Kroot

Kroot are a vassal species to the Tau Empire. Rather bitey. Basically carnivorous space chickens (in Tau Empire, chicken eats YOU!) who look like a cross between Amerindians and the aliens from Predator and Terror Birds. They steal genetic traits of things they eat, and secretly hate the tau. Which means they are cool.

Kroot don't use tanks or much in the way of tech (aside from long rifle-like guns with blades on both ends), instead using native animals derived from the kroot genus. They have attack dogs, gorillas with elephant guns, riding beasts like allosaurs, and really big riding beasts like t-rexes. Think the Gungans from Star Wars Episode 1, only not totally lame.

Kroot also moonlight as mercenaries for races other than the tau, thus dicking over their employers even more. Mercenary bands eat lots of different stuff, and so can have various genetic traits. Thus, Kroot can use Weeaboo Fightan Magiks, be cunnin' but fighty, or have balls of steel, depending on who they've eaten, but not as well as the originals. Eating chaos-types causes Bad Things™ to happen. They also get paid in weapons, allowing them to use Imperial and Tau special weapons together, and nearly their entire army can infiltrate, and get 1st turn assault if they're lucky.

Kroot have little support from GW or players in general, likely due to the fact that their odd stats, high frailty despite being billed as a melee force, and lack of wargear in the Tau list make them less than effective, and their mercenary codex is from Chapter Approved (and thus no longer legal). And as we all know, GW will just make reams of space marine variant codices rather than give them an update.

For those interested, there's a high-quality and mostly balanced 5th-ed Fan-Dex. Most people will let you use it in a friendly game.

Kroot: Hit like chaos marines. Shoot like tau with bolters. Move like Eldar. Die like guardsmen.

This article is a stub. You can help 1d4chan by expanding it