I've really never played tau or have read their codex, and I keep hereing bad things about them. Could someone please give me a short description of there rules and play style, be bad or good.

Cheers

Good shooting bad close combat.

and people who can't think past a 3rd grade level get angry when armies constantly stomp them. And because they refuse to take the blame they need something to point a finger at. and WHATS THIS OMG!!! IT MUST BE THE CODEX!!! YEAH THAT'S IT!!!! THE CODEX SUCKS!!!


and there you go that sums up the people who say the Tau codex is garbage.

Oh ok. What Ive herd is that it really was a bad codex. But what you've just explained is the general 40k player!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
But thanks for help

They suck in CC, and thanks to BS3, they are not as good at shooting as they first appear, in my opinion. They are also old, and suffer from being over costed.

Rogueyopants wrote:I've really never played tau or have read their codex, and I keep hereing bad things about them. Could someone please give me a short description of there rules and play style, be bad or good.

Cheers

Excellent for range, but suck in melee.
Good background and solid fluff.
They are fun army, try them.

They are a very difficult army to play with, let alone win with. If you don't get sophisticated movements just right you can be assaulted and you definitely don't want that as Tau. They are great at a distance but how often does that last in this edition? Everyones got deepstrike, outflank, turboboost, fast vehichles etc, so how fun is it to sit in the corner and wait for your inevitable death to come? To be honest I've seen good players do Tau and come out ahead, but it's by no means an easy feat. That's Tau in a nutshell.

They also suffer greatly from their fact that their tanks don't get the same protection from CC that they did in 4th edition, when you needed 6s to hit skimmers. That coupled with the TLOS, because skimmer used to not block LOS, also defanged the Fish of Fury tactic, which was an excellent way to buffer your shooters from incoming assaulters.

They're overcosted, but crumbling in CC is the army's designed flaw. Crisis suits are good though, and using them and Broadsides can make a pretty effective army. Personally I find them more competitive and far more interesting to play as/against than Necrons, the other perceived "bad" army.

Tau are really a finesse army and not a good first army in my opinion. They have some great long range firepower, but are lacking in hand to hand. I don't think they are horrible, but really think they could have been done better in some ways.

Markerlights help make up for BS3 and make the rail guns really nasty. IMO Tau are the one army that can chuckle when a Necron opponent puts a monolith or two on the table. Light it up with markerlights and then use the markerlight bonuses to increase the BS of the broadside suits and boom!

People grouse about the kroot being useless, but when you bulk out a kroot unit with a bunch of kroot hounds and then bring them in on the proper flank they are a real pain to deal with.

There are only 3 aspects of the Tau army that I think are kind of lousy: 1, aside from kroot, their units are generally not very good in melee, so you need to smartly move away from enemy CC troops and keep shooting at them instead. 2, crisis suits are just way too overpriced for what they are. A crisis suit is a jump pack equipped dreadnought with less capability than a single space marine. Most real weapons that shoot at them will invalidate their armor save and they just break way too easily for the points cost. They would be much more effective, I think, if they had an armor rating and were treated more like a walker than just another suit of powered armor. 3 is the Tau etheral. Why would you bother to take such a weak HQ choice that completely screws your own army if it is taken out??

I have seen some crisis suit tactics that make them a little better, like taking 4 units of single crisis suits and attacking one enemy unit at a time. This means that the attacked unit can only fire back at a single suit at once so limits their ability to damage your suits, but it eats up 4 different slots in your force organization chart, which is limiting in its own way.

Like every army (except Space Marines) Tau have the things they are good at the things they aren't so good at. Their capabilities on the table all depend on how you take advantage of the former and limit the impact of the latter. Expecting them to perform like space marines is the perfect way to lose with them every time. A while back I made an eldar army and was playing it for a bit, but after so many years of playing chaos marines I just couldn't get used to all of my models having T3 and being so bloody fragile, so I sold off the army and went back to chaos...

Skriker

1. Obsolete and rigid FoC which means that Elites and Heavy Support must provide nearly all firepower for the army.

2. Tanks, while not bad as such, were designed and priced for 4th edition rules when skimmers were much more powerful.

3. Poor morale. Almost all units outside of HQ slots have Ld7 or 8 without any extra rules to boost morale.

4. Really fragile and inflexible troops choices.

5. No high-strength and/or low AP blast attack, making it difficult to kill large amounts of FNP infantry.

6. Just three special characters, of which one is bad, second is worse, and third is so bad it has become frequent laughing stock of the whole 40k universe.

Basically, you can make Tau army powerful, or mobile, but it's very hard to have both. And some matchups are autolose unless you configure your army to specificially beat them.

But despite everything, it's fun army as you can do things other armies can't.

In addition to everything everyone else has said, of which i agree with. Tau appear to me to be one of those armies where every single unit needs to work as a single team. Any unit not recieving the support of the army will fall quickly with maybe an exception to A full squad of Crisis suits whereas other armies do possess squads that are more than capable of fending for themselves such as Assualt Marines.

My advice, wait until the Tau codex gets updated in 237 years time. Then everyone will gripe how overpowered it is. GW is like the cycle of life that way....

Skriker, you made a lot of good points but I'm going to have to call you out on a few of them:

Skriker wrote: 2, crisis suits are just way too overpriced for what they are. A crisis suit is a jump pack equipped dreadnought with less capability than a single space marine. Most real weapons that shoot at them will invalidate their armor save and they just break way too easily for the points cost.

What do you mean by less capability than a single Space Marine? 2 wounds, jet pack, and the possibility of two plasma guns is SIGNIFICANTLY better than a "single Space Marine" and will trounce one every time. They're also cheaper than dreadnoughts, but that's really an apples and oranges argument. Other than that you're right in your three points.

Skriker wrote:
Like every army (except Space Marines) Tau have the things they are good at the things they aren't so good at.

Marines have things they're good at and things they're bad at too - they just aren't quite as good or quite as bad at either.

The tau army suffers from not being able to deny LOS anymore to their damage dealers, their battlesuits. Their ability to pump out shots isn't enough to keep the enemy from reaching melee. With the introduction of such fast armies, and the ability to run, other codexes close the gap way to fast.

The codex needs a better counter assault unit than kroot.

The only problem with Tau is selling you that markerlights can solve any problem and then over pricing them. In addition the Tau troop choices are anemic at best. S5 30" weapons sound awesome but add BS 3 and AP5 and they are not too effective. By price, a SW Long Fang squad with 5 heavy bolters is putting out 15 S5 AP4 shots at BS4 for less than 12 Tau Firewarriors (12 S5 AP5 shots at BS5). Now this is not the be all end all but when you are hamstrung in your mandatory troop choices, and have no redeeming CC feature, you have problems.

The other issue is the crisis suits. This is more a matter of crisis suits are the answer to everything that the tau needs. You need AT support - crisis suit with fusion guns to the rescue. You need anti-MeQ/Teq crisis suit with plasma guns. You need long ranged anti-APC - crisis suit with missile launchers... You can only field 15 crisis suits and you probably need most if not all of them.

The biggest problem I see with Tau is the tactics people use with them and pulse rifles.

They run towards the enemy stabby units to shoot them as soon as possible and double tap the next round.

Problem is if they dont wipe the enemy to the man, those 3 remaining marines or beserkers will likely wipe out 10 fire warriors in melee, barring terrible dice rolls.

Tau are a strange army. Master the markerlight/fire warrior play and you can generally win or hold your own against anyone.

tetrisphreak wrote:The codex needs a better counter assault unit than kroot.

This sort of thinking is why people think the Tau codex isn't good. They're also the same people that have no clue how the army works, use it badly, then complain about it.

The Dex doens't need better assault units, that'll just make it like all the other armies *Imperial*, and would ruin the feel of the army (much like butchering faith is doing for the new nerfed Sisters codex). It could use some point adjustments, improved shooting abilities, and more ways to avoid assaults. Any army that ignores/avoids one phase of the game, but must excel in the other two, is going have certain people saying the army is no good.

Tau are not designed to engage the enemy. My best tactic is to continually shoot them when they come into range until I get to the point where they are close enough to be assaulted next turn. At that moment the whole army retreats back and if possible the sides move in to form a giant C shape effectively a crossfire situation. Its a wonderful tactic unless the opponent is smart enough to recognise it and counter it.

I think Tau is a still good to play though you'll struggle with them in their current rendition as they could do with updating. I have a 3000pts army gathering dust as they need repair work but I'm loathe to do it until I know what they are nerfing in the next codex.

They attract much ire from older players since they were added to the game's background a decade or so ago and, in the minds of many of us, don't really fit with the general style of Warhammer 40,000's background, and were added solely to sell the game to anime geeks and kids who were otherwise put off by the game's gothic, brutalist aesthetics.

I'll admit I'm a beginner with tau but it would be useful to have a unit choice that maybe could handle dedicated assault units and provide some sort of area denial.

tetrisphreak wrote:I'll admit I'm a beginner with tau but it would be useful to have a unit choice that maybe could handle dedicated assault units and provide some sort of area denial.

One of my friends uses "Kroot Bubblewrap." They have a line of Kroot, who are okay in melee, protecting their shooty guys. That way its very hard to charge them and most of the time you ended up tarpitted with a ton of Kroot.

I don't think there is anything "wrong" with Tau. The codex has some downsides such as outdated wargear that does nothing in the current edition and some point values are too high.

They are not easy to play. You cannot just line them up and run at the enemy like some armies. You have to play to their strengths and keep thinking ahead.

They do need a new codex pretty bad, but that's just to get them up to date, correct points issues as related to 5th edition, and give them some added variety.

Gameplay perspective: they haven't been updated in a while and are terrible inc lose combat. In addition the average fire warrior has the same BS as an Imperial Guardsmen which is ridiculous given the theme of the army or its backstory.

Fluff perspective: People dislike them for being a beacon of light in the "grimdark" universe, not having a doomed future, and being Space Communists.

Problems with Tau in 5th edition

Rubbish at melee.

Rubbish Leadership.

Rubbish at space magic – no offence, no defence.

Shooting though good, suffers in 5th edition from Run moves and increased amount of cover.

Only one good character.

Few good special rules.

Too reliant on a few decent units, not enough variety to provide different viable builds.

The basic Troops can’t have any support weapons.

In general all units are too expensive compared to newer codexes. It’s often only 1p or 5p per model, but it adds up.

Creeping Dementia wrote:

tetrisphreak wrote:The codex needs a better counter assault unit than kroot.

This sort of thinking is why people think the Tau codex isn't good. They're also the same people that have no clue how the army works, use it badly, then complain about it.

If Tau are not to get a scary counter assault unit, then they need something to make the enemy pay for getting close. Because right now, that is the absolute best way to win against Tau. Just get in close and thump them.

Maybe the Pluse Rifle needs a scaling AP. 0-6" AP2, 6.1- 12" AP4, >12" AP5. This way the tau have some way of very effictive ways of fighting back when the enemy get close.

Tau need to suck in close combat, it's their designed weakness. Giving them AP2 pulse rifles in close range is completely stupid. Most ideas I've had aren't much better though, like a leadership test to get a free round of shooting at the charging unit before assault.

Brother SRM wrote:Skriker, you made a lot of good points but I'm going to have to call you out on a few of them:

Skriker wrote: 2, crisis suits are just way too overpriced for what they are. A crisis suit is a jump pack equipped dreadnought with less capability than a single space marine. Most real weapons that shoot at them will invalidate their armor save and they just break way too easily for the points cost.

What do you mean by less capability than a single Space Marine? 2 wounds, jet pack, and the possibility of two plasma guns is SIGNIFICANTLY better than a "single Space Marine" and will trounce one every time. They're also cheaper than dreadnoughts, but that's really an apples and oranges argument. Other than that you're right in your three points.

Skriker wrote:
Like every army (except Space Marines) Tau have the things they are good at the things they aren't so good at.

Marines have things they're good at and things they're bad at too - they just aren't quite as good or quite as bad at either.

I guess survivability would have been a better term than capability. They are *very* fragile.

As for the marines, as the flagship default force of the game they are very forgiving and your basic marine is OK in ranged and melee combat and have the armor protection and stats to make it much easier to survive any stupid tactical mistakes you make while you fix them on the tabletop. A lot of other forces in the game, especially Tau, you make a mistake and you will have a harder time recovering.

Skriker

Skriker wrote:

I guess survivability would have been a better term than capability. They are *very* fragile.

As for the marines, as the flagship default force of the game they are very forgiving and your basic marine is OK in ranged and melee combat and have the armor protection and stats to make it much easier to survive any stupid tactical mistakes you make while you fix them on the tabletop. A lot of other forces in the game, especially Tau, you make a mistake and you will have a harder time recovering.

Skriker

I will not deny a single word of this, you summed it up just right. The one thing Marines do excel at is durability, which is what makes them so forgiving. I won't say an unskilled Marine player will beat a Tau/Eldar/whatever player regularly as the army isn't THAT forgiving, but it helps bridge the skill gap for new players.

The downside of SMs is that they do not offer a skillful player much chance to generate synergy.

Not that it matters much when you can field 15 missile launchers and a bunch of super space magic in 35 point Rhinos.

Brother SRM wrote:Tau need to suck in close combat, it's their designed weakness. Giving them AP2 pulse rifles in close range is completely stupid. Most ideas I've had aren't much better though, like a leadership test to get a free round of shooting at the charging unit before assault.

Right now, CC is the autowin button against the Tau. Especially considering how the core rules of 5th ed. promote CC. Add to that when you look at just how fast the latest codexs have made the armies, its obvious that the Tau need some sort of deterrent. Something that allows them to be on equal footing when the enemy is close. If your not going to let them fight in CC, then shooting is the only way.

Why does everyone else get two phases of the game to kill and the tau only get one? If your going to make it that way, then that one phase that the Tau do get had better damn well hit as hard as everyone else combined two. Otherwise they will continue to loose and perform badly and threads like this will continue to populate the internets.

Tau is a great army, the codex is certainly showing its age and needs to be replaced, but that is about the only problem I can think of.

I'd imagine when the new codex comes out Tau is going to be top tier. Considering Tau already have insane weaponry with insane range, even a slight buff/cost reduction is going to throw them into an amazing bracket.

Going off of the previous post, you then have to deny them the assault phase. With no assault phase, Tau then should outmatch the opponent. The way to do this is use screens and cut down their mobility. The army's best weapon is the missile pod. Its great for killing rhinos and killing troops. Kroot should bubble wrap the army, protecting your firepower units from getting charged for a turn. If you have two bubble wraps, then you have two turns of survival. It almost seems like a shield generator in star wars. They even provide cover saves for those inside!

This strategy won me third place at 'ard boyz round 1, with all my kroot dying but army surviving each game.

Anyway, Tau can still do well, but there are only a few options for competitive play. My other main problem with the codex is no good special characters. Farsight is a cool character, but I would only use him if he didn't hurt my army so badly.

Well tau are good at shooting and horrible in melee

I dont think their codex is all that bad, though IMHO i think they need more fluff, and need to update some of their HQs (Space pope) but my friend plays tau and some times stomps my ork army into dust, they require alittle more stragety on the board 'cus your trying to avoid assault infintray (jet packers and what not), and players have to put some time into planning their army list (from what i hear, they have lots of upgrades). But i think they are fine, i might even play them for my next army

Jayden63 wrote: threads like this will continue to populate the internets.

There's the Tau's real problem aside from other key points made by other Dakkanauts who know what they're talking about.

Pretty much goes like this.
1.Player asks for advice

2.Group of people who make claims that they know how to play Tau give advice going which way and that, mostly making copy-pasta quality remarks lacking explanation, or put points entirely based off of meta-related experience.

3.Group members that are still in the thread argues about whose advice makes them the all time space god of space hindu utilitarion anime robot fish people

4.Arguements descends into fluff related points and utter stupid

5.Thread locks

6. Wash, Rinse, Repeat

Kilkrazy wrote:Problems with Tau in 5th edition

Rubbish at melee.

Rubbish Leadership.

Rubbish at space magic – no offence, no defence.

Shooting though good, suffers in 5th edition from Run moves and increased amount of cover.

Only one good character.

Few good special rules.

Too reliant on a few decent units, not enough variety to provide different viable builds.

The basic Troops can’t have any support weapons.

In general all units are too expensive compared to newer codexes. It’s often only 1p or 5p per model, but it adds up.

Not only run moves but the average distance between standard troops is 18" in 2/3rds of the scenarios in 5th ed whereas in 4th ed. I think it was 100% 24" separation. 6 inches closer on average plus running makes them lose at least one fire phase that an army in 4th edition used to have. Now add the overbalance towards CC (morale -1 per casualty difference whereas firepower checks are unmodified - they are just qualified for - e.g. a Tau uni fires at a chas marine unit and kills 6. The chaos marine having suffered at least 25% casualties, is forced to making a morale test against his leadership of 10. The tau player is charged in the subsequent phase and suffers the same 6 kills as the CSM to none for the remaining Tau. The tau now has to make a morale test at -6 or needs to roll a 2 to pass his leadership.

Cool and decisive HTH but it makes for a total waste of the point values imposed on Tau because in pre 5th edition, they kind of rocked.

yea tau has good battle suits i think

DAaddict wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Problems with Tau in 5th edition

Rubbish at melee.

Rubbish Leadership.

Rubbish at space magic – no offence, no defence.

Shooting though good, suffers in 5th edition from Run moves and increased amount of cover.

Only one good character.

Few good special rules.

Too reliant on a few decent units, not enough variety to provide different viable builds.

The basic Troops can’t have any support weapons.

In general all units are too expensive compared to newer codexes. It’s often only 1p or 5p per model, but it adds up.

Not only run moves but the average distance between standard troops is 18" in 2/3rds of the scenarios in 5th ed whereas in 4th ed. I think it was 100% 24" separation. 6 inches closer on average plus running makes them lose at least one fire phase that an army in 4th edition used to have. Now add the overbalance towards CC (morale -1 per casualty difference whereas firepower checks are unmodified - they are just qualified for - e.g. a Tau uni fires at a chas marine unit and kills 6. The chaos marine having suffered at least 25% casualties, is forced to making a morale test against his leadership of 10. The tau player is charged in the subsequent phase and suffers the same 6 kills as the CSM to none for the remaining Tau. The tau now has to make a morale test at -6 or needs to roll a 2 to pass his leadership.

Cool and decisive HTH but it makes for a total waste of the point values imposed on Tau because in pre 5th edition, they kind of rocked.

Yeah the Dex has wrinkles and shes getting older. I'd imagine longer range on suit weapons would counter the issues, we will have to see though.

The suit weapon range is OK when combined with mobility.

The suits should be a bit cheaper and/or better and have a few more available -- i.e. increase the unit size to 1-4 (Tau use base 8 so this is fluffy).

Idiots think they're Commies when they are clearly Confucians.

Kilkrazy wrote:The suit weapon range is OK when combined with mobility.

The suits should be a bit cheaper and/or better and have a few more available -- i.e. increase the unit size to 1-4 (Tau use base 8 so this is fluffy).

Agree and disagree...

I like the idea of cap increase and price reductions, these are common across the board for new dexes.

As for weapon range, yeah it certainly is OK, but as a Tau player I want more range. I think a total lack of viable CC warrants it. Given the insane focus on assault in the new codexes I would certainly love to see a buff to Tau shooting. We pretty much have two turns in a three turn round. Not counting our sneaky assualt/bunny hopping.

Aside from the intentional assault weakness, Tau have by far the worst standard troops in the game.

A) Fire Warriors have horrible leadership, with virtually no way to upgrade it. Combined with low initiative, when they lose assaults even by a small margin, they still break almost every time and get swept almost every time. A single 20-point space marine model can easily charge and kill an entire squad of maxed-out fire warriors with only slightly favorable rolls.
B) Fire Warriors don't have any weaponry upgrades, and their transports shoot the exact same weaponry as Fire Warriors. S5 AP5 is obviously better than bolters and lasguns, but aside from the terribly expensive and also ineffective EMP grenades, no troop in a Tau army can crack a vehicle.
C) Devilfish are more expensive than any other transport in the game, and even though they are one of the tougher ones, they can't get AV, anti-elite, or anti-horde weapons.

Tau troops have basically no ability to kill anything except for footslogging troops, and even then, they can't put out enough volume to kill a horde.

Crisis suits are decent, but no better or more efficient than other multi-wound elites. With shorter range than your Fire Warrior gunline and your railguns, they have to be in front of everything else, unless the enemy is already in close range. They are your only real choice to bring special weapons to the table, but it would be nice to have the option of attaching the plasma and melta guns to normal squads instead of high-point death machines.

The only actually GOOD things Tau have going are in the heavy support - Hammerheads are some of the best tanks in the game, and Broadsides are the best AV units in ithe game, both of which also have incredible range.

They aint human.... Or atleast thats what my firendly neighborhood inquisitor keeps telling me...

But seriously when i played them there shooting wasnt nearly as good as it was made out to be and if you fail to shoot them you will quickly die in CC.

I might just be my experience, but my tau actually seem to kill more people in melee then in range. Probably because i don't have too many of the big guns yet.

What CC units are you using, and what other armies are you facing that die to your pillow-fighting skills?

tetrisphreak wrote:What CC units are you using, and what other armies are you facing that die to your pillow-fighting skills?

A fair amount might just be that we are still learning the rules.

I am fighting chaos SM. He takes the mark of nergle so it basically have to roll 4s to hit and damage with rifles. Then in melee, I still roll 4s to hit. Only now I attack in his and my turn.

My battlesuit took out a squad of demon thingys in melee. (We where actually rolling my armor and inv saves.) Then I had a lone drone kill two of them in melee.

I think it's just that I never kill anything at range. One maybe two guys before they get into melee.

So, it's pretty much been summed up: Old codex, Sucky CC, and average (at best) shooting for a shooting based army.

I agree that firewarriors needs a good rebuffing. Hell, if they even made the pulse rifle an Assault Weapon, I'd be happy. Anything to make up for the piss-poor rifle butt attack that they often have to dish out when assaulted. Crisis are a bit pricey, reductions there would be great. Something I personally would LOVE to see would be carrying 2 of the same weapons systems, as opposed to twin-linking them. Crisis Bombs with 2 Plasma rifles would do something fierce to almost anything it deepstruck into. As for Tanks, just nerf the price. Or make em fast. Something I can't gripe about is how cheap some of those vehicle upgrades are. But overall, I love playing Tau. It's rewarding when you win, and a challenge to overcome when defeated.

Oh, and Markerlight rules NEED to be redone...

Crisis Suits suffer a lot from being only T4 in a game where S8 AP3/2/1 comes as standard with a lot of armies. If a battlecannon template lands on your Crisis unit, then you have got to expect to lose it, unless it scatters so far that you can take what wounds it causes on your drones.

Space Wolves are one of the worst match-ups, purely because they can (and do) field 15 missile launcher heavy supports, of which 9 missiles can hit 3 squads, and 6 can hit another 3; all in all, unless you're on a cover-heavy board or are excellent at making 4+ saves on shield drones, you're going to lose Crisis Suits before you can do anything.

Markerlights also need to be made more... accessible. Pathfinders are almost necessary, and fight for FA slots with 'Ranas, but can only target 1 squad at a time. Fire Warrior markerlights are heavy weapons, and so you're sacrificing manoeuvrability for 1 markerlight that has a 50% to miss. Stealth Suits are reliable markerlight deployment systems, being Relentless (although they're the only battlesuit that is) and conferring that onto the drones, but they're expensive, and battle for a place with Crisis Suits.

An average team of 3 Stealth Suits with maximum markers costs 290pts for 7 Markerlights (2 drones per Suit + and extra one for the Shas'vre), whereas a Pathfinder unit can give you 8 markerlights for 181pts (inc. Devilfish with disruption pods) but cannot move and fire them.

If markerlights could be fired at different targets from the rest of the squad, it'd go a long way to making them more viable, but seeing as a squad of 8 pathfinders will only hit with 4 markerlights on average, expending 2-3 to reduce or negate cover, and expending 1-2 to increase BS of firing squads, it means that any counter expended on your fire warriors, aren't going onto your crisis suits, broadsides, or hammerheads.

Fire Warriors can be good at shooting with markerlights, but first cover needs to be reduced, and the important units need help with their shots first, often leaving Fire Warriors with no counters left to expend.

Avatar 720 wrote:Crisis Suits suffer a lot from being only T4 in a game where S8 AP3/2/1 comes as standard with a lot of armies. If a battlecannon template lands on your Crisis unit, then you have got to expect to lose it, unless it scatters so far that you can take what wounds it causes on your drones.

Space Wolves are one of the worst match-ups, purely because they can (and do) field 15 missile launcher heavy supports, of which 9 missiles can hit 3 squads, and 6 can hit another 3; all in all, unless you're on a cover-heavy board or are excellent at making 4+ saves on shield drones, you're going to lose Crisis Suits before you can do anything.

Markerlights also need to be made more... accessible. Pathfinders are almost necessary, and fight for FA slots with 'Ranas, but can only target 1 squad at a time. Fire Warrior markerlights are heavy weapons, and so you're sacrificing manoeuvrability for 1 markerlight that has a 50% to miss. Stealth Suits are reliable markerlight deployment systems, being Relentless (although they're the only battlesuit that is) and conferring that onto the drones, but they're expensive, and battle for a place with Crisis Suits.

An average team of 3 Stealth Suits with maximum markers costs 290pts for 7 Markerlights (2 drones per Suit + and extra one for the Shas'vre), whereas a Pathfinder unit can give you 8 markerlights for 181pts (inc. Devilfish with disruption pods) but cannot move and fire them.

If markerlights could be fired at different targets from the rest of the squad, it'd go a long way to making them more viable, but seeing as a squad of 8 pathfinders will only hit with 4 markerlights on average, expending 2-3 to reduce or negate cover, and expending 1-2 to increase BS of firing squads, it means that any counter expended on your fire warriors, aren't going onto your crisis suits, broadsides, or hammerheads.

Fire Warriors can be good at shooting with markerlights, but first cover needs to be reduced, and the important units need help with their shots first, often leaving Fire Warriors with no counters left to expend.

Crisis Suits and Broadsides could be buffed up to either Monstrous Creatures or Walkers, but keep the JSJ effect. Obviously the points would have to increase, unless they made them the equivalent of IG Sentinels. Tau need some heavy hitters to draw fire.

Pulse Rifles definitely need a tweak, and yeah, making them assault 2 would go a bit towards making them better. Really, giving them any reason to be outside a no-fire-points Devilfish would be an improvement. They should give them the option to upgrade their Shas'ui to a Battle Suit instead if just a crappy sergeant. That even lets them keep the fluff of "Fire Warriors don't carry heavy weapons."

Likewise, a geart change would be if they merged the Devilfish and Hammerhead platforms, so you could upgrade the transports to carry Railhead turrets, or at least Ion Cannons, and have a decent weapon on your transports.

The only change necessary to stealth suits would be to give them a weapon with enough range that their cloaking field actually matters.

Tau suffer from being built very closely to 4E's rules, specifically LoS, Skimmer rules, Terrain and Transport rules. In 4E Skimmers were stupid tough (and nigh immune to CC) and didn't block LoS. Coupled with the fact that Crisis Suits could jet out from behind Area Terrain which, without TrueLoS, completely blocked all LoS and then jump back behind it after shooting, meant that Tau could effectively shoot an enemy down without worrying about return fire. Additionally, anything that wasn't a skimmer in 4E was a cardboard box, and the transport rules were ridiculously harsh, making stuff like Rhinos (very powerful force multipliers against Tau) rolling coffins good really only for moving cover.

So basically, the core rules they relied on for survival changed radically the opposite direction, and their opponents vehicle got significantly more difficult to kill.

Thus, yeah, they're a little awkward. Not as bad as say, 4E IG, current Necrons or the like, but not great either, when they used to be a top tier tournament army.

Kilkrazy wrote:Rubbish at space magic – no offence, no defence.

This is, however, something I don't think should be fixed. They're not a psychic race, arguably outside of Ethereals. Psychic defense in 40k is generally a form of psychic power as well. There's no fluff reason for them to have either offense or defense with psychics.

There's nothing "wrong" with Tau they are the epitome of a shooting army without fielding the massive numbers required by IG. In 4ed skimmers that didnt go boom when immobilised was clutch. They were written in and for 4ed rules with no look to 5ed. now on the cusp of 6 they are showing thier age.
You can still win with a Tau army though: pathfinders,battle suits and hammerheads carry the day.
I am genuinely interested to see when and what an update will do for Tau. IMHO they need to come before BT but hopefully after 6ed (which means waiting until after a new C:SM)

-Loki- wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Rubbish at space magic – no offence, no defence.

This is, however, something I don't think should be fixed. They're not a psychic race, arguably outside of Ethereals. Psychic defense in 40k is generally a form of psychic power as well. There's no fluff reason for them to have either offense or defense with psychics.

