them. Hopefully, the Eldar and Dark Eldar are next and then we’ll have the complete Warhammer 40,000 turn-based strategy experience.

SCORE: 84%

Warhammer 40,000: Gladius – T’au has some pretty good looking graphics that make its strategy gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig: