I've never played the new Tau, and now we have a player starting out. So I wondered, what's Tau's edge on everyone? Other than the obvious Riptides and Eldar allies, my thoughts were something like
-Supporting Fire
-The sheer range and power of even the basic weapons
-Pathfinders (used correctly at least)

Did I miss something? Because shooty forces ignore support fire, fire warriors aren't the best shots or the toughest, and pathfinders need some real skill if WD is to be believed. And for now at least, run from the assumption there are no allies, and no riptide (he's only new)

Railguns
crisis suits
marker lights
ion weapons

Missile broadsides. The best ballistic skill in the game on basic troops using ML. Best infantry guns in the game... That's just a few.

Lucarikx

In general

- Long range
- High strength
- Volume of fire
- Synergy between models
- INTERCEPTOR ALL THE THINGS!

Yikes, think I need to round up some Comissars to shoot my guardsmen when they wet themselves and run away.
How in heck does any other shooting army beat that thing???

 Mitranekh the Omniscient wrote:
Yikes, think I need to round up some Comissars to shoot my guardsmen when they wet themselves and run away.
How in heck does any other shooting army beat that thing???

With IG? Super easy: MSU everything (don't even think about running combined squads), stay out of the 36" death zone and blast everything into pieces with Lascannons, Manticores and Russes.

 Mitranekh the Omniscient wrote:
Yikes, think I need to round up some Comissars to shoot my guardsmen when they wet themselves and run away.
How in heck does any other shooting army beat that thing???

They tend not to. Though Tau do tend to excel at longer range. There are armies that can match or beat them at under 24" and do even better even closer. Obviously, Tau really fail when the enemy gets right next to them, i.e. in Close Combat. The trouble is getting there and surviving the overwatch. With Tau gunlines, the trick is target priority and splitting up their supporting fire "web".

 The Shadow wrote:

 Mitranekh the Omniscient wrote:
Yikes, think I need to round up some Comissars to shoot my guardsmen when they wet themselves and run away.
How in heck does any other shooting army beat that thing???

They tend not to. Though Tau do tend to excel at longer range. There are armies that can match or beat them at under 24" and do even better even closer. Obviously, Tau really fail when the enemy gets right next to them, i.e. in Close Combat. The trouble is getting there and surviving the overwatch. With Tau gunlines, the trick is target priority and splitting up their supporting fire "web".

Great advice, but how would it be done? What is the order (I assume riptides, troops, suits roughly) and how would a web be best split?

 Mitranekh the Omniscient wrote:
I assume riptides, troops, suits roughly

Pathfinders/marker lights > Troops/ethereal > the rest > riptide last

Generally speaking without marker light support there shooting is just a bit above standard and removing them will remove most of there ability to remove cover.
Depending on the list troops will be light. remove them to force them to table you. also ethereal buffs are amazing for the price. try to snipe it out with barrage or something.
Kill the rest depending on what counters what in your army.
Riptides are bullet magnets. ignore if you can, locking them into combat for the game would be better to keep em from shooting.

I'll do my best, pathfinders in the right hands seem brutal so I'll just turn an LR eradicator on them.

Tau have good small arms and anti-mid strength vehicle shooting, and also can deal with Flyers and cover saves very easily. They also have great Troops. These are all strong assets in the current environment-- a balanced Tau army has the shooting power to deal with almost anything and the solid Troops core to go the distance.

That's good to know... My foot guard is doomed. Think I need some HEAVY armour.... Roll on the LRBTs

 Desubot wrote:

 Mitranekh the Omniscient wrote:
I assume riptides, troops, suits roughly

Pathfinders/marker lights > Troops/ethereal > the rest > riptide last

99% of the 40k playing population would disagree about Riptides being last.

Generally speaking without marker light support there shooting is just a bit above standard and removing them will remove most of there ability to remove cover.

This, imo, is the biggest thing to keep in mind in my opinion. The marker lights just allow the Tau to ignore a lot of rules and can even help them ignore some of their own weaknesses. Knock out Pathfinders first, followed by Missile-sides.

Next I would say watch out for mass Kroot squads. Using huge squads of cheap Kroot can allow the Tau to use decent board control.

Got it. Pathfinders, broadsides with SMS or whatever it is, troops (especially in blobs), then riptide (bullet magnet or no it needs dealing with), then the J-S-J Crisis gak, then I reckon that's me sorted. All using the poor bloody guard

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Mitranekh the Omniscient wrote:
I assume riptides, troops, suits roughly

Pathfinders/marker lights > Troops/ethereal > the rest > riptide last

99% of the 40k playing population would disagree about Riptides being last.

The riptide is last because it's ridiculously hard to kill via shooting and no sane Tau player is ever going to let you get into assault with one.

Because everyone is still stuck on the idea that 6th is a shooting-only game.

6th edition is all about Monstrous Creatures and heldrakes. Those are the biggest threats. Think about the top tier armies... they all have T6 or greater 2+ or 3+ armor save monstrous creatures. You simply can't out shoot that. You can't shoot it down.

Tau fold to assault... which is easier said than done. They also fall apart to leadership based tests. My Tyranids can out-MC them so I've been pretty successful.

THIS is why gravguns are needed.

If you didn't build your whole list around shooting then the two best shooting armies wouldn't be 'top tier.'

Imagine a Khorne Dog army or a drop pod army dropping in on those? Yes, they can intercept you with large blasts... if you drop in a position which means the blasts would have to touch Tau models they can't shoot you with that. Plus, they can't shoot that weapon next turn so you basically get a free turn against them.

Those are my feelings anyway... dismiss them at will.

Think about what Tau is afraid of... then look to see who is playing that competitively. Everyone is playing shooty-something which means Tau and Eldar are king for now.

 Kain wrote:

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Mitranekh the Omniscient wrote:
I assume riptides, troops, suits roughly

Pathfinders/marker lights > Troops/ethereal > the rest > riptide last

99% of the 40k playing population would disagree about Riptides being last.

The riptide is last because it's ridiculously hard to kill via shooting and no sane Tau player is ever going to let you get into assault with one.

And how does that make it last? What is posted above says Pathfinder are better than Troops and the Ethereal, which are better than the other good stuff, and then that the Riptide is the worst of the good stuff. Or at least that's how the above reads, unless I missed something?

I think he meant for target priorities for the guard.

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Mitranekh the Omniscient wrote:
I assume riptides, troops, suits roughly

Pathfinders/marker lights > Troops/ethereal > the rest > riptide last

99% of the 40k playing population would disagree about Riptides being last.

Then they are wrong. and that's coming from tau.

Most match-ups, I like nothing better then my riptides focued with all the nasty stuff that won't aim at my crisis suits/tanks (enclaves, suits are troops for me)


Reasons you MIGHT focus riptides?
You got a super-elite army, you should fear the IA/fusion riptides. they need to take a beating, at least enough to make NOVA risky.
You got horde army, you should fear the HBC/SMS riptide, and probably want to gun him down, good news-only 1 of them, and only in enclaves.
You got a deepstrike army, you should fear the riptides who got the EWO, and them alone, heavy guns take down interceptor suits. (remember that after intercepting he cant shoot any good next turn, so you got a turn free of him. get the ones who CAN shoot next turn.)
You got an air army-if its not with a VT, its not an issue, heavy guns got after whatever DOES have VT.
You got a MEQ spam army? forget riptides, you are an inefficient target for them anyway, heavy guns go against ion tanks first.

Now other targets?
Pathfinders-always good to kill. flamers make short work of them, so does anything else AP5 and ignore cover, or better. and even if you can't get AP5, just ignoring cover will probably get the job done.
Marker drones with controller? always good kill. the controller itself, or the drones. use AP4 high volum when drones take the front, and krakmissiles and up when the commander is.
Tetras? always good kill. even bolters will work, the hard part is cartching up. autocannons are great here, other long-range AT will also to the trick, but volume generally is better then quality in the case.
Ethreal? always good kill. precision shots with S6+ will be nice, though he will likely manage an LOS, you can also just nuke the entire squad, try dropping barrage on him, line attacks (heat ray, JOTWW, etc) or trying to nab some focused witchfire. vindicare is almost instant-win here.

Catch my drift? tau is an army with WEAK native shooting (though ability to spam some heavy guns), the point is we got multiple versatile buffers who play along very well, and we got a mechanic that allows, when used properly to render assault very hard.

How to get past the supporting fire? tank shock. not only does weak tau moral means they just might run away, when you tank shock the right distances-you can force units aside, and once you isolate them, in comes the sweeper unit. and you don't even need much or a sweeper. a lousy 5-man assault marine squad can take down most tau units in CC. (pretty much anything other then riptides and HQs)
Also, while we are abusing lack of Ld? if a unit is not a major threat, a few kills to force a retreat works, also pinning does wonders against tau.


How to get past the screen of S7 doom? AV13 works pretty well, S7 has a hard time with it, but S14 outright goes "and not a single feth is given" as it drives in, tankshocks around to force movement/runs, shoot a little to spice things up, and at some cases deploys some troops.
Got AV14 all around-drive into them like a boss.
Only front? build a wall.
Kist remember when using walls of AV-take down them fusion blasters. they can HURT.


But always, no matter WHAT happens-aim for the markers first if it is in any case possible, or, if markers are static (pathfinders), try to park the importat stuff out of their reach, at least until your own long range deals with them.

I've seen some good points in this thread, but I want to add something myself:
In my opinion their strength is in the built-in capability to 'ignore' their weaknesses.
Low BS: Markerlights
Bad in CC: Great overwatch, Jet Packs
Low Survivability: Great range so they can stay in cover.
Lack of AA: Skyfire-option for suits.

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
And how does that make it last? What is posted above says Pathfinder are better than Troops and the Ethereal, which are better than the other good stuff, and then that the Riptide is the worst of the good stuff. Or at least that's how the above reads, unless I missed something?

That list was for target priority

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Mitranekh the Omniscient wrote:
I assume riptides, troops, suits roughly

Pathfinders/marker lights > Troops/ethereal > the rest > riptide last

99% of the 40k playing population would disagree about Riptides being last.

The riptide is last because it's ridiculously hard to kill via shooting and no sane Tau player is ever going to let you get into assault with one.

And how does that make it last? What is posted above says Pathfinder are better than Troops and the Ethereal, which are better than the other good stuff, and then that the Riptide is the worst of the good stuff. Or at least that's how the above reads, unless I missed something?

Because Riptides can't score and have trouble killing stuff once pathfinders are dead, whereas FWs can score and Ethereals are worth VPs.

 Krellnus wrote:
Ethereals are worth VPs.

Not to mention decent AOE Buffs.

The rest everyone else pretty much answered

Basically the thing that makes Tau really good is that in addition to 6th heavily favouring shooting, they don't pay a premium for having a statline good at shooting and combat (like marines) and don't have any units in their codex with melee ability, which means pretty much whatever they take is focused on one thing, shooting you.

why tau are op.....

1) overwatch is another turn of shootong
2) they ignore cover like nothing else.
3) missile suits
4) massed long range fire power
5) eldar allies
6) riptides
7) they ingnore cover like a boss
8) repeat above^^^

Markerlights in general make them very powerful. If all you were doing was boosting BS, it'd be one thing, but a unit of 10 pathfinders can drop enough markers down that an enemy unit will be getting hit from multiple units at BS4 with ignores cover.

Cheap interceptor also pretty much breaks them. Tau are incredible at keeping people out of assault, and gunline for gunline they beat pretty much everyone. The equalizer would be to deep strike/outflank with things and try to do some damage in a single shooting round before you get shot to death, but with interceptor Tau don't even allow that.

Tau's one weakness is in assault. Problem is, no one can get there.

But yeah, missilesides, riptides with lots of ion, and pathfinders. Combine those three for profit.

Also, we should never assume he won't have a riptide. If anything, we should assume that as soon as he has the money for them, he'll have 3 (if not 4 via allying with Farsight supplement).

DogofWar1 wrote:

Tau's one weakness is in assault. Problem is, no one can get there.

Your forget
Low moral
Generally 4+ armor or worse
Weak mid and backfield grabs
Expensive as heck transports
dependance on other units (synergy works both ways)

Jet-pack infantry
Markerlight

The 2 most importmant reasons IMO.

 Desubot wrote:

DogofWar1 wrote:

Tau's one weakness is in assault. Problem is, no one can get there.

Your forget
Low moral
Generally 4+ armor or worse
Weak mid and backfield grabs
Expensive as heck transports
dependance on other units (synergy works both ways)

The issue is those downsides of their infantry are generally masked by the sheer awesomeness of their non-infantry units. Broadsides and Riptides don't suffer from 4+ saves. And odds are, fire warriors will be in some sort of cover getting themselves a nice save, and their firepower is likely better (s5) and longer ranged (30") than comparable infantry, so the 4+ saves and low moral don't factor in to it as much.

Synergy can cut both ways, but a well rounded list limits the downsides. Pathfinders are protected by broadsides and riptides long enough (especially with intercepter weapons) for them to put down markerlights. It's not like markerlights need to be stacked to 10 to be effective, a single unit of pathfinders can usually put down enough markerlights to make an enemy unit easy pickings. Their synergy is relatively easy to employ in that regard.

Their weakest point is mid and backfield grabs, and that can be taken advantage of, but that's more tactical choices of the player than army power. Even then, if you hold onto your home objectives and contest and keep focusing fire on opposing objectives, you can usually win by sweeping people off them. A couple riptides with 72" ion accelerators firing Nova charge will clear a unit off an objective real fast, one way or another.

Stop trying desubot, people like him keep crying foul even after proven wrong over and over again.

Tau has a shopping list of problems, and most of their units depends on other units to be efficient, and in every case at least one of them is highly fragile.

Overwatch is NOTHING like an extra shooting turn. you hit on 6s and don't quite control who gets to shoot what.

"Cheap interceptor" is not at all cheap, 5 points per model might look like a bargain, but once you realize it comes on an already expensive model, with attached opportunity price of limited system choices, you realize they are less then amazing. (also, wild thought, if he spammed interceptors-don't try to sneak in from outflank?)

Getting into assault is easy, if you got a shred of clue what you are doing and proper artillery support to force the tau to split up.

Missile suits are efficient, but expensive and immoile, if they are spammed just use your heavy guns to take them out from outside their reach, or again, take high AV so they can't really do anything.

You should not assume he has or has not a riptide, we should just learn to deal with them-and in 90% of the times, it means leave them alone.

God, why do people keep bitching about tau when they clearly don't even do minimal effort for using actual TACTICS against them.
Why do you THINK you get pounded? tau spent the entire last edition being stomped to the ground and were forced to learn every single trick in the book, come new codex and said tricks coupled with actual power mocks the age-old "just walk up and swipe them with no effort" way of action they call "strategy" is no longer enough.
I have yet to see ANYONE attempt a tank shock against me, despite it being a good choice at time, despite that I constantly do that to them and they SEE it in action, and unlike some armies, I don't really have anything to "death or glory" with.
Its also rare that people use movement to block my LoS, despite me doing it non-stop to them.
Dodging shots, forcing me to move more then I want to, scattering to prevent blast efficiency, non-standard deployment, trying to trick me-none of it almost ever happen.

If you can't take on tau, improve your play. and learn the rulebook because there are TONS of stuff you can do and probably not even aware. (for example, did you know jetpacks and skimmers can stand on impassable terrain as long you actually manage to place the model?)

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Mitranekh the Omniscient wrote:
I assume riptides, troops, suits roughly

Pathfinders/marker lights > Troops/ethereal > the rest > riptide last

99% of the 40k playing population would disagree about Riptides being last.

The riptide is last because it's ridiculously hard to kill via shooting and no sane Tau player is ever going to let you get into assault with one.

And how does that make it last? What is posted above says Pathfinder are better than Troops and the Ethereal, which are better than the other good stuff, and then that the Riptide is the worst of the good stuff. Or at least that's how the above reads, unless I missed something?

It's usually a waste of time to try and shoot it to death. You have to consider the time economy of 40k, you only have so many turns to do something, and spending time from lots of heavy weapons to try and take down a unit as tough as a Riptide that shows no appreciable diminishment in capacity until it actually dies is not a good investment of said units' time. Rather, it's best to neuter it by dealing with it's more vulnerable support that boosts it's lethality.

 ninjafiredragon wrote:
why tau are op.....

1) overwatch is another turn of shootong (good point but applies to all armies)
2) they ignore cover like nothing else. (weaker than 4th ed codex)
3) missile suits (have always had deathrains)
4) massed long range fire power (stronger in 3rd-4th codex)
5) eldar allies (good point but everyone (except nids) can take Tau allies if they wanted to)
6) riptides (so without it tau wouldn't be as strong?)
7) they ingnore cover like a boss (agian weaker markerlight than 4th ed)
8) repeat above^^^

my question for people who dislike the new tau... Did you get rolled by Tau before they got their 6th edition codex? People complain about Markerlights.... they were stronger in the older codex yet people didn't complain about them back then. People saying that Fire warrriors are now one of the best infantry in the game.... yet they folded almost instantly in previous codices.

How many people played agianst tau in 5th edition? Were there a ton of tau players in 5th edition? or is everyone complaining about them because a metric gak ton of people jumped the bandwagon?

 Ninjacommando wrote:

 ninjafiredragon wrote:
why tau are op.....

1) overwatch is another turn of shootong (good point but applies to all armies)
2) they ignore cover like nothing else. (weaker than 4th ed codex)
3) missile suits (have always had deathrains)
4) massed long range fire power (stronger in 3rd-4th codex)
5) eldar allies (good point but everyone (except nids) can take Tau allies if they wanted to)
6) riptides (so without it tau wouldn't be as strong?)
7) they ingnore cover like a boss (agian weaker markerlight than 4th ed)
8) repeat above^^^

my question for people who dislike the new tau... Did you get rolled by Tau before they got their 6th edition codex? People complain about Markerlights.... they were stronger in the older codex yet people didn't complain about them back then. People saying that Fire warrriors are now one of the best infantry in the game.... yet they folded almost instantly in previous codices.

How many people played agianst tau in 5th edition? Were there a ton of tau players in 5th edition? or is everyone complaining about them because a metric gak ton of people jumped the bandwagon?

The old Tau was very monobuild.

If you could deal with Crisis suits and Railsides, congratulations, you now can defeat 90% of all 5e Tau armies.

And even then they weren't really prize winners as their scoring units were still junk as the old rapid fire rules really did not play to the Tau's favour.

 BoomWolf wrote:
Stop trying desubot, people like him keep crying foul even after proven wrong over and over again.

Tau has a shopping list of problems, and most of their units depends on other units to be efficient, and in every case at least one of them is highly fragile.

Overwatch is NOTHING like an extra shooting turn. you hit on 6s and don't quite control who gets to shoot what.

"Cheap interceptor" is not at all cheap, 5 points per model might look like a bargain, but once you realize it comes on an already expensive model, with attached opportunity price of limited system choices, you realize they are less then amazing. (also, wild thought, if he spammed interceptors-don't try to sneak in from outflank?)

Getting into assault is easy, if you got a shred of clue what you are doing and proper artillery support to force the tau to split up.

Missile suits are efficient, but expensive and immoile, if they are spammed just use your heavy guns to take them out from outside their reach, or again, take high AV so they can't really do anything.

You should not assume he has or has not a riptide, we should just learn to deal with them-and in 90% of the times, it means leave them alone.

God, why do people keep bitching about tau when they clearly don't even do minimal effort for using actual TACTICS against them.
Why do you THINK you get pounded? tau spent the entire last edition being stomped to the ground and were forced to learn every single trick in the book, come new codex and said tricks coupled with actual power mocks the age-old "just walk up and swipe them with no effort" way of action they call "strategy" is no longer enough.
I have yet to see ANYONE attempt a tank shock against me, despite it being a good choice at time, despite that I constantly do that to them and they SEE it in action, and unlike some armies, I don't really have anything to "death or glory" with.
Its also rare that people use movement to block my LoS, despite me doing it non-stop to them.
Dodging shots, forcing me to move more then I want to, scattering to prevent blast efficiency, non-standard deployment, trying to trick me-none of it almost ever happen.

If you can't take on tau, improve your play. and learn the rulebook because there are TONS of stuff you can do and probably not even aware. (for example, did you know jetpacks and skimmers can stand on impassable terrain as long you actually manage to place the model?)

What he said

As always i am amazed at the sheer ignorance/contempt some players have for the new Tau... and they then whine and call it it partly grinds my gears

Riptides either have to be taken out or ignored, and then taken out later on if at all. The players i have lost to got this idea from the get go, partly due to them being far more experienced than my humble self. The other players at my club whine and moan when they get taken apart with the right application of firepower and markerlights, combined with a steady advance, and as yet they don't seem to want to take precautions to stop it effectively.

Oh please, Boomwolf, there's a reason tournaments have Tau and Taudar everywhere. If they were so easy to counter and fragile they wouldn't be the kings of meta right now.

Their intercepter is very cheap. 25 or so points gets you interceptor on 5 models, and can basically force your opponent to avoid deep striking/outflanking/coming in from reserve in any form. That cuts off a huge number of tactics that would counter Tau. Early Warning Override on a Riptide with an Ion Accelerator is cheap to add and utterly deadly.

"don't try to sneak in from outflank?"

WOW, what a concept! Ok, I'll just start on the field so they can't interceptor me!

*gets blown up*

Maybe if I use cover I can get over there safely. Oh wait *markerlights ignore cover* *seeker doesn't need LOS*

Getting to CC is easy if you're smart? Well, you can't outflank/scout into CC because they took those rules away. You never could assault out of deep strike, except for very special units like Vanguards and Lucius Drop Pod dreads, except they took those rules away too. You can't walk over, that's asking to be murdered in gruesome ways. Light transports are cannon fodder.

I guess I could pony up the points for a Land Raider/AV14 equivalent, but that's a huge chunk of points to get one unit into CC sometime around turn 3, and which will likely kill one unit before the game ends around turn 6.

I suppose you could hope cover saved you, setting up ruins and terrain and the like, except markerlights make every type of cover that doesn't completely block LOS practically useless. And I doubt many players will agree to enough LOS blocking terrain that someone could safety cross a full table, unless you agreed to a cityscape setting before hand.

Kill the marketlights then? Well, we've established we can't deep strike/outflank to try and shoot them without exposing ourselves to lots of interceptor. Trying to assault pathfinders has all the problems listed above. You can try to shoot them from beyond 36", but there's a limited number of guns and units that can do that, and most of them, while powerful, give you very few shots, many of which, assuming you put your pathfinders in 4+ cover, will be saved.

I guess if you're playing IG with lots of big guns it's not a huge deal, bombard them to death from afar, but most other armies don't have that kind of firepower.

If he doesn't want a riptide as a new player, that's fine, it's basically the equivalent of handicapping yourself, which is understandable as a new player since you likely don't have the models available, but the OP also asked what makes Tau so good. Riptides are a large part of what makes them so good. They're incredibly hard to kill.

Not to mention, leaving them alone while trying to kill everything else is a great way to get an AP2 large blast on top of you.

In the little notebooks the game designers used when making C:SM, they probably scribbled all over the margins "invent Riptide counter," and the result was grav weapons.

Tau is good because 6th ed IS a gunline game, and tau do gunlines very well, but, most importantly, they have a bunch of special rules that are specifically designed to counter gunlines.

Gunlines have bad mobility, so I'll just use zone attackers like ouflankers or deepstrikers... but I can't, because everything has interceptor, including a large blast Ap2 weapon interceptor. But that's okay, because gunlines are bad in assault... except you'll never get there against missilespam, etc., and if you do, their entire army gets to overwatch you, at better BS as markerlights start hitting, every charge. But that's okay, because at least I can advance up the field, hugging cover so I'll still arrive with most of my guys due to cover saves... which tau pretty much systematically ignore with markerlights. This is especially bad for bikes and skimmers. Night fight will give me at least a turn to rush things up quickly while taking less damage. Except tau still ignore cover saves, and they also ignore night fighting. Maybe I'll keep a few guys back and shoot as the rest of my army advances... but tau can ignore the cover on your dug-in units while being able to keep cover themselves while being able to shoot at you without you being able to shoot back with LOS blocking terrain and MSM/smart missiles. Maybe I'll just bunch up in a corner... except tau can outshoot you, and they can bring in deepstrikers of their own, between the too-many-special-weapons farsight bomb, or also including a unit that can cast psychic powers, except without having to make a psychic test and you can't deny the witch against them. Maybe I'll just put my minis down on the table, and spend the next two or three turns picking them up as your die rolls dictate without getting to do anything myself this game...

... yeah, I think the tau player will let you do that.

WARNING! This will be my most condescending post EVER!

I realize that this will make me sound like the quintessential internet douchebag but it still needs to be said.

The Tau are no more capable on the table than any other army. What makes them so competitive in the sense that I think you mean is that they are so simpole and intuitive to play. In a sense they are Games Workshop's ultimate acheivement since they are super easy to play, and have a strong appeal to first time players. Tau have, despite my personal distate for them, done a good deal to bring new players to the game. But that is beside the point.

As to why they are so competitive. Well, they are simple to play. While there are many examples to use in the various other races, I will use Space Marines as an example to illustrate my point.

The most basic difference between Tau and other armies is that other armies have the ability to play the game on more than on level. Space Marines, Eldar, Tyranids, Chaos (Marines & Daemons), Dark Eldar, etc all have the means to field units that can engage at range or close for assault. They have varied delivery systems such as light transports, drop pods, teleporting, assault transports, etc that can affect their use or role in the game. These armies all have a sort of depth to them that allows for every player the freedom to experiment and enjoy a style that works for them with some degree of success.

The Tau however are extremely two-dimensional. They have virtually no presence in the game as it concerns assaults. If you are assaulting the Tau, you've already defeated them. They have very limited use for their transports, and the only real strength that they possess as an army is their ranged firepower. The end result of all this is that all Tau players ultimately play the same way. There is no other way to player them. The strategy is hide in cover and fire your long range weapons at the enemy until they either die or break through your lines and kill you. There isn't a lot of varieety, and there isn't a lot that can be done to change the outcome of a game after a certain point.

Is this a bad thing? No. Their lack of versatility is a result of their ease of use. Anyone can pick up a Tau army and enjoy some victories in the game. They are a great introductory force. So great in fact that when two new players face off and one of them is playing Tau, that players is more likely to win. Not because they are a better player but becuase they are simply not bothered by having to learn more about the game their counterparts. They do only one thing, and they do it better than most other armies. It's a frightening sort of efficiency.

My best advice to you as a player who is facing Tau on the table is to look up the things in your codex (whichever it happens to be) and rely on the units in there that are not applying the same mechanics as the Tau player. Don't try and out-shoot them. You'll lose. Don't try and out-range them. You'll lose. Just find the units to which they have no answer - such as fast melee units, or units that bypass some special rules (snipers and units with poisioned weapons will eat units with high toughness valuse like the Riptide). Don't let yourself be confined to the same limitations as the Tau and you will win neatrly every game against them. Let yourself become as two-dimensional as them and you will lose (they kind of own those dimensions )

Why do people always say "Markers let you ignore cover" like it is a reason to stay out of cover?
Guess what? If you keep the units in cover that means more markerlights are going to be required per unit. When running this with MSU it becomes a huge bonus since scattering on to a neighboring unit still allows for a cover save on the other unit.

And if you think pathfinders are hard to kill then I'd like to point out the TFC and whirlwinds.

Its also a used hard point. and not only that interceptor has weaknesses too. if your able to bait it out they wont be shooting till the end of the next turn. meaning its even better if you bait it out on your turn (next turn they wont be able to intercept)

Use some LOS blocking terrain
And MSU answers alot of the other complaints

As it comes armies are getting more access to ignore cover as well. perhaps some list tweaking is in order.

Edit: damn you ninjas!

DogofWar1 wrote:
Oh please, Boomwolf, there's a reason tournaments have Tau and Taudar everywhere. If they were so easy to counter and fragile they wouldn't be the kings of meta right now.

so if for some reason everyone brought a Deathwing army to the next large tournement and Deathwing came in first deathwing would be the strongest meta? oh wait because well over half of the people brough tau/eldar lists they had from the get go the highest probability of filling the top spots by the end of the tournment. Space marines just came out and as such no one knows how they will preform agianst the current "top" lists, but until we get a tourney where every army is equally represented we won't get a good representation of which armies fit into the their teirs, we will remain to have the Everyone is bringing this one list with slight variations on it so i'll bring one to... and not just bring a hard counter list.

 Savageconvoy wrote:

And if you think pathfinders are hard to kill then I'd like to point out the TFC and whirlwinds.

Just one thing to add: Whirlwinds are superbad against tau. Their ignores cover shot is only S4 and the Large Blast is way less flexible and somewhat smaller than 4 Small Blasts. And taking out a Whirlwind is EZ for a good Tau list. Had to realize this in my third battle against the fish people. It was a pretty hard lesson.

 Ninjacommando wrote:

DogofWar1 wrote:
Oh please, Boomwolf, there's a reason tournaments have Tau and Taudar everywhere. If they were so easy to counter and fragile they wouldn't be the kings of meta right now.

so if for some reason everyone brought a Deathwing army to the next large tournement and Deathwing came in first deathwing would be the strongest meta? oh wait because well over half of the people brough tau/eldar lists they had from the get go the highest probability of filling the top spots by the end of the tournment. Space marines just came out and as such no one knows how they will preform agianst the current "top" lists, but until we get a tourney where every army is equally represented we won't get a good representation of which armies fit into the their teirs, we will remain to have the Everyone is bringing this one list with slight variations on it so i'll bring one to... and not just bring a hard counter list.

What do you believe led to so many people bringing such similar armies?

 Ninjacommando wrote:

DogofWar1 wrote:
Oh please, Boomwolf, there's a reason tournaments have Tau and Taudar everywhere. If they were so easy to counter and fragile they wouldn't be the kings of meta right now.

so if for some reason everyone brought a Deathwing army to the next large tournement and Deathwing came in first deathwing would be the strongest meta? oh wait because well over half of the people brough tau/eldar lists they had from the get go the highest probability of filling the top spots by the end of the tournment. Space marines just came out and as such no one knows how they will preform agianst the current "top" lists, but until we get a tourney where every army is equally represented we won't get a good representation of which armies fit into the their teirs, we will remain to have the Everyone is bringing this one list with slight variations on it so i'll bring one to... and not just bring a hard counter list.

I don't know what you're trying to say here. In 5th, tournies were won by Gk. why?
Strongest army.
Did Gk players make posts very similar to yours and Boomwolfs?
Yup
Did that change everyone knowing they were the strongest army on the block?
Not even a little.

If you really think you are a better player than everyone at NOVA, then kudos to you. Please post your tau destroying lists for the other armies in the game, and strategies.
After that, I'm having issues isolating two isomers of a Rh linked compounds without destroying the Rh linkage itself. Since I also assume you are an expert in biochemistry as well

I beat Tau all the time with my Tyranids. You can use tactics to negate their advantages.

I drop my guys in spore pods and deploy my 6" straight ahead to stand next to a tau unit. That means when my opponent tries to drop a str 8 ap 2 large blast template, he can't target me because he'd be touching a friendly model.

I use pinning weapons to force pinning checks on them.

I use puppet masters to have riptides blow up their own units.

I take hard-to-kill sacrificial units to run up the center and draw fire from the rest of my army (Swarmlord w/buffs, Gargoyles w/buffs)

Space marines, I imagine, would take some whirlwinds or drop some flamers on the marker light units and then mop up.

Chaos daemons would rush them with chaos hounds.

Eldar would focus down their missilesides and then go to town on fire warriors.

6th edition is not a gunline game... if you try to play it that way you'll get stomped by the gunline army... Tau.

 Ninjacommando wrote:

so if for some reason everyone brought a Deathwing army to the next large tournement and Deathwing came in first deathwing would be the strongest meta? oh wait because well over half of the people brough tau/eldar lists they had from the get go the highest probability of filling the top spots by the end of the tournment. Space marines just came out and as such no one knows how they will preform agianst the current "top" lists, but until we get a tourney where every army is equally represented we won't get a good representation of which armies fit into the their teirs, we will remain to have the Everyone is bringing this one list with slight variations on it so i'll bring one to... and not just bring a hard counter list.

Well, they're not bringing Deathwing, or Ravenwing, or CSM, or Chaos Daemons. There's a correlation, yes, but based upon W-L a causal one too.

Space Marines will hopefully push back against the meta. Grav weapons and new TFC rules do help, the former with riptides and crisis suits and the latter with pathfinders and fire warriors. Getting the competitive game back to being balanced would be nice. (I feel sorry for CSM though)

It would just be nice if GW would get their act together and get the 40k meta actually balanced from the get-go rather than turning it into a many way tug of war where one army with a couple overzealous concepts pulls everyone over, and then the next army has to be designed to pull back.

Edit: And as others have said, whirlwinds are a bad choice. AV11 dies pretty quick, and the ignores cover is S4 AP5. TFCs are indeed better, their ignores cover is S5 AP4 I believe. They aren't a cure all, but they are better.

 En Excelsis wrote:
WARNING! This will be my most condescending post EVER!

I realize that this will make me sound like the quintessential internet douchebag but it still needs to be said.

The Tau are no more capable on the table than any other army. What makes them so competitive in the sense that I think you mean is that they are so simpole and intuitive to play. In a sense they are Games Workshop's ultimate acheivement since they are super easy to play, and have a strong appeal to first time players. Tau have, despite my personal distate for them, done a good deal to bring new players to the game. But that is beside the point.

As to why they are so competitive. Well, they are simple to play. While there are many examples to use in the various other races, I will use Space Marines as an example to illustrate my point.

The most basic difference between Tau and other armies is that other armies have the ability to play the game on more than on level. Space Marines, Eldar, Tyranids, Chaos (Marines & Daemons), Dark Eldar, etc all have the means to field units that can engage at range or close for assault. They have varied delivery systems such as light transports, drop pods, teleporting, assault transports, etc that can affect their use or role in the game. These armies all have a sort of depth to them that allows for every player the freedom to experiment and enjoy a style that works for them with some degree of success.

The Tau however are extremely two-dimensional. They have virtually no presence in the game as it concerns assaults. If you are assaulting the Tau, you've already defeated them. They have very limited use for their transports, and the only real strength that they possess as an army is their ranged firepower. The end result of all this is that all Tau players ultimately play the same way. There is no other way to player them. The strategy is hide in cover and fire your long range weapons at the enemy until they either die or break through your lines and kill you. There isn't a lot of varieety, and there isn't a lot that can be done to change the outcome of a game after a certain point.

Is this a bad thing? No. Their lack of versatility is a result of their ease of use. Anyone can pick up a Tau army and enjoy some victories in the game. They are a great introductory force. So great in fact that when two new players face off and one of them is playing Tau, that players is more likely to win. Not because they are a better player but becuase they are simply not bothered by having to learn more about the game their counterparts. They do only one thing, and they do it better than most other armies. It's a frightening sort of efficiency.

My best advice to you as a player who is facing Tau on the table is to look up the things in your codex (whichever it happens to be) and rely on the units in there that are not applying the same mechanics as the Tau player. Don't try and out-shoot them. You'll lose. Don't try and out-range them. You'll lose. Just find the units to which they have no answer - such as fast melee units, or units that bypass some special rules (snipers and units with poisioned weapons will eat units with high toughness valuse like the Riptide). Don't let yourself be confined to the same limitations as the Tau and you will win neatrly every game against them. Let yourself become as two-dimensional as them and you will lose (they kind of own those dimensions )

The existence of codex: BA makes the second sentence of your diatribe completely false. Try again.

Martel,
How does Ba's existence make him sound less condescending or like a douchebag?

Fixed.

En Excelsis wrote:


***Lots of drivel***

Just a big huge NO to almost everything you said. I have seven different builds with my Tau models and some of them even focus on transport use and/or CC. Your statement doesn't come off as douchey so much as uneducated about the topic at hand. Maybe your local Tau players aren't that imaginative, or maybe you just have a very weak grasp of the book, but almost everything you said there is false.

Especially the part about Tau being a good "beginner" army. Tau, more so then any other army save the Eldar, need their units to work together as a cohesive whole. The trick with unraveling Tau is fairly simple. You knock out each part of that "whole" one at a time and the army becomes less and less efficient with each missing piece. Start at the markerlights and work your way back and you will likely win. That makes Tau far more difficult to use than say, Space Marines where you can lose several units at once and still not have an appreciable loss in over-all power. I'm just not sure you really "get" the Tau ...

 Ninjacommando wrote:
so if for some reason everyone brought a Deathwing army to the next large tournement and Deathwing came in first deathwing would be the strongest meta? oh wait because well over half of the people brough tau/eldar lists they had from the get go the highest probability of filling the top spots by the end of the tournment. Space marines just came out and as such no one knows how they will preform agianst the current "top" lists, but until we get a tourney where every army is equally represented we won't get a good representation of which armies fit into the their teirs, we will remain to have the Everyone is bringing this one list with slight variations on it so i'll bring one to... and not just bring a hard counter list.

Yeah, good example!
But in that hypothetical tournament ONE person would bring a Tau-army and he'd have the first place.

Nova-tournament was 'okayish' balanced, but the top10 was still dominated by Tau even when there were 5 other codices with almost as many players.

Tycho wrote:

En Excelsis wrote:


***Lots of drivel***

Just a big huge NO to almost everything you said. I have seven different builds with my Tau models and some of them even focus on transport use and/or CC. Your statement doesn't come off as douchey so much as uneducated about the topic at hand. Maybe your local Tau players aren't that imaginative, or maybe you just have a very weak grasp of the book, but almost everything you said there is false.

Especially the part about Tau being a good "beginner" army. Tau, more so then any other army save the Eldar, need their units to work together as a cohesive whole. The trick with unraveling Tau is fairly simple. You knock out each part of that "whole" one at a time and the army becomes less and less efficient with each missing piece. Start at the markerlights and work your way back and you will likely win. That makes Tau far more difficult to use than say, Space Marines where you can lose several units at once and still not have an appreciable loss in over-all power. I'm just not sure you really "get" the Tau ...

I agree with this. After their marker lights go down you're looking at a shooting based army that is primarily BS3.

I would argue that the thing that makes riptides and missilesides so popular is that their more survivable than most Tau units. Like I said previously, you'll struggle to just shoot down a riptide.

Tau are a chain of units that allow a player to win. If you know which link to take out first, the chain quickly falls apart.

Why Tau are OP:

- they have an effective killzone that stretches 6" longer than most other armies. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it makes a difference.
- They can effectively, with correct order, ignore a large potion of the game's mechanics, or use them against you.
- have (arguably) the best infantry-standard firearm in 40k
- have certain combos that troll the living gak out of the majority of everything, including your own trolly combos

and a fair few more.



Tactics to beat them:

- they run on hitting you as you close the gap, so you have to have a few things just appear at once, then they go to hell
- they don't have enough of anything in a TAC list to be a hard counter to every build, so try unusual combinations that they might prioritize incorrectly
- Bring suicide units. they are designed to die anyway, so any shot going at them is one not going for your actual army.

Tycho wrote:

En Excelsis wrote:


***Points obviously above Tycho's head***

Just a big huge NO to almost everything you said. I have seven different builds with my Tau models and some of them even focus on transport use and/or CC. Your statement doesn't come off as douchey so much as uneducated about the topic at hand. Maybe your local Tau players aren't that imaginative, or maybe you just have a very weak grasp of the book, but almost everything you said there is false.

Especially the part about Tau being a good "beginner" army. Tau, more so then any other army save the Eldar, need their units to work together as a cohesive whole. The trick with unraveling Tau is fairly simple. You knock out each part of that "whole" one at a time and the army becomes less and less efficient with each missing piece. Start at the markerlights and work your way back and you will likely win. That makes Tau far more difficult to use than say, Space Marines where you can lose several units at once and still not have an appreciable loss in over-all power. I'm just not sure you really "get" the Tau ...

Bite back all you like, but that reason has really run thin. ALL armies are more than the sum of their parts. ALL armies rely on units working together. That's not something unique to the Tau or the Eldar. In fact, it only strengthens my point that the Tau are so super-two-dimensional. Arguing that the existance of Pathfinders adds some depth to their play style is a joke. They still have a short list of unit types. Shooty units, and units that make the shooty units more shooty. Obviously Pathfinders are the later, and if you take them out first you do cripple most of the remaining forces.

Now... how exactly does that make them less friendly to beginners?

The bottom line is that the Tau simply do not have the variety of play styles or strategies available to them that other armies do. All Tau players, from the neophyte to the Expert play the same game with Tau. Deploy Army in a gunline - roll buckets of dice - profft. They don't need to bother about moving around the table since they have range to all of it. They don't need to worry about unit positioning since they don't need LoS. They don't have to worry about formations since they can shre overwatch. They don't have to worry about breakaway units or flyers since they have easy access to interceptor.

All the things that other players have to learn and dapt to... making them more skillful strategists, are absent in the Tau meta. They just don't have to adress them.

Tau mainly dominate the Meta because they casually crush marines and termies. And soooo many people just refuse to change their lists that they've used for so long.

Depends on the layout of the army really.
If they use heavy ML support, take it out as soon as you can.

Removing cover, raising BS and firing seekers at you isnt much fun to be honest, so you want to get rid of that quickly.

Riptides are a strange one.
I see the point about ignoring it, but i wouldnt really try that.
Yes, its a pain to kill, but guard have enough guns to do that in a reasonable time.

Then you have tau that actually use no ML's, which seems strange, but they dont really seem to suffer that badly because they have other ways of doing the job.

Another pain unit that may not seem obvious;
Commander with 2x burst cannons, drone controller, chip, suite and other junk with 2 gun drones.
Then 12 gun drones with him aswell.
You have 8 shots from him and 28 TL shots from the drones.
And at any point he can give up shooting to make his unit ignore cover saves.

Seems a bit of a weird one, but it tends to shred basic troops pretty badly.




Main thing though, tau sit back and usually castle up.
Templates and more templates.
Even if your killing a few FW's and chipping wounds off suits, its doing something.

Also, anything with precision shots should be aiming at ethereals and fireblades as they will be boosting the shooting even more.

 Jackal wrote:
Depends on the layout of the army really.
If they use heavy ML support, take it out as soon as you can.

Removing cover, raising BS and firing seekers at you isnt much fun to be honest, so you want to get rid of that quickly.

Riptides are a strange one.
I see the point about ignoring it, but i wouldnt really try that.
Yes, its a pain to kill, but guard have enough guns to do that in a reasonable time.

Then you have tau that actually use no ML's, which seems strange, but they dont really seem to suffer that badly because they have other ways of doing the job.

Another pain unit that may not seem obvious;
Commander with 2x burst cannons, drone controller, chip, suite and other junk with 2 gun drones.
Then 12 gun drones with him aswell.
You have 8 shots from him and 28 TL shots from the drones.
And at any point he can give up shooting to make his unit ignore cover saves.

Seems a bit of a weird one, but it tends to shred basic troops pretty badly.




Main thing though, tau sit back and usually castle up.
Templates and more templates.
Even if your killing a few FW's and chipping wounds off suits, its doing something.

Also, anything with precision shots should be aiming at ethereals and fireblades as they will be boosting the shooting even more.

If you take a unit of 5 Piranhas and detach their gundrones you get a free 10-gun-drone unit... works well.

Another thing people haven't pointed out is their ability to ally with themselves, to get essentially double FoC in sub 2k games and the best of both signature systems which synergise with themselves.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
Tau mainly dominate the Meta because they casually crush marines and termies. And soooo many people just refuse to change their lists that they've used for so long.

That is really not constructive at all.
So you are saying that people are only losing because they are bad?
So people on the tournaments are all bad and that's why they lose to Riptide-spam?

 Jackal wrote:
Riptides are a strange one.
I see the point about ignoring it, but i wouldnt really try that.
Yes, its a pain to kill, but guard have enough guns to do that in a reasonable time.

The idea behind it is that you kill the ML-providers which allows you to hide in cover.
If you start the game with shooting at a Riptide he has BS5 and 'Ignores Cover' the entire game.
If you take a turn or two to shoot down ML-providers, he only has BS3.

 En Excelsis wrote:

The bottom line is that the Tau simply do not have the variety of play styles or strategies available to them that other armies do. All Tau players, from the neophyte to the Expert play the same game with Tau. Deploy Army in a gunline - roll buckets of dice - profft. They don't need to bother about moving around the table since they have range to all of it. They don't need to worry about unit positioning since they don't need LoS. They don't have to worry about formations since they can shre overwatch. They don't have to worry about breakaway units or flyers since they have easy access to interceptor.

False.

I play tau, I do not play a gunline.
I do not use ethereal.
I do not use broadsides.
I do not use skyray.
I only use one riptide (and with a HBC, not a IC)

True, i play farsight main, but I play different for "all tau can do is gunline", and it works pretty well.
And yet, there are a few players that crush me, constantly. and other who I crush with ease.
Why? because from some reason my riptide almost never survives turn 2, even when my opponent got no jets/reserves (he is set up as VT/EWO with the enclave ECPA) and plays power armor (meaning his dakka spam is useless)

BoomWolf, it is not an Imperium's way to use tactics. People are to win by courage, endurance and furious charge! Anything that makes it impossible is a cheat .