A defense could easily be worked into fluff. After encountering Imperial Guard Battle Psykers they've adopted some kind of weak psychic dampening device for instance.

Like the anti-Force orangutan thing in the Star Wars books?


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The GK already have a space monkey

Harriticus wrote:

-Loki- wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Rubbish at space magic – no offence, no defence.

This is, however, something I don't think should be fixed. They're not a psychic race, arguably outside of Ethereals. Psychic defense in 40k is generally a form of psychic power as well. There's no fluff reason for them to have either offense or defense with psychics.

A defense could easily be worked into fluff. After encountering Imperial Guard Battle Psykers they've adopted some kind of weak psychic dampening device for instance.

Or they could just use their Nicassar allies. Who are a race of pyskers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AustonT wrote:Like the anti-Force orangutan thing in the Star Wars books?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The GK already have a space monkey

They should have given the tau the space monkey. >.> <.< >.>;

They should simply make the Tau warp-null like thier fluff suggests and make them pay heavily for it somehow. basically make psycic powers useless AGAINST them, but self buffing psychic powers like guide or sanguine sword would still work.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would nerd all over the floor if the Tau fix either the emperor or the throne and develop a non immaterium warp engine. hurrah humanity is saved from chaos forever (or are they?)

nomotog wrote:Or they could just use their Nicassar allies. Who are a race of pyskers.

Psychics in 40k are very specific. You're not just 'psychic' and can do 'psychic things'. You have specific talents - someone who has the gift of far sight might not necessarily be able to do anything else. The Nicassar are specifically telekinetic, and only use their powers us act as engines for their ships. There's nothing currently in the fluff even suggesting they can use their powers as defense against offensive psychic attacks.

-Loki- wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Rubbish at space magic – no offence, no defence.

This is, however, something I don't think should be fixed. They're not a psychic race, arguably outside of Ethereals. Psychic defense in 40k is generally a form of psychic power as well. There's no fluff reason for them to have either offense or defense with psychics.

I agree.

It's just that if the army going to be rubbish at space magic, melee, and leadership, it needs to be much better at other things to compensate.

Tau have reasonable mobility, reasonable shooting (but BS3) -- some individual units are outstanding, but they are limited in numbers -- reasonable armour, and are fairly expensive.

The markerlights are where a big difference could be made, by lifting big chunks of the army to effectively BS5, but they are too expensive and limited with the amount of 4+ cover in the game now. (One markerlight used to eliminate a cover save entirely.)

Personally I think GW should just give up on balancing space magic and leadership. Just give the Tau an Ethereal who lifts the army to Ld10, and an anti-magic field like a Librarian's helmet.

You can tinker with equipment and points values a bit. The only solution to melee, though, is to give the Tau some chances to try and avoid melee by evading or shooting at chargers. This could be easily done with a couple of special rules or an Orders system.

... not seeing the problems most people are listing, myself.

Lack of CC ability? Fluffy and not an issue if you think about what you're doing...

Lack of BS4? Never stopped me from shooting apart armies before they reach CC

Low leadership? Sure, it can be an issue, but its not exactly the end of the world.

Fire Warriors suck? ... yeah, yeah they really do XD but even they have their uses.


So where are all the game-breaking issues here? I've won more games than I've lost with these guys. Sure I don't win every time, but no one should and yeah it's a challenge, but that doesn't mean the army is broken, surely?

Edit: oh and now that I think about it some of their options suck to the extreme (vespid, for example) but that happens to every army

Lack of BS4...did someone actually say that?
Shooty armies don't get BS4, hell SNIPERS fire at BS3 now(mostly)

I haven't had much trouble with winning games, but my gaming group is pretty casual so it's not that important, but I have noticed some limiting factors:: The old codex means most units are overcosted, there isn't that much choice in units to start with and it doesn't help when some of those choices are close to useless (vespids and ethereals, I'm looking at you), I haven't yet got many markerlights in my army so I find my fire warriors not performing well.

However the basic S5 on guns is good, railguns are great and disruption pods are god-like. On paper kroot don't seem that useful but can actually be used for many different scenarios (although a 6+ save without needing a kroot shaper would be nice in CC) and the devilfish is a sturdy, fast transport. Crisis suits always get their job done and although Jump-Shoot-Jump isn't as effective as in 4th edition it still annoys my opponents to no end.

Perhaps the biggest inherent problem of the Tau codex is the FoC and unit selection, which makes the army building very inflexible (for a race which is supposed to be superbly flexible).

Nearly all Tau units are one-trick ponies, good at doing just one thing. Fluff-wise, they're supposed to improvise around this, but this is pretty poorly reflected in the rules. Tau FoC is the most rigid of all armies, even moreso than Eldar. For example, Fire Warriors don't carry special or heavy weapons with them; they don't have to, those weapons are mounted on Crisis suit, much more effective platform than some poor sod humping around bloody heavy cannon. But in game terms, it means that Tau need to use two FoC slots to perform a task other armies can do with one.

This means that effective FoC slots (ie. Elites and Heavy Support) have to be minmaxed for the absolute most effective configuration. Which is why nobody uses things like Sky Rays or Sniper Drones. There is no room. This is made worse by very weak Fast Attack units. Piranhas are good, but mostly as blockers or contesters. They're not cost-effective at killing things. Pathfinders are great, but only effective in support of other units which kill things. Gun Drones or Vespids never kill anything.

I don't think Tau need silly stuff like BS4 base, Fire Warriors carrying power weapons and Rail pistols or huge cost reductions. Relatively modest update would make the book competive. Some point reductions (but not really huge), upgrade of previously crappy units, some special rule for Fire Warriors so they would not be a liability, more flexible FoC like with Orks or other more modern books, better working Seeker Missiles.

What wrong is that the game has moved on and and as GW tends to do leave other factions behind.

The Taus book was centered on abusing old line of sight rules and skimmer rules, wich are now dust.
combine the fact that nearly all updated armies scince the new rule set have gotten cheaper its what has hurt the Tau rules the most.

To combat that Tau need to be cheaper something that a white dwarf article could fix a simple chart should the point reduction could help untill the new book is released.

I stress this cause when the dice are rolling straight averages or better winning is easy no matter what i face but when dice are below average not complete crap but 30-40% its over and thats typicly decided by turn 2. where in lies the biggest problem for any old book in the face of cheaper new codexs you cant put the DMG output with more of them less of us still generally on a BS3.

Im not saying Tau can win but against older dexs Ive been able to table guys that do know what there doing against new books with balanced builds its rough and if the dice average dips the best one can pull is a draw.

as far as fixing things price cuts a few unit value changes a few new features some battle orders maybe like imps or (savage scars ) kroot psykers - I laughed my ass off when i read this in the book.

and maybe a new xeno allie

I think the Tau would do good to have some "Greater Good" enhancements. Like drones never count as KPs. They should be willingly sacrificed to serve the greater good. That gets rid of the big downside of Tau vehicles and perhaps even gives Drone units a reason to be played.
Allow them to contest objectives but never to count as KPs. I have also thought it would be good to make them fearless. The Tau programmers should be considering drones as expendable. No flight risk just a fact that drones could be overrun. (Extra attacks suffered if beat in HTH.)

AustonT wrote:Lack of BS4...did someone actually say that?
Shooty armies don't get BS4, hell SNIPERS fire at BS3 now(mostly)

So are we just ignoring the fact that half of 40k armies are BS4 as standard and can be pretty damn shooty to boot? Space Wolves can be a very shooty army and get BS4, vanilla Marines can be shooty and get BS4, GKs can be shooty-ish (especially with psyrifleman dreads) and get BS4, BA can be pretty shooty and get BS4, Eldar, whilst not completely shooty, have a good amount of BS4 shooting with Fire Prisms, Dark Reapers, Wraithlords, Dire Avengers, Fire Dragons, Wraithguard, Rangers, Warp Spiders, Swooping Hawks... And a good amount of BS3 shooting is twin-linked (Wave Serpent) or just puts out large amounts of shots to make up for it (War Walkers), Necrons are all BS4, Sisters of Battle I believe are also BS4, hell even Tyranids get BS4 shooting in the form of Hive Guard and Zoanthropes.

BS3 armies like Imperial Guard and the rest of the Tyranids have large amounts of weapons to counter it, and the fact that most snipers are BS3 is because they're wounding any model with a toughness value 50% of the time no matter what, and are also rending and pinning to boot; there has to be at least one downside.

I'm not saying we should make Tau BS4, only that your statement is very inaccurate.

Avatar 720 wrote:

AustonT wrote:Lack of BS4...did someone actually say that?
Shooty armies don't get BS4, hell SNIPERS fire at BS3 now(mostly)

So are we just ignoring the fact that half of 40k armies are BS4 as standard and can be pretty damn shooty to boot? Space Wolves can be a very shooty army and get BS4, vanilla Marines can be shooty and get BS4, GKs can be shooty-ish (especially with psyrifleman dreads) and get BS4, BA can be pretty shooty and get BS4, Eldar, whilst not completely shooty, have a good amount of BS4 shooting with Fire Prisms, Dark Reapers, Wraithlords, Dire Avengers, Fire Dragons, Wraithguard, Rangers, Warp Spiders, Swooping Hawks... And a good amount of BS3 shooting is twin-linked (Wave Serpent) or just puts out large amounts of shots to make up for it (War Walkers), Necrons are all BS4, Sisters of Battle I believe are also BS4, hell even Tyranids get BS4 shooting in the form of Hive Guard and Zoanthropes.

BS3 armies like Imperial Guard and the rest of the Tyranids have large amounts of weapons to counter it, and the fact that most snipers are BS3 is because they're wounding any model with a toughness value 50% of the time no matter what, and are also rending and pinning to boot; there has to be at least one downside.

I'm not saying we should make Tau BS4, only that your statement is very inaccurate.

Tau should not be BS4 but make markerlight tech cheaper than 20+ pts to field and they have a built-in answer. Pathfinders can do it (20+ pts) or marker drones can do it (30 pts). To me, just get drone costs down to 10 pts each and suddenly the BS problem and the Tau non-shootiness problem gets fixed.

Really? You are going to try to compare 15 point space marines, 12 point dire avengers, etc to 10 point fire warriors that outrange every single other basic troop and have a higher strength weapon than any other basic troop.
Considering you can lay down 1.5:1 models against space marines. You hit 16% lower and wound 16% higher at longer ranges. Tau have a distinct advantage over "shooty marines" hitting is the easy part, wounding has the most variables. My statement is quite accurate Eldar non aspect warriors are BS3, ig basic infantry is BS 3.
If you want to compare apples to apples tau are a bargain.
A hammerhead with railgun and burst cannons is 150 points
A fire prism is 115 points
Both are BS4, the Fire Prism is outranged by 12inches has less S and AP on its main gun, outranged by 6 inches, 4 shots and 1 S on it's secondary weapons. It also blows up on immobilized results.
35 points buys an awful lot of pain.
So in summary: shooty armies basic BS is 3
MEQ armies are not shooty armies
My argument makes plenty of sense. Yours is akin to "IG are no good because Terminators are better at everything they do."

AustonT wrote:Really? You are going to try to compare 15 point space marines, 12 point dire avengers, etc to 10 point fire warriors that outrange every single other basic troop and have a higher strength weapon than any other basic troop.

No, you're trying to apply my post to something it wasn't meant for.

Considering you can lay down 1.5:1 models against space marines. You hit 16% lower and wound 16% higher at longer ranges. Tau have a distinct advantage over "shooty marines" hitting is the easy part, wounding has the most variables. My statement is quite accurate Eldar non aspect warriors are BS3, ig basic infantry is BS 3.

Considering Aspect warriors make up the majority of choices in the Eldar book, you're basing this off 3 non-vehicle units (Guardians, Guardian Jetbikes, and Support Weapons) in a book containing a total of 15; 4/5ths have BS4 and you're trying to base an argument off the 1/5 that does not... I have also stated why IG have BS3, it's because there's lots of them. IG are considered a very good codex despite what you see as a huge disadvantage, because they can field enough units to negate it. Your statement remains very inaccurate, seeing as though you're ignoring the fact that every single Space Marine codex has basic units with BS4.

If you want to compare apples to apples tau are a bargain.
A hammerhead with railgun and burst cannons is 150 points
A fire prism is 115 points
Both are BS4, the Fire Prism is outranged by 12inches has less S and AP on its main gun, outranged by 6 inches, 4 shots and 1 S on it's secondary weapons. It also blows up on immobilized results.
35 points buys an awful lot of pain.
So in summary: shooty armies basic BS is 3
MEQ armies are not shooty armies
My argument makes plenty of sense. Yours is akin to "IG are no good because Terminators are better at everything they do."

So a Fire Prism is worse than a Hammerhead, so it proves that all shooty armies are BS3 and marines can never be shooty? Your 'argument' is making less and less sense the more you try to explain it. I also never said IG are no good, and I never even mentioned Terminators; right now, you're just trolling.

Avatar 720 wrote:
So are we just ignoring the fact that half of 40k armies are BS4 as standard and can be pretty damn shooty to boot?

Both armies which have been designed to pretty exclusively win through shooting (Tau & IG) have generally been BS3. In their prime (mid-lat 4E for Tau, now for IG) they didn't really suffer for it.

Space Wolves can be a very shooty army and get BS4

All marines are BS4. SW's shootyness is the result of poor codex design resulting in a Space Berzerker army with more long range heavy weapons fire than just about any other army but IG.

vanilla Marines can be shooty and get BS4

Yes, again, all marines are BS4, but they don't win soley through shooting either generally. Throw a BS4 C:SM army against a BS3 IG army and ask the Marine army to win a shooting war and it will lose, as it should. Throw any 4E marine army aganst 4E tau with 4E rules and ask the marine army to win just through shooting and you'd get the same result.

GKs can be shooty-ish (especially with psyrifleman dreads) and get BS4

Again, as with other marines, they don't win purely by shooting and can't win shooting wars with BS3 shooty armies without getting assaults into action.

BA can be pretty shooty and get BS4

Once again, marines, they're pretty much all the same thing as the above.

, Eldar, whilst not completely shooty, have a good amount of BS4 shooting with Fire Prisms, Dark Reapers, Wraithlords, Dire Avengers, Fire Dragons, Wraithguard, Rangers, Warp Spiders, Swooping Hawks...

And almost all of their vehicles are BS3, as are their heavy weapons units. It's only their elite aspects and sniper specialists that get BS4.

Necrons are all BS4

And will lose a shooting war with BS3 Tau every time, they also have a number of CC units and more CC ability that Tau don't have.

Sisters of Battle I believe are also BS4

Yup, and are on average much more highly trained, experienced, and expensive troops.

hell even Tyranids get BS4 shooting in the form of Hive Guard and Zoanthropes.

On a small number of specialized hyper evolved lifeforms, sure. Tau can do the same thing with suits and tanks.

BS3 armies like Imperial Guard and the rest of the Tyranids have large amounts of weapons to counter it

And Tau have lots of TL abilities or longer range or higher strength weapons or they can move and shoot with weapons others could not. They can also get BS4 on tanks and suits with equipment upgrades.

and the fact that most snipers are BS3 is because they're wounding any model with a toughness value 50% of the time no matter what, and are also rending and pinning to boot; there has to be at least one downside.

Sniper rifles are awful, BS3 was never designed to be a drawback for them, rather a fluff decision based on what the units are supposed to portray.

I'm not saying we should make Tau BS4, only that your statement is very inaccurate.

The armies which have historically been designed to defeat their opponents primarily through shooting (Tau, IG, and to a lesser extent Eldar) have primarily been BS3. The BS4 armies generally have been those with lower model counts and some CC ability, even if they can be very shooty, they're generally designed as generalist armies.

Avatar 720 wrote:

AustonT wrote:Really? You are going to try to compare 15 point space marines, 12 point dire avengers, etc to 10 point fire warriors that outrange every single other basic troop and have a higher strength weapon than any other basic troop.

No, you're trying to apply my post to something it wasn't meant for.

Considering you can lay down 1.5:1 models against space marines. You hit 16% lower and wound 16% higher at longer ranges. Tau have a distinct advantage over "shooty marines" hitting is the easy part, wounding has the most variables. My statement is quite accurate Eldar non aspect warriors are BS3, ig basic infantry is BS 3.

Considering Aspect warriors make up the majority of choices in the Eldar book, you're basing this off 3 non-vehicle units (Guardians, Guardian Jetbikes, and Support Weapons) in a book containing a total of 15; 4/5ths have BS4 and you're trying to base an argument off the 1/5 that does not... I have also stated why IG have BS3, it's because there's lots of them. IG are considered a very good codex despite what you see as a huge disadvantage, because they can field enough units to negate it. Your statement remains very inaccurate, seeing as though you're ignoring the fact that every single Space Marine codex has basic units with BS4.

If you want to compare apples to apples tau are a bargain.
A hammerhead with railgun and burst cannons is 150 points
A fire prism is 115 points
Both are BS4, the Fire Prism is outranged by 12inches has less S and AP on its main gun, outranged by 6 inches, 4 shots and 1 S on it's secondary weapons. It also blows up on immobilized results.
35 points buys an awful lot of pain.
So in summary: shooty armies basic BS is 3
MEQ armies are not shooty armies
My argument makes plenty of sense. Yours is akin to "IG are no good because Terminators are better at everything they do."

So a Fire Prism is worse than a Hammerhead, so it proves that all shooty armies are BS3 and marines can never be shooty? Your 'argument' is making less and less sense the more you try to explain it. I also never said IG are no good, and I never even mentioned Terminators; right now, you're just trolling.

So a SW player fields 3 units of long fangs with heavy bolters... that is 30 hits each and every turn. To match that with Tau you need to field 60 firewarriors to average the same hit percentage. Now look at the cost 345 for the long fangs 600 for the tau. To add to that you suck at HTH and only get a 4+ AC instead of 3+ and your initiative sucks and you don't have counter attack. Now admittedly this is looking at a small element but having 255 points free to field something else in an army seems like a big advantage whether you call

MEQ armies are not shooty armies

MEQ shooty or not.

Vaktathi wrote:Large Quote

You're missing my point; Auston said "Shooty armies don't get BS4" and I proved that there are shooty armies, or armies with plenty of shooting capacity, that do indeed have BS4. Whether they're good at it or not is not my point, nor was it his. I openly admit that BS4 shooting isn't always 'good', but I never said that it was, I only said that there's enough of it to disprove what Auston said.

Both armies which have been designed to pretty exclusively win through shooting (Tau & IG) have generally been BS3. In their prime (mid-lat 4E for Tau, now for IG) they didn't really suffer for it.

This sums up rather well what I expressed when I said "shooty armies don't get bs4"

now, you're just trolling.