Speaking of, I find the hypocracy amusing when people state from one hand that "taudar rule the meta" and from the other hand that the TFC and land raiders are "not competitive" when they are the very things the so called "ruler of the meta" cant really handle when used properly.

as a great man once said "A dumb move is not dumb when it works."
Sure LR and TFC were subpar in the 5th meta of power armor spam and melta all over the place, but now that melta has gotten rare and 4+/5+ infantry ruin your day? these two will crush thier way to the top.

I played vs Tau with my old DW army and it worked very well.

Tau have massive issues with AV14 and I fielded three LRC in 1850.

Tau also have issues against Nidzilla as all of their shooting goes towards the big beasts, they ignore the little ones and end up with their Fire Warriors in CC.

I don't know what the top meta army is in your area, but mono Tau is not top in either of my Metas. I put that down to poor pilots.

We have Mono Eldar and Drakespam as our top armies and even then, Drakespam is very beatable.

Puscifer wrote:
Tau also have issues against Nidzilla as all of their shooting goes towards the big beasts, they ignore the little ones and end up with their Fire Warriors in CC.

... Not at all, Tau kill all the MCs then the little ones evaporate without Synapse. Tau are the third worst matchup for Tyranids, atm.

If tau evaporate your MCs, you are doing something wrong.
Killing one per turn is within the realm of reason, but when you have 4-5 of them, and you spawn hordes of minions, and reach into charge range by turn 2 with multiple squads and even more squads in turn 3 (as I've seen done to me too often), killing an MC every turn is not enough.

 PrinceRaven wrote:

Puscifer wrote:
Tau also have issues against Nidzilla as all of their shooting goes towards the big beasts, they ignore the little ones and end up with their Fire Warriors in CC.

... Not at all, Tau kill all the MCs then the little ones evaporate without Synapse. Tau are the third worst matchup for Tyranids, atm.

I took a this list to the last 1750 tournament I went to.

Swarmlord
Guard w/whip

2 Pyrovores in a pod
3 zoanthropes
1 Doom in a pod

Tervigon w/ 3 powers, TS, and AG
10 Termagaunts

Tervigon w/ 3 powers, TS, and AG
10 Termagaunts

25 Gargoyles, TS, AG

Biovore

Firestorm Redoubt

I played against a Tau player with 3 Riptides and 2 Hammerheads. He had a big squad of crisis suits with marker drones and a few squads of fire warriors with an ethereal. There was a quadgun line but he didn't put anything behind it after he saw me deploy across from it.

He put his fire warriors in reserves because he knew that I was going to bake them with my reserves. When his first turn started, my leading gargoyles were just 6-8" away from his crisis suits in some ruins. A mediocre jump move made it possible for me to assault them with the gargoyles.

When my reserves came in I made sure to either drop them out of line of sight (pyrovores behind a ruin) or right next to a pair of riptides (1 inch from one of their bases to avoid blasts for the doom).

Gargoyles ran around glancing hammerheads to death after that. The biggest threat he had was his Monster Hunter/missile pod crisis suits (which could be switched out with missilesides I suppose). My list was so aggressive though that he couldn't focus everything down fast enough.

He knew he had one chance at the swarmlord and that was when I rolled a 1 for iron arm turn one. At T7 and at cost of his guard, he clung on with 1 wound and just slunk into the shadows of a nearby ruin to hold down my backfield objectives until the game ran down.

Target priority is everything for Tau. If they can shoot 1 thing at a time, they're excellent. If you mob them with 2-3 threats at once they tend to fall apart as the key to their success, markerlights, don't spread around like that. They can kill precisely one thing per turn except for the odd lone model or rhino chassis.

Tau are very very good vs nids, they have single handily bumped them from tier 1 to tier 3 in the competitive scene. There is a reason out of 250 people at nove, I was one of 6 nid players.

Now a good bug player can beat a bad tau player still, but with even skill level and average luck on both sides, the tau player should come out on top, assuming the mission is a standard one.

Broadsides, or a burst tide with a chip commander should kill a mc a turn.

That said, as long as you are not playing them in kps you have a chance.

 BoomWolf wrote:
If tau evaporate your MCs, you are doing something wrong.
Killing one per turn is within the realm of reason, but when you have 4-5 of them, and you spawn hordes of minions, and reach into charge range by turn 2 with multiple squads and even more squads in turn 3 (as I've seen done to me too often), killing an MC every turn is not enough.

I'd love to live in this magical land of yours where Tau can only kill 1 MC per turn.

 BoomWolf wrote:
If tau evaporate your MCs, you are doing something wrong.
Killing one per turn is within the realm of reason, but when you have 4-5 of them, and you spawn hordes of minions, and reach into charge range by turn 2 with multiple squads and even more squads in turn 3 (as I've seen done to me too often), killing an MC every turn is not enough.

They can do a lot more damage than that, just extrapolating off how fast then can kill FNP space marines.

I just started playing Tau and have to deal with daemon players who like to play 4 FMCs running around the board so do tell...how do I kill 1 FMC a turn? A Riptide nova charging his heavy burst cannon would give him 12 rending shots (that get hot!). Attached to commander Buffy the Riptide would become TL, monster hunter and ignore cover. In most cases the MC has iron arm so will almost always be t7+ which means you will need to hit and wound on 6's, right?

When I was at Nova this year there were a ton of people playing daemons with multiple MCs and dogs running around. My first two games were against that type of build so I can only assume the Tau players (and there were a sh*t load of them) had to deal with the daemon MC lists and Tau almost always seemed to come out on top...

How are they reliably getting iron arm?

Luck I guess but it seemed like they were lvl3 psykers so they just kept rolling on biomancy until they got it...

It should be a 50% chance on each level 3 psyker: 1-((5/6)*(4/5)*(3/4)).

Even with ironarm, they'll need T9 to not take a huge amount of wounds from missilesides. And the ones that don't have it can be popped by firewarriors.

 necron99 wrote:
Luck I guess but it seemed like they were lvl3 psykers so they just kept rolling on biomancy until they got it...

As someone who plays flying daemon circus, I can tell you that I would much rather roll telepathy on all my flying princes then biomancy. If I get an iron arm its because fateweaver got it.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
It should be a 50% chance on each level 3 psyker: 1-((5/6)*(4/5)*(3/4)).

Even with ironarm, they'll need T9 to not take a huge amount of wounds from missilesides. And the ones that don't have it can be popped by firewarriors.

Yup, and on princes you are going to max out at t8 which just is not worth it. Especially vs tau

Yeah, as I recall it was Fateweaver who was running around with iron arm in both games. FW was also the lynch pin of the whole operation so my night scythes were pouring everything they could into it to try and keep the dogs from getting their 2+ invuln. So I'd take some shots and then they'd vector strike me to death.

 necron99 wrote:
Yeah, as I recall it was Fateweaver who was running around with iron arm in both games. FW was also the lynch pin of the whole operation so my night scythes were pouring everything they could into it to try and keep the dogs from getting their 2+ invuln. So I'd take some shots and then they'd vector strike me to death.

the best way to beat that list is to not fire at fateweaver (tho sometimes it might be the only model on the board lol). He should be pretty light on scoring units so you should go for those first.

Above 2500 points other armies start to catch up to tau and eldar. I know not many people play at this high of a threshold but at that level he is forced to fill in spots he doesnt want to take. even with a 2nd FOC nobody I know owns 6 riptides or would dish out for 6 riptides. If you want to have a fun game play a 4000 point game. There will be so much for the tau to shoot at that they can't possible take it all down before you get there. I played 4500 Eldar (me) vs Orks and with all my shootiness I couldnt stay out of melee combat. By the end of turn 2 I had 2 squads tied up in melee combat. Turbo boost a wave serpent of wraithguard in there and watch tau cry as his riptide gets instagibbed by distortion cannons. 3 squads of 5 make it nearly impossible to avoid this 565 points for 3 squads in a serpent each makes short work of any multi wound models. Their high toughness makes it near impossible for their troops weapons to damage you and with a heavy armor save they are forced to shoot their heavy weapons at your guard or suffer because of them. Meanwhile your wave serpents are mopping up troops by discharging their shields on things and while your wraithguard are getting shot up by their heavy weapons, your heavy weapons are tearing them up. It deffinately isnt a take all comers list but it really takes down the tau (especially if its nightfighting and they go first)! Have a spiritseer in the army and those wraithguard are scoring as well!

Bite back all you like, but that reason has really run thin. ALL armies are more than the sum of their parts. ALL armies rely on units working together. That's not something unique to the Tau or the Eldar. In fact, it only strengthens my point that the Tau are so super-two-dimensional. Arguing that the existance of Pathfinders adds some depth to their play style is a joke. They still have a short list of unit types. Shooty units, and units that make the shooty units more shooty. Obviously Pathfinders are the later, and if you take them out first you do cripple most of the remaining forces.

Now... how exactly does that make them less friendly to beginners?

lol So you admit that simply killing ONE SINGLE unit can instantly have a crippling effect on the rest of the army yet you can't understand how that might make them harder for beginners to use? You don't understand how different that is from an army like Space Marines where you can drop multiple units and the army just keeps on coming like nothing's wrong? You really don't see how an army like Tau that is made up of specialists with almost no redundancy and a lot units that are easy to kill would be harder for a beginner? I'm starting to think you might actually BE a beginner. No shame in that of course. I'd draw similar comparisons to Eldar, but given your previous comments it's clear your not following.

The bottom line is that the Tau simply do not have the variety of play styles or strategies available to them that other armies do. All Tau players, from the neophyte to the Expert play the same game with Tau. Deploy Army in a gunline - roll buckets of dice - profft. They don't need to bother about moving around the table since they have range to all of it. They don't need to worry about unit positioning since they don't need LoS. They don't have to worry about formations since they can shre overwatch. They don't have to worry about breakaway units or flyers since they have easy access to interceptor.

All the things that other players have to learn and dapt to... making them more skillful strategists, are absent in the Tau meta. They just don't have to adress them.

Look, I'm no "expert", but I've played Tau since their very first codex. I can count on one hand the number of times I've deployed in a gunline and even when I've deployed that way, it breaks up into seperate mobile units right away, so I can honestly say I've never played using a gunline. Same with most of my local Tau players. To be honest, I'm not sure why I'm bothering here. The more I read your comments the more it feels like you might just be suffering from a mild case of butt-hurt. My guess is that you probably also feel CSM is OP because you lost to Helldrakes once, and even though your probably running a lot of Fortuned Jet seers and Serpent spam, YOUR army probably requires you to be a tactical genius ...

Smart people don't even bother with Pathfinders anymore, just a C&C commander in with Farsight Enclave O'Vesa and an Iontide and spammed Skyrays, for some AV13 markerlights that have skyfire.

My only local Tau player (outside of tournies) only uses a single squad of Pathfinders, and uses their weapons more than their Markers. The Markers are usually to enable multiple units to gain Skyfire. BS3 TL Railsides + a BS4 Hammerhead both into the sky makes my Night Scythes a little nervous to fly in.

 IHateNids wrote:
My only local Tau player (outside of tournies) only uses a single squad of Pathfinders, and uses their weapons more than their Markers. The Markers are usually to enable multiple units to gain Skyfire. BS3 TL Railsides + a BS4 Hammerhead both into the sky makes my Night Scythes a little nervous to fly in.