Really I wrote a total of two sentences to which you responded with two paragraphs extolling the virtues of units that cost 2-3 x what fire warriors cost. When I redone with things like "numbers" and "unit costs" now I'm trolling. I can get you a ladder if you'd like down from your horse. Your argument is roughly akin to the overzealous 12 yr old BA kid who points out his 30 man DC can roll your 10 man term squad but ignores the fact that he paid 2x as many points.
Apples to Apples. Unit type to unit type. Points cost and statline.
Longfangs aren't troops, so no I wouldn't expect my basic troops to out shoot them. I can't even really say I would expect my Broadsides or Hammer heads to out shoot them, but that is the comparison worthy of noting.
It's not unfair to say that a full unit of Tactical marines: 170 points ML/Flamer
Will lose against equal points of tau two units of 8 fire warriors. Oh look, bs 3 and numbers, no heavy weapons but 4+ to hit 3+ to wound and They must be a shooting army, however will I defeat them with my Tactical marines? I know I should close with and assault them. No tau or IG player in his right mind thinks man it looks like ima get outshot by these here MEQ, I should assault.
If you would like you and I can play a game without assault turns using only the Troops entries of a MEQ army and after were done we can discuss the "shootiness" of MeQ. I've done it before, it's not pretty for the emperors finest.

It's not unfair to say that a full unit of Tactical marines: 170 points ML/Flamer
Will lose against equal points of tau two units of 8 fire warriors.

Oh look, a vacuum comparison. ABC > XYZ so ABC is better... until you factor in the other ~1300/1700pts worth of models also on the field + the terrain + the fact that you have to spend 2 turns getting into range whilst I sit at 48" with my missile launcher aimed at your crisis suits or vehicles.

Bearing in mind that an average game is 5-6 turns, you've just spent 1/3 of the game getting two fire warrior squads into position. That's assuming i'm not behind LoS blocking cover, in a vehicle, on the other side of the board...

Both armies which have been designed to pretty exclusively win through shooting (Tau & IG) have generally been BS3. In their prime (mid-lat 4E for Tau, now for IG) they didn't really suffer for it.

This sums up rather well what I expressed when I said "shooty armies don't get bs4"

now, you're just trolling.

So what you actually meant was "IG and Tau don't get BS4"? Because "shooty armies don't get BS4" means any army that relies on shooting, and nearly every race in the game can have a list that does just that, which was my point. Don't blame me for your inability to word your comments.

Also, the way you said 'now you're just trolling' smacks of "I have no way of replying to your comments, so i'll just repeat what you said and spew a load of BS".

I'd suggest that you spend a little time learning how to word your comments to represent what you actually mean, since "shooty armies don't get bs4" and "IG and Tau don't get bs4" are two completely different statements.

I begin my post with a simple message: Bananas

Since the crux of your argument seems to be what a "shooty" army is I choose to address this first. In your roughly 5 years of playing 40k you have managed to either remain ignorant or willfully dismiss that there are 3 basic army types arranged in a standard hierarchy based primarily on their basic troop choices
Shooty: An army composed of a relatively large number of infantry models with poor ballistic skill, low armor saves, and little or no assault ability.
Assault: An army composed of a relatively large number of infantry models with average weapons skill, assault ability and little or no ranged threat.
Generalist: An army composed of a relatively small number of models capable of posing a reasonable threat in both ranged and close combat.

These armies since at least 2001(to include Tau since that's what this thread is actually about) have been represented by:

Shooty: IG,Tau, and Elder ( although they have managed to transcend into a more generalist army with their latest codex)
Assault: Orks,Dark Eldar, and Tyranids
Generalist: Space Marines (loyal, traitors; red,blue,grey, or green)

More exotic armies have livened up 40k to keep it from becoming a game of rock, paper, scissors played with toy soldiers and dice.

Avatar 720 wrote:
Don't blame me for your inability to word your comments.

Also, the way you said 'now you're just trolling' smacks of "I have no way of replying to your comments, so i'll just repeat what you said and spew a load of BS".

I'd suggest that you spend a little time learning how to word your comments to represent what you actually mean, since "shooty armies don't get bs4" and "IG and Tau don't get bs4" are two completely different statements.

I'll word my argument in the deliberately inflammatory tone that you have taken.
Your argument is a load of BS. You are being deliberately obtuse and ignoring basic facts like points cost, the FOC, and codex design. Your contribution to debate is a narrow minded view of 40k shaped only by your need to be right. Don't blame me for your lack of understanding of what I, and many other 40k players who have experienced more than one rules edition, see as the basic hierarchy of army composition.

I'll word my argument in the deliberately inflammatory tone that you have taken.

I took no inflammatory tone with you, you are simply percieving it to be inflammatory.

Anyway, flaming another user is against the rules, and also demonstrates a lack of willingness to debate matters in a civillised way.

Hence why i'm not going to reply to the rest of your post (you can believe it's because i've got nothing else to say, but I have my reasons for doing so (and have stated them) and therefore I don't really care) and am instead going to report it for being intentionally inflammatory.

Good day.

Avatar720 wrote:Also, the way you said 'now you're just trolling' smacks of "I have no way of replying to your comments, so i'll just repeat what you said and spew a load of BS".

AustonT wrote:I'll word my argument in the deliberately inflammatory tone that you have taken.

<broadcast mode active: you will both calm down, or you won't like the consequences>

Please tone it down, folks. There is no need to be rude to one another.

There are a lot of different ways to fix the tau codex.

However, as a general rule, an army that solely relies on shooting to win having BS 3 is nonsense. You can't argue otherwise. Even guard can do melee.

juraigamer wrote:There are a lot of different ways to fix the tau codex.

However, as a general rule, an army that solely relies on shooting to win having BS 3 is nonsense. You can't argue otherwise. Even guard can do melee.

That's where markerlights come in. Unfortunately they're unreliable, but expanding on the concept (or even giving the Shas'ui who use them +1 BS) would go a long way to helping Tau out. Every GEQ infantry has some cool gimmick to make them more effective - Gaunts have the psychic abilities from a Tervigon, Eldar Guardians/Dire Avengers have psychic support powers from warlocks and farseers, the Guard have orders, and Tau have markerlights. It's just a matter of making markerlights as effective as the previously mentioned options. They can stay BS3 base as long as they can boost it more reliably with markerlights.

The biggest problem with Tau is that they are bad at CC. It's just sort of a thing.
You hit one of their units with virtually anything and it falls apart. A lot of high-strength shooting is your counter. Which is alright against things like Howling Banshees, but stare down a horde of Ork Boyz and suddenly that really isn't an option.
Weight of fire is really a problem they have as well. Even the much gushed-over Crisis Suits are loaded out typically with Plasma/fusion/missile pods. Which is alright, if you enjoy your SUPER UBER MEGA XBAWKS HUEG main unit putting out 12~ shots a turn, at BS3, relying on markerlights.
Pricing is just a flaw of having a 3rd ed. Codex in 5th, but it's pretty glaring. The points of a WS2, BS3 unit with S5 AP4 Rapid Fire gets you a WS4 BS4 Kaballite Warrior that can hurt every unit in the game, has I5 and can milk Pain Tokens out of things.
Not to say the army is really fundamentally bad, but it has a bunch of major glaring problems that prevent it from being even mid-tier.

Tau were my first army. I recently sold them to feed me titanic CSM addiction, as they were just gathering dust.

Firstly, the Tau codex is by all accounts, okay-ish. No codex is completely balanced. If any of them were we'd all be running the same armies all of the time. The problem is the tau codex is severely lacking assault clout. Even the kroot will wither under fire.

I came up with a pretty solid list, but couldn't fund it. It is basically a crisis suit heavy list, slap-ass full of firewarriors, with a broadside and 2 hammerheads. Give everybody markerlights and watch the magic happen. The problem with the Tau (and EVERY army for that matter) is the battleforce. The firewarriors, devilfish, drones, and suit are cool, but honestly the kroot should have been canned in favor of a sniper team, or more firewarriors. For what it's worth the best battleforce imho is the Necron one. Not much in it, but all solid choices.

If you wanna run Tau you need to love to shoot, love to avoid cc like the plague, and preferably run farsight. Also be prepared to build it from the ground up and pay out the nose for a solid force.

Brother SRM wrote:
That's where markerlights come in.

Markerlights firing on BS 3 hitting half the time, against armies using MSU meaning the tau ability to focus fire does jack all in the end. The eldar are the only other army that have a lynchpin, aka the farseer, for army support. However if your telling me I need to spend 200-400 points in my army list for a support unit (8 markerlights) or two (8 more markerlights) that can get killed easily and fail their meager leadership and run merrily meaning the HEAVY laserpointers can't be fired next turn? You meant to say that's where markerlights get shot at and the actual parts of that tau army that do damage firing at BS 3.

Lots of issues here!

Personally I have fought against two people's Tau armies. The simple observation I would make is that they, like any army, have strengths and weaknesses. Obviously they are rubbish in CC but can be highly effective if used correctly. For my money they are effective when they utilise terrain to keep the range open and use their manoueverable vehicles carefully to act as firefighters or spearheads. I would humbly suggest to Tau players to deploy as far back as possible, especially if facing an army high on very fast moving units, such as hormagaunts. Deep strike may negate this to some extent but again terrain comes into play, a good Tau player will position his troops so that terrain is likely to cause mishaps.

I felt that Tau, like Necrons, suffer from a slim choice of units. They are pretty much forced to operate in one way, so that would be my main problem with them: lack of options.

For what it's worth, as an old player returning to the hobby after 20 years or so, I was distinctly underwhelmed with the Tau and felt they were not in line with the feel and ethos if the game. I think I am echoing someone else there, call me old-fshioned but they just don't feel 'right' to me, sorry!

The problem with Tau is that their supposed to be an army that excels at shooting to make up for their horrible close combat ability, but really aren't that great at shooting compared to other 5th ED armies.

They're slow, they have barely above average shooting, and they're extremely fragile. The marker light is supposed to assist their shooting capabilities, by in all but the highest point values, taking them ends up handicapping your army so much that your already stretched then army is torn apart.

Their battlesuits are absolutely ripped, and give them the ability to keep themselves out of close combat longer. Also, they have a huge number of high strength, low AP weapons. Tau are a great army, and highly competitive if played correctly.

Jimsolo wrote: Tau are a great army, and highly competitive if played correctly.

You're right, one Tau army made it to 'Ard Boyz finals last year; they're totally competitive.

I can win the occasional friendly game but never in a tournament. I'm not an awesome player but I'm not terrible. I also win consistently with my UltraSmurfs...go fig.

Jimsolo wrote:Their battlesuits are absolutely ripped, and give them the ability to keep themselves out of close combat longer. Also, they have a huge number of high strength, low AP weapons. Tau are a great army, and highly competitive if played correctly.

I agree but their troop choices are so much crap. Like a swiss army knife the suits have to do all the heavy lifting for the Tau. Not that that is bad but I find it boring to play armies with the philosophy of "well you can play anything you want but if you want to have a snowball's chance of winning you will play X." A key to that is making tau firewarriors more effective now you could make them stand up better in HTH by giving them stubborn or an effect that adds stubborn (space pope nearby) or you could make it where their fire is that much more effective. (Pulse rifle Hvy 30" ROF2 Rapid Fire, or Pulse Carbine 18" Ass 2.) or you could make markerlights more effective and cheaper ( persistent - they are not expended per shot but exist throughout the turn. All drones cost 10 pts. All markerlights affect any shots during the turn.) To this you can add subsidiary changes. (Seeker Missiles are not one-shot and done - particularly on skyrays - and make them expend a markerlight to shoot one off but make it BS 5 and ignores cover save.

Now we can also talk about small changes like lowering the cost of kroot. (Orks with a rapidfire gun and T3 for more than an orc.) Burst cannon rate of fire increased to 4 to make stealth suits viable choice as well as make burstcannons a viable choice for vehicles. Drones not yielding KPs or count against casualties.

English Assassin wrote:They attract much ire from older players since they were added to the game's background a decade or so ago and, in the minds of many of us, don't really fit with the general style of Warhammer 40,000's background, and were added solely to sell the game to anime geeks and kids who were otherwise put off by the game's gothic, brutalist aesthetics.

I'm glad somebody mentioned this, which pretty much sums up my first impression when I saw their original release. I'm not sure how many older veterans still feel this way, but I'll admit it took me well over half a decade to get over that initial outlook.

DAaddict wrote:

Jimsolo wrote:Their battlesuits are absolutely ripped, and give them the ability to keep themselves out of close combat longer. Also, they have a huge number of high strength, low AP weapons. Tau are a great army, and highly competitive if played correctly.

I agree but their troop choices are so much crap. Like a swiss army knife the suits have to do all the heavy lifting for the Tau. Not that that is bad but I find it boring to play armies with the philosophy of "well you can play anything you want but if you want to have a snowball's chance of winning you will play X." A key to that is making tau firewarriors more effective now you could make them stand up better in HTH by giving them stubborn or an effect that adds stubborn (space pope nearby) or you could make it where their fire is that much more effective. (Pulse rifle Hvy 30" ROF2 Rapid Fire, or Pulse Carbine 18" Ass 2.) or you could make markerlights more effective and cheaper ( persistent - they are not expended per shot but exist throughout the turn. All drones cost 10 pts. All markerlights affect any shots during the turn.) To this you can add subsidiary changes. (Seeker Missiles are not one-shot and done - particularly on skyrays - and make them expend a markerlight to shoot one off but make it BS 5 and ignores cover save.

Now we can also talk about small changes like lowering the cost of kroot. (Orks with a rapidfire gun and T3 for more than an orc.) Burst cannon rate of fire increased to 4 to make stealth suits viable choice as well as make burstcannons a viable choice for vehicles. Drones not yielding KPs or count against casualties.

All these are good ideas for changes in the new book. I would add that being bad in CC is by design, keeping firewarriors stubborn would be a bad change - if you get charged you don't want to stay locked, you'd rather sacrifice a squad and get swept so you can return fire during the next shooting phase. Tarpitting is not a tau strategy encompassed in the mont'ka or the kay'on.

For the kroot, i suggest a system like tyranids where they can pay for upgrades to their organs (fits the fluff since they have chameleonic DNA). - 5 points/model for wings, 1 point a model/fleet, etc etc (playtesting obviously required here).

The battlesuits are honestly one of tau's coolest units, I would like to see them T5 with 3 wounds, personally, for about the same cost they are now (so krak missiles don't ruin our day quite as bad as they do now). I'm hoping for a codex update within the next six months but who knows anymore with GW.

agnosto wrote:

Jimsolo wrote: Tau are a great army, and highly competitive if played correctly.

You're right, one Tau army made it to 'Ard Boyz finals last year; they're totally competitive.

I can win the occasional friendly game but never in a tournament. I'm not an awesome player but I'm not terrible. I also win consistently with my UltraSmurfs...go fig.

Agreed! My friend plays Tau against my SM and it is always a competitive game. Marker lights, Shield Drones + Broadsides, and Piranha x3 are common in my buddy's force and it always gives me a run for my money. STR 10 AP1 twin linked shots are hard to combat if I have to take 2 or more turns to get to you.

tetrisphreak wrote:
The battlesuits are honestly one of tau's coolest units, I would like to see them T5 with 3 wounds, personally, for about the same cost they are now (so krak missiles don't ruin our day quite as bad as they do now).

For the 35 points or so they cost now? Are you nuts? T5 with 2 wounds, sure. T4 with 3 wounds, okay. Both is entirely too much. Maybe give the Shas'el (I think that's the crisis sergeant equivalent?) 3 wounds if need be, but for basic suits that's too much.

Shas'Els currently have 3 wounds, shas'os have 4. Not that you would realize, however, because they often die to a single s8 weapon. maybe points should be tweaked, but my wish listing changes would make the units withstand enemy fire power way better. If I had to pick one or the other I'd go with t5.

Actually SRM I disagree wit you a bit on that point. With wraithlords continuing to have a ridiculous toughness + wounds it is not beyond the realm of possibility that battlesuits are nearly as tough. I doubt we will ever see T5 W3, bout it's a BATTLEsuit can you give a brother T5 so it's at least less likely to get intstasmeared. Sooner or later we will actually see what happens to the Tau.

Oh know, OP asked what is wrong with Tau. Probably shouldn't have done that, because I just wrote a wall-o-text. Only for the brave of heart, here is my answer:

Ok, to answer the OPs initial question, there are a lot of problems with the Tau codex. A lot. Its a fun army to play, and great for casual games and more relaxed tournaments, but I wouldn't consider it competitive. Its too dated. Its got too many weaknesses. Against the new 5th edition codices, in the hands of experienced players who know their army, who know how the Tau work, and who know how to build lists properly, they will get crushed.

This has nothing to do with the Tau CC weakness. The Tau are supposed to be weak in CC. They were provided with tools to avoid CC. The problem is that the Tau are supposed to be a mobile, shooting army that isn't that mobile, isn't any better at shooting than many of the 5th edition codices out there and far, far worse at shooting than IG (who are arguably more mobile), and furthermore lacks the endurance to stand up to return fire. They also have a poor range of scoring troops and an incomplete set of ranged weapons, which means there are certain enemies they have an extremely difficult time killing at range, which is a problem as they can only kill things at range.

Among the problems they have are:

Scoring Units:

Tau have exactly to troops choices. Firewarriors and Kroot. Both perform the same role in combat, anti-light infantry. Neither have any access to any heavy weapons, special weapons, or power weapons. This means going heavy with troops, which is necessary given the frailty of both these choices, makes the Tau innately heavy on the anti-light infantry side and lacking harder hitting weapons, which forces the Tau to eschew other anti-infantry options available in the codex, and makes there scoring units powerless against many foes.

Among the two troops choices, Kroot are actually a rather solid guerrilla/harassment type troop, and superior to Firewarriors nearly every way(including in shooting, if the target is toughness 4 or less), while Firewarriors are utter rubbish, terrible at the task they specialize and even worse at everything else. The major problem is that Kroot just can't perform the scoring troops role alone. Infiltrate is fantastic for getting into position or for outflanking, they actually have a rather effective shooting attack, they are decent in CC, and they are numerous enough to survive a committed attack. However, they are Ld 7(Ld 8 with an rather expensive upgrade) and they lack armor of any kind. This means flamers, tank shocks and any assault in which the Kroot cannot inflict significant enemy casaulties will quickly remove them from an objective, as will a lucky enemy shotting phase which inflicts 25% casualties and causes them to break on there awful Ld 7/8. They are good, just not hardy enough to hold objectives in the face of committed enemy resistance.

Finally, we have our troops transport, the Devilfish. This is, for the points, arguably the worst transport in the game. And in a game environment where mech is king (and mech really means massed APCs, not heavy tanks), this is a huge liability. Costing over twice the price of a Rhino or half again the price of a Chimera before upgrades, the Devilfish is slow, lacks fireports, is equipped with pathetic weaponry, and benefits from no free equipment or special rules. Only armor 12 11 10 and the lucky break Tau received with disruption pods prevents this unit from being irredeemably horrible. Wise Tau players would be advised to avoid including these units in their list entirely. And yet, doing so means all scoring units are strictly foot mobile, and can only advance on objectives slowly, while most current codices have access to fast skimmer transports that can used for quick objective grabs (which is easy to execute against flimsy Tau scoring units).

So there you have, a major handicap in taking objectives, which in 2/3rds of the missions determines the victor. Oh, don't think it gets any better in kill points, but first, lets get to the Tau's true weakness.


Terrible Leadership:

Sure, every noob and their dog knows that Tau suck in CC. The thing is, unless you are using some utter BS like Snikrot, the Tau can be irritatingly good at avoiding it. A true pro knows their real weakness, unbelievably terrible leadership. Why attempt to corner some dancing Crisis Suit while it merrily grinds to troops to dust over multiple shooting phases, when often a couple stray bullets are enough to send them running for the hills?