Less nervous when flying into a HBC Riptide with re-roll to hit, tank hunter and ignores cover?

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
If tau evaporate your MCs, you are doing something wrong.
Killing one per turn is within the realm of reason, but when you have 4-5 of them, and you spawn hordes of minions, and reach into charge range by turn 2 with multiple squads and even more squads in turn 3 (as I've seen done to me too often), killing an MC every turn is not enough.

I'd love to live in this magical land of yours where Tau can only kill 1 MC per turn.

Sure, ok, you kill two a turn... oh look the rest of the Nid army is nomming your face off as you couldn't kill the original two swarms of Gants or the two more that spawned on T1.

If you have unit redundancy like Nids tend to have, Tau then have a hell of a job to kill them all. You produce or field too many things for Tau to shoot at.

If the Tau Player saturates one or possibly two MC or units a turn, you'll probably kill one or two a turn... but the Tau player is on a clock. Those Nids will be in CC on T2.

If you split fire across the breadth of a Nid army, the Tau are in trouble as you won't have done enough dmg to stop the horde.

That's how Nids beat Tau.

That and a Mawloc or two. Biovores a good too.

There is a reason why Tau in one form or other are on the top of every major tournament. I don't expect Space Marines to make a huge impact there, but I do expect to see SM allied with Tau, e.g.

SM:
Khan on bike
Fully tooled up Chapter master on a bike taking hits
3-4 Grav-gun bike teams with assault bike (MM)
2 TFC's and a Stormtalon

Tau:
Buffmander without guns
Kroot bubblewrap
Missileside team with missl drones

It lacks air superiority, but does have table control. What missilesides+buffmander can't kill, the grav-teams will. I'm considering fielding something like this (ie. acquiring Tau models), but don't expect it to be fun to face in friendly games.

And to those who think it's cool to "get back at you" for Tau being weaker and now can be perceived as being almost OP, how is that good for the game? Just look at the competitive lists, they are rather limited.

It gets quite boring to see Taudar, Eldau, TaoTao and whatnot with the occassional GK/Necron/Daemons/CSM. Let's see what Codexes Orks and Tyranids can offer and I expect/hope Codex BA to hit the shelves soon enough, being a BA player.

I might have my plan nailed down in my head... testing it is going to be the only way to get results.

One thing people miss out are the pirahnas, fast skimmer that can take out a maulerfiend? Yes please!, Take 3 and get out the tear cup...

Puscifer wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
If tau evaporate your MCs, you are doing something wrong.
Killing one per turn is within the realm of reason, but when you have 4-5 of them, and you spawn hordes of minions, and reach into charge range by turn 2 with multiple squads and even more squads in turn 3 (as I've seen done to me too often), killing an MC every turn is not enough.

I'd love to live in this magical land of yours where Tau can only kill 1 MC per turn.

Sure, ok, you kill two a turn... oh look the rest of the Nid army is nomming your face off as you couldn't kill the original two swarms of Gants or the two more that spawned on T1.

If you have unit redundancy like Nids tend to have, Tau then have a hell of a job to kill them all. You produce or field too many things for Tau to shoot at.

If the Tau Player saturates one or possibly two MC or units a turn, you'll probably kill one or two a turn... but the Tau player is on a clock. Those Nids will be in CC on T2.

If you split fire across the breadth of a Nid army, the Tau are in trouble as you won't have done enough dmg to stop the horde.

That's how Nids beat Tau.

That and a Mawloc or two. Biovores a good too.

Loosing 2 mcs a turn is really really bad when you only have 8 and the majority of your killing power is tied up in 2 4 wound flyrants.

God I wish it was that easy. Now keep in mind I was the top ranked bug player at nova (7-1) and I ended up Co winning bracket 3 with fennel (I got downpaired by mistake) so I had my fare share of success against tau. So I feel like I know how to play bugs in a competitive setting. Now I'm far from a perfect player but I can hold my own with the big boys.

That said I pretty much got tabled by tau in kill points. Keep in mind this tau player was a pretty new player as well. That is how bad the tau bug match up can be (especially in kill points.

I know not everyone plays nova format, and west coast gts play out much different then east coast gts, but look at the amount of nid players before and after adeotacon, and you can see what tau did to bugs..

Tau is competitve because it is one dimensional. There are almost no variant builds for the army and it is the new one-click win army with every single rule-bending upgrade.

Remember kids: competitive means one-click and no imagination.

 krootman. wrote:

Puscifer wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
If tau evaporate your MCs, you are doing something wrong.
Killing one per turn is within the realm of reason, but when you have 4-5 of them, and you spawn hordes of minions, and reach into charge range by turn 2 with multiple squads and even more squads in turn 3 (as I've seen done to me too often), killing an MC every turn is not enough.

I'd love to live in this magical land of yours where Tau can only kill 1 MC per turn.

Sure, ok, you kill two a turn... oh look the rest of the Nid army is nomming your face off as you couldn't kill the original two swarms of Gants or the two more that spawned on T1.

If you have unit redundancy like Nids tend to have, Tau then have a hell of a job to kill them all. You produce or field too many things for Tau to shoot at.

If the Tau Player saturates one or possibly two MC or units a turn, you'll probably kill one or two a turn... but the Tau player is on a clock. Those Nids will be in CC on T2.

If you split fire across the breadth of a Nid army, the Tau are in trouble as you won't have done enough dmg to stop the horde.

That's how Nids beat Tau.

That and a Mawloc or two. Biovores a good too.

Loosing 2 mcs a turn is really really bad when you only have 8 and the majority of your killing power is tied up in 2 4 wound flyrants.

God I wish it was that easy. Now keep in mind I was the top ranked bug player at nova (7-1) and I ended up Co winning bracket 3 with fennel (I got downpaired by mistake) so I had my fare share of success against tau. So I feel like I know how to play bugs in a competitive setting. Now I'm far from a perfect player but I can hold my own with the big boys.

That said I pretty much got tabled by tau in kill points. Keep in mind this tau player was a pretty new player as well. That is how bad the tau bug match up can be (especially in kill points.

I know not everyone plays nova format, and west coast gts play out much different then east coast gts, but look at the amount of nid players before and after adeotacon, and you can see what tau did to bugs..

Sorry, I don't know the Nova format, can you please tell me what it is?

I'd love to see your Nid list if possible please? I'm just starting out with them and would like some insight.

As for the Tau, I have no doubt they are powerful, but I believe that the three Tau players in my Metas are not great pilots or even list builders.

My results and wins may be skewed due to this, but as it stands, both my DW and Orks never had big trouble with Tau. Tough games, yes, but never one sided.

 Desubot wrote:

 Mitranekh the Omniscient wrote:
I assume riptides, troops, suits roughly

Pathfinders/marker lights > Troops/ethereal > the rest > riptide last

As a Tau player I will offer my advice on this. I think the first thing to do is look at the Tau army you are up against first and determine what the most important unit is that makes his army work. Now a lot of times this can be the pathfinders, but there are instances where this is not correct. Broadsides for instance with HYMP & SMS are twin linked and thus will most likely hit roughly 75% of their shots, so marker lights, albeit good, are not essential for the functionality of this unit. In a case where you opponent has Broadsides with this set-up I would make them the target priority.

I think its about identifying which unit is going to bring the pain and then taking that unit out. Of course you need to look at pathfinders and see what they are giving the other units around them and if taking them out will leave the other units at a measly BS3 without re-rolls to hit, then they are then the wise option.

 DarthOvious wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Mitranekh the Omniscient wrote:
I assume riptides, troops, suits roughly

Pathfinders/marker lights > Troops/ethereal > the rest > riptide last

As a Tau player I will offer my advice on this. I think the first thing to do is look at the Tau army you are up against first and determine what the most important unit is that makes his army work. Now a lot of times this can be the pathfinders, but there are instances where this is not correct. Broadsides for instance with HYMP & SMS are twin linked and thus will most likely hit roughly 75% of their shots, so marker lights, albeit good, are not essential for the functionality of this unit. In a case where you opponent has Broadsides with this set-up I would make them the target priority.

I think its about identifying which unit is going to bring the pain and then taking that unit out. Of course you need to look at pathfinders and see what they are giving the other units around them and if taking them out will leave the other units at a measly BS3 without re-rolls to hit, then they are then the wise option.

this is again a better way to look at it.

In the majority of my Tau games the pathfinders have been highly useful to buff units on targets that need to be nuked. Actually they have only been buggered once or twice, but when combined with multiple big threats e.g. Riptides, hammerheads, broadsides they tend to fall way down the target priority list for a few players.

That is until El commander turns up with crisis suits... if we are in luck 3 marker lights on a unit usually means its dead from the suits, they then jump away giving a two-fingered salute. This then means more whining from the other side of the table.. not including the riptide trolling

Thatguyoverthere11 wrote:


I agree with this. After their marker lights go down you're looking at a shooting based army that is primarily BS3.

I would argue that the thing that makes riptides and missilesides so popular is that their more survivable than most Tau units. Like I said previously, you'll struggle to just shoot down a riptide.

Tau are a chain of units that allow a player to win. If you know which link to take out first, the chain quickly falls apart.

There is another reason why Riptides and Missilesides are so popular. Their shooting isn't as inaccurate as people think they are. They have a tendency to look at them and go "Bah, they're only BS3" but they forget that Missilesides are twin linked and thus actually hit roughly 75% of the time and they also forget that the riptide has a blast weapon which use the scatter dice, so a third of the time you directly hit anyway and an extra +1" to your scatter compared to BS 4 isn't a lot either, not to mention that the Riptides second weapon is also twin linked.

People need to get out of the frame of mind where they say "Bah, its only BS3" and recognise that means nothing when the extras along with those units make a big difference in whether they hit or not.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 En Excelsis wrote:
Bite back all you like, but that reason has really run thin. ALL armies are more than the sum of their parts. ALL armies rely on units working together. That's not something unique to the Tau or the Eldar. In fact, it only strengthens my point that the Tau are so super-two-dimensional. Arguing that the existance of Pathfinders adds some depth to their play style is a joke. They still have a short list of unit types. Shooty units, and units that make the shooty units more shooty. Obviously Pathfinders are the later, and if you take them out first you do cripple most of the remaining forces.

This isn't true. Tau are not all about pathfinders. Have a look at Owens Tau army over at Miniwargaming and you will see he has no pathfinders in his list at all. None whatsoever. The list isn't a bad one either, so its not like he is handicapping himself. There are things in a Tau army you can do to avoid taking Pathfinders in your list if you don't want them.

1) Different source of markerlights (markerdrones, Tetra's, Skyray, Remora Drones, etc, etc.
2) Command & Control Node for twin linked weapons
3) Units with twin linked guns (Missiliesides)
4) Riptides with blast weapons. Other blast weapons in general
5) Hammerheads (BS4), even take Longstrike upgrade for BS5
6) Commanders with drone controllers to make drones within units BS5

Those little bits there make a very large difference to the effectiveness of a Tau army and its shooting without having to solely rely on markerlights.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jackal wrote:
Depends on the layout of the army really.
If they use heavy ML support, take it out as soon as you can.

Removing cover, raising BS and firing seekers at you isnt much fun to be honest, so you want to get rid of that quickly.

Riptides are a strange one.
I see the point about ignoring it, but i wouldnt really try that.
Yes, its a pain to kill, but guard have enough guns to do that in a reasonable time.

Then you have tau that actually use no ML's, which seems strange, but they dont really seem to suffer that badly because they have other ways of doing the job.

Another pain unit that may not seem obvious;
Commander with 2x burst cannons, drone controller, chip, suite and other junk with 2 gun drones.
Then 12 gun drones with him aswell.
You have 8 shots from him and 28 TL shots from the drones.
And at any point he can give up shooting to make his unit ignore cover saves.

Seems a bit of a weird one, but it tends to shred basic troops pretty badly.




Main thing though, tau sit back and usually castle up.
Templates and more templates.
Even if your killing a few FW's and chipping wounds off suits, its doing something.

Also, anything with precision shots should be aiming at ethereals and fireblades as they will be boosting the shooting even more.

Sir, I exalted your post. A good explanation all round. I should point out though that I don't always sit back with my Tau. I use crisis suits with fusions in suicide deep strike fashion into the enemys zone. I also have a habit of jumping my Riptide up as well throughout the game in order to try and get line breaker but this one depends on who I'm playing and whether it is safe to do so.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BoomWolf wrote:
Speaking of, I find the hypocracy amusing when people state from one hand that "taudar rule the meta" and from the other hand that the TFC and land raiders are "not competitive" when they are the very things the so called "ruler of the meta" cant really handle when used properly.

as a great man once said "A dumb move is not dumb when it works."
Sure LR and TFC were subpar in the 5th meta of power armor spam and melta all over the place, but now that melta has gotten rare and 4+/5+ infantry ruin your day? these two will crush thier way to the top.

I use a bit of melta in my list and I use it for this exact reason, Landraiders. When building my list and seeing my lack of anti AV14 I had, I put some into it. I use Broadsides you see, so I only have one hammerhead tank with Longstrike in it and if he just so happens to miss or get blown up then I need a second option. So Crisis Suits with Fusions and the Riptide will take up that role if Longstrike bites the dust.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 necron99 wrote:
I just started playing Tau and have to deal with daemon players who like to play 4 FMCs running around the board so do tell...how do I kill 1 FMC a turn? A Riptide nova charging his heavy burst cannon would give him 12 rending shots (that get hot!). Attached to commander Buffy the Riptide would become TL, monster hunter and ignore cover. In most cases the MC has iron arm so will almost always be t7+ which means you will need to hit and wound on 6's, right?

When I was at Nova this year there were a ton of people playing daemons with multiple MCs and dogs running around. My first two games were against that type of build so I can only assume the Tau players (and there were a sh*t load of them) had to deal with the daemon MC lists and Tau almost always seemed to come out on top...

These lists are one of the lists that Tau will find more difficult. High toughness monsterous creactures seems to be one of our biggest weaknesses. I had trouble the other week with this very thing when I came up against a daemon player with 4 of them in an apocalypse game. I'm also now having to think about how I go about taking out a Hierophant Bio-Titan. The player down at the store who brought in his Reaver Titan has now stopped bringing that in and brings the Hirophant instead.

Puscifer wrote:

 krootman. wrote:

Puscifer wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
If tau evaporate your MCs, you are doing something wrong.
Killing one per turn is within the realm of reason, but when you have 4-5 of them, and you spawn hordes of minions, and reach into charge range by turn 2 with multiple squads and even more squads in turn 3 (as I've seen done to me too often), killing an MC every turn is not enough.

I'd love to live in this magical land of yours where Tau can only kill 1 MC per turn.

Sure, ok, you kill two a turn... oh look the rest of the Nid army is nomming your face off as you couldn't kill the original two swarms of Gants or the two more that spawned on T1.

If you have unit redundancy like Nids tend to have, Tau then have a hell of a job to kill them all. You produce or field too many things for Tau to shoot at.

If the Tau Player saturates one or possibly two MC or units a turn, you'll probably kill one or two a turn... but the Tau player is on a clock. Those Nids will be in CC on T2.

If you split fire across the breadth of a Nid army, the Tau are in trouble as you won't have done enough dmg to stop the horde.

That's how Nids beat Tau.

That and a Mawloc or two. Biovores a good too.

Loosing 2 mcs a turn is really really bad when you only have 8 and the majority of your killing power is tied up in 2 4 wound flyrants.

God I wish it was that easy. Now keep in mind I was the top ranked bug player at nova (7-1) and I ended up Co winning bracket 3 with fennel (I got downpaired by mistake) so I had my fare share of success against tau. So I feel like I know how to play bugs in a competitive setting. Now I'm far from a perfect player but I can hold my own with the big boys.

That said I pretty much got tabled by tau in kill points. Keep in mind this tau player was a pretty new player as well. That is how bad the tau bug match up can be (especially in kill points.

I know not everyone plays nova format, and west coast gts play out much different then east coast gts, but look at the amount of nid players before and after adeotacon, and you can see what tau did to bugs..

Sorry, I don't know the Nova format, can you please tell me what it is?

I'd love to see your Nid list if possible please? I'm just starting out with them and would like some insight.

As for the Tau, I have no doubt they are powerful, but I believe that the three Tau players in my Metas are not great pilots or even list builders.

My results and wins may be skewed due to this, but as it stands, both my DW and Orks never had big trouble with Tau. Tough games, yes, but never one sided.

go to www.novaopen.com its a gt format that a few east coast gts run.

My list was pretty simple.

Flyrant tl dev old adversely
Flyrant tl dev hive comander

doom in pod

terv 3 powers, toxin sacs
terv 3 powers, toxin sacs
terv 2 powers, toxin sacs
10 guants x3

Mawloc x2

Skyshield

DarthOvious wrote:

Thatguyoverthere11 wrote:


I agree with this. After their marker lights go down you're looking at a shooting based army that is primarily BS3.

I would argue that the thing that makes riptides and missilesides so popular is that their more survivable than most Tau units. Like I said previously, you'll struggle to just shoot down a riptide.

Tau are a chain of units that allow a player to win. If you know which link to take out first, the chain quickly falls apart.

There is another reason why Riptides and Missilesides are so popular. Their shooting isn't as inaccurate as people think they are. They have a tendency to look at them and go "Bah, they're only BS3" but they forget that Missilesides are twin linked and thus actually hit roughly 75% of the time and they also forget that the riptide has a blast weapon which use the scatter dice, so a third of the time you directly hit anyway and an extra +1" to your scatter compared to BS 4 isn't a lot either, not to mention that the Riptides second weapon is also twin linked.

People need to get out of the frame of mind where they say "Bah, its only BS3" and recognise that means nothing when the extras along with those units make a big difference in whether they hit or not.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 En Excelsis wrote:
Bite back all you like, but that reason has really run thin. ALL armies are more than the sum of their parts. ALL armies rely on units working together. That's not something unique to the Tau or the Eldar. In fact, it only strengthens my point that the Tau are so super-two-dimensional. Arguing that the existance of Pathfinders adds some depth to their play style is a joke. They still have a short list of unit types. Shooty units, and units that make the shooty units more shooty. Obviously Pathfinders are the later, and if you take them out first you do cripple most of the remaining forces.

This isn't true. Tau are not all about pathfinders. Have a look at Owens Tau army over at Miniwargaming and you will see he has no pathfinders in his list at all. None whatsoever. The list isn't a bad one either, so its not like he is handicapping himself. There are things in a Tau army you can do to avoid taking Pathfinders in your list if you don't want them.

1) Different source of markerlights (markerdrones, Tetra's, Skyray, Remora Drones, etc, etc.
2) Command & Control Node for twin linked weapons
3) Units with twin linked guns (Missiliesides)
4) Riptides with blast weapons. Other blast weapons in general
5) Hammerheads (BS4), even take Longstrike upgrade for BS5
6) Commanders with drone controllers to make drones within units BS5

Those little bits there make a very large difference to the effectiveness of a Tau army and its shooting without having to solely rely on markerlights.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jackal wrote:
Depends on the layout of the army really.
If they use heavy ML support, take it out as soon as you can.

Removing cover, raising BS and firing seekers at you isnt much fun to be honest, so you want to get rid of that quickly.

Riptides are a strange one.
I see the point about ignoring it, but i wouldnt really try that.
Yes, its a pain to kill, but guard have enough guns to do that in a reasonable time.

Then you have tau that actually use no ML's, which seems strange, but they dont really seem to suffer that badly because they have other ways of doing the job.

Another pain unit that may not seem obvious;
Commander with 2x burst cannons, drone controller, chip, suite and other junk with 2 gun drones.
Then 12 gun drones with him aswell.
You have 8 shots from him and 28 TL shots from the drones.
And at any point he can give up shooting to make his unit ignore cover saves.

Seems a bit of a weird one, but it tends to shred basic troops pretty badly.




Main thing though, tau sit back and usually castle up.
Templates and more templates.
Even if your killing a few FW's and chipping wounds off suits, its doing something.

Also, anything with precision shots should be aiming at ethereals and fireblades as they will be boosting the shooting even more.

Sir, I exalted your post. A good explanation all round. I should point out though that I don't always sit back with my Tau. I use crisis suits with fusions in suicide deep strike fashion into the enemys zone. I also have a habit of jumping my Riptide up as well throughout the game in order to try and get line breaker but this one depends on who I'm playing and whether it is safe to do so.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BoomWolf wrote:
Speaking of, I find the hypocracy amusing when people state from one hand that "taudar rule the meta" and from the other hand that the TFC and land raiders are "not competitive" when they are the very things the so called "ruler of the meta" cant really handle when used properly.

as a great man once said "A dumb move is not dumb when it works."
Sure LR and TFC were subpar in the 5th meta of power armor spam and melta all over the place, but now that melta has gotten rare and 4+/5+ infantry ruin your day? these two will crush thier way to the top.

I use a bit of melta in my list and I use it for this exact reason, Landraiders. When building my list and seeing my lack of anti AV14 I had, I put some into it. I use Broadsides you see, so I only have one hammerhead tank with Longstrike in it and if he just so happens to miss or get blown up then I need a second option. So Crisis Suits with Fusions and the Riptide will take up that role if Longstrike bites the dust.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 necron99 wrote:
I just started playing Tau and have to deal with daemon players who like to play 4 FMCs running around the board so do tell...how do I kill 1 FMC a turn? A Riptide nova charging his heavy burst cannon would give him 12 rending shots (that get hot!). Attached to commander Buffy the Riptide would become TL, monster hunter and ignore cover. In most cases the MC has iron arm so will almost always be t7+ which means you will need to hit and wound on 6's, right?

When I was at Nova this year there were a ton of people playing daemons with multiple MCs and dogs running around. My first two games were against that type of build so I can only assume the Tau players (and there were a sh*t load of them) had to deal with the daemon MC lists and Tau almost always seemed to come out on top...

These lists are one of the lists that Tau will find more difficult. High toughness monsterous creactures seems to be one of our biggest weaknesses. I had trouble the other week with this very thing when I came up against a daemon player with 4 of them in an apocalypse game. I'm also now having to think about how I go about taking out a Hierophant Bio-Titan. The player down at the store who brought in his Reaver Titan has now stopped bringing that in and brings the Hirophant instead.

Actually mc heavy lists are pretty easy for tau to deal with, broadsides with a chip comander should have no problem icing a mc per turn. Markerlights cause grounding checks, and if you can strip cover, skyrays, sniper drones, and riptides have no problem killing mcs.

 krootman. wrote:
Actually mc heavy lists are pretty easy for tau to deal with, broadsides with a chip comander should have no problem icing a mc per turn. Markerlights cause grounding checks, and if you can strip cover, skyrays, sniper drones, and riptides have no problem killing mcs.