Tau leadership problems stem from three sources: poor base leadership, max of 8 for anything not HQ, horrible options for correcting poor leadership, as Ethereals in particular will actually make things worse, and small unit sizes. The only sizable Tau units are the troops choices, virtually everything else comes in squad sizes of 8 or smaller. Crisis suits are 1-3 suits occasionally accompanied by 1-2 drones, as are Broadsides (additional drones can be taken, but aren't for a variety of reasons). Stealth suits come in squads of 3-6, pathfinders and gun drones in squads of 4-8, vehicle drones in squads of 2, sniper drones in squads of 4. Often a single casualty is enough to force an Ld check, if not, it will take all of two casualties. Against suits, small arms fire can be used to remove the drones and result in an Ld test. If drones aren't present, an unsaved str 8 wound will instant kill and suit and cause the same effect.

In 4th edition, there problems were ameliorated by the fact the small units could use their footprint to easily hide behind terrain. Thanks to TLOS, it is often impossible to hide units (especially on tourney tables, which often have inadequate terrain). Thus there is nothing besides a 4+ cover preventing an opponent with sufficient weapon range, shooting at each squad in turn just enough to inflict 25% casualties to force as many Ld test as possible each round. Your opponent need not actually kill your army, the terrible Tau Ld will have your army withdraw for them

This fact, combined with Tau's weakness in CC and the high Ld scores and fearless nature of most other armies make things particularly difficult. Because even a single model is often a CC threat to the Tau, the Tau must kill each an every enemy unit to the last man. However, it is often sufficient for the enemy to defeat a Tau unit by inflicting a single casualty.

Oh, its a good thing Tau still have good anti-mech going for them, because heaven help you if you let anything with the “Tank” rule near your forces, as you can easily watch two of your units run off the board do to a single tank shock. Usually avoidable, but some codex writer decided it was a good idea to let IG bring in excess of 10 vehicles to a normal point game. So good luck with that.


Kill Points:

A yes, the final 1/3rd of victory conditions, kill points. THE WORST RULE IN WARHAMMER 40K. We need to reinstate corporal punishment, and use it on the individual who came up with this rule. Its that bad. But I digress.

As bad as kill points are, they only get worse for Tau. The Tau lend them selves naturally to multiple small units, which can often be driven off the board by a single casualty. Tau will often be coordinating many relatively weak units against a single much stronger, much more expensive enemy unit. Say multiple crisis suit teams against a single terminator squad. Sense some mathematically illiterate at GW decided a 100 point pair of crisis suits, a 70 point kroot squad, and a 600 point terminator squad are all worth essentially the same, should a stray krak missile cause your suits to run off a board and a deepstriking flamer cook your kroot while you finish off his termies, you will be one kill point behind because you were only able to destroy 3 times as much of his army as he destroyed of yours. So essentially you and your opponent will be operating under two completely different sets of objectives, with your objectives being far harder to achieve and yielding less points than your opponent. So for this third type of objective, Tau are once again at a disadvantage.

I suppose I described kill points in general, but due to the nature of the Tau codex, your likely to always end up on the screwed end of this badly contrived mission. Kill points were designed by idiots, and Tau suffer for that.


Crisis Suits and Imperial Hand-me-Down Weapons:

As a race dedicated to strictly ranged combat that is impotent in CC, you think Tau would be equipped with better weapons, or at least weapons that are not inferior to, weapons found on more CC capable races. Now the Tau do have two signature weapons that are superior to their imperial counterparts: the pulse rifle, which is unfortunately equipped on a unit that is so terrible that you are mathematically better off using bolter equipped chickens instead, and the railgun, which is simply awesome and is still awesome despite all the codex creep that has come since. However, railguns cannot and should not be expected to deal with everything. It is here that we encounter the weapons that bridge the gap between the pulse rifle and the railgun. Unlike the railgun and pulse rifle, the weapons are typically inferior to there IoM counterparts, especially when compared to IoM weapon platforms that perform similar purposes.

Burst Cannons – Burst cannons are a poor mans heavy bolter, possessing only half the range and inferior AP to its imperial counterpart. As an assault class weapon, it does grant suits the benefit of firing on the move, while Imperial troops must remain stationary for the heavy bolter. However, it typically isn't used on suits as it performs that same function as the Tau troops choices. This leaves vehicles mounted versions, for which the assault classification is irrelevant, making the secondary weapon on all Tau tanks and the Devilfish wholly inferior to their Imperial counterparts. Worst however, is the Piranha burst cannon. Its Imperial counterpart is the Landspeeder, which mounts not a heavy bolter, but an assault cannon, utterly outclassing the Piranha with superior range, ROF, str, AP and rending. To add insult to injury, the Landspeeder can carry a second powerful weapon, while the Piranha is stuck with the useful, but comparatively weak, gun drones.

Fusion Blaster – Just another word for a meltagun. Found on Piranha, Stealth, and Crisis Suits. Appropriate for the Stealth Suits, but underpowered otherwise. While the large based, elite special and heavy weapon platforms that are the Crisis Suits can only take a stock meltagun, a basic Tactical Marine is capable of using the longer range multi-melta. Similarly, the Piranha is stuck with the short range infantry version while a whole range of imperial vehicles can take multi-meltas as primary or secondary weapons, including the Landspeeder, which can simultaneously carry a multi-melta and heavy flamer.

Flamer – Only the flamer is available to Tau. No heavy flamers exist in the codex. And once again, while the specialized Tau elites can only carry the most basic flamer, often available to basic troops of other codices for free, your IG vets, a basic troops choice, have the option of packing the much more effective heavy flamer. Oh, and they can even use the heavy variant on the move.

Plasma Rifle – Once again, our plasma rifle is weaker than its imperial counterpart, although at least this one enjoys the benefit of not overheating. At least a slight benefit is obtained by mounting on Crisis Suits though, as it can be fired at full range while on the move. Still, its another weapon that the IoM can mount on basic troops, and even in the same quantity thanks to IG vets, while specialized Tau troops are needed in our codex.

There are basically two ranged weapons that really suit our Crisis Suits, as a signature elite shooting unit of a dedicated shooting faction: missile pods and the airbursting fragmentation projector. All other weapons are essentially cheap upgrades IoM codices can easily take on their basic troop choices, and can often use without hampering their mobility, which mind you, is the whole reason the Crisis Suits are supposedly using these weapons instead of stock troops. Even more insulting, sometimes basic IoM troops can take weapons that are superior to the ones found on Crisis Suits, while IoM vehicles are always equipped with weapons superior to that of the Tau, save that one exception. For a faction that is supposed to be known for their superior weaponry, Tau have exactly one weapon that actually fits this description: the Railgun(although not exactly superior to any IoM counterpart, missile pods are a strong and serviceable weapon). That's it. Virtually every other weapon available to the take is just a copy of a IoM weapon, but usually mounted to a much heavier platform that would have superior weapons if it were a IoM unit.


The Firepower Gap:

Of course when the unit that was supposed to bridge the gap between Railguns and troop level weapons is really just carry basic meltaguns and flamers rather then genuine heavy weapons, Tau firepower is going to be deficient. Many common IoM weapons such as plasma cannons, missile launchers and battlecannons are unavailable in any form to the Tau, even in inferior packages, and the Tau really don't have many weapons unique to themselves outside of pulse rifles and railguns. Thus a firepower gap exist between the missile pod of str 7, the only decent Crisis Suit weapon outside of the ABFP, and the railgun of str 10. Often there are units too resilient to be taken down with str 7, but are either too numerous, or are instant death multi-wound models that require more shots that are available from the limited amount of railguns that can be taken. Units such a Nobz, TMC, FNP Marines and Greater Demons can fall into this category. A str 8 pieplate or high volume str 8 ap 3 is what is often required of these targets, although sometimes plasma will suffice, and the only options Tau have for that is a meltagun at point-blank range, or a gimmicky a problematic one-shot seeker missile. So while Tau are expected to kill things at range, some things are simply difficult to impossible to kill at range. A large FNP nob squad with complex wound allocation exploits is nearly impossible for the Tau to remove.


The Tau Army Wide Special Rule – Markerlights:

Most armies in 40k enjoy some army wide special rules: Orkz get mob rule and Waagh, Marines get ATSKNF and Tactics, IG get orders, DE get power from pain, Eldar just get plain awesome support pyschic powers. For many armies, these rules are absolutely free, and if not, come with an otherwise solid HQ choice. Tau get markerlights, which are powerful, arguably more powerful than most of the rules listed, save the Eldar powers. Unfortunately, they are not free. You have to pay for them, and you have to pay A LOT. There are essentially two variants: mobile markerlight drones that cost 60 points per marker hit, which are simply too expensive to field, or pathfinders. Pathfinders cost only 24 points per hit, but thanks to an archaic and outdated rule, must take a transport that ill suits them, as the heavy nature of markerlights prevents them from using it after disembarkation. Should they embark in a Devilfish for any reason, two turns of markerlight shooting will be lost. Suffice to say, the markerlights are cumbersome and awkward to employ in an army, while most other armies enjoy automatically or easily incorporated special rules.


Conclusion:

This is getting far too long so I am going to end it hear. Basically you have an army that is supposed to have excellent mobility and firepower at the cost of CC, but its mobility is hampered the lack of a good way to get troops to objectives, its firepower is crippled by the fact that the most of the armies weapons are inferior copies of IoM weapons save a few signature weapons, all while the army is being hampered by a poorly integrated army wide special rule, lackluster troops, kill point liabilities, and crippling leadership issues. Its expected to kill at range when it can effectively harm many common enemy units at range, and has limited options for winning based on mission objectives.

Mind you, I was discussing the good things in the codex. I never went into details about the bad options in the codex. In particular, photon grenades, krootox, ethereal and Aun'vi are so bad they are not just a waste of points, they will actively screw you!