Its more along the lines of MCs with Ironarm on them or just with a really high toughness value. So talking about a T8 to T10 Great Unclean One for example. I shot a whole Farsight bomb unit with 16 Fusion blasters at this GUC at T9, using Monster Hunter from the Puretide Chip and I didn't even cause a single wound. Granted I was a bit unlucky because my opponent rolled well for his Invulnerable Save and FNP.

However I need to have a look at a copy of the Daemons codex sometime because he had a unit of Bloodletters which he gave a 2++ save to and I've been told by some other people that he can't do that to the Bloodletters, he can only do it to one of his MCs, since it is only a +1 onto an invulnerable save.

In all it wouldn't win tournaments because you don't always effectively roll Ironarm, but when you do roll it those MCs can be tough for a Tau player to deal with.

 DarthOvious wrote:
However I need to have a look at a copy of the Daemons codex sometime because he had a unit of Bloodletters which he gave a 2++ save to and I've been told by some other people that he can't do that to the Bloodletters, he can only do it to one of his MCs, since it is only a +1 onto an invulnerable save.

It is possible to get a 2++ on Bloodletters with the right Warp Storm result and the Grimoire of True Names.

 DarthOvious wrote:

 krootman. wrote:
Actually mc heavy lists are pretty easy for tau to deal with, broadsides with a chip comander should have no problem icing a mc per turn. Markerlights cause grounding checks, and if you can strip cover, skyrays, sniper drones, and riptides have no problem killing mcs.

Its more along the lines of MCs with Ironarm on them or just with a really high toughness value. So talking about a T8 to T10 Great Unclean One for example. I shot a whole Farsight bomb unit with 16 Fusion blasters at this GUC at T9, using Monster Hunter from the Puretide Chip and I didn't even cause a single wound. Granted I was a bit unlucky because my opponent rolled well for his Invulnerable Save and FNP.

However I need to have a look at a copy of the Daemons codex sometime because he had a unit of Bloodletters which he gave a 2++ save to and I've been told by some other people that he can't do that to the Bloodletters, he can only do it to one of his MCs, since it is only a +1 onto an invulnerable save.

In all it wouldn't win tournaments because you don't always effectively roll Ironarm, but when you do roll it those MCs can be tough for a Tau player to deal with.

Id just play the mission and kill the troops, and wait until he fails iron arm.

The other way he could give blood letters a 2++ is if he cast forewarning on them and then grim them.

 krootman. wrote:

Id just play the mission and kill the troops, and wait until he fails iron arm.

It was an apocalypse game and we did try to knick as many objectives as we could. However we went first and in the last turn they we were able to claim back objectives we took and won the game. My partner in this game even had a royal air force with him and we still couldn't hang onto to those objectives with his flyers.

The other way he could give blood letters a 2++ is if he cast forewarning on them and then grim them.

This sounds like the deal. I was sure he was using psychic powers to do it. I thought that Forewarning was only a 4+ though? Is this correct or am I wrong? I was also told that grimnoire only boosted it by 1.

In other words, I really need to learn how Daemons work.

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:

 IHateNids wrote:
My only local Tau player (outside of tournies) only uses a single squad of Pathfinders, and uses their weapons more than their Markers. The Markers are usually to enable multiple units to gain Skyfire. BS3 TL Railsides + a BS4 Hammerhead both into the sky makes my Night Scythes a little nervous to fly in.

Less nervous when flying into a HBC Riptide with re-roll to hit, tank hunter and ignores cover?

He doesn't have a Riptide, nor the means to get one on the near future.

But I do agree, Riptides are a pain in the arse to look at on paper, as statistically they have to absorb a lot of bullets before going down

 DarthOvious wrote:

 krootman. wrote:

Id just play the mission and kill the troops, and wait until he fails iron arm.

It was an apocalypse game and we did try to knick as many objectives as we could. However we went first and in the last turn they we were able to claim back objectives we took and won the game. My partner in this game even had a royal air force with him and we still couldn't hang onto to those objectives with his flyers.

The other way he could give blood letters a 2++ is if he cast forewarning on them and then grim them.

This sounds like the deal. I was sure he was using psychic powers to do it. I thought that Forewarning was only a 4+ though? Is this correct or am I wrong? I was also told that grimnoire only boosted it by 1.

In other words, I really need to learn how Daemons work.

Ahh no one wants to be on my team because I always loose apoc games doing stupid stuff so I can't help you there haha.

I am just going to flatly say that Tau plain cheat and that's why they are so good!

Not really, if no one else has mentioned this being able to go Monster Hunter/Tank Hunter and ignore cover with a bunch of suits or a Riptide is just BRUTAL. Then you lump on about 20 or so S7 TL shots per missile suit, then more of the same from Broadsides and you get the picture.

Individually no unit is great, it's when they work together with markelights, puretide chips etc that they become really really nasty.

Tycho wrote:
probably requires you to be a tactical genius ...

You called?

You called?

+1

Tactical_Genius wrote:

Tycho wrote:
probably requires you to be a tactical genius ...

You called?

I bet that never gets old

 krootman. wrote:

Tactical_Genius wrote:

Tycho wrote:
probably requires you to be a tactical genius ...

You called?

I bet that never gets old

You'd be right

Tactical_Genius wrote:

Tycho wrote:
probably requires you to be a tactical genius ...

You called?

Have an exalt on me.

BoomWolf wrote:Overwatch is NOTHING like an extra shooting turn. you hit on 6s and don't quite control who gets to shoot what.

What makes the Tau overwatch phase so good are the markerlights. Each markerlight can increase the BS of the shooter by one, so if you hit with 2 markerlights, the rest of the overwatch shots are at BS3, for example.
This is how you can get an 'extra turn of shooting'.

You are correct. Its not a true extra turn, as you cannot control what your going to be shooting at -- but whatever you do shoot at is going to be dead as a doorknob unless its has something like a rerollable 2+ save.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Naw wrote:
There is a reason why Tau in one form or other are on the top of every major tournament. I don't expect Space Marines to make a huge impact there, but I do expect to see SM allied with Tau, e.g.

SM:
Khan on bike
Fully tooled up Chapter master on a bike taking hits
3-4 Grav-gun bike teams with assault bike (MM)
2 TFC's and a Stormtalon

Tau:
Buffmander without guns
Kroot bubblewrap
Missileside team with missl drones
.

This is very much like the army I am currently building. I'm not going with kroot, however. They don't bring anything to the table that 30 scouting, outflanking bikes cannot do better. Instead I think fire warriors supporting backfield objectives are better.

I also don't think the chapter master is needed. Those points can be better spent on a riptide and storm talon.

Tau are tough because Kroot eat anything even Terminators

Puscifer wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
If tau evaporate your MCs, you are doing something wrong.
Killing one per turn is within the realm of reason, but when you have 4-5 of them, and you spawn hordes of minions, and reach into charge range by turn 2 with multiple squads and even more squads in turn 3 (as I've seen done to me too often), killing an MC every turn is not enough.

I'd love to live in this magical land of yours where Tau can only kill 1 MC per turn.

Sure, ok, you kill two a turn... oh look the rest of the Nid army is nomming your face off as you couldn't kill the original two swarms of Gants or the two more that spawned on T1.

If you have unit redundancy like Nids tend to have, Tau then have a hell of a job to kill them all. You produce or field too many things for Tau to shoot at.

If the Tau Player saturates one or possibly two MC or units a turn, you'll probably kill one or two a turn... but the Tau player is on a clock. Those Nids will be in CC on T2.

If you split fire across the breadth of a Nid army, the Tau are in trouble as you won't have done enough dmg to stop the horde.

That's how Nids beat Tau.

That and a Mawloc or two. Biovores a good too.

Umm - what???!?!?!?!?!?!!!!?!!?
Nids DON'T beat Tau - not if the Tau general know what he is doing. Nids struggle to beat 2nd and some 3rd tier armies at this point.
One of two things is going on here: The Tau players you play against have no idea how to run their army or you are a master troll of biblical proportions.

labmouse42 wrote:

BoomWolf wrote:Overwatch is NOTHING like an extra shooting turn. you hit on 6s and don't quite control who gets to shoot what.

What makes the Tau overwatch phase so good are the markerlights. Each markerlight can increase the BS of the shooter by one, so if you hit with 2 markerlights, the rest of the overwatch shots are at BS3, for example.
This is how you can get an 'extra turn of shooting'.

You are correct. Its not a true extra turn, as you cannot control what your going to be shooting at -- but whatever you do shoot at is going to be dead as a doorknob unless its has something like a rerollable 2+ save.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Naw wrote:
There is a reason why Tau in one form or other are on the top of every major tournament. I don't expect Space Marines to make a huge impact there, but I do expect to see SM allied with Tau, e.g.

SM:
Khan on bike
Fully tooled up Chapter master on a bike taking hits
3-4 Grav-gun bike teams with assault bike (MM)
2 TFC's and a Stormtalon

Tau:
Buffmander without guns
Kroot bubblewrap
Missileside team with missl drones
.

This is very much like the army I am currently building. I'm not going with kroot, however. They don't bring anything to the table that 30 scouting, outflanking bikes cannot do better. Instead I think fire warriors supporting backfield objectives are better.

I also don't think the chapter master is needed. Those points can be better spent on a riptide and storm talon.

There are an iron hands white scar build that works quite well, I have played against it a few times. Depending on how popular this build becomes you may see the return of massed kroot + ethereal for bubble wrapping to protect the riptides and massed shots.

Inigo Montoya wrote:

Puscifer wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:
If tau evaporate your MCs, you are doing something wrong.
Killing one per turn is within the realm of reason, but when you have 4-5 of them, and you spawn hordes of minions, and reach into charge range by turn 2 with multiple squads and even more squads in turn 3 (as I've seen done to me too often), killing an MC every turn is not enough.

I'd love to live in this magical land of yours where Tau can only kill 1 MC per turn.

Sure, ok, you kill two a turn... oh look the rest of the Nid army is nomming your face off as you couldn't kill the original two swarms of Gants or the two more that spawned on T1.

If you have unit redundancy like Nids tend to have, Tau then have a hell of a job to kill them all. You produce or field too many things for Tau to shoot at.

If the Tau Player saturates one or possibly two MC or units a turn, you'll probably kill one or two a turn... but the Tau player is on a clock. Those Nids will be in CC on T2.

If you split fire across the breadth of a Nid army, the Tau are in trouble as you won't have done enough dmg to stop the horde.

That's how Nids beat Tau.

That and a Mawloc or two. Biovores a good too.

Umm - what???!?!?!?!?!?!!!!?!!?
Nids DON'T beat Tau - not if the Tau general know what he is doing. Nids struggle to beat 2nd and some 3rd tier armies at this point.
One of two things is going on here: The Tau players you play against have no idea how to run their army or you are a master troll of biblical proportions.

Its really is hard to dispute this :( however if the mission has multiple objectives, you play a super tight game, and you have some luck....it is possible lol. A skyshield is almost a must these days. It really really really helps vs tau

Funny, because I'm the tau player-and the nids is one of the few that I hardly beat. maybe its the player, but he's a real struggle.

As for labmouse42's point, and that's why an assualt army need a bit of artillery to soften things up first, or enough dispensable units to take the overwatch bait.
If you assault/bombard the markerlights first, or force the tau to spread out-the overwatch is not that much better then other armies, and once you go past the overwatch its pretty much an assured kill.